Did Jesus Claim Deity? James White vs Shabir Ally in Toronto 2012

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It is indeed my pleasure to be with you this evening. It is a tremendous group we have gathered here and I hope that we all recognize this is an incredibly important subject.

It is my honor to once again debate Shabir Ali. As mentioned, this is the fifth time that we have engaged one another and I believe that you will be in for a treat this evening because we have great respect for one another and I think it's because we have great respect for the subject matter that we are addressing and I hope that you likewise will be able to focus upon what's truly important this evening.

But we have very little time, unfortunately. I'd like to begin with a quotation from Ignatius, who was the

Bishop of Antioch, writing around A .D. 107. He said, there is one physician of flesh and of spirit, generate and ingenerate,

God in man, true life in death, both from Mary and from God, first passable and then impassable,

Jesus Christ our Lord. He likewise said in writing to the church at Ephesus, by the will of the

Father and of Jesus Christ, our God, later he said, for our God, Jesus the

Christ, and he wrote to Polycarp, he said, await the one who is above every season, the eternal, the invisible, the one for our sake, who for our sake became visible, the untouched, the impassable, who for our sake suffered, who endured in every way for our sake.

Now this is the first generation after the Apostles. Clearly we have here testimony of a belief in the deity of Jesus Christ.

It wasn't something that came about with the Council of Nicaea in 325. There's tremendous evidence that the early

Christians believed in the full deity of Christ as soon as the Apostles had passed from the scene.

How could that have happened? Where did they get this idea? Well, I think if we turn to the

New Testament, we find out. The Apostle Paul, when he wrote to the church at Philippi, quoted from an early hymn of the church, probably this material precedes

Paul's own conversion to Christianity. It comes from the very earliest years of the

Christian faith. And he said these words, right in the Philippians, he said, you must have the same mindset among yourselves that was in Christ Jesus.

And here's the part of the hymn, who, although he eternally existed in the very form of God, did not consider that equality he had with God the

Father something to be held on to at all costs. But instead he made himself nothing by taking on the very form of a slave by being made in human likeness.

And having entered into human existence, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even to death one dies on a cross.

Because of this, God the Father exalted him to the highest place and bestowed on him the name which is above every name.

So at the mention of the exalted name of Jesus, everyone who is in heaven and on earth and under the earth bows the knee and every tongue confesses

Jesus Christ is Lord, all the glory of God the Father. Now this, if this precedes

Paul's own entrance into the Christian faith and we are going into the very earliest years, this again does not come after the

Council of Nicaea. This is something that comes from the very time period when the apostles, the

Lord Jesus Christ themselves, are still alive. Where could that kind of belief have come from?

That is the question we must ask this evening. Because the question is, did Jesus claim deity?

And I submit to you that the only way you could have this early testimony, this early witness to the deity of Christ, is because Jesus himself is the source of this belief.

In the Gospel of Mark chapter 2 we read, And Jesus, seeing their faith, said to the paralytic, Son, your sins are forgiven.

But some of the scribes are sitting there and reasoning in their hearts, Why does this man speak that way? He is blaspheming.

Who can forgive sins but God alone? Immediately Jesus, aware in his spirit that they are reasoning that way within themselves, said to them,

Why are you reasoning about these things in your hearts? Which is easier to say to the paralytic, Your sins are forgiven, or to say,

Get up and pick up your pallet and walk? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, he then said to the paralytic,

I say to you, Get up, pick up your pallet and go home. Do you hear Jesus' point here at the very beginning of the

Gospel of Mark? Jesus claims authority that is God's alone, and in the question he asks them,

Why are you reasoning like this? Which is easier, to say, Your sins are forgiven, that's something only

God can do, or get up and pick up your pallet and walk, which would require the healing power of the Spirit of God?

They both mean that I am operating under the very power of God. Why would you have a problem with this?

Because they didn't know who he was. And many of Jesus' questions, when he said to the rich young ruler,

Why do you call me good? That wasn't a denial of his goodness, that was making sure the young man knew who he was dealing with.

This use, the term Son of Man, who is the Son of Man? Now, the Son of Man can be used generically of just a human being, but the

Son of Man is a very special person. All through the Gospel of Mark, Jesus identifies himself with this language, and finally in the 14th chapter when

Jesus is on trial, and he's standing before the Sanhedrin, and they're trying to, they can't even come up with witnesses that can come up with a meaningful argument against him.

Here we read these words, again the high priest was questioning him, and saying to him,

Are you the Christ? Are you the Messiah? The Son of the Blessed One? And Jesus said,

I am, let me stop right there, just to our Muslim friends, Jesus identified himself as the

Son of the Blessed One. God doesn't have that kind of son by the tongue,

I can assure you of that. Son of the Blessed One, that was well known who that was in Jewish theology.

And Jesus said, I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven.

I put it into a different color, you can't really see it on the screen there, but I put it into a different color because those are quotations from the

Old Testament, I'll look at them in just a moment. Now notice the result, tearing his clothes, the high priest said,

What further need do we have of witnesses? You have heard the blasphemy, how does it seem to you? And they all condemned him to be deserving of death.

What did Jesus say? If Son of Man is just simply, well, that just means I'm a human being.

If that's what it means, then why did they understand this is blasphemy? Because of the text that Jesus had just quoted of himself.

He quoted from Psalm 110, there Yahweh says to my Adonai, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.

This exalted being, Jesus was identifying as himself in the same way that he quotes from Daniel chapter 7.

In Daniel 7 it says, I saw in the night visions and behold with the clouds of heaven there came one like a

Son of Man. And he came to the ancient of days and was presented before him and to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom that all people's nations and languages should serve him.

And I put the Greek term there so you can see that. That's Latruo. That's the highest form of religious service and worship is given to the

Son of Man prophetically in the book of Daniel. Jesus applies these words to himself at his own trial saying,

I am the Son of the Blessed One and the Jews know exactly what it is that he is claiming for himself.

His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.

This is Jesus's own teaching about himself in the gospel of Mark.

But it's not just Mark. Here in Matthew chapter 11 we read Jesus saying, all things have been handed over to me by my father and no one knows the son except the father and no one knows the father except the son and anyone to whom the son chooses to reveal him.

Now once again we have to recognize the dialogue that we're in here. I know what the third ayah of Surah Tal Iqlas says, but here is

Jesus saying, I am the son and I am uniquely the son and as the son no one knows me except the father.

This is not a mere Rasul speaking, my friends. No one knows the son except the father and no one knows the father except the son and anyone to whom the son chooses to reveal him.

May I suggest that those words are directly contradictory to Surah 5, verse 117 where Jesus says, you know the secret,

I don't know. Here Jesus, and these words were written within a matter of decades after Jesus' crucifixion burial and resurrection, and he says, no one knows the father except the son and anyone to whom the son chooses to reveal him.

Let me tell you something, my friends. My sincerest prayer for everyone in this place this evening is that the son would reveal himself and reveal the father to us this evening.

That truly is my desire in our being here this evening. Jesus said in Matthew chapter 7, not everyone who says to me,

Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my father who is in heaven.

On that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name?

And then I will declare to them, I never knew you depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.

Now, these words are very important to Christians because there are many people running around saying,

Lord, Lord, but they do not act in accordance with the father's will. And Jesus says they will not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

And not everyone who says, Lord, Lord, to Jesus will enter into the kingdom of heaven. But I hope you hear what Jesus said.

You must call him Lord to enter the kingdom of heaven. That's what his words say.

Just saying, Lord, doesn't get you in. But everyone who enters in will say, Lord. And notice what

Jesus says to those he casts away. I never knew you. The entrance to the kingdom of heaven, my friends, according to the

Jesus Christ of history, was dependent upon your knowledge of him and his reciprocal knowledge of you.

You can know a lot about Jesus, but if you don't know Jesus, you don't have eternal life.

Jesus goes on to say, now he said to them, these are my words. This is from the

Gospel of Luke, which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the

Psalms must be fulfilled. This is after Jesus's resurrection. He's meeting with the disciples.

He says, I've told you everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.

Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, not by teaching.

This was a supernatural thing. Jesus has the ability to open the human mind to even understand the very words of God.

Whose function is that? Is this not part of where the disciples got this idea?

And he said to them, thus it is written that the Christ should suffer. And on the third day rise from the dead and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

Jesus was the one who began the belief in his own deity and his own fulfillment of biblical prophecy.

