Being Consistently Reformed, Talking With Muslims

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Greetings, welcome to the Divine Line. We're back here in Phoenix, Arizona for about, right at, right at two months, actually.

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I think it'd be right around the 15th, 16th of October is when I'm heading back out again, if I recall correctly, looking at the calendar.

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So, back here in the regular studios. Clearly, Rich has been playing with cameras, they're zoomed out, so there's all sorts of stuff that you can see that you're not supposed to be normally seeing, but, you know, that's what happens when the mice...

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Cat's away, the mice will play. At least, at least not everything has changed completely, which sometimes happens when

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I go out of town. So he's over there talking about stuff, but just a reminder, the raffle for this beautiful, melt -and -forged blade ends

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Sunday night. You want this. Midnight Eastern Time.

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See, it has to be Eastern Time, because that makes it 9 o 'clock our time, so that Rich doesn't have to stay up late.

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That's really the reason for all that. So, this is a beautiful, beautiful blade.

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You want this. And Rich wants it really, really bad.

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So get your raffle tickets in. Great item there.

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Thanks very much to the very talented Derek Melton for... That is, of course, to help with the travel funds and everything going on along there.

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Also, I will remember to link this. You know how I know I'll remember to link this? Because I already typed it into the blog article.

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So it'll be hard for me to forget it. Though I could probably still find a way to pull it off. I keep forgetting to mention that Jason Wallace and AncientPazTV on YouTube has put out a new video on the

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Filioque Clause in regards to Eastern Orthodoxy. So there's the lengthy video they did first, and they did the one that we did the

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Make Lucaris Great Again hats for. And now not as long as the first one, but a fairly lengthy video on the

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Filioque Clause and again, just lots of history in regards to Eastern Orthodoxy.

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There isn't much out there so being aware of that. I will try to remember to link to that on the program blog notes today.

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Okay. It's been interesting to see some of the commentary and discussion that has taken place since, well, a week ago yesterday.

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Yeah, a week ago yesterday, Jared Longshore and I had our debate and it was focused on the biblical evidence, at least

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I wanted it to be focused upon the biblical evidence. It seems like the well, let's put it this way.

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If you guys want to win this discussion, what you need to do is either demonstrate that the connection that I have asserted, which

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I can provide lots of more evidence of, and certainly great theologians who have seen the same thing, the connection between Hebrews 7, 8, 9, and 10 that the argument on the

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New Covenant in chapter 8 is the Old Testament demonstration of the assertions of Hebrews 7 that Jesus is able to save Aistop, Panteles, to the

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Edomos, those who draw nigh unto God by him. Why? Because he ever lives to make intercession for them.

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So, the newness in the New Covenant is then laid out as being forgiveness of sin, universal knowledge of God, and the writing of God's law upon the heart.

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And the only way that you can do that is regeneration. Regeneration. So, what needs to be argued from the other side either is that I have misunderstood the relationship between 7, 8, 9, and 10 and the application, or an explanation of why this is not the central passage on this topic.

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And I argued in the debate that I really think that my

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Presbyterian brothers would do well to get out of some of the echo chamber of Reformed theology and take this stuff to the streets.

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And what I mean by that is do some debates with some Roman Catholics on justification, on the

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Mass. I debated Roman Catholic a few weeks ago, I'll be debating Roman Catholic two months from now, a little over two months from now, on the

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Mass. And, of course, I've been doing that for a long time. First debate on the

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Mass was with Mitch Packwood in January of 1991 over in San Diego. So, and the reason

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I say that is that it really seems to me that while we would,

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I think, right now agree that Reformed folks who are

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Reformed in their theology would go to the central chapters 3, 4, and 5 of Romans to demonstrate justification by grace alone through faith alone.

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That this is the longest single text that addresses this subject.

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And that this would have to, therefore, be the central place of argumentation if the debate topic basically is does the

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Bible teach this? Now, with Roman Catholicism, you have to first establish the

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Bible needs to because if you have an ultimate authority outside of the text of Scripture then you can get it from Pope Francis if you want,

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I suppose. It would be hard to argue that there are not key central texts for all of the most important of our

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Christian doctrines. So monotheism, the trial of the false gods, Isaiah 40 -48, also

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God's omniscience, eternality, likewise that section.

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And the key Christological texts, John 1, Colossians 1, Hebrews 1, Philippians 2,

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John 17, John 10, there are these lengthy discussions, the relationship of the

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Father and the Son, things like that. This is how we do these things and when we look at the

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Old Testament and we see its usage in the New Testament, for example,

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Genesis 15 said its utilization by the Apostle Paul has to become normative for us.

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It's central to his argument on justification in Romans 3, 4, and 5. And when

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Jews seek to dispute that, there are Jewish apologists that seek to dispute what

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Paul said there, what do they do? They attack the New Testament usage. When there are

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Old Testament texts we use in the Deity of Christ, Unitarians, they attack the New Testament usage. This is why

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I say if you get out of that context and try to take some of this stuff to the street, then you start seeing how important this really is.

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I was sent a comment, Toby Sumter, who

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I'll see in a couple months as well, maybe, who knows, made a comment on Twitter and basically what he did is he, our

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Presbyterian brothers have to defend the concept that the New Covenant is a mixed covenant that does not provide forgiveness of sins, regeneration, and the law written upon the heart to all who are in the

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New Covenant. So as I said in the debate, they start with a theory of apostasy and define the

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New Covenant on the basis of the theory of apostasy. And I say if we are consistent, we start with the fuller, more central doctrine, that is the nature of the

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New Covenant, the work of Christ, and build your doctrine of apostasy based upon those central affirmations.

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And so I find it backwards to do it this way, and yet, Toby had said whether the

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New Covenant is only regenerate persons, but as Jerry pointed out, the phrase, from the least of them to the greatest is used elsewhere in Jeremiah to mean pervasive and not exhaustive.

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Well, as I said, neither of the other two references, it's not identical language, but even the one in Jeremiah 6 is a completely different context.

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But aside from that, the issue is, is that how the writer of the Hebrews is interpreting it?

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And so Tim Bouchong, the famous Tim Bouchong of Radio Free Geneva fame, not that we've ever done a

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Radio Free Geneva about him, he's the one that does the Radio Free Geneva music, which means that he, my parents would not have liked him because my parents thought that John Denver was too rockish.

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So that gives you an idea of what my upbringing was like. But Tim Bouchong, who has served in the

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CREC in the past, he's had connections there, so he knows these guys, loves these guys, but doesn't agree with these guys on this subject.

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Responded, he said, here's the problem, the hermeneutic that returns to Jeremiah's original intention is inconsistent.

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Example, in Romans 9, Paul quotes Malachi 1 .2, Jacob I love, but Esau I hated. Specifically referring to the nations of Israel and Edom.

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However, in Romans, Paul is speaking of an individual's election to salvation. God's purpose of election might continue because of him who calls, and all of us covenantal reformed folks rejoice.

