A Double Radio Free Dividing Line

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Greetings! Welcome to The Dividing Line. Yes, I wanted it live. We don't need themes today because we're going to be playing themes twice.

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So if you play the opening theme and then that theme and then that theme as three themes, it'll take up the entire time. We wouldn't have time to do anything else.

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That's what I meant by give it to me live. Welcome to The Dividing Line and today, a double edition, the

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Radio Free Geneva and Radio Free Damascus. But before I get into that, I've got to almost waste some time, to be very honest with you, to address two of the things.

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I just can't let them hold until Thursday to address them, so I need to take a little of the time that I want to be using for other things just to address these things.

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Catholic Answers has put up a blog post basically saying we're a bunch of liars or whatever, showing great confusion on their part.

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Here's simple facts, simple response. We did a debate with Tim Staples. We made the debate available to Tim Staples.

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We'll provide you with the MP3, et cetera, et cetera. Look, folks, this is the simple facts of what happened.

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A, they never made it available. Now they're saying, well, it's because we couldn't do MP3s. I don't know what took them so long to get around MP3s.

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We've been doing them for how long? We've been doing MP3s a decade, maybe something like that. Yeah, about a decade. But it was too short for CDs.

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Well, 90 minutes, isn't that two CDs? We can put it in one? Okay, well, that's fine, but it's too short.

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See, we know where to… But they said they don't do single CD things. Yeah, but see, we know where to find things, and so we found a 90 -minute

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CD that you can record 90 minutes. But that's the point. That's the point. Maybe they don't do it. I don't know. It doesn't matter to me.

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The point is they said it was too short, and that's why they didn't make it available. And then all of a sudden we start talking about it, and they want to make it available.

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Look, the fact of the matter is I know the folks in the Catholic Answers forums. I know many of them listen to this program. I know that any debate whatsoever where they felt that they bested me, such as in the

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Jimmy Akin non -debate, where Jimmy Akin gets all this extra time and the callers call in and determine topics, they make those things available.

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Have you noticed how few of the debates we've done in the past with anyone from Catholic Answers are still available? They're just sort of disappearing.

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If they felt that this particular debate was a slam dunk and that's how they always present all of Tim Staple's stuff, if they're going to make the stuff that he did with Steve Gregg available, there was no reason on God's green earth why they wouldn't make this available.

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It would have been easy to add it in to stuff that Tim did on Purgatory and stuff like that.

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They just didn't want to make it available. And it was not until we said the debate—how many times in this program we had mentioned,

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Boy, those folks over at Catholic Answers ain't doing anything about this. You don't think people in the Catholic Answers forums were well aware of that?

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Of course they were well aware of that. The Catholic Answers forums are the forums where anything goes when it comes to me.

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Any accusation, no matter how inflammatory, how libelous, how slanderous, is perfectly fair game in the

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Catholic Answers forums. They want to believe—and the worst possible things about me. The fact of the matter is, what that debate demonstrated is that 1

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Corinthians 3 has nothing to do with Purgatory. And that you cannot defend that concept without engaging in the most egregious eisegesis.

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And so it was not until we put up that banner ad that they contacted us to make that debate available.

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And I leave it to the listening audience. Why do you think they did that within, what, two weeks after we did that?

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I think there's a pretty obvious reason why that is. And I think our putting up that banner ad is what forced them to make that available.

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They didn't contact us. They didn't go, oh, you know, now we're doing MP3s, we ought to get that—no.

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If we hadn't put that banner ad up, they never would have made that debate available, period.

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End of discussion. That's all there is to it. That's the reality on that. Secondly, in regards to the Pope stuff, like I said last week, the idea of everybody's redeemed and stuff like that, that's not unusual.

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I really appreciated Turgeon Fan's blog article demonstrating the contradiction in the Popes and their teachings on that subject.

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That's a topic we've pointed out many times before, that modern Rome's teaching and ancient

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Rome's teaching is not the same thing on many subjects. But in regards to the issue of redemption, the issue is not, oh gosh, now all the atheists are saved.

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The issue was the Pope does not use language the way that the apostles did.

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And he's supposed to be their successor. He is not limited by biblical categories of theological terminology.

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His language is not defined by that. His language is defined by Roman theology and really a less than conservative strain of that in some areas.

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That's why I think a lot of people would have to admit, boy, these sort of impromptu, off teleprompter homilies could be a really interesting source of information.

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Very, very interesting source of information. That's really what the issue there is.

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And of course, I would argue very strongly that the Pope was wrong in saying that atheists can do good.

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There is none that does good. That's Romans chapter three. Especially one who denies the existence of his creator, for crying out loud.

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You say, well, it's a different kind of good. No, again, the Bishop of Rome might want to speak with the voice of the epistle to the

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Romans. That would be a good thing, I think, to do in the future.

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With that, we have Radio Free Geneva and Radio Free Damascus. Which one comes first? Radio Free Geneva.

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Yes, go ahead, let him start. I don't like Calvinists because they've chosen to follow

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John Calvin instead of Jesus Christ. I have a problem with them. They're following men instead of the word of God.

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Our helper he amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing.

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And I've got hands standing on top of my feet, standing on a stump and crying out, he died for all.

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Those who elected were selected. For still our ancient foe does seek to work us woe.

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His craft and power are great and done with cruel hate.

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Well, first of all, James, I'm very ignorant of the reformers. On earth is not his equal.

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I think I probably know more about Calvinism than most of the people who call themselves

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Calvinists. Did we in moral strength confide our striving would be losing?

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For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever.

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We're not the right man on our side, the man of God's own choosing.

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Ladies and gentlemen, James White is a hyper -Calvinist. Now, whatever we do in Baptist life, we don't need to be teaming up with hyper -Calvinists.

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You ask who that may be, Christ Jesus it is he.

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I've said the other day in class that I don't understand the difference between hyper -Calvinism and Calvinism.

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It seems to me that Calvin was a hyper -Calvinist. Right, I don't think there is typically any difference between Calvinism and hyper -Calvinism.

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Lord, swallow his name. Read my book. From age to age the same.

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And he must win the battle. And now, from our underground bunker hidden deep beneath Liberty University, where no one would think to look, safe from the mutter

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Calvinists, Dave Hunt fans, and those who have read and re -read George Bryson's book, we are

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Radio Free Geneva, broadcasting the truth about God's freedom to say to his own eternal glory.

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All right, we got a lot of requests for me to do this, and I finally had an opportunity last week to listen in, and so I'm going to begin a response to the

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Calvinist call -in day on Line of Fire with Michael Brown.

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And I've let Michael know this. I think Michael's a little nervous about this, to be perfectly honest with you. But a lot of folks said, look, we'd like to hear what you'd have to say, how you'd respond, especially to the assertions of some of the biblical texts.

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I guess some of them had not been addressed directly in what we've already done in the past, though I think we're getting pretty close to having covered most of them.

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The public debate was really more focused upon, I think, the key issue of whether you believe that there is a divine decree and God's relationship to time and things like that.

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What was weird was only a few of the callers were actually Calvinists. The majority were like, well,

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I'm a fence -sitter, I'm not really a Calvinist, but what about this, or something like that.

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So only the first few callers were actually Calvinists, including a good old Brian from Long Island called in.

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And we're going to play the entirety of Brian's call. And he got Michael upset.

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The one person who called that I know personally. Brian's the one that flew me out to Long Island to preach at Doug McMaster's installation at New Hyde Park Baptist Church a few weeks ago.

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So good old Brian called in and got under Michael's skin,

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I'm afraid. So we're going to listen to that, and we are going to try to give a reformed response.

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There's some really interesting comments there. And then once we get about—we're not going to get through all of it by any stretch of the imagination, even though we're doing a jumbo edition of the program today—then we're going to switch over to Radio Free Damascus, and I'm going to start a series in response to Yusuf Ismail.

