Ignatius in His Own Words; Problematic EFS Quotes; Doubling Down on False Judging from Afar

With Rich so that he can tell me if I mess stuff up. But we're just going to do the best we can. And if there's some odd extraneous noises and things like that, please just recognize we're just doing the best we can with the technology we've got at the moment.

And hopefully, it'll still be useful to you. And you can sort of just think back. Think back to the days of dial-up modems. Some of you don't remember the days of dial-up modems. I do remember the days of dial-up modems.

I'm just going to, if I turn my volume down like that, you may actually have to either text me, Rich, because I can't see the thing where I can bring up the chat window-type thing on this. So anyways, we'll just have to do the best we can.

So you may either have to do that or use Twitter or something, because I do have Twitter up. I've got a 15-inch screen, but too many things on it. So oh, there is that. There is Facebook, sort of. It's all good.

OK. Well, let's hope it stays that way. Unless I try to share my, oh, yeah, I even get that. Look, I even got that on my watch. It's all good. Anyway, I'm having a great time up here. I did, I've already told my wife this, so I guess I can tell everybody else.

I had the closest call on a bike I've ever had today. I really did. I even have the video, but I'm not going to show you the video. I have a, sometimes when I ride, I will have an HD camera on my back.

And you see some interesting things that way. Well, I haven't completely figured out what happened today. But I was descending, high altitude, around 11 ,000 feet, and it was very windy. And my theory is I got hit by a blast of wind.

And you know how sometimes it'll hit you from one direction, but if it's spinning, it hits you from one direction, then the other direction. And it started a shimmy in the front end of my bike that I simply couldn't control.

And I'm in a turn at over 30 miles an hour with oncoming traffic, and I can't stay in the turn. I'm heading right toward him. And the video shows me missing the second vehicle because he swerved by about six inches.

And it was, yeah, that was an experience. So I'm actually going to put that video on my iPad, and tomorrow I'm going to take the bike in and say, I'd like you to sort of look at that really carefully and just make sure.

Because I'm going to be descending 21 ,000 feet over the weekend, so I'd sort of like to not have that. I descended over 4 ,000 feet after that without any problems, so the wind was really blowing. So up at those altitudes, you can get some really wacky stuff happening, so once in a lifetime thing.

Anyways, why am I telling you these things? I do not want any of the tweets and everything else about how I shouldn't ride a bike. Not going to happen. Anyway, lots of stuff to get to today, and unfortunately I'm not going to be able to see what Twitter's doing most of that time.

Because this is when you are reminded of how wonderful it is to have four different screens. Or like on my desk, I have two of the Apple screens up there, the huge things. And because now when you're on your laptop, and of course I fried my laptop power supply, it's just dead.

I guess that happens, and I'm going to have to schedule a stop at an Apple store on my way down to Santa Fe. But thankfully, my hosts have one that is keeping the unit running, so that's how we're able to do this.

Yeah, Summer just said, you brought the lamp from Letters to a Mormon Elder all the way to Colorado? That actually is the same lamp, but the actual lamp that's on the front of Letters to a Mormon Elder is actually sitting on my desk in my office.

But it is the exact same green banker's lamp, and they just seem to follow me around. So only Summer would recognize that probably. But evidently the clarity of the camera, and I'm just using the standard little camera that's up there, a little green light thing on my laptop.

Ignatius, the Trinity, and the Early Church Against Muslim Critiques

OK, here's what we want to do today. I want to talk about Ignatius of Antioch, and Muslims, and the Trinity, and consistency of sources and scholarship. Haven't talked about that before. Want to talk a little bit about the Trinitarian controversy, and the fact that it doesn't really matter what you say about it, you're going to end up getting shot by both sides, as it seems to be my lot these days.

I am discovering that if you actually try to ask folks to engage in apologetics or polemics in a fair fashion, that will only earn you gunfire from both sides of whatever issue it is that you're trying to actually see discussed in a meaningful fashion.

So I want to talk a little bit about some quotes that were posted recently from Bruce Ware's book, and then we do need to talk a little bit about the controversy from last week. So we'll see how long all that takes, or we'll just see how long Skype manages to stay connected.

There's always been a theory in some people's minds that after about 20 minutes, the little Skype demons start disconnecting things just for the fun of it. So who knows? It's a possibility. It's a possibility.

Anyway, yesterday, a well-known Christian apologist to Muslims shared with me some comments that were made to him by a particular Muslim apologist. And they were very disappointing comments, because they were very clearly intended to seek to divide, seek to create division.

Well, I guess divide and create division are pretty much the same thing, huh? So discord. And in essence, they were not designed to help the cause of truth. They were designed to actually diminish our pursuit of truth.

This particular Muslim apologist, I'm not really sure how to express my feelings in regards to this particular individual, but he is probably either watching right now or recording, because almost anything I say will be utilized frequently, a, contextually, and never with any fairness, always with a huge amount of bias.

It's just horrible. But it seems that I sort of define his life for him, which I find sad for anybody, to be perfectly honest with you. And so he was attempting to bring division between me and this other individual, and in a very childish fashion, to be perfectly honest with you, very obvious and certainly nothing that you could show much respect for.

And around the same time, he put out a video addressing the issue of Ignatius of Antioch. And this, obviously, Ignatius came up in the debates that we did with Elder Aka and the GOCC. And by the way, I am well aware of the fact that YouTube is now filled with videos of me with horns, pitchfork, and burning in flames, and basically every possible insult that could suggest itself to the fevered mind of man has appeared over the past two weeks, ever since I dared disagree with black Hebrew Israelism.

I'm well aware of that. I'm not actually, while up here, I don't even have time, even if I wanted to, and I don't want to, keeping up with that stuff. Right now, if Vocab Malone sends me a link, I'll take a look at it.