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That's apostolic interpretation, where the apostle, writing inspired words, takes the

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Old Testament and casts it in light of its new covenant application. The author of Hebrews says the exact same thing, building upon the perfection of the work of Christ, and the perfection of that work for all in union with Christ, he quotes

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Jeremiah 31, in light of its new covenant application. I believe that when it comes to this particular subject,

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DePedo folks don't allow the same apostolic latitude, especially here in Hebrews 8. And that's

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I certainly agree with that. And I want to remind folks that when you look at the utilization, when you look at the argumentation provided in Hebrews chapter 8, this idea that, well, these things in Jeremiah 31 are pervasive, whereas they were not pervasive under the

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Old Covenant. So that's the newness. The newness is more.

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It's a more -ness. There are more people who have the law written upon their heart.

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There are more people who have their sins forgiven. There are more people who truly know the

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Lord. But you still have the people who don't. And therefore, we're going to build our doctrine of apostasy, and we're going to say, there it is, there's the apostate, so on and so forth.

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But when the nature of that covenant is laid out in Hebrews chapter 8, which is already said, it's not like the covenant that I made before.

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It's not like. We all have continuation and discontinuation.

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Continuity and discontinuity. The question is, how much? But in contrast to that Old Covenant that was a mixed covenant, this is a covenant that will make the

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House of Israel, after those days, says, Yahweh, I will put my laws into their minds and upon their hearts,

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I will write them. And immediately say, well, there were people who whoever wrote the 119th

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Psalm, there's someone who loves God's law. And the idea that overriding argument is that, yeah, there were some, there's just going to be a whole lot more now.

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But the only way to make that work that way and to make that connection, as long as you have it all mixed, is to say that there will be those in the covenant in His blood.

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Remember, that's the key. What I was trying to emphasize is that if this is an argument amongst

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Reformed people, that amongst Reformed people, the covenant in His blood involves union with Christ.

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That's what particular redemption is about. That's what quote unquote limited atonement is about. That's what union of the elect with Christ is about in His blood.

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And so, the natural way to follow from Hebrews 7, the perfection of Christ's work,

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He ever lives to make intercession for them, He saves them completely, is to then see that chapter 8 is the biblical foundation for the assertion that has been made about the supremacy of the

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New Covenant priest. The New Covenant high priest, the Melchizedek priest. He is able to save the animals.

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The result of that work is the New Covenant, and in that New Covenant, I will put my laws into their minds, and upon their hearts,

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I will write them. You're not in the New Covenant if you do not have

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God's laws in your mind and written upon your heart. You're not in the New Covenant. I will be their

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God, they shall be my people. Personal relationship. They shall not teach everyone his fellow citizen, everyone his brother, saying, know the

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Lord, for all will know me. That was a part of, again, the Old Covenant. Know the

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Lord. All these other guys out there, know the Lord, know Yahweh. No, they will all know me from the least of the greatest of them.

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Now they're saying, well, but you know, that doesn't mean, that means there's more knowledge, but it doesn't mean it's exhausted.

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It doesn't mean everyone. But just think about it. Verse 12 of chapter 8 starts with a

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Hati clause. For, because,

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I will be merciful to their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.

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Can that be said of an apostate? Again, if we were discussing almost any other subject, the standard exegetical process that Reformed people use for justification, resurrection, predestination and election, deity of Christ, we'd all be making the exact same arguments until we come here.

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Until we come here. And we, you have Reformed guys going,

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I will be merciful to some of their iniquities. And I'll remember, but I will remember some of their sins.

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And you're going, why? Where is this coming from? There is a source outside the exegesis of the text here.

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You're not going to 9, you're not going to fulfillment 9 and 10, the obtaining of eternal redemption, the intercessory work of Christ, the perfection of those for whom that one sacrifice has been made in chapter 10, you're not going there.

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You're going someplace else. And I truly, and I did at least get a chance to say this in the debate,

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I truly honestly believe that this is a situation,

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I said then, I love reading the institutes, there's the set the one over there

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I have that, you know, I've taught through it and all marked up and all the rest of this stuff.

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But you get to some sections of book four and things change.

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Things change. And you gotta remember something. John Calvin, I've told people, if you haven't heard my, the two programs

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I did with Summer and Joy on Sheologians back in 2019, on the subject of the

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Munster Rebellion, you really need to. I've said over and over again, it is the wildest, craziest story in all of church history.

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It really, really is. And I emphasize to people when

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I tell them the story, I muddled my way through it back when

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I was sicker than a dog at Grace Bible Theological Seminary just a few months ago and I got sick on that trip.

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But I did tell the story of Munster and I tell people it's vitally important to recognize the impact that this event had.

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You might say, what does this have to do with Hebrews 8? Well, let me explain. People argue about when

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Calvin was specifically converted. What year? Between what events?

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There's only a few fragments of information that give us some of the chronology.

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But he was a young man and the Munster Rebellion took place very, very early on in his experience.

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Contemporaneously or very early on after his conversion. And you need to understand all of Europe, some of the, obviously some of the story was blown up and exaggerated and stuff like that, but you didn't really have to exaggerate much at all in that story.

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And so there was next to no meaningful debate, discussion.

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If you're an Anabaptist, if you did not practice paedobaptism, they didn't use terms like creedobaptist back then.

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If you're an Anabaptist you would either be executed, imprisoned, kicked out of town.

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But what didn't happen is you didn't have someone like John Calvin listening to your reasoning and your argumentation.

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And since most Anabaptists only lived a few years, it's not like they had a whole lot of time to develop their theology.

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So the point is that when Calvin develops his covenantal paedobaptist argumentation, which again was in that century a theological novum.

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People hadn't believed this before. This is not what they believed infant baptism was about.

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I forgot something to drink, Brother Rich, I'm going to need a cup of water. I was going to get that before the program started,

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I forgot it. When he's developing this stuff, he's not developing it with any type of back and forth, any type of pushback from the other side, from someone that you'd actually think is a

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Christian, for example. And so for a long time reformed theology did not even have to deal with, all they were dealing with was

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Rome's perspective of things. They weren't dealing with anyone who was pushing to reform the understanding of baptism, the reasons for baptism, things like that.

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So the Reformation movement in this area needed to continue.

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It needed to continue. It didn't happen at the time of the Reformation. Just like people will point to Calvin and Luther on the perpetual

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Virginia Mary as if, see, they thoroughly studied this and came to a conclusion it was true. No they didn't.

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It wasn't even the issue. It wasn't the issue of the day. And the next generation had to then take up many of the topics that simply weren't central to the time period of the

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Reformation. And when they did, they rightfully rejected it for the fiction that it is.

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So, same thing, if we're going to recognize that the process of Reformation had to continue then couldn't this understanding of covenantal baptism likewise be something that needs to be examined biblically?