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I've done this many times before, as you all know. When I have a major debate coming up, one of the things I try to do is to—oh, thank you very much.

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We have the Blu -ray and DVD available now of the Southern Evangelical Seminary predestination debate.

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It is at store .aomin .org, if you'd like to go and get that.

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I'm supposed to do things like that. I'm not very good at doing things like that, as you can tell. That was really a natural transition. But anyway, no, that's okay.

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We'll stick with this. Keep your hands off that microphone. Anyway, I have many times done reviews of lectures, debates, et cetera, by people

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I'm going to be debating to try to help them to prepare for our debate, to make it a better debate. Now, there's not too many people that do that.

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In fact, let me think for a second. No, I can't think of anybody that does that.

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I don't honestly think—I can't think of anybody who does entire debate reviews publicly, makes it available for the people

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I'm going to be debating. Here's what I'm going to say. Here's how I respond to what you're saying before the debate actually takes place.

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But that's that I really want these debates to be useful. And so that's—and when you're confident of the truth, that's the way to do it.

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And so I'm going to be responding to the debate that took place between William Lane Craig and Yusuf Ismail in 2010, which, interestingly enough, was arranged—in fact, the fellow who arranged the

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Southern Evangelical Seminary debate between myself and Michael Brown is the one who arranged the debate between Yusuf Ismail and William Lane Craig and told me that, and he's mentioned in the debate.

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So Simon Brace is his name. So we will be doing that in the second half of the program today.

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So that's what is on tap. So with that, let's get to it. I wanted to start off by responding to the primary thing that Michael said a number of times, where he basically asked the question, does it really matter?

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One, I would like to see if my Calvinist friends can demonstrate that it actually matters in terms of having a belief one way or the other on this.

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In other words, as far as our service of God, as far as our service to the world, as far as our passion to see the lost saved and Jesus glorified, in practical terms, not theoretical terms, in practical terms, does it actually matter?

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I actually believe that you can be a Calvinist, you can be an Arminian, and if you are committed to the

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Great Commission, if you live your life, say, the same way that Whitefield and Wesley did, or the same way that Spurgeon and Moody did,

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I mean, just put people on different sides of the equation, if you live with a passion to see the lost saved and discipled, and a passion to see

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God glorified and you're committed to praying and doing what you know how to do, then if God chooses or He doesn't choose or however it works out, that's

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His business, and we go about doing the work. Why divide over it? Why make a major issue over it?

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That's something I'd like to discuss with you as well. Now, by the way, I do have things sped up just a little bit.

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That's what I normally do in debates, so that we can get more material covered, because I talk fast, and so that means everybody else has to talk faster.

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And I've been told that when other people then speed this program up to listen to it fast, that that can cause a problem, but there's nothing we can do about that.

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Does it matter? I mentioned, I believe I mentioned, I have a recollection of mentioning, in our debate anyways, that one of the things that does concern me, and I think this is an answer to one of the audience questions, is that it does matter.

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For example, I do not believe Michael and I could team up to debate a Roman Catholic on a soteriological issue.

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We couldn't. I don't believe we could team up to debate the Mass, because my understanding of the primary problem with the

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Mass is that the representation of the one sacrifice of Christ in the

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Mass does not accomplish the perfection of those for whom it is made. And I don't believe

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Michael believes that the death of Christ actually, in and of itself, accomplishes the perfection of those for whom it's made, because he believes it's made for every single person.

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And since not everybody's going to be saved, then we don't approach that subject in the same way. We don't have the same view. And so, later on, he's going to say he doesn't believe that we should use terms like Pelagian, Semi -Pelagian, etc.,

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etc. I'm going to respond to that at that point. But he also included the terms monergistic and synergistic, and objected that basically we were rigging the deck by using these terms that honestly have a long historical usage as descriptive of the difference between whether you believe that there is one force that saves, that God's grace saves perfectly, or you believe that there are two forces, that there is a combination, a joint effort, in essence, in bringing about salvation.

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But the difference between being a monergist and a synergist, there are many practical ramifications. Apologetically, there are.

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I think a sharp individual that we would be debating might raise those issues. As I mentioned, not only

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Roman Catholics, but some others in soteriological areas. And so, we are limited, unfortunately, in the areas that we can team up and have a consistent position in response to other people.

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I am troubled by that, but I think it's necessary to point it out and to be honest about it.

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No, I just didn't do a Canadian thing. That was A, as in now B. I think that there is also an apologetic ramification as to how we argue.

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Michael is going to ask a number of the callers, and we're going to get to some of this, I think, today. Is God doing everything he can do to save every single individual?

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And my answer is an obvious, clear, and my goodness, the

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Bible is awfully clear on this, no. And I'll be honest,

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I don't know how someone who is an expert in the Old Testament can say anything other than that. How can anyone say, oh yeah,

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God is doing the exact same thing to save the Amorite high priest than he's doing to save Moses?

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Everything that he does with the children of Israel, he's doing the exact same stuff with the

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Egyptians, and the Babylonians, and the Assyrians, and the faraway people in lands like China.

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He's got the Old Testament sacrifices pointing to the coming

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Lamb, and he's got the prophecies, and he's sending prophets, and he's sending scriptures. No, he's not. No, he's not. There's no evidence of that.

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So the idea that, well, yeah, God's just giving 100 % effort for every single individual,

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I see absolutely no evidence of that. Where does the Bible say, I am trying to save every person equally, and I only accomplish it with those who cooperate with me?

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I don't see it. As such as I don't see it, that's just directly contradictory to everything that we do see.

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And if God was already doing that, why does he send Christians all over the world? Why is there this big transition into sending people out with the gospel?

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Just a lot of differences with this there. So it matters in, for example, how we argue with atheists.

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I approach the person I'm talking to as a person who is enslaved to sin.

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I do not present the evidence of the existence of God to an individual as if they are in the position to judge

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God's Word. They're not. They're creatures. They are condemned creatures. The wrath of God abides upon them, and they have no right to judge the existence of God.

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And I do not put them in a position of thinking they can in any way, shape, or form. So there's a lot of practical ramifications there.

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There's practical ramifications in regards to the doctrine of the Church, how we worship, the regulative principle.

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And I think this has come out, and certainly in how the

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Church is to be ordered, and what the Church is to be doing, and what its focus is, and things like that. So I really do believe it matters, and that that's why we should talk about it.

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And that's why I do talk about it, and that's why I've written books on it, because I do believe that it matters. And I do believe that there is a—

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Obviously, Michael believes he's being more faithful. He's going to say that. He's being more faithful and more consistent with the biblical text than I am.

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Obviously, I believe the opposite, that I am being more consistent with the biblical text. But especially as an apologist, that's really important.

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Everybody knows it's really important for me. Yeah, that James White guy, he's that consistency dude. Well, I don't know how you define truth.

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You know, I remember the logic class I took, how do you define truth without using the term consistency? You just have to be consistent.

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So I think that it does actually make a difference in a number of different areas.

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And it can out on the street in the proclamation of the gospel, too. Because whether you are proclaiming the gospel and calling sinners to repentance, with the assumption that they have the capacity and ability in and of themselves to make that effort successful, or whether you are trusting that God will miraculously perform the work of regeneration, that, honestly,

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Reformed churches are not the ones that have come up with some of the wild and crazy how to get a person through the church doors ideas.

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For the very reason that if you're consistently Reformed, you're going to trust the Holy Spirit to do that by the power of the gospel, not all these other things and ways that things are done, and so on and so forth.

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So I think it does make a difference. Now, the one thing that Michael and I did correspond about is his story.

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And he wrote some fairly long emails back to me. I think he was very straightforward in saying,

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I did have that experience, because I talked a little bit about what made me a

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Calvinist. Well, here's what he said on the program. This is what I'm—here's his own statement. In fact, I'm going to close it down to normal speed, so you actually hear how he actually put this.