Jesus is the source of these things. And Jesus came up to them and spoke to them right before his ascension, saying, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth, go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the

Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching and preserve all that I commanded you and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

Here is one who is not just the Jewish Messiah. All authority has been given to him. I submit to you that no mere

Rasul can be given all authority in heaven and on earth. This is the exalted position

Jesus claimed for himself in Matthew, in Mark, in Luke. You'll notice

I haven't even quoted the Gospel of John. But this leads us to the

Muslim dilemma. The author of the Quran did not have first -hand knowledge of the content of the

Jewish scriptures, the Tanakh, or the Christian scriptures, the Injil. They're never quoted.

You don't have the kind of deep knowledge of the Old Testament scriptures that the New Testament writers show in their quotation thereof.

Yet the Quran says two conflicting things. The Quran clearly denies the central teaching of the

Bible regarding God's self -revelation as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And in strong and direct terms, it denies the deity of Jesus, the

Messiah. We don't have time this evening to look at Surah 4 and Surah 5, but it's right there. It's very, very clear in what is said.

Yet the Quran also claims the Torah and Injil were sent down and that the Torah and Injil contain light and guidance and we are to judge by what the

Gospel contains. We read in Surah 5, 44 through 47, we reveal the

Torah wherein there was guidance and light by which the prophets who surrendered to Allah judged the

Jews and the men of Allah and the rabbis judged by such of Allah's book as they were bidden to observe and be its witnesses.

So fear not men, but fear me and sell not my signs for a miserable price. Whoever judges not by that which

Allah has sent down, such are the disbelievers. And we are ordained for them therein a life for a life, an eye for an eye, and a nose for a nose, and an ear for an ear, and a tooth for a tooth, and wombs for retaliation.

That's the lex talionis from the book of Leviticus. But if anyone remits the retaliation in charity, it is an act of atonement for himself.

And whoever judges not by what Allah had revealed, such are the unjust. And in their footsteps, so you've got

Allah sending down the Torah to Moses in which is light and guidance. In their footsteps, we send

Jesus, son of Mary, confirming that which was revealed before him. And we bestowed on him the gospel where it is guidance and light.

In the gospel is guidance and light, confirming that which was revealed before it in the

Torah. So you see the connection that's being drawn here. The Torah is sent down from God, guidance and light.

Now Jesus is sent down, he's given the Injil, there's guidance and light in it as well. And it confirms that which was revealed before it in the

Torah, a guidance and an admonition to the God -fearing. Let the people of the gospel judge by that which

Allah had revealed therein. Whoever judges not by that which Allah has revealed, such are the corrupt.

And to you, so here's the last step, now to Muhammad, to you we have sent down the book, the

Quran with the truth, confirming whatever books were before it and a witness over them.

So judge between them by what that which Allah has sent down and follow not their passions away from the truth which has come to you, for each of you have appointed, we have appointed a divine law in a traced out way.

Now I want to look again at ayah 47. Let the people of the gospel judge by that which

Allah had revealed therein. I looked at the root for judge there. I looked at all the uses in the

Quran just today. It means to judge, not to correct, not to examine and find different levels of tradition and things like that.

It means to judge by what? By what Allah had revealed therein. What's the fihi there?

It's the gospel. So what do these words have to mean? For them to have any meaning at all to the people to whom they were spoken, they had to possess the gospel.

They had to have the ability to judge and hence not be unbelievers.

Now why is this important? If the people of the gospel were to judge by what

Allah had revealed therein, then of necessity the gospel had to exist in Muhammad's day.

Now we know what that gospel looked like as we possess entire copies of the Bible that were written centuries before Muhammad was born.

We know exactly what it taught and we know that the Quran does not represent what it taught. Therefore, if the

Quran is correct that the gospel existed in the days of Muhammad and the gospel reveals throughout its text the deity of Christ at every level, no matter how you take it apart, and I know that my friend

Shabir loves the liberals out there that engage in redaction criticism and they cut stuff apart and we'll find out if he's become consistent and now he's started to cut apart the

Quran and look at the different levels of it and so on and so forth, we'll find that out tonight. But it doesn't matter what level of tradition you're at, the deity of Christ is testified throughout everything in the gospel.

And so if the Quran is correct that the gospel existed in the days of Muhammad and the gospel reveals throughout its text the deity of Christ, which the

Quran denies, then the Quran is in contradiction with itself because if I judge by the gospel, then

I have to reject the message that denies what the gospel teaches. But if the

Muslim asserts the corruption of the gospel prior to the giving of the Quran, then Surah 547 makes no sense as the people of the gospel could not judge, and by the law has revealed therein, hence the

Quran would be nonsensical. So which one is it? Does it contradict itself? Or was there no gospel by which they could even fulfill the commandment in the first place?

Two minutes. Muslims have, since the end of the 19th century, been using double standards in denying the biblical witness to the deity of Christ.

That is, they will utilize one form of scholarship, redaction, criticism, whatever it might be, in taking apart the biblical witness, but they won't do the same thing for the

Quran. Now folks, there are scholars out there that are consistent on this point, and they are not our friends.

They're not friends of the Christians here, they're not friends of the Muslims here. But it is time, it is time, my friends, for Muslims to begin using just balances, equal weights as Surah 55 -9 commands you, and to abandon double standards in this matter.

The answer to our question this evening is simple. Every credible source, historically, and every theological source, revelationally, gives the consistent answer to the question, did

Jesus claim deity as yes? Only by fragmenting the witness of the

Bible can one avoid its testimony found in the words of Thomas himself, where in encountering the

Lord Jesus Christ after his resurrection, Thomas answered and said to him, my

Lord and my God. That, my friends, is the confession of the earliest

Christians. Not because Paul came along and perverted the message, not because the original followers of Jesus were too weak to maintain his teaching, but because they were following his message, and they knew that God had invaded time, the

Word had become flesh. Did Jesus claim deity? Yes, my friends, he did.

It's throughout the New Testament. Thank you very much. I listened carefully to Dr. White, and it was a pleasure listening to him again.

I want to begin, as always, by praising our creator and fashioner, asking him to send peace and blessings upon all of his prophets, his messengers, and upon all of the righteous people of all time, including all of the men and women who are here in this hall tonight, all of your families.

And may God bless all of you, heal all of the people who are sick, especially the founder of this foundation.

Now, on to our topic. Where do I begin?

First, I enter this discussion not as an academic scholar, that I might do if I were presenting something in a university setting.

I am a theologian of the Muslim faith, and there's no secret about that. This is my particular bias.

This is where I come from, and it is important that we recognize what biases we have, so that at least we can take that as a stepping stone for overcoming whatever biases we do have.

Second, if I'm not approaching this as an academic scholar or as a historian, in what sense would

I approach this? I am approaching it as a theologian, but at the same time,

I want to be aware of whatever historical studies have been done regarding Jesus, so that if there is a firm conclusion from history,

I should not believe something contrary by faith. I believe that faith should rest on and it should build upon and rise above things like historical evidence and empirical studies.

In other words, what people might refer to as facts. We should not say that I believe something when it is contrary to fact.

However, facts only take us to such an extent, and then faith takes over. So I believe that faith can continue where facts stop.

Now, of course, there are historians who try to understand the life and teachings of Jesus, and today's field of historical studies regarding Jesus largely is done without reference to God, without reference to the

Muslim or Christian idea that Jesus is a man who has been somehow commissioned by God to preach a message.

For historians, this is out of the question. They examine the things that they could feel, see, and touch, rather than things that people believe, either intrinsically or as a matter of faith.

John Meyer, in his book, The Marginal Jew, says that his work comes out of the thinking of what would happen if we put together in the same room a

Catholic, a Protestant, a Jew, and so on, and have them hammer out what can we know about Jesus.

He wants to arrive at some neutral ground. So we should understand what historians arrive at from this kind of study, starting from a neutral ground, and how that affects the faiths of either

Muslims or Christians. One of the things I'll admit to you right away is that some of the things that historians now say about Jesus, neither

Muslims nor Christians will accept, as a matter of faith. Muslims and Christians will say that as a matter of faith, we have some other knowledge that is not available to the historians.

We believe that God has revealed a message to us, and that tells us, that message tells us that Jesus is a man approved by God.