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And therefore you can't grab hold of these traditions and allow them to go hey, well, yeah, it says

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I'll be merciful to their iniquities, but that's only that's not everybody in the New Covenant. I mean it's talking about the

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New Covenant but we can't go there because of our pre -existing traditions.

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That's what the Reformation was about. So if you want to deal with that argumentation, you've got to provide more than well, it's really big.

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It's pervasive. It's great. That's not his argument. Writing a law upon the heart means the heart's been changed.

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Everyone in the New Covenant heart is changed. I've seen a bunch of folks and they're like, well

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I've seen Reformed Baptists saying, yeah, yeah, what he said about Hebrews, that's great, but we need to address this, but we need to address that.

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Here's the problem. If you want to do debates like that, great, do them.

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Do them. But here's what I have seen over and over and over and over and over again.

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You get into debate and if the Scripture is not the central ordering foundation, then you end up with one side saying that such and such a

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Reformed giant really said this. Well, nobody said this over here. Yeah, but over here in the footnote, this person said this about what that person said and that's all you ever get.

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You just get a bunch of people tossing names back and forth and some of you think that's really cool.

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Get out and do something with your theology people because you'll discover that we're a small group and you can quote all your

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Witsiuses and Owenses and Turretinses all you want.

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The vast majority of people out there have no idea who those folks were. They're not going to look them up and you're not going to get anywhere with it.

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So, if I'm going to do a debate on this subject and I don't know, I cannot possibly see why

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I would do any more debates on this subject. I've debated a non -pedo -communionist,

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Bill Shishko I've debated a pedo -communionist who actually doesn't believe Doug Wilson is a pedo -communionist.

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Greg Strawbridge, I've actually debated him twice. Once was on the radio and then once in person before he passed away.

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So, we've done two major public debates in person. I've done this debate with Jared.

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I've done 13 sermons at Apologia. What more needs to be said?

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I just don't know what else there is to add to the topic, but there you go.

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Important stuff. I personally think that's really important stuff and so to my pedo -baptist brothers, as much as you don't like it, one of us is being more consistently reformed and I honestly believe that you are allowing a tradition which came from medieval

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Catholic Europe was continued by Calvin, Luther, and Zwingli for different reasons, but for primarily political reasons established within reformed tradition without any dealing with any of the arguments that we're making because anybody who would have made those arguments would have been exiled, imprisoned, or killed.

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Especially thanks to Munster. So I get the historical part of it.

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I really, really do. But, that doesn't change the necessity of trying to be consistent.

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And I'll say to you, a lot of you have read my book, The God Who Justifies and you appreciated its biblicism.

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What's different between The God Who Justifies and most books on justification? It's focused on the text.

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It's not focused on 47 ,000 footnotes in N .T. Wright. And some of you just go, you just can't do that!

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Well, you know what? Every single person tells me, you just can't do that. I've never seen you on the street.

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I've never seen you debating Catholics. I've never seen you debating Atheists. I've never seen you debating Muslims. I've never seen you debating anybody.

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You're in your little ivory tower and sure, it doesn't work there, but I don't want in your ivory tower.

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Get out of your ivory tower and start doing something. And you'll go, oh, wow, that doesn't really work, does it?

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So I really think that the approach that I took in The God Who Justifies is the same approach

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I'm taking to Hebrews 7, 8, 9, and 10 on this issue of defying the new covenant. It's the same thing.

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Same approach. There you go. I saw, I gotta admit, like I said,

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I've got surgery tomorrow morning and so there's all these people that have to call you and they go through stuff and verify information and blah, blah, blah, blah.

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And I thought I had already gone through the long telephone call about what drugs are you taking and this, that, and everything else.

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And so I get this voice text and you really need to call today. So I call.

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I'm talking to this nice lady and it's a different part of the hospital.

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Who knows? It's so complicated. And then we start talking and I forget how it came up.

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We started talking about what's going on in the world. And at one point they said,

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I'm certain this is probably being recorded. I don't want to get you in trouble. Oh, I don't care.

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It's like this whole world's gone crazy. Can you believe what people are doing?

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Oh, oh, oh, I remember what it was. She said, do you identify as a male or a female?

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And I couldn't, I couldn't hide it. I said, I said, ma 'am

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I live in the real world that God created and there's only males and there's only females and I'm a male.

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And, and she just said, I know they just added that question in there.

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I hate asking. It's so stupid. And I'm like, I would really think that minimally the medical world would recognize the utter insanity of this whole thing.

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She does. Thank goodness. But obviously the people in charge, she has to ask the question.

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Do you identify as male or female? Yes. So it wasn't me in the hospital back in March, but someone related to me was in and I was in the room.

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This nurse comes in, starts asking a bunch of questions. And it's funny because the nurse says now this medication that you're on and you'll get a hint as to who

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I'm talking about here. We can't give it to men. So we've, we've got to make sure that we apply this right.

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It's like, Oh, so suddenly it matters. Okay. All right. Whatever. Oh, it does. It does.

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And every person with a, an iota of common sense knows that it does, but we live in a day where common sense has blown the coop.

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And so, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Where was

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I going here? There it is. Okay. I could show this, but, you know,

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I could put it up, but it's just a guy talking to another guy on a campus and the

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Christian guy looks really familiar to me. I'm sorry that the name's just not coming through to me.

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Maybe somebody will pop up a name for me on Twitter when you recognize who this is.

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But it's a conversation, but I'm getting all sorts of, yeah, it's not you.

34:49

Yeah, no. Yeah, no. Mike wants to, wants a free plug for the movies and Michael Fallon.

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Yeah, Michael Fallon's in that new video that just came out. I haven't seen it yet. Let's put it this way.

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I hope I'm not laid up long enough from this surgery to have time to watch it, to be honest with you.

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I mean, seriously, it's a hernia, okay? I've had it for four years. I've ignored it.

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That's why I stopped running. Ever tried running with a hernia? It's not fun. So I was just going to ignore it.

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It happened right as COVID started, and I'm just like, I'm not going through that.

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And look, the whole reason we're doing it now, I've already paid my deductible. I've had so many surgeries, had to pay so much money out of pocket.

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We've paid our deductible, so why not get it done now? Maybe I can start losing some weight again.

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I don't know. Sort of genetic stuff. Anyway, so back in 1993 when

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I had double hernias done, the old, old, old school, old, old school guy that did this.

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I mean, he was older than dirt. And this new guy I'm going to have doing this could be using the robot thing and all that stuff.

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Supposed to be much less invasive, which is great. What? You're looking at this?

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He was looking, folks! That's old school, baby. He was looking at this.

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Rich found the, can you believe? Man!

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Is that bedside manner or is that bedside manner? I'm going to tell you.

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I'm sitting here talking about going under the knife and he's looking for that thing. Wow. Somebody needs to save that clip.

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Next time anybody walks up to me and says, you need to be nice and rich,

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I'm just going to pull the knife out. There you go. That thing is very sharp.