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You tell me if this is my description. Well, I'll tell you what my description is first.

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Then you listen to what Michael said, and you tell me whether you think that they're saying the same thing. Why am

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I Reformed? Believe me, it would be— I'd probably have five staff people outside this room if I wasn't

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Reformed, because we'd have a much wider support base and a whole lot more churches that would want to have us in and all the rest of this kind of stuff.

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I've said many times the best way to keep your ministry small is to address Roman Catholicism, Islam, and to be

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Reformed. And that's really, really, I think, a true observation. But I became

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Reformed as I was studying the Word of God. I was not raised anti -Reformed.

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I was raised certainly in what would have been a non -Reformed context as far as the churches

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I was a part of, the language that would be used. I wasn't familiar with terms like particular redemption or limited atonement or issues like that.

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But I had never been told that Calvinists were heretics and that election is only unto blessings and not unto salvation and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

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I had always believed in the perseverance of the saints and things like that. And I remember as a junior in high school at Glorieta, New Mexico, just struggling with the concept of election and my own salvation and all these types of things.

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And so it was in the midst of really starting to try to put together my own personal faith and, again, that emphasis upon consistency and being exposed to the whole counsel of God and studying

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Greek and all these things that I was forced to start thinking these topics through.

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And fundamentally, there comes a point in time where you encounter the reality that the

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Scriptures say God is God, you are not, you are his creature, he is holy, he is completely other, he is eternal, you are time -bound, you are but a vapor, you are the creature at his hand, he is the potter, you're the clay, he can do with you as you wish, as he wishes, not as you wish, as he wishes.

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And there is a absolutely world -shaking, completely reorienting experience of recognizing that I am not in control,

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I am merely a creature. And it was in studying

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Isaiah 6 and it was in, well, The Holiness of God by R .C.

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Sproul, just that whole concept of the otherness of God and his absolute kingship over all things that changes you as a person.

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One of the ways it changed me, for example, is it was only a few years later that I ended up working as a hospital chaplain.

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And I had to do so much grief counseling and there was, almost all the grief counseling books that I found were not written by Reformed people in any way, shape, or form.

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I had to work through that on my own because I had had such a soul -changing, life -changing, reorienting encounter with this idea of the sovereignty of God.

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And it just changes everything. And I think it's a work of the

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Spirit of God, obviously. It's not like you're sitting around one day and you flip a coin and go, yeah, okay,

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I'm gonna go with Sproul. Yeah, you know, Geisler, Sproul, I don't know,

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I think I'll go this way. No. And people who do do it that way tend to be very fickle and end up,

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I think, being Calvinists who aren't really Calvinists. So with that in mind, here's Michael describing his time as a

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Calvinist and what made him a Calvinist. And I want to give as much time to callers as possible.

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So in a nutshell, when I got saved in 1971, I never heard of Calvinism or Arminianism, but the church in which

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I was saved would be strongly Arminian. If you had to classify it, although we didn't use those terms, we respected

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Charles Spurgeon, but we agreed with John Wesley. If you had to break it down like that.

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I didn't know a lot about the issues when I studied Scripture. I saw a few verses that could point towards Calvinism, but otherwise it seemed clear to me what

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Scripture said. Around 1977, 76, 77, doing a lot of theological study, reading more scholarly material, commentators, different things.

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I saw, wow, some of these guys are Calvinists. Some of these great scholars and Bible commentaries and theologians.

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Maybe there's something I'm missing. I began to look into this and went through kind of an intellectual, emotional conversion and said, yes,

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I accept Calvinism is true and scriptural. And that's what I held to quite dogmatically for the next five years.

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When I experienced deep personal revival in my own life in 82, I questioned some of the things that I had learned through primarily intellectual theological study and not primarily getting alone with God on my knees with the word open, seeking his face.

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And that's just my experience. I'm not saying it's your experience. And when I reflected back on the word, I couldn't deny that from beginning to end,

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God called human beings to choose life or death, to receive his free gift or to reject it.

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And that he held us accountable. And I found that as much as I appreciated Calvinism's emphasis on God as king and ruler, something

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I hold to, to this day, I could not agree with the five points of Calvinism and have not held to it since 1982 and did not talk about it a lot or preach about it a lot or emphasize it a lot until being on radio about five years ago,

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I started getting lots of questions. So it's come up more since then. Now here's the phraseology again.

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I think it was right here. When I reflected back on the word, I couldn't. No, maybe it was up here. I began to look into this and went through kind of an intellectual, emotional conversion and said, yes,

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I accept Calvinism is true and scriptural. And that's what I held to quite dogmatically for the next five years.

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When I experienced deep personal revival in my own life in 82. Now saying intellectual, emotional conversion, and then real revival is making a contrast that I think in my experience, it was that encounter with the holiness of God that was real revival for me.

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And now he said, no, I'm not making this a blanket thing, but this is my experience. Okay. My experience is just the opposite.

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That when you encounter the living God as he truly is, that was part and parcel of what convinces me that he is king.

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I am not. And I never will be. And I cannot be. And that's one of the differences,

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I think, especially with some of the standard objections that come up in this particular conversation are objections that I think a reformed person,

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I would like to hear how Michael understood his own objections when he was a quote unquote

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Calvinist. So we'll get into those as we look at some of these particular statements.

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Yeah, very, very true. And Rick, thanks for your kind words. And my feelings, of course, were exactly the same towards Dr.

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White in terms of his scholarship and his graciousness in our debate at Southern Evangelical Seminary.

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Folks, you can also order that if you want to watch it on DVD from our website. And from ours. And Rick, I also have no problem leaving certain things in tension.

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In other words, I don't have to tie together every loose knot. I don't have to necessarily be able to say how this verse and this verse are in perfect harmony.

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I love to do that. But if I'm not able, that's certainly in keeping with first century

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Jewish thought. For example, we have a famous statement from the second century or early third century, but probably goes back earlier, where the rabbi said that everything is foreknown and free will is given.

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And you say, how can those both be true? They can't be. Tension is,

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I remember back when I was in seminary, there was, I went to church with another fellow who was going to the same seminary,

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Fuller Seminary, their extension here in Phoenix. And I remember we were,

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I was talking about this very issue with him at a Bible study get together. You know, Baptists have get togethers.

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We look for every possible excuse to eat something. Rich is even eating in the other room right now. And I hope you don't get any crumbs on the board or anything like that.

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That would be bad. But yeah, the board's far enough away. That's why you designed it that way, isn't it? OK, gotcha. Anyways, I can't do that in here and talk at the same time.

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It really doesn't get in the computer. And that'd be bad. Anyways, we were at one of these things and I was sort of pressing him on this particular subject because I was really working through it.

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And the favorite term at Fuller was tension. There's tension in the text.

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There's tension in the text. And I'm like, well, wait a minute. If God has revealed these things to us and he wants us to know these things, then don't you think that by looking at the whole counsel of God and recognizing there's a priority to certain things, like what the

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Bible says about God is probably a high priority thing and that might shed light on lesser things.

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And he's like, you can't allow for tension. He says, you're trying to figure out too much stuff, is what he said to me.

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I've never forgotten that particular statement that he made to me. I'm not saying that I've got everything figured out.

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But what I am saying is, if you listen to our debate, I think

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I was presenting a very consistent understanding of God's relationship to time that makes sense of God's statements.

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And I've not found a consistency in Michael's position on the same issue.

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And when we get to that point, he's like, well, you may be trying to go too far. I think you're going beyond Scripture. But the interesting thing is, a number of times during the call -in program, he would say to other people, well, the consistent testimony of Scripture is, well, obviously

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I think the consistent testimony of Scripture is to God's sovereignty and man's responsibility.

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And that responsibility is underneath God's sovereignty and the result of God's sovereignty. But it does not mean that God, therefore, has given up his sovereignty in the selection of his elect people or any of these other things.