And so we take a different approach than what the historians would take. Point in fact is that many historians today believe that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet.

Not only that, they believe that he predicted the apocalypse, the end of the world as we know it, to occur within the lifetimes of his first listeners.

Now this obviously did not happen. The apocalypse did not arrive, and people are still predicting when the apocalypse will occur.

So as a Muslim, how do I approach this piece of historical conclusion? I would say that for some reason, the historians are mistaken.

It would seem to me as a Muslim, that someone else was responsible for putting into circulation those sayings of Jesus which would indicate that the apocalypse will occur within the lifetime of his own disciples.

So that failed prediction, from my point of view as a Muslim, cannot come from the lips of Jesus.

It must have come from someone else. So I differentiate between the historical conclusions and the conclusions that I have from faith.

But does this mean then that by rejecting this historical conclusion, I am in a way not being faithful to the facts?

Well history is such that many of these conclusions are based on subjective evaluations of the material at hand.

Historians use certain criteria by which they comb through the Gospel material and they look at historical events and they ask what could have happened, what must have happened, what is most probably the event that has occurred.

And so they form their conclusions that way. Now if from a faith perspective, I have a more firm conclusion, a firmer conclusion than what

I can see from the historical evidence, naturally I go with the firm conclusion of faith.

With that caveat in mind then, how do we approach the subject of the Gospels and their recorded sayings of Jesus on whom be peace?

We will find in the Gospels that there are sayings of Jesus which show that he is very much a human being, he has limitations, and Muslims would naturally seize upon those sayings and say, look, that is where it shows that Jesus is a man, a prophet of God, just as Muslims believe.

At the same time, in the Gospels, there are statements which do not accord with Muslim belief. They place

Jesus on a higher level than a human being and than a prophet. Some sayings, in particular in the

Gospel according to John, would represent Jesus as literally the Son of God, not physically of course, but literally the

Son of God, since the Bible presents God as a spirit being, not a physical being.

And Muslims obviously will not accept this regarding Jesus. So then how do we come to the

Gospel materials with a clear and acute mind, wanting to believe what we believe, and at the same time not ignoring the facts of history, in particular these historical records, the biographies of Jesus?

There are certain conclusions which, though subjective in some ways, nevertheless are built on certain hard pieces of evidence.

And such conclusions, such hard pieces of evidence, are so clear in their implications that although conservative

Christians have resisted those pieces of evidence and continue to do so, more and more conservative scholars are now admitting that this is what the evidence is.

I'd like to share with you some of what has been discovered regarding the

Gospels, so that we can understand how to approach the Gospels and how to understand why the

Gospels retain both sayings of Jesus, which would indicate his limitations, and also sayings which would indicate that he is somehow divine.

Let me then go to my slides. As the Gospels now appear in the

Bible, this is the order, starting from your left to your right,

Matthew first, Mark, Luke, and then John. However, scholars generally today believe that Mark was the first of the four

Gospels to be written, and hence this would be roughly the order, Mark first,

Matthew and Luke somewhere in between, and finally John. One of the scholars who has contributed to this conclusion, or rather has accepted the conclusion, and is undoubtedly a conservative scholar, let me check with Jane, is

Richard Volkmann a conservative scholar? Somewhere there.

Is F .F. Bruce a conservative scholar? Oh, by the way, since he is a conservative scholar,

I'd like to present to you New Testament History by F .F. Bruce. Now, both

Richard Volkmann and F .F. Bruce hold to the idea that Mark was first and John last.

Now this is a very important conclusion, and we'll see where it heads. The dating I've given here for Mark's Gospel is 65 to 75, and that corresponds to the specific dating that has been given by Richard Volkmann.

Well, I said specific, but obviously there's a range, because there is a certain amount of subjectivity involved in trying to determine the precise dates.

According to F .F. Bruce, a few years earlier than this, because he said the middle of the 60s, and so it could be somewhere close to that, but not to the 75 number.

John's Gospel in the last decade of the first century. So anywhere from 90 to 100, and this seems to be what

F .F. Bruce says repeatedly, that John wrote towards the close of the first century.

Now what else do these scholars tell us? So Matthew and Luke are somewhere in between, but it is important to notice also that the scholars believe that Mark was a source used by Matthew and Luke in the composition of their own

Gospels. Now that's natural. If somebody has written a Gospel, you're going to write another one.

Why start from scratch? You use the existing document, and you write it according to the way you know the facts to be, or to bring out the message you would like to bring out.

So Matthew and Luke did this. But, as noted by F .F. Bruce, Matthew and Luke sometimes made improvements to Mark's Gospel.

Now he didn't spell out what all of the improvements are. But the improvements are,

I believe, very important. And we should take cognizance of what they are.

For example, there are improvements which show that in Mark's Gospel, somebody addressed

Jesus as Rabbi, such as in Mark chapter 9, verse 5. But then in Matthew's Gospel, in the same incident, you can compare them side by side.

You go from Mark to Matthew, the same incident, the person referred to Jesus as Lord.

So, in Mark 9, verse 5, Peter said to Jesus, Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. In Matthew 17, verse 4,

Peter said to Jesus, Lord, it is good for us to be here. So in the one Gospel, he's called Rabbi, the earlier one.

In the later Gospel, he's called Lord. So there is a significant improvement here from a Christian point of view.

Second, there are improvements in which we find in the later

Gospel that Jesus describes himself as Lord. For example, in Mark chapter 13, verse 35, therefore, keep awake, for you do not know when the master of the house will come.

Compare that with Matthew chapter 24, verse 42. Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know on what day your

Lord is coming. When I mentioned this in Seattle a few years ago, James took issue regarding this.

Actually, I haven't mentioned it in Seattle. I mentioned it elsewhere, then James took issue with it during our Seattle debate. And following that,

I wrote a rejoinder, reaffirming that this difference actually does exist.

Third, there are improvements in which the later Gospel calls

Jesus the Son of God. For example, Mark chapter 8, verse 29, Peter answered him, you are the

Messiah. But compare that with Matthew chapter 16, verse 16. Simon Peter answered, you are the

Messiah, son of the living God. So the later Gospel is inserted here, son of the living

God, in Peter's speech, as is admitted by many scholars who have worked on this. Four, there are improvements in which the later

Gospel suddenly calls God Father, or has Jesus call

God Father. Mark chapter 3, verse 31, whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.

Matthew chapter 12, verse 46 improves that by saying that Jesus said, for whoever does the will of my

Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother. So it was God in the earlier Gospel, was

Father in the later Gospel. Five, there are improvements so as to have people pray to Jesus.

For example, when a storm broke out, Jesus was asleep in the storm and the disciples came up to Jesus and awoke him according to Mark's Gospel, Mark chapter 4, verse 38.

And they said to him, teacher, do you not care that we are perishing? What do they call Jesus?

Teacher. Again, teacher, do you not care that we are perishing? In Matthew chapter 8, verse 25, same incident, they approached

Jesus and they said, Lord, save us, we are perishing. What do they call him this time?

Lord. It's the same incident, just the later Gospel, the situation has been changed, or the wording has been changed.

Then there are improvements to reduce Jesus' emphasis on one God. In Mark chapter 12, verse 29,

Jesus was asked, what is the first and the greatest commandment? And this is what he said.

The first is, hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, you shall love the Lord your

God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. So he repeated basically what is known as the

Shema Israel, which pious Jews will repeat twice a day, reminding themselves that there is only one

God, Yahweh, to use the name that James already used here tonight, or Jehovah, to use another spelling of the same name.

Whether that is right or not, that's a different question, but it's popular. Some say Jehovah, some say Yahweh. According to Deuteronomy chapter 6, verse 4, hear

O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one. The name there that is translated as the

Lord is Yahweh or Jehovah, so it really sounds in the New Jerusalem Bible, hear

O Israel, Yahweh your Lord is one Yahweh. Jehovah your

Lord is one Jehovah. In fact, in Deuteronomy it also says, besides him there is no other.

Jesus is repeating the same as the first commandment in Mark's Gospel. But then the same story is told in Matthew's Gospel.

What has happened to the first commandment? It's just not mentioned. In Matthew chapter 22, verse 37 and 38,

Jesus just simply said the part about loving your Lord with all your heart and all your soul and with all your mind, and he said this is the greatest and the first commandment.