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Derek likes to send them out like razors. He truly, truly does. There's no two ways about it. What was

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I talking about? I have no idea. The old, old, old school guy that did my stuff.

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When we were having some, I had some appointment before the surgery. He told me, he said, you young guys, because I was 29, 30 years old.

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He said, you young guys, you get a lot of pain with this and it's going to take you a few days to recover.

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He says, but I have guys, I got retired guys coming from Sun City and I'll do the procedure in the morning and they're playing golf in the afternoon.

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He says, it just does not impact older guys the way that does younger guys. And of course, now it's significantly less invasive.

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I mean, they were literally cutting you open back then. Now they've got these little sticking stuff inside you and things like that.

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So I'm really hoping, honestly, I'm really hoping that in fact, if things go really, really, really well,

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I'm hoping for a Saturday bike ride. I really, really am. Indoors, obviously. But I'm hoping.

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We'll see. So I may not have a whole lot of lying around time, please, to be watching it, but yeah, beneath sheep's clothing

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Oh, okay. Yeah, he you got two? Yeah.

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Beneath sheep's clothing. So I looked at the trailer and it's the, we need to start we need to stop calling the

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Democrats Democrats, start calling them what they are Marxists. They're Marxists, they're

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Communists and Tim Walz is one of the worst of them. You know,

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Kamala Harris is just a ditz. I mean, she and Biden were just the perfect sock puppets for whoever is whoever's running this country.

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It's not them. It's not an American. I can guarantee you China knows who it is.

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Russia knows who it is. Iran knows who it is. And I think China knows who it is because it's probably someone from China.

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They're running this show. Have you noticed that Biden was beamed to another planet after the coup?

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I mean, literally, we're living in a, there's been a coup. This has never happened in American history but it happens every day in Communist countries.

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I mean, it's just how things are done. So that's what we're looking at.

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That's what we are facing. And this new video, which I believe you can like if I recall correctly,

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I looked at the website last night Beneath Sheep's Clothing. Look it up.

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Google it. Beneath Sheep's Clothing. It's how communism functioned in Russia under the

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Soviets and how it's infiltrated the United States and how we literally have communists running for President and Vice President of the

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United States. Kamala Harris just as I understand it, made comments within the past 24 hours talking about establishing governmental food pricing controls.

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And again, the young people in this country have been so, they're not educated.

40:48

They know nothing about history. They know nothing about history. They don't know our history.

40:53

They don't know anybody's history. And so they don't understand that this has been tried over and over and over again.

41:03

And in fact, when it was tried in Jamaica it led to starvation, degradation of life, because once the government says you can't charge any more than this, why should anybody grow food?

41:18

Why should they provide it? And so everything goes into short supply. People are starving. And guess who suggested this to the

41:27

Jamaican government? Dr. Harris. Kamala, not

41:34

Harris. Is it Harris? It is Harris. Her father was a

41:43

Marxist economic advisor to the government of Jamaica. And now she wants to do that in the

41:50

United States. Everything the communists have tried has always failed. But it's always brought death along with it.

41:59

And so if you're a culture that's in love with death, now

42:04

I'm not in love with death. I don't want to see death for them. I don't want to see death for my grandchildren or my great grandchildren.

42:12

But they love death. And therefore a deep deception.

42:18

They refuse to love the truth, they'll be caused to love a lie. And they love lies. And the thing that's driving me nuts is to see people who claim to be

42:29

Christians. David French. What a buffoon. What a buffoon.

42:37

Smart guy! But a buffoon. You can be both by the way. These days there's a lot of them.

42:45

So anyways, look up the film. Get a hold of it. I think you can buy a ticket and that gives you access to the video or something like that.

42:55

I'm not sure. Look it up. Were you going to say something? Well I was going to chime in here. You were talking about.

43:01

Oh you got your camera back. Where has that camera been?

43:08

It's been out on the road. We talk about Biden just suddenly being disappeared.

43:16

I mean he showed up on the stage today and you can tell nothing's changed. He's still just deer in the headlights.

43:23

But I look at what they did here and I was reminded I just keep thinking about.

43:29

I think his first name is Leonid Brezhnev. And you and I are old enough to remember what happened with Brezhnev.

43:36

He was for the most part the Soviet premier through the Cold War.

43:44

And I think it was toward the end of the 70s somewhere in there suddenly he just kind of dropped out of sight.

43:49

Nobody saw him in public. And the rumor was that he was ill and he wasn't in good health.

43:56

And but the Soviets. Oh Premier Brezhnev he's fine. Everything's wonderful. He's he's fine.

44:02

And then suddenly the Politburo meets the single party system of the

44:10

Soviet Union. The Politburo meets and it wasn't it Yuri on drop off.

44:16

Yeah I think he was the next one. Suddenly Yuri on drop off is in charge and poor

44:21

Brezhnev and we just he just got disappeared. And I just see so many shades of the same kind of ways of doing things here.

44:32

We're in the middle of it. I never ever thought it'd be possible.

44:40

We fought it. Men have died fighting its expansion and progress but here we are.

44:49

Kids don't know it. They're not educated anymore. They're taught what to think not how to think.

44:58

Okay so I want to get to this. Like I said there's lots of stuff we could be talking about in that area and it just gets frustrating but I was sent this video.

45:11

It's a conversation between a Christian and a Muslim. And as I was saying I recognize the

45:17

Christian but I'm not putting two and two together. I don't know who it is so maybe somebody on Twitter will remind me.

45:26

It's fascinating. I just hope that I can make it work right.

45:32

Because if I hit pause and then hit play again it goes back to the beginning.

45:40

So if I click somewhere else it will restart where it started before. I hope.

45:46

It worked before. We'll find out if it's going to work this time. So it's only five minutes long but there's lots of stuff to comment on and it's been a long long time since we have 20 years ago 18 years ago.

46:07

We would spend entire dividing lines on Islam. Because that's when I was doing my fundamental research and study and learning and preparing for the debate with Shabir Ali that we did in May of 2006 and led to all those other debates overseas primarily.

46:26

A few here in the United States but overseas primarily. Now we see what's happening in the UK. I have said

46:34

I don't know how many times Islam is a religio -political system and the emphasis depends upon the population in a country.

46:45

When they're a small group the emphasis is upon the religion. When they pass a certain percentage the emphasis moves to the political and the suppression of all other speech.

47:01

So right now I do not believe that I would have the freedom to do the debates in the

47:09

United Kingdom. I did only 6 or 8 years ago. I don't believe I would. They are putting people in prison for 18 months 2 years for blasphemy crimes against Allah.

47:24

I mean that's where the UK is going. It's the end of the

47:32

West. France too. These are theological discussions thankfully.

47:42

I want to reiterate that we as believers must be prepared and I believe we must pray to have the opportunity to speak the truth to Muslims.

48:03

Now this young Muslim man says he's a former Christian and so he's well read.