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And so I don't think it's a matter of, well, you know, you're just taking certain texts and we just need to leave tension in the text.

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I think that we should interpret Scripture in such a way as to have the least, quote -unquote, tension in the text.

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Because if you have massive amounts of tension in the text, then what you're saying is

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God really hasn't spoken with clarity. And I think God has spoken with clarity. And I think that's an important aspect of things.

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And that led into—and here's a good example—that led into a discussion of, quote -unquote, prevenient grace.

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The very thing that I keep challenging my synergistic friends to show me in Scripture.

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Where do you find—I'm not asking you where you find the term, prevenient grace, because we all know it's not there.

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This is a later construction. This is a theological construct. And so we have the idea of a gracious act on God's part—evidently, from what

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Michael says here, it sounds like what he's saying—aimed at every single human being ever.

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That every single human being receives prevenient grace. And the purpose of that prevenient grace is to enable us to have a free choice, by grace, to accept

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Jesus. Now, I simply say, Amorite priest again. I see no evidence whatsoever that by prevenient grace, an

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Amorite priest, while the children of Israel are in captivity in the land of Canaan, when

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God himself says, their transgression is not yet full, that there is any evidence that there is some prevenient grace bringing that person to a position of being able to have salvation, aside from the proclamation of God's Word.

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Just, I guess, based upon some supernatural revelation? I don't know. But here's, you know,

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I say, you want to talk about a situation where you have something that's really unbiblical?

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Prevenient grace is really unbiblical. I see no evidence that God's grace tries to save.

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And in fact, you want another area where this is really important? This is the issue of the Reformation.

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The issue of the Reformation, as I've said so many times before, was not the necessity of grace.

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I recognize that my Arminian friends say that grace is necessary.

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The issue of the Reformation was the sufficiency of that grace. Can God's grace save without the assistance of humankind?

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That is not a divisive question. That's not a, you're loading the question wrongly.

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That is, that was the central issue of overthrowing the sacramental system of Rome.

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Interestingly enough, one of the callers was actually a Catholic. I had a Roman Catholic call in and try to promote

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Scott Hahn and Akers and some other folks. And they're all former Calvinists too. I'll play that one later.

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But here's the prevenient grace discussion. They held to them both being true, as I do. But Ephesians 2, for by grace you are saved through faith and this is not for yourselves, it is the gift of God.

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So there is debate among Greek scholars as to what this is speaking of. Is it speaking of that salvation is through faith or that, excuse me, that the gift is salvation?

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That the gift is faith? That the gift is grace through faith? The whole package, what's clear to me is that...

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The whole package is really about the only way it can be, to be very honest with you. That none of us deserve salvation, that in and of ourselves we can't save ourselves, that in and of ourselves that we cannot advance towards God nor do we want to advance towards God.

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In that respect, when Martin Luther said that man has free will, if you let him go he goes down, if you pick him up he goes up, there's much truth in that.

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That being said, I do believe in what's called prevenient grace, which is that the call does go out.

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That Jesus says in John 12, 32, that if he'll be lifted up on the cross, meaning that, that he'll draw all men to himself.

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Now, prevenient grace and a universal call are not the same thing. Prevenient grace brings a person to a point, at least historically, at least the

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Wesleyan formulation of prevenient grace, is this, well, even

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Rome has a concept of prevenient grace, is the idea of a grace that basically counteracts the effects of depravity.

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And so it brings you back to a moral neutral point, in essence. And I would love to see, hopefully, what's not being suggested is that that's what

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Ephesians 2 is talking about. Because Ephesians 2 is not talking about prevenient grace. Ephesians 2 is talking about a powerful grace.

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For by grace you have been saved. Not for by grace you are brought to a position where you can make the decision to be saved.

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Grace never makes men savable. This is one of the main issues that I raised against Norman Geisler.

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Norman Geisler's position is that grace makes us savable. That's Rome's position, that's the synergistic position.

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The dividing line is between the monergists and the synergists here. Rome has the prevenient grace concept. The Wesleyans have the prevenient grace concept.

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Norman Geisler has the prevenient grace concept. The idea that grace is absolutely necessary. I'm glad that people are saying grace is necessary.

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But that issue was solved and settled a long, long time ago. That is not enough.

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The issue is, is grace sufficient to save apart from the actions of the human will?

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Can God save his elect people? Or does he just try his best, give a 100 % effort?

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It seems just glaringly clear to me that not everybody, every pygmy in Africa has not been knocked off his horse by blinding light from heaven.

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God extended special effort with Saul of Tarsus, right? Burning bushes and flaming chariots.

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And God has used extraordinary means to save his elect people. And he doesn't do that for everybody.

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He just doesn't. So the idea that there's an equal 100%, we're all doing the same thing for everybody, not a possibility.

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It's just not a possibility. So whatever we're talking about when we talk about grace in Ephesians 2, that is a powerful grace.

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That is a grace that saves. And I'm still waiting for the grace that doesn't save. The grace that makes,

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I want to, where is the verses? We can provide so much meaningful exegesis of texts that say that grace saves.

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Titus chapter 2, the grace that saves. Where is the meaningful exegesis of texts of the grace that does not save, but makes us savable?

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That's what I would like to hear, because that's what the proponents of pervenient grace have to provide.

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That the gospel is the power of God to salvation to those who believe. So I believe God grants faith to every person.

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Faith to every person. Now again, this concerns me, because I believe that faith has a specific object.

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Saving faith, its object is the promises of God, and specifically found in the person of Jesus Christ. So are you saying that, let's go past the

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Old Testament period so we don't get involved in issues like that, that today, God has granted that faith to every

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Muslim in the world. Every Muslim has been granted that faith, and now it's just up to them to exercise it?

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You see, again, this brings us to fundamental issues.

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I do not believe that an unregenerate person can exercise saving faith.

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That's what regeneration is necessary for. Paul said that those who are according to the flesh cannot do what is pleasing to God.

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Believing in Jesus Christ, repentance of sins, pleasing to God, those who are in the flesh cannot do it. You have to be out of the flesh.

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You have to be in the Spirit. You have to be that new creature. That's the point of Romans 8. Beginning of Romans 8, anyways.

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So how has saving faith been granted to every single Muslim in the world?

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Where does the Scripture say that? The Scripture does talk about granting faith, but it's always to God's elect people.

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It has been granted to you not only to believe in His name, but also to suffer in that name.

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Philippians 1. Well, is that to every person? Is that to every Muslim? Is that to every atheist? No. That gift of faith is part of the entire work of God.

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Ephesians 2, that is summing up the entire preceding clause. That's the best syntactical reading of that.

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It is God's gift to His people. And man, I rely upon that.

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I rely upon that. That is the only hope I have. Because if saving faith has been given to everybody, to every single human being,

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I don't know what hope any of us have. Because I'm certain I could persevere in it, if it's just something that's been given and you can either do it or not do it.

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Saving faith is the result of the work of the Spirit of God in my heart that is a part of the work of regeneration.

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It's part of regeneration. Let's at least finish this section on prevenient grace, and then we will need to move on.

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Just like someone on my website commented, you can be given a $100 ,000 gift that you can't earn on your own and that you don't deserve.

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Now, what do you do with that? So that Scripture makes clear that we can say yes or no.

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When the Bible talks about us being dead in our sins, it does not mean dead in terms of incapable of responding. Luke 15, the

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Father says about the prodigal son, he was dead, now he's alive. Well, he wasn't physically dead, and he wasn't incapable of responding, but he was spiritually dead.

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He was separated from God. So human beings can say yes or no. God's grace enables us.

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So it's all a gift. Now, will you receive it or not? And it's not a work to receive a gift. It's not a work to believe and say, yes,

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I receive your salvation as a gift. Nowhere would that be considered a work in Scripture. So evidently the idea is prevenient grace is everyone's been given faith, everyone's been given the $100 ,000.

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Will they spend it? Will they use the gift? Everybody has the ability to say yes or no.