But that's not true. That is not the first commandment. The first commandment is, as it was mentioned in Mark, the earlier of these two

Gospels. Finally, our last but one, there are improvements to reduce the distinction which

Jesus made between himself and God. For example, in Mark 10, 18, a man had come up to Jesus and called him good teacher, and Jesus then replied, why do you call me good?

No one is good but God alone. But in Matthew 19, 17, the same incident is there, and the man approached

Jesus and called and asked him, what must I, what good deed must

I do? I have to start over. See, in Mark's Gospel, the man comes up to Jesus and says, good teacher. But in Matthew's Gospel, the man comes up to Jesus and says, what, teacher, what good treatment.

So, whereas in Mark's Gospel, he calls Jesus good, so then Jesus replies, why do you call me good? In Matthew's Gospel, he only asks about what is good, and so Jesus says, why do you ask me about what is good?

So Jesus does not repudiate the title in Matthew's Gospel. According to James Dunn, Matthew here has modified not only the response, but in order to get the modified response, he also modified the man's question.

Finally, there are improvements to cover the human limitations of Jesus. For example, in Mark's Gospel, chapter 11, verses 12 to 14,

Jesus approached a fig tree thinking that he would find fruit on it, but when he did not find any fruit on it, he cursed the fig tree.

Why didn't he find any fruit on it? Mark is very clear, because it was not the season for figs. But then in Matthew's Gospel, chapter 21, verse 18, the situation is changed.

Jesus is hungry, he sees the fig tree, he went to it, he found nothing to it but leaves, and he said to it, may no fruit ever come from you again.

The difference is that Matthew here has removed the mention that it was not the season for figs.

This allows Christians to meditate on Matthew's statement and make that into a parable about good and bad and what happens to those who do not fulfill their functions.

They get destroyed, just like this fig tree, because they do not do what they're supposed to do. But as Mark's Gospel makes it plain, the reason there were no figs is because it was not the season for figs, and therefore it appears that Jesus here has made a mistake, which is natural for a human being.

Muslims would not have any difficulty accepting that such an error could occur. Finally, in the minute that I have remaining, when we go to John's Gospel, we see that in John's Gospel, the situation has improved even further.

Now, we go apart from these three Gospels to John's Gospel, and we notice that now

Jesus suddenly, the whole thing is rewritten. So, whereas, in fact, in Mark's Gospel you will find, for example, that Jesus is praying in the

Garden of Gethsemane, indicating that he has a will different from that of the Father, but nevertheless he submits his will.

In John's Gospel, we're told that Jesus wouldn't pray like that. In John 13, when

Jesus enters Jerusalem, or when he approaches Jerusalem, he says, Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say?

Father, save me from this hour? No, it is for this very reason that I came to this hour. So, this is a very different presentation in John's Gospel.

John doesn't have the Garden of Gethsemane prayer, in which Jesus says, Save me from this hour. In John, Jesus wouldn't pray like that.

In the other Gospels, Judas Iscariot is necessary for surrendering Jesus to the authorities, but in John's Gospel, John has

Jesus handing himself over to the authorities. They do not dare arrest him, just his voice blows them over.

Right from the very beginning in the Gospel, according to John, John the Baptist declares that Jesus is the

Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. So we have here a developing Christology over time.

Why did the early Christians think that Jesus is God? It's because largely,

John's Gospel and this development over time. Thank you very much. Shabir, if I could clarify a couple of your positions that I'm unclear on.

Do you believe that Jesus, do you still believe that Jesus prophesied in John 14 and 16 about the coming of Mahan?

You might try to get this closer. Oh, you've got one close?

Let me see if there's a... Can you pull that up a little bit closer? How's that? Sound good then?

Okay, that's fine. So now... Yeah, sure. All right, go. You can get closer. My approach to the

Gospel of the Lord to John falls largely from my studies of Raymond Brown's Two -Bodying

Quorum in the Gospel of the Lord to John. Now, he says that the

Gospel of the Lord went through five stages of edging, and there were three different persons involved in that process over time.

Now, that brings us close to the power plea passages you're referring to.

The power plea passages, where Jesus speaks of someone coming after him who's called power plea in John 14, 15, and 16, have different layers of material regarding the power plea.

And the way in which Raymond Brown puts the layers together are slightly different from the way

I conceive it. Of course, I come to this from a Muslim perspective. I would love to see

Muhammad mentioned there. But at the same time, I believe that a very careful sifting of the material and looking at Raymond Brown's detailed arguments leads me to take a different angle.

At a certain point, I see where, at a certain point, he is trying to make it Jesus, the

Holy Spirit, coming to invoke the Eucharist. And I see that that argument is weak, and it is more likely that the earliest layer of power plea passages was about a human being to come after Jesus, and that the early church turns this into the

Holy Spirit to invoke the Eucharist. So, the only reason I brought that up is if you believe that there is something so inspiring back there, what is the standard that you can use to tell us what in John or Matthew or Mark or Luke is still from God and what is not?

Is it not then, as you said in your opening, is it your Islamic beliefs? My Islamic beliefs, to a large extent, guide me.

I should not try to hide that fact. This is where I begin. At the same time, the scholars do try to come up with criteria for determining what is early and what is late.

For example, I mentioned John Mayer. The criterion of embarrassment, for example, he gives us an example of the interaction between John the

Baptist and Jesus to many scholars. The way he mentioned

Mark's Gospel was embarrassing for the early church, and they would not have invented it because it is embarrassing to themselves.

They would more likely invent things which would be in their favor rather than something that they would have to then try to explain later on.

So, that is one criteria. I looked at these criteria that historians use, and I tried to put all the information together, and in the end, to arrive at a position which is at once faithful to my

Muslim tradition and, at the same time, very informed about the facts of the matter as discussed by the

Torah. Certainly, you would be aware that there are many believing scholars who are fully aware of Mayer's and all the liberals, and yet they continue to believe that the

New Testament is a consistent whole, and what do you do then when you see someone like myself, who knew all this stuff, to be honest with you, before you did, because I went to Fuller, and believe me, you go to Fuller Seminary, you hear all this from the beginning, and yet I do not accept the naturalistic worldview behind that.

How do you deal with the existence of that scholarship in light of the fact that it seems that you bring the same worldview to the examination of the

Koran that I bring to the Bible? You and I, it sounds like, have the same approach to our sacred texts, but you're using a completely different approach when you approach mine.

This is something we've talked about many times before, but I still think it's vitally important. How do you deal with shifting to a completely different worldview to criticize my texts when you object to my using that worldview to criticize yours?

I don't believe that I am inconsistent in this. The way

I see it is that in studying the Koran, I listen to Muslim scholars, but I also read works by non -Muslim scholars who criticize the

Koran. I read works by Christian missionaries who try to point out errors in the

Koran and try to prove that it is not a divine origin. After looking at all of the information presented both by Muslims in favor of the

Koran as a sacred text and information presented by non -Muslims against the Koran as a sacred text,

I then make up my own mind as to where the facts lead and that I have to make a view, which could be nuanced.

It may not necessarily be the view that an average Muslim may hold.

It may be a more nuanced and particular view. In a similar way,

I have certain beliefs regarding Jesus and who he is based on my Muslim background.

And at the same time, I listen to non -Muslim historians about Jesus and what they have to say.

I look at what scholars are describing. I look at the information that they have presented. And I feel that persons like yourself, with all due respect, are not taking close enough attention to the specific matter of redaction criticism to look at how the material has changed as we go from Mark to Matthew and Luke and then finally

John. What physical evidence, do you claim any physical evidence for having knowledge that Matthew possessed a manuscript of Mark and was in it?

This is not based on physical evidence. This is based on many centuries of historical studies.

If we get to historical studies of what? I'm getting to that. If we have two documents that are very similar to each other, we have a source from which both documents derive.

When scholars have looked closely at the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they started to look at a source for the three because they're so similar in the outline of events and even in the narration of similar events within that broad outline.

And the more they tried to reconstruct what that source would have been based on the combinatorial between the three, the more and more that source looked like Mark's Gospel itself.

That was a source of Mark, an earlier version of Mark's Gospel, and eventually they felt it's not even necessary to do that.

The nuance is necessary. I understand all that, but the problem is, have you looked at the worldview that is behind the production of these theories?