48:10

A lot of Muslims you talk to are not nearly as prepared as he was. So once again

48:17

I say to everybody if you're a Christian how do you respond to this kind of stuff?

48:22

Would you be prepared? I'll say again the reason that so many evangelicals are utterly ineffective in reaching

48:35

Muslims is because they're afraid. They know they don't know it. They know they don't know their stuff.

48:42

They know that they're going to be asked questions that they can't answer. I'm not going to push to finish this necessarily but I do want to cover it and I think it's important.

48:59

Like I said I'm not going to play the video. It's just a fine looking young Muslim man talking to an older Christian fellow.

49:06

It's obviously college campus type situations. But making it big enough to play and then making sure it continues to play is what

49:15

I'm concerned about. So I'd rather have the audio working than mess with all the rest of it.

49:22

I'm a Muslim. What we learned about Jesus is that we love him. We love all the prophets,

49:27

Moses, Abraham and we adore them and we follow them. So you need to be prepared to hear that.

49:36

I've heard over and over and over again from Muslims over the years we are the second largest religion in the world that teaches people to love

49:45

Jesus. Now the conversation doesn't stop there and the fellow he's talking to probably has a particular direction he wants to go so he doesn't stop it there.

49:59

But what must be commented upon is there is such a vast difference between the

50:07

Jesus of Scripture and the Jesus of Islam. Now this man it's going to come out to where the

50:18

Christian is going to say I encourage people to read the Quran and I encourage Muslims to read the

50:24

Gospels because he understands what I certainly came to understand and that is the vast majority of Muslims have no earthly idea who the

50:32

Jesus of the Bible is. Now this young Muslim man is going to say he's read the entire Bible. That would be extremely unusual.

50:40

The vast majority of Muslims have never read more than a few verses of the Bible. Just as the vast majority of Christians have never read more than a few verses of the

50:49

Quran if anything at all. So that's one of the reasons we talk past each other. And remember if you choose to read the

50:58

Quran I wrote a book a while ago whatever a Christian needs to know about the

51:03

Quran toward the beginning of the book there is a chart that gives you about the best guess we can give you as to the order in which the surahs, chapters of the

51:12

Quran are written Remember the Quran is considerably shorter than the New Testament so it's not difficult to get through.

51:21

The only way for it to make almost any sense is if you read them in that order and it wants to hold on to Scrivener's Annotated Greek New Testament you have the study

51:37

Quran and you'll notice, you can sort of see it from there the vast majority of the page is notes and so the study

51:48

Quran, even though I don't know why they did this the translation is

51:53

King James -ish I don't understand why

52:01

I mean it says, thou wouldst have seen the sun when it rose this is a new translation why use thou?

52:11

I don't get it but anyway, so I can't necessarily recommend the translation itself, but the study

52:19

Quran, and by the way if you're looking for one that looks like that, I had it rebound. No, Jeffrey Rice didn't do it this is actually about the last one

52:29

I had done with this other place, I had a friend there that did stuff for me and did rebinding for me and then he just disappeared

52:37

I heard he was in a car accident, but I lost all contact with him and it was right at that time that Jeffrey Rice came along so there you go, but get the study

52:46

Quran and that will at least give you introductions and stuff like that that will give you some idea but what you want to do is to get a

52:56

Muslim to read one of the Gospels and I'd suggest Mark I've said many times that one thing

53:07

I would like to do and still like to do before I croak is to translate

53:13

Mark and provide an annotated version of Mark for Muslims something you just hand out

53:27

Gospel of Mark for the Muslim people and I still would like to do that I talked with somebody about doing that about 2008 and one of those things, so yeah

53:41

I would like to do that I think it would be really really useful, get a Muslim to read the Gospel of Mark, but the point is they believe that they love

53:48

Jesus, but they don't love what the Bible teaches about Jesus Beautiful!

54:00

Okay, what? What? Oh, okay

54:15

Cliff Knechtel Knechtel, something like that How did anybody know that just from, hasn't even said anything yet Okay, alright

54:28

Again, that looks familiar to me, and actually he hasn't shown up on the screen yet even what we're showing here

54:38

So, I was going to make a comment there and I've lost it We'll just press on Okay, he had said we learned that Jesus fell down on his face and worshipped

54:53

See my discussion with Adnan Rashid on that subject, from one of the last debates we did,

55:01

I know it was the last debate we did in London at a church I've spoken at a number of times, miss you guys but we had a discussion of how

55:12

Jesus' physical attitude in prayer was not the

55:19

Muslim idea of five times a day all that kind of stuff

55:28

Okay, the teachings of Jesus and unfortunately the

55:36

Muslim believes that the only real source of the teachings of Jesus is not the New Testament The problem is you don't get the teachings of Jesus from Islam The author of the

55:48

Quran lives half a millennium later more than half a millennium later and the amount of material in the

55:59

Quran attributed to Jesus is next to nothing The Muslim lives in a weird world because they'll talk about we love the teachings of Jesus but if you only have the

56:10

Quran you have no idea what it is and obviously the author of the Quran assumed that his readers had access to the entirety of the

56:21

Bible even though he didn't know what the entirety of the Bible was and clearly had no idea what the canon of scripture was

56:31

See, see what he taught according to Christianity and the issue is how do you know what

56:44

Jesus taught about anything because the Quran doesn't tell you It's just not there

56:56

You read a single chapter of the Gospels you've got more of Jesus' teachings than you have in the entirety of the Quran Now the

57:04

Christian has started to say if Muhammad and this is just a totally practical thing

57:18

I'm not going to agree with everything he says I'm going to disagree with one or two minor things but most of you who have listened to me dialoguing with Muslims know that I almost never use the name of Muhammad It is so emotionally charged

57:41

So I will talk about the author of the Quran Now if I'm talking about a Hadith if I'm narrating one of the

57:47

Hadith where Muhammad is there and is involved, okay fine then we'll use it and I think

58:01

Christians in Muslim lands and Christians in the UK now understand why this is

58:10

You know that in Pakistan all you have to do is to claim that a

58:16

Christian has blasphemed Muhammad that a Christian has burned the

58:22

Quran blasphemed the Quran and the number of people who have been taken out and stoned beaten to death without any trial whatsoever is very high

58:39

For me it's just a methodology of trying to keep the temperature as low as possible for as long as possible

59:19

Interesting approach and technique I wouldn't use it personally because what you're literally saying is

59:36

Muhammad believed some true things but not the key true things and so that's not the same thing as respecting the individual as much as it is going well there are certain things he said were true he believed

59:57

Jesus was born a virgin he believed that Jesus ascended to heaven I struggle a little bit with that because you're going to have to go back and revisit all that stuff in the future if you get that far that's not necessarily my way of doing things

01:00:19

Muhammad made a crucial mistake he denied the deity of Christ that was interesting

01:00:25

I was watching the video when he said Muhammad made a crucial mistake he was backing up from the guy he was backing up from him that's smart if you want to cause problems when you're saying