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They've been brought to that position. The only text that was cited was

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Luke 15 and the prodigal son. Now, you know, when you go to parables,

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I think there's a whole lot more to be found. For example, in John 11, when Jesus is talking about the resurrection and the life, and your brother shall live, and things like that, that's a historical incident that was specifically by Jesus put into the context of the demonstration that the

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Son of God calls people to life. And then in light of John's teaching in John 5, hearing the voice of the

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Son of God, they shall live, etc., etc. I think that's far clearer than trying to go to a parable that's clearly talking about Jews and Gentiles and read into that some capacity.

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Well, my son was dead, but now he's alive. Well, he really wasn't dead. He had the capacity to respond.

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When Paul, in didactic direct teaching, in Romans chapter 8, said that those who are according to the flesh cannot do what is pleasing to God.

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Now, again, this is an exegesis issue. Romans 8 .5,

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For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the

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Spirit, the things of the Spirit. Notice the contrast between the two.

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There is contrast between those being the Spirit, those in the flesh. The mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the

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Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God, for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please

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God. You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you.

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Not you are in the Spirit since you chose to. It's the work of the

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Spirit of God that has brought about that transition. But the mind that is set on the flesh is at enmity with God, is hostile toward God.

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Not at some moral neutral point. If there's a prevenient grace, then that prevenient grace would have to take that hostility away so that you could make that free choice.

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But no, if you're in the flesh, you are hostile toward God. It does not submit to God's law.

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What does God's law say? God's law says repent and believe.

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The hard heart of man does not want to do that. It does not submit to God's law.

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Indeed, it cannot. Ude gar dunatai.

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It is not able to subject itself to the law of God. What happened to prevenient grace?

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Well, there isn't any prevenient grace in Paul's thinking. If you are in the flesh, you are hostile toward God, and you are not capable of submitting to God's will, to God's law, those who are in the flesh cannot please

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God. Ude dunatai. Is it pleasing to God to humble yourself?

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That's one of the things that Michael's going to keep asking, and we're going to have to stop here and move to Radio Free Damascus. Is it pleasing to God to humble yourself?

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The answer is, yes, of course it is. The scripture says, not capable. So the answer to the question, why does

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God say this? Because God uses means. And that's what we'll get into next time. God uses means.

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He gives direction to those people who, once they receive his grace of regeneration, need direction as to how they are to live pleasing to him, and that's why those commands are there.

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The fact that command exists does not imply the capacity of every single person to fulfill it. That is a common logical error on the part of my synergistic friends.

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And it leads to major problems. All right, there is the beginning of Radio Free Geneva.

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But now we are going to shift gears and move to Radio Free Damascus.

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Many Mother Christians believe that Jesus Christ, peace be upon him, he was

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God. But if you read the Bible, there is not a single unequivocal statement.

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Not a single unambiguous statement. In the complete Bible, where Jesus Christ, peace be upon him, himself says that I am

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God, obey his worship. And about this business of every knee shall bow, the question will follow, well look,

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Paul, what about this business here now? It says here that every knee shall bow to God. And you're saying here to the

50:53

Philippians that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow. So Paul assures us, look, don't get upset.

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That was just something for them. Now just fool around with those Philippians. Because Jesus said it in so many ways that he is not

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God, you just want to stick it to him no matter what. I said, you're not reading your

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Bible. You don't read your Bible properly. You know, God has got sons by their tongues in the

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Bible. By their tongues. Coming to you live from our underground bunker deep beneath the madrasa where Ergen Kanner was trained in Jihad and Arabic somewhere in Turkey or Beirut or Cairo or Ohio.

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Anyway, this is Radio Free Damascus. Speaking of Ergen Kanner and the madrasa, we sent a copy of my new book to Ergen Kanner.

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I thought that was awful nice of me. We got it back a couple days ago.

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Return to sender unopened. Will not even look at it, of course.

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Just hearing that made me remember that. Anyways, as I said, getting prepared to debate

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Yusuf Ismail in South Africa at the beginning of October. And as a result, wish to provide to him an interaction with his comments on the subject of the deity of Christ.

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I listened to this debate. Obviously, I approach the debate from a different angle than William Lane Craig does.

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We both believe in the deity of Christ. But I would never present Kerberos as a picture of the

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Trinity. Nor would I present Avatar as a picture of the Hypostatic Union.

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Which William Lane Craig did in this debate. Oh, it's painful. It is painful.

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So there will be differences. And at least if it would help you to understand the differences between myself and William Lane Craig, we will raise those issues and go from there.

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So we're going to work through Yusuf Ismail's presentation. And as is frequently the case, the best material is actually in the rebuttals and that period later.

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But Yusuf Ismail is obviously very, very deeply influenced by Akhmed Didat. And Akhmed Didat was not a scholar.

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And his arguments are very, very bad. We have provided numerous refutations of them.

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And we will hear, once again, the same statement we had in the opening with Zakir Naik.

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There is not one unequivocal statement in the Bible where Jesus said, I am God, worship me. I have identified this as one of the worst arguments that Muslims can make.

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They need to stop making it, and they need to understand why they need to stop making it. You are making an irrational demand as if the only way that Jesus could demonstrate his deity was to walk up and put up a sign that says,

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I am God, worship me. Is that really the level at which you think that the incarnate one would communicate his true nature to his followers, let alone to those who rejected him?

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The Bible is clear and forceful in its presentation of the deity of Christ.

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It says, Jesus says and does things in all four of the

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Gospels. I could defend the deity of Christ from the

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Gospel of Mark alone. Alone. But when you bring all four of the

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Gospels in, it just becomes overwhelming that Jesus said and did things that no mere human prophet could ever say or do.

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Generally, the response from my Muslim friends is, once you're faced with those texts, they like the texts that describe

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Jesus as a prophet because, of course, they believe he was a prophet. Of course, so do we. And they like the texts that talk about the virgin birth because they believe he was virgin -born.

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And so do we. And that he was a man because they believe he was a man. And, of course, so do we. But then you get to the unique aspects of Jesus that transcend those, and all of a sudden that's corruption.

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All of a sudden, the same texts that they will quote to prove that Muhammad was a prophet in John 14, all of a sudden are no longer reliable.

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And one of the things that I will have to address repeatedly over the course of this discussion is the necessity of using equal scales.

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Use the same arguments. Use the same sources. Use the same methodology.

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To defend the Quran that you use to attack the New Testament. If you can't do it, then you're not acting in a truthful fashion.

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So, anyway, let's get started. I am going to speed this up again because we're going to be listening to entire blocks of presentation.

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But this is after William Lane Craig's presentation, which, again, especially in dealing with Muslims, why would you not begin with a presentation that assumes the inspiration of the

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Bible? I mean, the Quran says the Torah and the Injil are Natsal.

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They're sent down. They contain light and guidance. Put the onus on the other side to demonstrate this is not what was there.

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I mean, and I will let Mr. Ismail know right now, if you're going to say that any text that I cite, and I'm not going to be citing the

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Kama Yohanim because it didn't appear in the Greek text of the New Testament until, like, you know, the 14th, 15th century, at the earliest, but if you're going to say that any text

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I cite is a later corruption, then what I'm going to say in response is,

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I can demonstrate that that text existed in the Injil in the days of Muhammad. Surah 547 says to judge by what is in the

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Injil. Tell me why I'm wrong. And if you want me to demonstrate that it was in the

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Injil in the days of Muhammad, I can do that. I have right on my iPad and on my computer the entire text in not only transliteration, but in photography, high -quality photography of Sinaiticus and Vaticanus and the papyri, and all these long predate

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Muhammad, long predate Muhammad, and we can demonstrate that. So, let's dive in to Yusuf Ismail's opening statement.