Because what you're presenting to us are theories. You don't have any manuscripts of John that are different than what

John has said. You don't have any manuscripts of Mark. You have no solid evidence. What you have is scholars who could not believe.

Well, let me put it this way. You said Jesus predicted the apocalypse in his own lifetime, right? I'm not going to say that.

You said that Jesus predicted the apocalypse. You said that as a Muslim you would not believe that the words attributed to him.

Okay, so someone else put those words in Jesus' mouth. This is what a

Muslim would want to believe. Okay. Why do you believe that the words of Jesus recorded in the

Gospel are talking about the apocalypse and not merely the destruction of Jerusalem after chapter 24?

The studies regarding this have led to very clear conclusions. The saying which are attributed to Jesus speaks about the destruction and says that many of those who are standing here will not believe that until it happens, and it also says that this will happen within the lifetime of this generation.

This generation will not pass away until all of these things happen. Jesus looked at the temple wall, the western wall of the

Jerusalem temple, and he said that the destruction would be so complete that not one group would be left standing on another.

But as Raymond Brown points out in his book Jesus, God, and Man, the wall is still standing tall.

So a Muslim would say this is not the words of Jesus. These are something else that can be attributed to Jesus.

Here's my question. The Christian scholars, well, for almost 2 ,000 years, have answered all of those objections and demonstrated what

Jesus is talking about. Why is it that you listen to and apply the liberals who do not believe in inspiration and do not believe in a prophetic voice when you as a

Muslim of Arian said you believe in a prophetic voice, and you would apply in interpreting the

Koran about the sun setting in a muddy pool of water, you would interpret that in a literary genre and allow that.

Why don't you allow one stone left upon another to be interpreted in the exact same way, that is, complete destruction, not, well, there's a western wall over there.

I think I see two bricks. Therefore, he was wrong. I see a complete distinction in the application of that worldview that you're using to my scriptures than you would use in interpreting your own.

First of all, it's not just two bricks. It's the entire western wall. Second, when something is said so clearly that it will happen and it doesn't happen, well, then

I have to admit that there is an error here. Something is wrong. And the same thing will have to be admitted, whether it's about the

Koran or the Hadith or any aspect of whether or not we should not sacrifice our rationality for the purpose of faith.

Faith and rationality go together. One informs the other. One inspires the other.

Dr. White, in your opening remarks, you said that most things here are in a dilemma because on the one hand, the

Koran approves of all these Gospels, and at the same time, the Koran does not approve of doctrines, which there are a lot of Gospels, such as, as you say, the

Divinity of. I didn't say they approve the Gospels. I said that Surah 547 uses an imperative command to the

Al -Angeel to judge by what is contained in the Gospel. And therefore, the Gospel had to exist then to be able to fulfill the commandment that's found in there.

Now, I'm not asking you what any of this is. That is precisely what I'm asking you about. So since you've said that, and if you pay attention to the fact that the verse says that nothing judged by what

God has revealed in the world. Yes. So what does that mean to you? Well, obviously, given the flow of 544 through 48, it is an argument, literally, for the prophethood of Muhammad.

It's the Torah is sent down to Moses in which is light and guidance. Jesus comes.

He's given the Angeal. He confirms what came before. The Angeal has light and guidance. Now, Muhammad has come.

He's been given the Quran. What he has given has light and guidance. It confirms that which came before. In fact, acts as a hymen over that.

And so, it's an unbroken chain that is supposed to convince both Jews and Christians, I am the continuation of this thing that God has been doing all along.

And so, what was said is, if you will not judge, if the Jews will not judge by what's in the Torah, and if the

Christians will not judge by what's in the Angeal, they are prophets. They're unbelievers. They are the unrighteous. And so, they're being told to judge by what is contained in what they possess.

And so, the only way that that could have a fulfillment is if they actually possess the

Angeal in which is light and guidance. Because if what they possess has been corrupted, then there's no light and guidance left.

Oh, left in it. What if there is some light and guidance left in it, though all of it is not still its original impurity?

Well, it would seem to me that there would be some incumbent necessity upon the

Koran to give warning and say, and here's how you determine. Because I listened to you just on Tuesday, and again, since some of these recordings are very old,

I want to find out whether you still hold these positions or not. I don't want to assert something to you that you know of at all, but you actually quoted a lecture of 547 from the

Koran, either in debate against the Oneness Chalice, or I felt it had a very high -pitched British voice.

I don't remember which one it was. Maybe I didn't tell you anything. But you quoted it, and you said that if Christians would simply examine their traditions in depth, they would be able to see these different levels and discover the real

Muslim Jesus underneath all these different levels. Is that still how you would understand it?

I mean, that's part of what I would understand, regardless. Oh, OK. OK. I would just simply say it does not cross my mind, and I don't think it crossed the mind of Ibn Kathir, al -Khutubi, or anybody else, that what

Surah 547 is saying is, wait for about 1 ,400 years for reactionary criticism to develop, use that to atomize the text in the

New Testament, and then you'll find the Muslim Jesus. Because no one that Muhammad was talking to at that time would have any earthly idea of what

Muhammad was talking about. And I think that if the Qur 'an makes an argument that was meant to be convincing to the people to whom it was addressed, they'd have to have some idea what the argument was.

OK. I'll address this in my rebuttal. But let me move to a different topic. The Bible, according to Mark, as I've said, according to these scholars,

Raymond, Richard Rockham, and F .F. Bruce, as the early scholars before. Do you ever hear that?

No. And so, I agree with Nancy, right? We don't know. We do not have any evidence.

The early church thought Matthew was the first. A computerized study recently made Luke the first.

The fact of the matter is that barring the discovery of the originals with date stamps on them, it is always a matter of conjecture.

And I suggest, along with a number of scholars, that the best way to approach this is not to assume literary dependence and close the doors to everything else.

But there was something else that Richard Rockham himself, in his book, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, emphasizes very strongly.

And that is the eyewitnesses were still alive during the time of the writing of the Gospels. And there was this thing called oral tradition.

I think that's why you see those differences, is because Mark's writing for one audience. Matthew's writing for another audience.

Luke is writing for another audience. They're drawing from the same oral tradition. And they emphasize different aspects. Not that they're sitting there.

Luke says he used other written sources. So if Luke has other written sources, I don't have any problem with that. But the idea of sitting around and creating a snowball, and in serving a certain—well, let's be honest.

What you're saying is they were being dishonest with the text. They were literally creating a religion that would prompt people to commit massive acts of shirk.

I mean, we can't say these people were morally neutral in doing this. I think we need to be open about this. If we're going to say

Paul and John especially were just really bad guys, then we need to be open saying they're really bad guys.

But no, I believe that—I do not know who was written first. Mark may have been.

But I actually look at the information and go, you know why most people put the dates on it?

You put Mark on the same thing. Because they don't believe in prophecy. They don't believe they could have prophesied on the destruction of Jerusalem.

You and I believe in prophecy. So I would put Mark in the late 50s at the latest.

Luke and Matthew in the 60s. And some people make strong arguments for John pre -70.

I know he was just pre -70. I don't think there's any question about that. Okay. Now, you know I think his debates, you know, accuse me of just following liberal scholars.

And I want the great thing is to find conservative scholars. There are very few. There are very few.

I need to bring you more books here. Epic Proof.

Now, I know you're going to ask a question. There's an issue over here. Richard, welcome. What's wrong with you? I don't see anything wrong.

But let me ask you a question. Okay. My question to that is, are you still going to accuse me of following liberal scholars and saying that this is the date of Mark and that Mark is the earliest of the four?

I am going to accuse you of not listening to the large portion of us who argue against those things and who say the reason of the popularity in quote -unquote

Christian scholarship for these things is due to an anti -supernaturalistic bias. Shamir, what

I've always said to you is that it's exactly what you said to Bob Moore in your debate when

I quoted it to you. You're a supernaturalist, but you take off your supernaturalist perspective when you read our scholars.

And hence, you don't recognize when these folks are functioning on a foundation that says, well, it's talking about the structure of Jerusalem, so it has to be out in the structure of Jerusalem.

So both Richard Baucom and Epiphrus are anti -supernaturalists. No, they're not. Wait a minute.

You're confusing here the order of the Gospels and the dating of the Gospels and the idea that someone can say there are conservative scholars that might put

Mark and Matthew and these others very late for reasons other than anti -supernaturalist ones. But the people who, for example, cut

John up into parts without any historical evidence that these stages ever existed in a way that you wouldn't even agree with the way they put it back together again, they are functioning from a worldview that fundamentally says we are embarrassed by the existence of the supernatural in our text.