01:00:45

Muhammad made a crucial mistake you're moving toward him that's a psychological thing but it makes sense that's smart to do now all

01:01:22

I would do at that point he just wanted to get to his specific point but I would

01:01:34

I don't know how long this conversation is going to last I'd probably provide a specific text because the power is in the word of God I would probably say something along the lines of and as we know multiple times

01:01:55

Jesus claimed to be the I Am that you find in Exodus 3 you find

01:02:02

Jesus calling himself the I Am in John 8 .58, John 13 .19, 18 .5

01:02:08

-6 and in fact he said in John 8 .24 so you can sneak that in without necessarily derailing where you're going

01:02:21

I'm not trying to sit here and critique everything this guy is saying I'm just using it as an opportunity to draw on some extensive experience that I have in interacting with Muslims in the hope that you can learn from him learn from me, every situation is going to be different every person is different and what might be effective for him is not necessarily for me and vice versa now

01:02:49

I agree it amazes me that people would seriously consider converting to Islam without reading the

01:03:13

Quran and without reading it and seeking to understand it, but here's the problem most

01:03:20

Muslims never do that, most Christians don't either and when you think about it,

01:03:26

I mean how many Christians do you know that have never even read the Bible all the way through or their knowledge of its background, its history, languages, how we got it extremely lacking and the same thing is true of the

01:03:41

Quran but in my experience, the majority of Muslims treat the

01:03:48

Quran as a talisman more than a revelation from God to be fully understood they're going to have a guy here who has memorized the

01:04:02

Quran and there's a number of people who have done that Yasir Qadhi has memorized the

01:04:08

Quran but that's seen more, that functions differently than people who have memorized the

01:04:19

New Testament it's viewed differently the idea of doing exegesis of handling the text in a consistent fashion, there really isn't any way to do that with the

01:04:36

Quran the Quran does not provide you with enough historical context to even start getting into that so obviously memorizing is for a different reason than we have in how we treat our scripture does the evidence point to him being reliable or not?

01:05:02

does that make sense? yeah, does it point to him being reliable or to the

01:05:13

Bible being reliable? that's probably not the terminology that I would use but again, we're in a college university campus, in fact it sounds like it was in Texas we're in that kind of a context

01:05:35

I would want in a longer conversation to point out that the author of the

01:05:42

Quran argued that the Bible is reliable and I'd do that from surah 5 surah 5, 14 and following is a pretty long, extended argument for the consistency of scripture, of the

01:05:58

Torah and the Injil now, did the author of the Quran know what the Torah and the Injil law and the gospel was?

01:06:07

no, clearly not had no first -hand information of it but again, from the

01:06:13

Islamic perspective, as this Muslim is about to say the Quran are not the words of Muhammad they are the literal words of Allah and so the understanding of inspiration and the nature of scripture is very different between them now,

01:06:32

I don't believe that their position can hold water if you want to read about it,

01:06:39

I think you can demonstrate that for example, the ways in which the

01:06:47

Quran narrates what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah is a good way of demonstrating that their understanding of a dictation type heavenly

01:07:02

Quran heavenly scroll and the angel

01:07:08

Jibril piecemeal giving it out to Muhammad, so it just doesn't work it's not really overly defensible first of all,

01:07:21

I respect you a lot for telling people to read the Quran I 100 % agree, I used to be a Christian and I finished the Bible I read it myself,

01:07:27

I had issues with the deity of Christ itself after reading the Bible because you said, who do we trust?

01:07:32

Muhammad peace be upon him or Jesus? I said that Muhammad first of all did not author the Quran he was a messenger of the words of God, the

01:07:40

Quran claims to be the infallible word of God itself, whereas the Bible was written by humans so there you have the idea now this is problematic for a lot of different reasons

01:07:53

I don't think that the author of the Quran believed this, this is a later development again, I go to Surah 5, because the argument in Surah 5 is that the

01:08:03

Torah was Natsal, it was sent down to Moses the angel,

01:08:11

Jesus comes and he confirms the Torah, the angel, Natsal is sent down to him, and now you have the

01:08:20

Quran with Muhammad it's a chain, and the idea that the

01:08:25

Bible was written by humans, well, so was the Quran and you can sit there and believe otherwise is all you want, but you're not going to be consistent the

01:08:38

Quran had to be compiled the story of its compilation has lots of problems

01:08:51

I'm not going to take time to go into it all right now, and standing under a shade tree on a university campus might be a little bit difficult to get into Ibn Masud and Uthman and the

01:09:08

Uthmanic revision, and Abu Bakr and all the rest of that kind of stuff, which we have gone into and which is still online, and still available if you go to transcripts .aomin

01:09:20

.org and put in keywords like Quran and especially

01:09:31

Ibn Masud I'm not sure now that I think about it, that's exactly what

01:09:40

I was just sitting here thinking I remember in those years when

01:09:49

I would be listening to so many Muslim books, and I was listening to all of the

01:09:55

Hadith and I had converted them either from Kindle or using various programs, and how the programs really struggle with Arabic All Azhar would become

01:10:10

Alabama Azhar Alaska, Arizona, all these things ended up in there that shouldn't have been there

01:10:21

I'm not a thousand percent sure how the AI dealt with all the

01:10:29

Arabic, but it's there someplace hopefully you can at least find

01:10:34

Quran, and there would be all sorts of stuff there, but anyway being able to engage these topics can be very intimidating dealing with Biblical inspiration, consistency and doing it in such a way that you can criticize the

01:11:01

Quran, but not by using a different set of standards than you use to defend the

01:11:09

Bible the very first debate that I did with Shabir Ali, inconsistency is a sign of a failed argument, my whole point was that Shabir used one set of standards to criticize the

01:11:26

New Testament, and a completely different set of standards to defend the Quran I don't think that a modern day

01:11:36

Muslim can escape that, they're stuck with it because of the way that Islamic theology has developed over time themselves as Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John whereas the

01:11:53

Quran claims to be the word of God itself transferred through prophets and as an oral tradition, the

01:11:58

Quran isn't even a book the Quran is an oral tradition, memorize the whole thing, cover to cover that sounds really nice, but it's not true he didn't memorize an oral tradition an oral tradition cannot communicate with specificity over lengthy periods of time the

01:12:26

Arabic Quran the Arabic Quran that is in use in Texas, I think again this is where this came from, is not identical to the

01:12:39

Arabic Quran that was compiled by Uthman and probably edited at a later period of time around the year 700 or so, as a lot of evidence would seem to indicate there are lots of differences between the various readings of the

01:12:59

Arabic Quran and the relevant texts in Bukhari and Muslim reflect this, that there were variations early on, and as I've said for years and years and years, decades now the study of the

01:13:19

Quran and it's historical text, on a scholarly critical level is way behind the study of both the

01:13:29

Old and New Testaments, as far as scholarship is concerned the cataloging of manuscripts, the making of manuscripts available through digital imagery and things like that way behind what we have for the

01:13:45

New Testament, and so that's something I think most Muslims do not understand, they have a high belief that the

01:13:54

Arabic Quran they possess, which most of them can't read but the Arabic Quran they possess is just a photocopy of what was dictated by Muhammad to his followers, but that's just not true but they believe it, and they believe it strongly so the reason why we give preference to the

01:14:16

Quran over the Bible, is because first of all, it's preserved in its original language that's

01:14:21

Arabic, whereas Jesus spoke Aramaic now, again some people might argue that obviously he spoke

01:14:36

Hebrew, because what did he do when the scroll of Isaiah was handed to him in the synagogue in Nazareth?