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I begin in the name of God, most gracious, most merciful. Mr. Chairman, emcee,

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John Smythe, my as well competitor, Dr. William Lane Craig, ladies and gentlemen, good evening. It's an immense privilege to be sharing this platform with so eminent an individual as Dr.

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Craig tonight, and it's my privilege to be back in Cape Town. I must say that in half an hour,

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Dr. Craig has confirmed what I had initially predicted, and that he has not adduced a single passage or verse from the

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New Testament where Jesus proclaims divinity, where he says, I am God, or where he says, worship me.

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In fact, what he seems to be having engaged in is a process of what we would call decontextualization, and so I'm pretty surprised by the weakness of the arguments that I hear this evening.

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Coming to the topic identifying Jesus, is he man or both man and God? I think the theme for the program or this evening is a claim or a cry by this particular individual called

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Job. And he says in Job chapter 25 verse 4, How then can man be justified with God?

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Or how can he be clean that he is born of a woman? Behold, even to the moon, and it shineth not.

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Ye, the stars, are not pure in his sight. How much less man that is a maggot, and the son of man who is a worm?

01:00:02

Man is described as a maggot according to the book of Job. In other words, in comparison to the

01:00:09

Almighty God, man is but a creature. He is small. He is insignificant.

01:00:17

But that's only part of what Job says, and by the way, that is a poetic work and needs to be contextualized, because the same

01:00:25

Old Testament says, Who is man that you take thought of him? And yet you have made him just a little lower than the

01:00:30

Elohim. And so to take one text like this and say, Ah, here is an

01:00:36

Old Testament anthropology, an understanding of the actual view of the

01:00:41

Old Testament concerning man. And what's worse is, and William Lane Craig did a good job of exposing this,

01:00:47

Yusuf Ismail is assuming that son of man here has the same meaning as Jesus' own use of the term son of man.

01:00:55

As if son of man, which can mean just simple human, is the same thing as the son of man that appears in Daniel chapter 7, that Jesus quotes himself, and that's just a horrific misreading of the text.

01:01:07

That would be like reading the Quran, and every time a phrase appears, it always means the same thing. Well, you don't read it that way.

01:01:13

You don't read any book that way. You read any phrase and determine it in its context.

01:01:19

And the Bible uses son of man in a number of different contexts, and that's very important. The son of man, if we have to apply the same particular, you're assuming you want to apply a thousand and one prophecies to Jesus, the son of man is described as a worm, a slightly higher degree.

01:01:33

But that's a theme for this particular evening, and it's important that some of the statements I make are not meant to offend any particular individual tonight.

01:01:41

But that's not a good start. That is not a good start. To go to Job, make no effort to connect the phrase son of man there with anything other than what

01:01:51

Job is talking about. There's no attempt to connect that with Daniel 7, no attempt to connect that with Jesus' use of son of man of himself as an apocalyptic figure.

01:02:03

And ironically, he's later going to make reference to Bart Ehrman's view on this, and I've mentioned this to you before.

01:02:09

Bart Ehrman holds this very odd view, very strange view, confused view, that Jesus didn't use son of man language of himself.

01:02:19

He was talking about somebody else. And as a result, he doesn't understand why the Jews were so upset with Jesus when he said you'll see the son of man coming on the clouds.

01:02:28

I mean, it's just a massive blind spot with Bart Ehrman, but Bart Ehrman is not an exegete by any stretch of the imagination anyway.

01:02:36

But that's not a good start here. Job is not the context for looking at anything.

01:02:43

New Testament writers don't make that application, acontextual, out of context, and a simple violation of standard reading principle that we just saw there.

01:02:54

At the outset, we need to basically come to this particular point that it's important in a debate of this nature that we look at our source.

01:03:00

Without detracting from the debate, if the source is in doubt, then reliance upon that particular source to prove a theological point doesn't prove anything.

01:03:07

Many people aren't aware of the fact that what we have as a New Testament is nothing more than an eclectic edition. And I'm surprised that Dr.

01:03:13

Craig, as a noted scholar, never pointed that out. What the textual critic does is that he selects, he rewrites, or he chews from a collection of manuscripts to determine what might be the original.

01:03:24

Which is what Uthman did with his committee in the revision of the

01:03:31

Quran over against the readings of someone like Abdullah ibn Masud. Again, if you're going to make the argument that the

01:03:40

New Testament is nothing more than an uncertain text, then simply because there are competing readings, and not discuss the nature of those readings, not discuss the fact that even a critic as critical as Bart Ehrman would tell you, well, almost any manuscript you read is going to have the same fundamental teaching in it, obviously.

01:04:09

Even someone like him, remember when he was on with the atheists? The atheists were like, oh, Dr. Ehrman, so what do you think the

01:04:19

New Testament really originally said? And Ehrman's like, well, pretty much what it says today, obviously.

01:04:26

And the guy was just so disappointed, because they don't understand what

01:04:31

Ehrman's actually saying. Those of us that do recognize that what sounds like what

01:04:37

Yusuf Ismail is saying here is, well, if you have to make decisions, you have to make textual decisions, then it's unreliable.

01:04:44

Well, here's my counter to that. If you—everybody who deals with any ancient text has to make textual decisions.

01:04:53

If it was transmitted by hand, you have textual variance, just as you do throughout the

01:05:00

Quran. The question is, how much information do we have from the manuscripts as to what the original reading was?

01:05:08

And in that case, the New Testament is in significantly better condition than the Quran, because we have much more information about it, its manuscripts, its critical edition.

01:05:21

There is no critical edition of the Quran. There needs to be one. And I would think that Yusuf Ismail, and people like him, would be the ones beating the drum to get this done faster than anybody else, because they would realize, we need to have a critical edition of the

01:05:38

Quran. But if the argument is, you've had to make textual decisions, well, so did you.

01:05:45

So, equal scales. If it means the New Testament's unreliable, which has significantly wider documentation and wider distribution, which in textual critical areas is vitally important than the

01:05:58

Quran does, well, are you being consistent? And I would say, no, you're not being consistent.

01:06:04

Sometimes a selection amounts to no more than an informed guess. Here we have a collection of manuscripts.

01:06:10

Now, by the way, what do you mean, sometimes a decision means nothing more than an informed guess?

01:06:20

Give us a text. Give us an example. Are you talking about conjectural inundation?

01:06:25

Are you talking about a real difficult textual variant, like in Jude, where the

01:06:31

New Nestle All in 28th has changed from Kurios to Yesus? I mean, one of those two is the original.

01:06:40

The original is still there. One of those two is the reading. We're very open about that.

01:06:46

The original reading hasn't been taken out. There hasn't been an editing. No one took the earlier sources of the

01:06:53

New Testament and burned them. Sahih al -Bukhari, Volume 6, 509, 510. So, what do you mean by guess?

01:07:02

And when we can demonstrate that in Surah 2, 222, there's at least three readings with multiple changes and variations of words between the

01:07:13

Fawqs Palimpsest manuscript, the Su 'anna manuscript, and the Uthmanic version, one of them probably representing

01:07:18

Abdullah ibn Masud's reading. Again, if you're consistent, isn't Uthman's just a guess?

01:07:25

If you take the Su 'anna reading, is that just a guess? How about the Fawqs Palimpsest reading, is that just a guess?

01:07:33

Got to have equal weights, equal measure. Apply the same standards.

01:07:39

Different types of manuscripts, like the papyri, unseals, curses, minuscules. Out of a total of 5 ,847 manuscripts, you can see that the existing editions of the

01:07:48

Greek New Testament use a particular minority, sometimes going down as low as 5%.

01:07:54

What he's saying, of course, is that the earlier manuscripts are given weight over the later manuscripts, and there is a logical and rational reason for that.

01:08:08

It's the same thing is true with the Quran, again. You're going to look at those earlier manuscripts as having more weight than a manuscript produced 500 years later.

01:08:19

Now, the only exception to that, the only exception to that is when you have something like minuscules 1739 -1881, which are clearly and noted to be copies of a very, very ancient text themselves.