And so we will try to explain it away. Just as you know, there are liberal Muslims who are embarrassed by the presence of the supernatural in their text.

But I don't think you and I are ready to explain those things away or just suggest the presence of the supernatural in our text.

Unless you start saying that Ruth and Logan are anti -supernaturalists and they are no longer conservative scholars,

I will not see your point. But I have another question for you. You have written that Mark ends with chapter 16, verse number 8, in which case you are doing away with the longer ending.

Now, if Matthew was written first, what would be the need for Mark?

If Mark was written first, isn't this the natural way in which somebody has tried to improve on Mark by ending with a longer ending that Matthew and Luke have also improved upon Mark by getting their own alternative ending?

Two things. You're not seeing what Richard Baldwin emphasizes and what Eckert Bruce emphasizes, and that is the gospel of Mark existed in a time when the korigma, the spoken word, the spoken tradition, was the very essence in which that gospel was represented.

And secondly, you're assuming literary independence so that everybody would know Matthew. And therefore, if everybody knows

Matthew, then there's no reason for Mark to have a shorter ending because there's all that stuff in Matthew. We don't, we didn't, we live in a day of cell phones and PDAs and the internet and information goes around so fast most of us can't even keep up with it.

That was not the situation back then. You could live in an area of your entire life and never travel more than seven miles from where you were born.

So the idea that everybody would have known, well, Matthew's already written his gospel. It's all on the internet, isn't it?

And there would have been entire, Mark may have been living in a place where he's never heard of a written something called the gospel of Matthew.

And so the assumption, I think, misunderstands the context.

And I didn't say that Edgar Cruz and Richard Baucom are liberals. I said I would have differences with both of them in certain aspects.

And there's a difference between the dating of gospels and things like that. But Baucom himself, if you read Jesus and the eyewitnesses, emphasizes the fact that those books were being written during the lifetime of the eyewitnesses and that functioned as a control so that we can trust the text of the

New Testament. So I would certainly agree with him on that matter. I really hope you can see, sometimes in the crossfire, it gets lost.

I'm here this evening because I love my Lord Jesus Christ, and I love my fellow believers, and I love

Muslims. And I have tremendous respect for the gentleman sitting behind me.

And for him, too. Sorry. That's not really the point. You just want to lie back, though.

Yeah, it's true. It's true. This is the fifth time Shabir and I have engaged each other.

And if I feel, if you sense, a little bit of frustration in my heart, it's because I listen to this man, and he knows.

I have listened to his lectures that he gives to Muslims. I have spent hours and hours and hours listening to this man speak.

And inconsistency drives me crazy. And if I really like you, I'm going to point it out to you.

And I really believe that Shabir needs to see that the liberalism that he has embraced, and he'll say, well, you know, these guys agree with this part.

There is a worldview, folks. You have to know what your worldview is. I don't care. I'm talking to Christians and Muslims here.

If you believe that God has spoken, then you and me, we make for a minority in our world today.

Our belief that God has spoken is under attack. And I don't care whether you're Jew, Christian, or Muslim.

If you say God has spoken, the secular world around us says, you're crazy. And there is a tremendous amount of scholarship out there being perpetrated by people who teach in seminaries and Bible colleges and universities, and they call themselves religious people, but they don't really believe

God has spoken. And they don't believe that anything that claims to be a revelation can actually be consistent.

And that's what we're seeing tonight. Did Shabir really respond to my presentation? I showed you.

I know this stuff. I went to Fuller Theological Seminary, to cry it out loud. I was a freak at my seminary for my first master's degree, because I actually believe

God has spoken consistently. And so I've heard all the redaction criticism. I know all this stuff.

I had to read all the commentaries and all that stuff. I know where it's coming from. And I simply say to you, you and I, my

Muslim friends, we don't share the worldview that is behind that kind of tearing apart the very fabric of written revelation.

It is assuming inconsistency. You don't approach the Quran that way. Why should

I approach the New Testament that way? Why not listen to consistent responses?

For example, Jesus, no one put false words in Jesus' mouth in Matthew, Mark, and Luke about the coming and the destruction of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem was destroyed in the lifetime of those people. You have to just look more carefully. I'm teaching through Matthew chapter 24 right now.

You can see that there are certain things that are filled with destruction in Jerusalem, and there are certain things that go beyond that. There really isn't any question about that.

There is no need to assume that there have been lies placed in his mouth. And we need to understand, folks.

Shabir has not said this evening, well, you know, this may not have been what Matthew wrote, or this may not have been what

Mark wrote, or something like that. That's a common accusation that's made, and I'd be happy to respond to any accusations about the alleged inaccuracies in the transmission of the text of the

New Testament, because I say to you, the New Testament has been transmitted to us the way God wanted it to be.

It has been preserved by God, and it is, in fact, a mural of God's work of preservation. If I had time,

I'd be happy to demonstrate that. But the reality is that that text of the

New Testament, in whatever layer of tradition you want to theorize, and all of that stuff, all of that stuff from Roman Catholic scholars is theory.

It's not fact. It's, well, this is one way of thinking about it. Maybe it happened this way. We don't know. Folks, there's all sorts of theories about how the

Quran was put together. There are people who theorize that Muhammad didn't exist. There are people who theorize that Surah al -Baqarah circulated as one book, separate from the others, and then it became combined.

And there's all sorts of stuff about the sources that the Quran utilized. Surah 19 has

Jesus speaking from his cradle. That's in the Arabic infancy gospels written 150 years earlier.

There are lots of scholars. Every single scholar Shabir was quoting would agree, oh, yeah, but there's reliance there.

Do you accept that? Do you accept that type of application? If not, why not? And if you want other people to handle your text fairly, you need to listen to what we're saying when we try to handle our text fairly.

For example, Shabir said, well, there's many texts in the New Testament that show Jesus as a man, a prophet of God.

Every Christian on the planet believes that Jesus was a man and a prophet of God. It's just that he wasn't just that.

Yes, he was a prophet. He was a priest. He was king. But he was so much more than that. He truly was man.

And he had to be, to be the sacrifice for our sins. So, yes, we believe that he was a man.

He was a prophet of God. But all of this material, and I do want to just mention really quickly, Shabir, the issue about kurios in Mark 13, 35 and Matthew 24 came up in our debate at Biola in 2006.

And I asked you during cross -examination, because what you've been saying, and I heard you say it again on the recording, but again, I don't know how it was, that this is an example of an exaltation of Jesus, because in Matthew it says kurios, but in Mark it says master of the house, and Lord is higher than that.

Both use the term kurios. Kurios teis oikios is the term in Mark 13, 35, the master of the house.

It uses kurios. If anything, this would be another example of Matthew using a, or Mark using a longer form, but Matthew uses a shorter form, which he did very, very often in his recounting of various incidents.

I did bring up the Shema. Jesus believed in the Shema. But that same

Jesus quoting Shema, who said, Shema yisrael yahweh elohimu yahweh akad, accepted the worship of his disciples, even in the

Synoptic Gospels. How can you deal with that? How can you deal with the fact that the Apostle Paul, writing within the first decades, takes that very same

Shema in 1 Corinthians chapter 8, and he sees its fulfillment in the coming of the

Son, that there is one God, the Father, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, using the very same language from the

Greek Septuagint that the Shema was expressed in, that most Jews who did not live in Palestine would have understood it.

And by the way, the fig tree issue, why was Jesus talking about the fig tree? And why are

Muslims so fascinated with the fig tree issue? Yes, that number has come up over and over again. Folks, the fig tree represents

Israel. Jesus is going into Jerusalem. He is about to have all the encounters with Jewish leaders.

He's saying that Israel looks like it has fruit. It's got all the outward trappings and the pretty buildings and the prayer shawls and everything else, but there is no fruit.

There is no real life. That's what the whole fig tree parable is all about. It wasn't Jesus ignorant of what time things were.

He grew up in that area. Do you really think, I mean, it would almost be like someone in Toronto saying, well, it's always snowing in March.

Well, it's not now, is it? You know when it's supposed to be snowing here. He knew when it was. And it's not right now.