01:14:45

He read Hebrew so he clearly could read Hebrew Aramaic was certainly a common language of that area at that time, but so was

01:14:56

Koine Greek. When the Roman soldier started yelling at you, you needed to have some idea of what in the world he was saying you may not have used it at home but you better have some basic idea of what's going on there

01:15:16

I didn't get a chance to speak there this summer it's a bummer, I didn't even hear from Eric Ellis down in Boulder but I didn't contact him either that wasn't up there all that long

01:15:30

I remember probably 10 years ago I was speaking on Islam at South Boulder Bible Church and some

01:15:41

Muslims attended I thought that was great, and so after the talk they came up to me, and one of the things the guy says one of my objections would be that you said that Arabic is so primary to the expression of Islamic theology, and he says,

01:16:01

I just don't necessarily see that I didn't really deal with it too much but we talked for a good 45 minutes and about 45 minutes in,

01:16:12

I stopped him and I had just used an Arabic phrase, and I said, by the way how many

01:16:18

Arabic terms have you and I used just in the past 45 minutes and he sort of looked down and got a sheepish grin and said, a lot and I said, yeah, that sort of answers your first objection, doesn't it yeah,

01:16:30

I guess so but this idea that, well, it was given in Arabic and therefore, since we have it in Arabic, that's best so Arabic's eternal because the

01:16:50

Quran exists in this eternal form in heaven so it has to be in Arabic, so Arabic's God's language?

01:17:00

I mean, most people who study Arabic recognize it developed out of previous languages, so how does that work?

01:17:07

Have human languages always existed? You might say, well, what about Hebrew and Greek?

01:17:14

Well, again the biblical understanding is that men spoke from God as they were carried along by the

01:17:22

Holy Spirit, so whatever language they were speaking, whether Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek, all three used in the

01:17:29

Bible, God speaks all three languages just fine, and he's not limited to human speech for the content of his revelation, so I don't see that as having some kind of a there would be some weight to the argument if there was such a thing as a critical addition of the

01:17:54

Quran, but there isn't and I don't think he probably even understands that if there is as much serious concern about having the original readings rather than just simply assuming that the version

01:18:10

I have has them then there might be a little bit more weight to put on it.

01:18:17

He did not speak Greek, he did not speak Hebrew, he spoke Aramaic You don't know that You could argue that when he was speaking with Pilate, that Pilate had learned

01:18:29

Aramaic to be there, but how do you know that he couldn't speak Greek?

01:18:35

Seriously, how do you know that? You can theorize all you want, but how do you know that?

01:18:41

Learning about Jesus in a language that he didn't even speak first of all and also when you read the

01:18:46

Bible, you see multiple verses where Jesus says when someone came up to him and said, oh good teacher, he said, why do you call me good?

01:18:52

Only the Father is good. And now he's going to interrupt him but these are standard

01:19:02

Unitarian arguments and if you learn to deal with Muslims, then you're ready to deal with Unitarians and the

01:19:08

Jehovah's Witnesses and sometimes Mormons, even though Mormons aren't Mormons are a hybrid form of Unitarianism but it's very useful to know how to respond to these things with a wider it gives you confidence to speak to a wider range of people

01:19:31

Another passage, he says only God is good but why would he create the distinction between him not being good but saying

01:19:38

God is good? Because the guy said good teacher, teacher. He was his teacher at the time And Jesus says right there, time out.

01:19:44

If you're simply going to acknowledge I'm a teacher don't give me this gibberish that I'm good because nobody's good except God but Jesus obviously claimed to be good, he obviously claimed to be

01:19:51

God. The guy was not acknowledging it, he was denying it Now, I would agree, and this is clearly edited this is meant to,

01:19:59

I don't mean edited in a negative sense I mean edited in the sense to keep it moving quickly and cut out pauses and irrelevancies and things like that which happens so much.

01:20:12

But it almost sounds like what he's doing is he's using where did

01:20:24

I put that? I know it's supposed to still be back here Yeah, there it is.

01:20:34

In Jesus and the Eyewitnesses he's using Richard Balcom's understanding, and I agree of that encounter that Jesus has with the, you know, why do you call me good there's not one good but God.

01:20:51

Jesus is not denying his goodness. I mean even Muslims believe he was sinless so he's not denying his goodness.

01:21:00

He is exposing to this individual the fact that this individual does not know with whom he is actually speaking and that's allowing again,

01:21:14

I have a feeling that if you press this young man he'd eventually say, well the Bible's been corrupted so we don't know what it originally said type of thing.

01:21:21

That's the default position. But if you allow the scripture to say what the scripture says then that's really the only way you can end up interpreting that in the same book where this story is being told, you know, people are worshipping

01:21:40

Jesus and he says all authority has been given to me in heaven and earth and baptizing them in the name of the

01:21:46

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all these references to himself. I mean even in the

01:21:51

Gospel of Mark Jesus quotes Daniel 7 and Psalm 110 of himself identifying himself as the

01:21:59

Divine One brought before the Ancient of Days to whom a kingdom is given and his followers worship him and serve him and so on and so forth.

01:22:15

How do you answer that? It's a plain and obvious thing plain and obvious thing.

01:22:22

We're talking about the Incarnate Christ we're talking about the one who became flesh. That's why it's still my favorite debate with a

01:22:28

Muslim from 12 years ago now from Australia of all places but can

01:22:38

God become man? Still my favorite. It's still got the most depth into the discussion and I'd highly recommend it to you.

01:22:53

Maybe I'll remember to link it in the show notes. ...who limited himself and passed down the birth canal of a woman named

01:23:03

Mary and he was a human being who was not omnipresent. He lived in Palestine and he never visited Austin, Texas or the

01:23:09

Big Apple or Saudi Arabia. So he obviously limited himself as the omnipresent God. He limits himself, becomes a human being and yeah, the

01:23:16

Father's greater than I. Yeah, the Father's greater than I because the Father did not become incarnate.

01:23:23

The Son had and if you read John 14, 28 he said, I told you I'm going back to the

01:23:29

Father and if you had loved me, you would have rejoiced because the Father's greater than I am. His whole point is, if you loved me, you wouldn't be so focused upon yourselves.