01:08:35

So you can have someone who creates a minuscule text where they are quoting something, their original source is very, very old, so they're only one generation removed.

01:08:44

So you can actually have later manuscripts that are given more weight because of that, but there are only a small number of those.

01:08:52

But, yeah, you're going to give the weight to the best manuscripts, right?

01:08:58

What is wrong with that? It's almost like it's being presented as if this is somehow a bad thing, but the reality is, what it means is, we have been able to identify better manuscripts than other manuscripts.

01:09:12

And isn't that good? Yeah, that's actually a very good thing. Why? This is a committee of Bible societies such as Bruce Metzger sitting in the middle with a number of individuals, and what are they doing?

01:09:22

They're developing the New Testament based on the existing manuscripts. No, they're not developing the New Testament. They're dealing with the massively rich, richer than any work of antiquity.

01:09:33

The Quran is not a work of antiquity, so it's not included in this. But richer than any other work of antiquity in its textual basis.

01:09:40

As Bart Ehrman said in my debate with him, the New Testament is the earliest attested document of antiquity.

01:09:48

I think he'd also have to admit it is the best attested document. It is the most widely attested document of antiquity.

01:09:56

And so we have an embarrassment of riches. The reason you need a committee is because we have so much.

01:10:05

Classical scholars would love to have a tenth of what we have to work on Pliny or Tacitus or Suetonius or Plato or any of these others.

01:10:18

But they don't have it. It doesn't really take a committee when you've only got seven manuscripts. But when you've got thousands, well, that's a whole lot more work.

01:10:26

But you see, the idea being presented here is that's a bad thing. Oh, bad thing. No. To the person who really studies this, that's a good thing.

01:10:35

Very good thing. Of the 5 ,847 Greek manuscripts, no two, apart from the very tiniest fragments, are identical.

01:10:42

In fact, up until the 8th century, there is not one Greek manuscript that contains the entire New Testament in its particular order.

01:10:49

Now, two statements in one sentence that have no relationship to one another.

01:10:54

Now, if you've listened to when we've gone through Ehrman lectures, we've gone through the debates with Dan Wallace, and we've played each statement and responded to each statement, you're recognizing the problems with this.

01:11:10

I just sort of... And it's very clear that Mr. Ismail thinks these are real problems. But that also means very clearly

01:11:15

Mr. Ismail does not know the field of textual criticism at all. And unfortunately, his listeners probably are in the same situation.

01:11:25

And so I'm hoping that maybe by providing this kind of response... And by the way, we need to get an address

01:11:33

ASAP. I just got to remind myself to get this. Get an address ASAP for Mr.

01:11:39

Ismail to send him some books so he can have them because that's coming up really, really fast.

01:11:44

And I'm not sure how long it takes to get things to South Africa as far as shipping is concerned. But I would like to send him the

01:11:51

King James Only controversy, The Forgotten Trinity, The God Who Justifies, some books like this so he can have them.

01:11:58

And maybe he'll do as Abdullah Kunda did and actually read them in preparation and that will make for a much better debate.

01:12:05

And that would be very, very useful. But there were two things that were said there.

01:12:10

First of all, no two Greek manuscripts were alike. Well, what do you mean alike? Identical, I think is the way to say it.

01:12:16

Identical. Well, of course, they're handwritten. They're handwritten. I would imagine probably no two early

01:12:24

Qurans are identical with one another because they're handwritten. I mean, there's all sorts of added alephs and skipped alephs in the manuscripts.

01:12:33

I have museum quality reproductions of both the Paris and British library manuscripts in my library.

01:12:41

I mean, museum quality. These things were incredibly expensive. And they are not identical to one another.

01:12:48

They're not. So? That's exactly what you would expect. They're handwritten documents.

01:12:54

That's why you have to do textual criticism on any document that was transmitted by hand.

01:13:00

That doesn't mean anything. But then that statement, which is just an observation of any historical, anyone who knows how documents are transmitted would go, yeah, that's unremarkable, is then combined with you don't have a complete

01:13:19

New Testament until much later. Well, of course not. For a number of reasons. The church is under persecution up until 313.

01:13:29

The books normally circulated in collections, such as P66, P75, which are gospel collections, and P46, collection of Paul's epistles.

01:13:42

Why? Well, because they're written in unsealed Greek text. And there's a reason why it's not until the 8th century, because that's when minuscule was developed.

01:13:50

And finally, with minuscule text, you can get it down small enough that you could actually put it all into one rather large book.

01:13:57

I mean, Sinaiticus comes pretty close. Well, actually, you know, he did say, in the order of today.

01:14:03

The order is irrelevant. The order is irrelevant. Why is that relevant?

01:14:11

I mean, most people could not afford to make something like Sinaiticus. I mean, it's huge.

01:14:18

It must have been extremely expensive. There would be only a few people. And it certainly wasn't something you could carry around.

01:14:24

There were no pocket New Testaments in that day, okay? It just wasn't a possibility. And so the idea that, well, not until you have a complete

01:14:34

New Testament that's in the order today. What does the order matter? There's no divine table of contents that says, well,

01:14:42

Matthew goes first, then Mark, then Luke. No. Why is that even relevant? I don't know, but you're throwing facts out here, putting them in a context that's completely foreign to their actual meaningful application.

01:14:55

Until, of course, the dated Uspensky Gospels of the 8th century. One can go on further. What about the words of Jesus?

01:15:02

Are we in possession of the words of Jesus today? What people and scholars tell us is that Jesus spoke Aramaic, not

01:15:07

Greek. Further on. Okay, so? Now, I think that most people living in Palestine had at least some facility in Greek, because that's how you talk to Roman soldiers, so it's sort of good to know.

01:15:22

That guy over there with the sword, he's yelling at me. I might want to know what he's saying. You know, I don't know. It just sort of crossed my mind that they might want to do that.

01:15:29

But do we have the words of Jesus? That's a theological question, isn't it?

01:15:37

Interestingly enough, I don't know that Yusuf Ismail is approaching it from a theological perspective.

01:15:44

But let me just ask this. You claim to have the words of Jesus in the

01:15:49

Quran, don't you? Are they in Aramaic? No, they're in Arabic. Where is the consistency?

01:15:59

I mean, anyone that Yusuf Ismail will quote to attack the text of the New Testament and say that we cannot trust that Mark contains the words of Jesus accurately, anyone he quotes will then just die of laughter that we could actually believe that the words of Jesus in the

01:16:22

Quran have anything to do with the historical Jesus at all. Equal scales.

01:16:29

If you're going to say, well, you know, don't know, then you have to say the same thing about Surah 5, verse 16, right?

01:16:38

You have to say the same thing about Jesus speaking from a cradle, which actually comes from the Arabic infancy gospel, which was written 500 years after the birth of Christ.

01:16:47

Right? Got to be fair. Got to be consistent.

01:16:53

Got to use the same arguments. As you can see in Acts 26, verse 14, Jesus spoke to Paul in the

01:16:58

Hebrew dialect. Some translators have it in Aramaic. So the problem is that if the source is not reliable, if we're not sure we don't have the original words of Jesus, then how can we go about making these particular claims that he allegedly made?

01:17:12

Now, I'm sorry, but I have yet to hear anything that from any perspective, let alone an

01:17:18

Islamic perspective, which you're supposed to be dealing with a supernaturalist, you're supposed to be dealing with someone who believes that there's revelation, someone who's holding a book that says the

01:17:26

Torah and the Injil are sent down by God and contain light and guidance, and that we, as the Al -Anjil, are supposed to judge by what is contained in these things.

01:17:33

I haven't heard anything that even comes close to establishing a problem with the source.

01:17:41

This is propping up your base. This is saying to your followers, there's real problems here, without actually providing any evidence that there are real problems there.

01:17:54

That's not an appropriate way of argumentation, and I have to assume this.