It's hot in here. You got some fans or something? I'm from Arizona and it's hot in here. I mean, really.

Jesus knew what the season of figs was. He was making a point about the people of Israel. They weren't walking after God.

This is clearly what is there. When you look at the crucifixion narratives that he brought up, well, you know,

Mark has one view, John has the other. I'm working through those right now and teaching. And my friends, again,

I just find this to be a very surface -level reading of the text. The truth is much deeper.

And if you'll just allow the text to speak for itself. But these folks will not allow, the folks that Shabir, I think, has been most deeply influenced by, will not allow the text to speak for itself.

Because that takes you back to the dilemma. And I'll be interested in hearing what Shabir has to say about it. But if I try to obey the command, and the first word,

Surah 547, is in the imperative. You can confirm that for me if you would, Shabir. In the Arabic, it's in the imperative form.

It says, judge. The people of the gospel are to judge by what's contained therein.

The only object, the only antecedent for Fihi there is the gospel. How am I supposed to do that?

When I do that, I find that the revelation of the Quran comes from someone who didn't know my gospel.

Didn't know my New Testament. My New Testament wasn't translated into the Arabic language with the earliest manuscripts we have from the end of the 9th century.

And if you believe that Muhammad was illiterate, he had no access to my gospel.

He may well have believed that what he was saying was consistent, that the gospel would support him.

But he was wrong, and that's why we're here this evening. And if I love you,

I will say that, not out of disrespect to you, but out of honor for my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

That's why we must understand and hear what we're saying so often we pass by what each one of us is saying.

And that's why I'd like to say to Shabir, let me recommend some books to you to read from folks who actually believe

God has spoken, rather than the folks who are embarrassed by prophecy or embarrassed by the supernatural nature of Scripture.

And I think that you'll discover that there's a lot of us out there. This evening, we've asked the question, did

Jesus claim deity? I've demonstrated that the only way to understand the text is that he did.

And that really is the issue we need to be focused upon this evening. Thank you very much for your time. Folks, to respond to what

James said and to make sense of the cross -examination period, first of all,

I would say that Quran 5 verse 47 is not telling Christians that all of the

Injil is preserved and accurate and is the word of God. It says, وَالْيَحْكُمْ أَهْلُ الْإِنْجِيلِ بِمَا أَنزَلَ اللَّهُ فِيهِ

Let the people of the gospel judge by that which God has revealed therein.

So it is not all of it. It's what God has revealed therein. Some of its contents are hud and mannur, guidance and light.

But have you ever read any list of ingredients of the things that you eat? It's not only one thing.

So you might say something is in there, but that's not the whole thing. It's got that plus it's got some other things.

So from the Quranic perspective, the Injil does have some truth and guidance from God, but it has other things besides.

And in my presentation, I've illustrated what are some of these other things. There are changes. So that whereas in fact in Mark's gospel,

Jesus appears on many occasions as a human being with limitations, as subscribing to a

God, a higher power than himself. In the later gospels, there are attempts to remove that distinction between Jesus and his

God and to make Jesus appear more and more divine. As we go from Mark to Matthew and Luke, and then finally to John.

James talks a lot about Shabir's inconsistency. When it comes to the Quran, Shabir is just listening to people who believe in the

Quran. When it comes to the gospels and to Jesus, Shabir is listening to hypercritical liberal scholars who reject everything supernatural.

I don't believe this is true. It is true that I do have my bias as a Muslim. I cannot deny that.

And when I do approach the world of information out there, I have to be selective. Not everybody can learn everything all at once.

There are certain things that we find attractive, certain things that we do not. But I do listen to criticism. I do listen to suggestions from James, and I do investigate what he advises that I investigate.

For example, in my last debate, he advised me to investigate the writings of Leon Morris. Last night,

I was at Trinity Graham Library into the late hours at the University of Toronto studying the writings of Leon Morris.

He also advised me to study F .F. Bruce in my last debate. And so I got books by F .F.

Bruce, I studied these works, and I cited from F .F. Bruce. But then that's still not good enough.

So what do we have to do then? As a Muslim, am I expected to just listen to those

Christians who say that Jesus is God, and then believe in everything they say? Obviously, this would be too much.

Just as I do not expect James to listen to the Muslim scholars who say that the Quran is the word of God, and just end it right there.

I expect him as a non -Muslim to investigate, to listen to all sides of the question, to study, and then to form his own conclusions about what is right and what is wrong, what he can believe in the end.

I believe this is precisely what I'm doing. I have been led to believe that Richard Baucom is a very conservative scholar.

And in fact, in some of our past encounters, I'm sure that James had recommended Richard Baucom.

In fact, I recall seeing Richard Baucom's name on a list of books that James had circulated as recommended reading.

But now, I quote it from Richard Baucom, and this is still not good enough. So I pointed out in a written piece some time ago that it becomes frustrating when we try to dialogue and we're being told that your dialogue is approaching this from the wrong angle.

And when we ask for the right angle, we are led to a certain path, and then we're still told that that's the wrong angle when it turns out that what we're citing from the conservative

Christian scholars is still not good enough. Now, when it comes to the

Quran, of course as a Muslim, I keep my mind open. I read, as I said, writing from a wide variety of sources, those who are critical of the

Quran. Those who will say, for example, as James pointed out, that the Quran, in speaking about Jesus, depends on apocryphal sources.

So I have to have a way of putting that all together. And the way I understand this is that the word of God, the

Quran, speaking from divine authority draws the attention of people to the divine truth, and in doing so,

God uses whatever people knew at the time as the starting point. And this is logical argumentation.

The Quran is a hudja, it is an argument. So a logical argument starts with premises that will be acceptable to the people that you are presenting your argument to, and then you build upon that.

So if some people knew the stories about Jesus from apocryphal sources, the Quran starts there and then develops its own theology out of that.

Some people knew the stories as they are in the Gospels. The Quran starts there and then develops its own theology from that.

In any case, the Quran arrives at the same place that Jesus is a prophet, a messenger, a Messiah of God, but still a servant and a humble worshiper of God who has been made into God by other people who claim that for him.

The Quran says, يَذْوَاهِئُونَ طَوْلَ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا مِنْ قَبْلٍ They follow the sayings of those who are disbelieved of old.

It's not that the Quran is ignorant of what the New Testament says and of what Christians believe. It is that the

Quran just doesn't agree with that. The Quran, in fact, when studied carefully shows detailed knowledge of what

Christians believe. And in my cross -examination, I asked James about his view regarding Mark's Gospel, ending at chapter 16, verse number 8, in which case there is no description in Mark's Gospel of Jesus actually appearing to his disciples after the event of his burial.

There is a promise that he will appear in Galilee, but no description of his actual appearance.

The last we hear is that women fled from the tomb telling no one about this because they were afraid.

So the question is, how did anybody hear about this? The women told no one. Somebody then appended a long conclusion to Mark's Gospel.

Somebody appended a short conclusion and somebody put the two together and somebody else put a further insert into the longer conclusion.

And that shows you how the Gospel materials have been handled over time. This is only the hard evidence that we have showing the corruption in motion and now requiring that these added portions be removed.

But we don't know what happened during that oral period. Didn't James say that the material was transmitted orally for a while?

Well, we don't have the hard evidence of how the changes occurred. But if you have something in writing before you and you're still going to change it, then we're going to ask you, what did you do during the oral period when there was nothing to cross -check against what you are writing?

So if the writing was changed, then the oral tradition was probably changed even more.

And this is the Quran's point, that people said things regarding Jesus which are not true. They made him into a god.

James replied to my statements regarding the destruction of the temple wall.

He was responding to the destruction of Jerusalem. That's not my point. Yes, Jerusalem was destroyed during the lifetime of those who heard

Jesus. But that was not the prophecy. There were two prophecies. One is that the apocalypse, the actual day of judgment will occur.

Jesus will come back from the clouds of heaven. And two was that the temple wall will be so completely destroyed that not a stone will be left upon the other.

According to historians, both of these prophecies were uttered by Jesus and both failed. And Muslim will say,

I will not go by the historians in this case. It looks like somebody else said this about Jesus. But they said it so early and so widespread that now all historians can do is submit to this evidence and say, well, it looks like Jesus said this on the criterion of embarrassment.

The Christians would not have invented this. And so it looks like Jesus said it and Jesus' prophecies failed.