01:23:38

I'm going back to where I was before, into the presence of the Father. So you know, when the young man said

01:23:45

I was a Christian before, well, look, there are a lot of young Christians in our churches that don't know the doctrine of the

01:23:56

Trinity and we try as best we possibly can to make sure that our young people won't get caught up in this kind of stuff.

01:24:04

It's through the power of the Father. Nothing I do is of my own action. So why would he say that if he's not

01:24:10

God himself? If he doesn't have the power to do all these things, then why would he call himself God? The answer that we have is he doesn't.

01:24:16

He calls himself a prophet, a messenger of God and what he teaches, I believe. Okay, fine, but don't you understand if you stand there and say the

01:24:23

Qur 'an is the word of God and I stand here and say the New Testament's the word of God, it's going to get us nowhere. Because you cannot show the

01:24:29

Qur 'an's the word of God the same way I cannot show that the New Testament's the word of God. Okay, so that's where I'm like,

01:24:35

I'm not sure what just happened here. And I don't know exactly what he means by you cannot show the

01:24:44

Qur 'an is the word of God and I cannot show the New Testament's the word of God. Because my position would be

01:24:51

I can show the Qur 'an is not the word of God because it claims to be consistent with what came before it.

01:24:57

The Torah and the Injil, but the author was ignorant of what was contained in the Torah and the

01:25:02

Injil. And if the author is Allah, Allah knew what was in the Torah and the Injil. Allah knew what the

01:25:08

Torah and the Injil was whereas the author of the Qur 'an didn't know what the

01:25:13

Torah and the Injil was. And Jesus said that scripture is

01:25:18

God speaking. So his death, burial, and resurrection demonstrates the authority of what he said was

01:25:27

God's actual speech. I just got the feeling there was some stuff edited out there.

01:25:36

Maybe. It seemed to jump real fast topic -wise. And Rich is agreeing with me.

01:25:43

Absolutely can. No you cannot. You cannot show that any book is the word of God. It's impossible.

01:26:05

That's just simply not true. There are all sorts of myths all around the world that today are believed by hundreds of thousands or hundreds of millions of people that have no historical credence whatsoever.

01:26:21

Mass transmission is not how you prove anything. That's like talking to a

01:26:28

Mormon and saying there sure are a lot of Book of Mormons around there. There wouldn't be all these Book of Mormons. No.

01:26:38

He may believe it. So hundreds of thousands of people believe the Quran is the word of God and hundreds of thousands of people believe the

01:26:45

Bible is the word of God. So what does that tell you? Yes. We believe the Injil, the gospel that was given to Jesus Christ, is the word of God.

01:26:55

No, you don't. Because you don't have it. It's referenced in the

01:27:01

Quran, but you can't tell us what it contained. And the author of the

01:27:06

Quran didn't know what it contained. And does not interact with it. There's no historical evidence of something that existed in the days of Christ that doesn't exist today that was called the gospel, the

01:27:22

Injil. The reality is the author of the Quran had heard

01:27:30

Christians talking and he used their language, but he didn't know what they were talking about.

01:27:37

And there's your problem. However, we don't believe it was preserved properly, and the Bible we have today is not the

01:27:43

Bible that was given to Jesus. I know. Been there, done that, got the t -shirt.

01:27:50

Here's the problem. Surah 5 tells the Christians to judge by what is contained in the

01:27:57

Injil. Now how are they supposed to do that? And when's that true?

01:28:05

Because we know what the Christians had before Muhammad came along. We know what they possessed.

01:28:14

We have manuscripts that go far closer to our originals than you have to the

01:28:20

Quran, at least as far as full manuscripts and things like that, that are much older. Because obviously there's a half -millennium difference in the age between the

01:28:28

Quran and the New Testament and even more with the Old Testament. But we know what they had. And they did not have anything that looks like what you would expect.

01:28:37

I could pull up and play my dialogue with Shabir Ali on this very issue.

01:28:45

This doesn't work, because the Quran tells the people of the Injil, the Alal Injil, to judge by what is in the

01:28:53

Injil. So that means the Injil existed in 600 A .D.

01:28:59

Well, we know what the New Testament looked like in 600 A .D. without any question. So what do you do with that?

01:29:06

You have to believe it was corrupted beforehand, which makes Muhammad's statement to judge what's in the

01:29:11

Injil meaningful. He spoke Aramaic, and the oldest

01:29:18

Bible we have now is written in Greek. It cannot be the same. It's impossible. However, the Quran given to Muhammad, peace be upon him, is in Arabic.

01:29:25

It's memorized in Arabic. He's memorized the whole thing in Arabic. Good for him. I have a chain of narration connecting the

01:29:32

Quran. I have memorized the Quran Muhammad revealed in that. That is a complete statement of faith.

01:29:38

I have a chain of narration that goes over 1 ,400 years.

01:29:43

I would love to ask him. I'd love to grab. I have two of the earliest manuscripts of the

01:29:51

Quran. Museum quality reproductions. Right down there. 1 ,400 bucks a pop. Right down there.

01:29:57

I'd love to ask him about the textual variance between what's in that and what's in the

01:30:03

Quran that he has memorized. There's a small chance he might be familiar with some of that.

01:30:11

Small chance. But it's a very small chance. I'm sorry. You're not listening to me. We're not making any headway.

01:30:20

See, I... I'm a little disappointed at that point. I'll be honest with you.

01:30:29

Again, there may have been a bunch of stuff edited out. It may have been a much longer conversation.

01:30:35

I'm sure it was a much longer conversation than five minutes, obviously. But I'm actually thinking you're just now getting to a point where you're just now getting to the point where Adnan Rashid and I were in London 10 years ago.

01:30:49

Maybe a little more than 10 years. Yeah, more than 10 years ago. Probably about 12 years ago. When we did the debate on the transmission of the

01:30:58

Quran versus the transmission of the New Testament. So I would actually think there would be more to have a conversation on there.

01:31:07

But, again, important stuff. Important things to be thinking about and talking about there and being prepared to deal with.

01:31:18

And I know it's real easy these days to be totally consumed with everything else that is going on and all the politics and stuff like that.

01:31:34

But the fact of the matter is we are called to be salt and light.

01:31:41

I'm not going to give in to the woohoos out there that are trying to hijack the calling of the church so that we only witness to people who look like us and talk like us and things like that.

01:31:59

Not going to go there and hopefully you won't either. Alright, there you go.

01:32:07

I'm hoping and praying that we'll be back here next week to do another program and that I'll be a bit as a fiddle and ornery as I always am,

01:32:24

I guess. I don't know. All ready to go? Don't know. We'll let you know one way or the other.

01:32:30

But we appreciate your support. Don't forget, Sunday night, midnight, I'll never look at this blade again the same way that I used to.

01:32:42

Rich wants to use it to cut me open. It's terrible. I feel so unloved now. But anyways, get your raffle tickets by midnight eastern time on Sunday to get the

01:32:54

Derek Melton blade. You're helping to keep the RV on the road.