01:18:06

One of the 99 beautiful names of Allah is Al -Haqq, the truth. So, if the highest standard of truth and consistency is part and parcel of what one ascribes as the beauty of Allah, then

01:18:20

I would think that that would have to mark one's arguments as well. So, assuming that that is

01:18:26

Yusuf Ismail's approach as well, my hope is he'll go, I hadn't realized that there was an inconsistency here.

01:18:33

And maybe that will help in our debate to make things better. An interesting point to also note is that when we look at the relationships between the synoptic

01:18:43

Gospels, Dr. Craig subscribes to a theory called Mark and Priority. Now, where have we heard this before?

01:18:50

Where have we heard this before? What are you going to hear? Now, this is 2010. I'm pretty sure this is 2010.

01:18:58

Remember a debate I did in 2006 with Sheikh Shabir Ali at Biola University?

01:19:08

In the cross -examination period, I asked Shabir Ali about this idea of development over time and the idea that he had presented for years in his lectures, that when you start with Mark and you look to Matthew and Luke, they're changing

01:19:28

Mark, they're editing, they're expanding, and that one of the evidences of this is the use of the term kurios, remember?

01:19:36

And I pointed out to Shabir that one of the examples that he uses of this is in error, that he was reliant upon English translations, and that in reality, both

01:19:50

Matthew and Mark, both use the term kurios. It's just that one translates it differently in English, but kurios is the term that is used in both.

01:20:02

That was 2006. Here, four years later, Yusuf Ismail will make the exact same mistake on the exact same text, clearly borrowed the material from Shabir Ali, but was unaware that it was in error.

01:20:24

So, I'll point that out when we get to it here. Which I accept, which many fundamentalist

01:20:30

Christians will not accept, which is that Mark was the first gospel to be written, and then Matthew, Luke, and John subsequently followed, based upon the works of Mark.

01:20:39

As you can see... Based upon the works of Mark? No. There may be someone, but I don't know of anybody who says

01:20:50

John had Mark. Or used Mark. There may be some, I don't know. But Mark in priority has all sorts of different flavors.

01:21:01

You could believe Mark is prior, and not believe that Matthew and Luke have access to him, or that only one has access to him.

01:21:08

I mean, there's a lot to this area of synoptic studies, and my concern is that most of my

01:21:16

Muslim friends have only read what they want to read in synoptic studies, and not stuff that would help them to really understand the issue.

01:21:27

They see this as an area of weakness, and it is on a debate level, because most evangelicals have never really put a lot of thought into the relationship of the synoptic gospels, or taught through them, or studied through them, or things like that, and so it's easy to throw curves out like that.

01:21:46

I was really disappointed. We're going to get to it here in a little while. I was really disappointed, because one of what

01:21:53

I consider to be the worst arguments that Muslims have ever presented, and I will call upon Yusuf Ismail to not use this argument in the future, because it's really, really bad, is we will hear the fig tree argument.

01:22:06

The fig tree argument will be repeated. It is just, wow.

01:22:12

It's bad, and we'll have to explain why it's bad again, but it's coming up.

01:22:18

There's a triple tradition, and there's a double tradition. There are passages in Matthew which are taken directly from Mark. Passages in Luke and Matthew which are identical.

01:22:25

Passages which are only unique to Mark. And in accordance with that, Mark is seen to be the primary source. By some.

01:22:32

But once again, let me point this out, and we will send a copy, obviously, of whatever a

01:22:43

Christian should know about the Quran. But I provided in my book, and you can find this in, let's see, there we go.

01:22:56

This is chapter 10, Perfection of the Quran, Parallels and Sources.

01:23:02

I start off with a discussion of the synoptic issue, but then I start asking questions about the parallel text in the

01:23:12

Quran. Now, you don't have the same situation in the Quran that you have in the New Testament with multiple authors. You allegedly, at least from the

01:23:18

Islamic perspective, only have one author. But the

01:23:23

Quran tells the same story multiple times. And I start off with the issue of Sodom and Gomorrah, which is told in Surah 7,

01:23:36

Surah 26, Surah 27, and Surah 29. So four parallel accounts of Lot and the people in Sodom and Gomorrah.

01:23:46

And I go through for a number of pages. Pointing out that you do not have word -for -word identical stories in these four passages.

01:24:00

There are substantive differences. And even in the same statements of Lot, there are differences.

01:24:06

Now, here's the question. I can explain why Matthew telescopes

01:24:11

Mark. I can explain why he summarizes Mark, the

01:24:17

Mark in material. I don't know that he's using Mark. I think he's drawing from the same tradition.

01:24:23

But I can explain why two different authors would go to different levels of detail in telling the same story because that makes sense.

01:24:35

Earlier today, we had a guy outside, here at the offices. And I was actually doing a radio program at the time.

01:24:42

It was distracting me, but I was watching on the video that we have in here. And Rich was dealing with the guy. And if I told that story, and Rich told that story, would we give identical accounting of that story?

01:24:57

No, because Rich is actually the one talking to him. I was watching. And then I heard from Rich what the conversation was about.

01:25:05

So Rich's story is probably going to be much more detailed, especially because Rich is Rich. But Rich's story is going to be much more detailed.

01:25:12

In fact, it's going to be too detailed, to be perfectly honest with you. There are many times when we have meetings like, Rich, get to the point, okay?

01:25:17

We didn't really need that level of detail, okay? Put that back. No, no, no, no, no.

01:25:23

You know what I'm saying is true, brother. Does that mean one of us is lying? Of course not.

01:25:30

That's the nature of human communication. That's how it is. So I can explain why

01:25:37

Matthew and Mark are different. Can you explain to me why Sura 7 and 27 and 29 are different?

01:25:45

Because you've only got one author, right? This is only Allah. It'd be one thing if you took sort of a liberal view of the

01:25:53

Quran and you said, well, you know, this is Muhammad, and he's telling stories.

01:26:00

And when you tell stories, it's best not to tell it the same way all the time. And so in this situation, he says it this way, and so he's going to use a little bit different language this time.

01:26:13

And the next time he tells it, he's going to give it a little more detail or a little less detail. You know, if Muhammad's a good storyteller and it's poetry, then he's going to do it in certain different ways.

01:26:23

If you take a liberal view, that's fine, but here's the problem. I don't think Yusuf Ismail is a liberal. And something tells me he probably believes the

01:26:32

Sunni orthodox position, and that is that the Quran are the very words of Allah, and that they are simply sent down on Laylat al -Qadr, and then they are given by the angel

01:26:44

Jibril to Muhammad, and there's nothing of Muhammad in here. So in which of those four surahs does

01:26:52

Allah get it perfectly right? Which one's perfect? Because if it's perfect in surah 7 and then surah 29 is different, does that make it imperfect?

01:27:02

And when you're quoting a lot, which one's the right one? These are questions that Muslims have to answer.

01:27:10

I've never heard them answer it. I've never even heard them be aware of it. And yet they'll applaud when you quote about synoptic problems.

01:27:21

Oh, yeah. May I suggest that when you have figured out everything about the parallels in the

01:27:30

Quran and the sources it uses, then you can start talking about the synoptic issue.

01:27:36

Until then, got to have equal scales. Got to have the same arguments.

01:27:45

You can't use double standards. Double standards are the demonstration of a lack of truth.

01:27:54

Inconsistency is a sign of a failed argument. Double standard is a sign of a lack of truth. So we'll pick up at that point looking at that argumentation the next time we continue with our examination of this.

01:28:07

And I've got to get it done fairly soon because it's not, believe me, it's not all that long. Which reminds me, if you want to help send me there to South Africa via London, bannerads at aomin .org.

01:28:21

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01:28:30

I've got to get there to do it. So please help us in that way if you possibly can. We appreciate it.

01:28:35

We'll see you next time on The Dividing Line. God bless. The Dividing Line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.

01:29:36

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01:29:47

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