For a Muslim, this cannot be because it would mean that Jesus is a false prophet. Because the Deuteronomy chapter 13 says that if a prophet says that something will happen, then it doesn't happen.

That is a false prophet. Deuteronomy 18 as well. And for Muslims, Jesus is a true prophet.

So we don't accept all of what these liberal historians are saying, but we keep an open mind, we examine, and we study.

What about the fig tree episode? James did precisely what I said the Christians do.

They go to Matthew's recollection of the event and then they make that into a parable, into a story, into a lesson.

And then he made a lot of fun about it. I enjoyed that. James, you are very funny. About the weather, and Jesus knowing about the seasons.

But Mark is very precise. The reason that the tree had no fruit is because it was not the season for figs.

Jesus went up thinking that he will find fruit, but then he did not find fruit because it was not the season for figs.

In Mark's narrative, it is very clear that Jesus was mistaken. And then Matthew tried to correct that to remove this clear conclusion that Jesus was mistaken.

So, finally, Mark's gospel, ending as it does.

What has happened after all of these people tried to put the long ending, the short ending, and so on? Mark's gospel was not deemed sufficient to proclaim the

Christian faith. And James, in his book, mentioned that this is the reason why people had it. Well, why did

Matthew and Luke write other gospels? Not only because Mark was in short supply, but because they wanted to now show the faith in Jesus.

Jesus did appear, and here is the story. That's according to Mark, Matthew, and Luke, revising the story.

John revised it even further. We want to get back to the true original story. That, to me, is the Quranic depiction of Jesus.

Thank you very much. Well, may I say thank you to all of you who have stayed for the entire evening.

Thank you for being here and listening very attentively. Thank you very much to all who made this available to us, this fine facility.

Thank you for being a respectful audience, and thank you very much, Shabir, for once again engaging in debate with me.

I do look forward to our future engagements, and I hope that they will be just as useful to folks. I hope that you have an understanding of what the issue this evening was.

I truly believe that what I presented to you was clear evidence that Jesus claimed deity for himself.

I demonstrated this by a consistent line of testimony, starting with the earliest Christians. I went back through Paul, quoting from the early hymn of the church.

I went back to Jesus himself, and I demonstrated that Jesus himself utilized language that specifically identified him as God in a way that could not be mistaken.

What has been the response to that? The response has basically been to cast doubt upon the accuracy of what we have today.

Not only the transmission of the text, interestingly enough, though that's a direction that many Muslims will go, but to cast doubt and say, well, we can see theoretically that there is a development here, or there is an addition here.

However, we saw in the question and answer period that there are counterexamples to that, and it's difficult for you to maybe grasp hold of all these things in a short discussion we might have here, but there have been sound and consistent

Christian responses to every one of the criticisms that Shabir Ali has leveled for a very, very long time, and here's what

I want the Muslims to hear. I suggest to you that if you take the time to look at those responses, you will discover that the worldview behind them, the worldview that allows

God to speak with clarity is the same worldview that you would hold as a supernaturalist, and that the people who would not allow

New Testament to give us a specific testimony to the deity of Christ or would say, well, theoretically, maybe this was an addition, or theoretically, maybe that happened, that the worldview of the people who take that perspective would not be consistent with your own.

That really becomes the issue here, and I really would suggest to you if you would take the time,

I mean, one of the questioners had just taken the time to read the Gnostic Gospels.

My friends, if you will read the Gnostic Gospels, if you'll take the time to read that, please read Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

You will find that the people who wrote Matthew, Mark, and Luke believed in the

God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and that the people who wrote the

Gnostic Gospels didn't believe in that God, and in fact, reviled that God. And if you'll take the time to just understand that what we have is all of this, all of the earliest evidence points us to the same conclusion, and here's my commitment for all of us this evening.

What if those texts I presented to you are right? What if Jesus Christ, when standing before his accusers, identified himself as the

Son of Man, the Son of Man who is worshipped by his followers and is given a kingdom that will never end and is worldwide?

What if that, which is part of the earliest tradition even from the liberal perspective, what if that is true?

My Muslim friends, what if every breath that you have and every beat of your heart actually comes from the hands of Jesus of Nazareth?

What if he truly was the Incarnate One? You cannot treat him as a mere

Rasul. The Jews did that in John chapter 8. They would have accepted him as a

Messiah. They would have accepted him as a prophet. He raised the dead. It's pretty hard to argue with that. But what they rejected was that he truly was the

Eternal One, that he had come into human flesh. And Jesus said to them, unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins.

That sounds very final to me, my friends. And so have you ever pondered what if Jesus was telling the truth?

What if this message which existed for hundreds of years before the Quran came into existence, what if it's true?

What will you do with a Jesus who can stand before his accusers and say, I am the

Son of the Blessed One. And you will see the Son of Man coming with clouds and with power.

Are you ready to meet that Jesus? That is the Jesus I believe in.

That is the Jesus I pray will reveal himself to you even this evening.

Thank you very much for your time. Thankful for all of your responses during the Q &A.

And I hope that we'll have some further discussions even after we close. And I look forward to further dialogue with Dr.

White on the question of salvation. Now to sum up what has happened here tonight in my own view, it seems that I presented eight examples from the

Gospels to show that Matthew and Luke, in particular Matthew, have,

Matthew has evolved the story from the way it was in Mark for these particular reasons.

One, for having people call Jesus Lord. Two, for having Jesus describe himself as Lord.

Three, for having Jesus, or calling Jesus the

Son of God. Four, for calling God Father, or having Jesus call

God Father. Five, having people pray to Jesus. So you find in the earlier Gospel, nobody prayed to Jesus, they didn't know what to do.

In the later Gospel, all of a sudden, they're calling Lord and they're praying to him. Six, to reduce

Jesus's emphasis on one God. Seven, Matthew made changes to reduce the distinction between Jesus and his

God. And eight, Matthew made changes to cover the human limitations in Jesus, as is evident from the previous narrative of this story.

So how did we get to that situation? James would say, no, this is just liberal scholars saying that.

But I actually cited conservative scholars who have accepted the basic presupposition that Mark is the earliest of the four

Gospels and that. Now once you accept that and you stare so clearly at these examples, you don't have to be an anti -supernaturalist to see that there is a difference between the two.

In fact, it will be the opposite. You would have to be some kind of supernaturalist to say that what

I'm seeing here is not really that. For example, Peter said to Jesus, Rabbi, in the first Gospel.

In the second one, he said to Jesus, Lord. Same event, Rabbi, Lord, not a difference. In the one event,

Jesus is called the Son of God, but that's the second Gospel. In the previous one,

Peter just simply confessed, you are the Messiah, and so on. These are clear examples of changes.

You don't have to be a believer in Matthew or not. You just have to be a rational human being. You see that one guy is saying this, one guy is saying the other thing, and the two things don't match.

It is very clear. So when we saw that, what was James' reply? Well, he tried to use one example, the example about the

Greek, but notice what is done in Mark. In Mark's Gospel, Jesus refers to himself as the master of the house.

That's like saying in Arabic, Rabbi, Rabbi. But then in the second Gospel, he refers to himself as the

Lord. That's like saying in Arabic, Rabbi. There is a change between the two.

And this change has been admitted by Robert Stein in his book The Synoptic Problem on page 86 where he says that Matthew has, it seems evident that what

Matthew has done is change the saying about the parables master of the house to Lord. So this is biblical scholarship, folks, and I'm citing conservative scholars.

I'm still hearing from James that you should hear you're not citing the right scholars. This is a very confusing sort of signal

I am receiving. What about the apocryphal material? The apocryphal material is not necessarily wrong.

There may be some truth in the apocryphal material and one has to evaluate them as we evaluate any other material.

So if the Quran refers to some material which is not in the Gospels, that doesn't mean that the public made a decision to not include that and to include this.

That's somebody's decision. It could be a wrong decision. The Quran is more wholesome in this approach in looking at whatever materials were available and then bringing out its own theology based on that.

What I found interesting is the problem of definition. James in his book on the

Trinity said that a lot of discussion goes on because people don't describe this term. But if we define

Yahweh as the Trinity and then Yahweh sent his son, then the son is not included in the

Trinity. If we describe Yahweh as the father and he's the only God and only the father is God, I think we have set ourselves on a wrong foot because James failed to identify his terms and define his terms and I thank you very much.