And by the way, our plan is, I don't think the dates have been firmly, absolutely established yet, but our plan is to, I wish there was a way I could minimize just that window. Anyway, my plan is to actually have Vocab come in, and he and Rich and some guests will actually have two programs while I'm gone, with folks who know this movement inside and out, know its history.

And again, the idea being, eventually, what we want is a resource that people can go to, and they can watch these videos, and in the majority of the instances, do so without having to have a profanity filter on, and hear meaningful, solid discussions of the issues raised by Hebrew-Israelism, as well as a discussion of the wild-eyed racism that is expressed by the Black Hebrew-Israelite movement, and just the horrific nastiness of it.

And by the way, I might note as well that I was just sent an article by someone about the recent shootings, and of course, they decided just to take a shot at me and refer back to the old Ron articles.

You know, this does illustrate what we'll be talking about later on. Once something appears on the internet, no matter how absurd it is, how untrue it is, it will be repeated over and over again. There is no truth filter in the internet, and as long as someone makes a false accusation, that false accusation will just take on a life of its own forever.

I think that's one of the reasons that God takes truth speaking so seriously. And one of the commandments is that we are not to lie, that we are to be people who speak with truth, and that therefore, we should be very, very slow to make accusation, especially against individuals, because God takes that seriously.

But anyway, like I said, someone sent me an article, and they were taking further shots. And I will just mention in passing, I went on to the RAAN website, the Ron website, the Reformed African-American Network.

And I typed in Hebrew-Israelism, because I sort of figured, hey, if anyone's going to, you know, if anyone has taken this movement on, it's going to be the RAAN folks, right? Because I mean, this is impacting the black church.

It is just really, really amazing stuff. And this should be, there should be pages of articles, because how many articles did they write about me six months ago? For daring to address the rebellious activities of a black teenager?

Why, you know, if that could get two or three articles, then good grief, something that's been going on for years that has, you know, clearly not only damaged black churches, but is just so deeply indicative of a horrific attitude of racism.

There should be dozens and dozens of articles. Well, there's nothing. Nothing I could find, at least not under that name. And it just made me go, hmm, strange how that works. I don't see the BHI guys going after them, but they will go after me for some strange reason.

And I sort of have to wonder why that is. Anyways, all that to a circular trip, back to the fact that this article, this video was posted talking about Ignatius. And what it did is it, you know, played Unitarian webcasts and tried to cobble together.

And it's, again, all due respect, but the person put together is not a historian and has not ever taught history, to my knowledge. It's not published in any type of historical field like that. And so it's real easy for them to just sort of cobble things together, figuring that their audience is not going to be overly concerned about the sources you're using as to whether they are consistent or anything else.

Obviously, for Christians, what we want to know is we want to ask the question, if we look at Ignatius at Antioch, what did he believe? He's very important because he lives, he dies about 108 AD. And so you're talking about contemporaneous with John, with the last of the apostles.

So that very important period of time in which we only have things like probably the Didache, Clement, we just don't have much, nor should we expect to have much. I mean, persecution had already begun.

This is a small movement, generally speaking. And so the idea of having a huge amount of literature wouldn't make any sense. But we do have some, thankfully. And Ignatius's epistles live and breathe the primitive church and hence are very important to us because of that.

And the question is, what did Ignatius believe? Now, it's funny, if my Muslim friends, I'm not talking about the BHI guys, let's make sure that we've got our groups clear here, because I've got to be honest with you.

I've never had any Muslims, any Muslims. Now, I've seen Muslims go after David Wood and Sam Shamoon in the same way that the BHI folks go after me. But I've never had any Muslim, even the Muslims I would identify as the most reprehensible in their research or their bias or their prejudice or whatever else it might be.

I've never had any of them. Come after me the way that the BHI people did. Not even close. Not even close. Finally, someone has made the King James only people look like they're on Prozac and it's the BHI folks.

So should make mention of that. So what the Muslims should be talking about is, did Ignatius believe what we would say is the proper primitive Christian belief? In other words, if Jesus was merely a prophet, if he did not instruct his followers to go out into the world and preach the gospel to all nations and proclaim his name to all the nations and to worship him, then here you have a very early leader.

Because they always want to talk about the Ebionites, but the fact of the matter is we know almost nothing about the Ebionites. Almost everything we know about the Ebionites, we know secondhand at best.

It's primarily speculation when it comes to constructing the Ebionite perspective and belief. So if we had a fair approach, what you would have from Muslims would be, well, here's an early Christian leader and he believes what we believe.

He believes Jesus was merely a prophet. But the fact is, that is not what they're doing. Instead, what they're arguing is, well, look, he does not enunciate a Council of Nicaea level definition of the doctrine of the Trinity.

And therefore, he wasn't a Trinitarian. Well, the New Testament doesn't contain the Nicene Creed. And if we understand the appropriateness of what B .B. Warfield has said and what I have said in regards to the nature of Trinitarian revelation, and that is that the early church was experientially Trinitarian.

And therefore, the allusions that they will make to the doctrine of the Trinity will flow from natural discussion. They will not be, and here is a creedal statement of this. They will more be found in the illustrations, in the language, in the association of Father, Son, and Spirit.

The switching between Father, Son, and Spirit is so easily seen in the New Testament. And that's exactly what we have in Ignatius. That's exactly what we have in Ignatius. And so I would simply say to our Muslim friends, you cannot make Ignatius your own.

And so let's listen to Ignatius himself. Well, that'd be nice if he would play an MP3, huh? Let's hear what Ignatius said. And let's ask ourselves the question, could this have been said by a Muslim or by the theoretical disciples that the Muslims assert existed in the days of, well, it would have existed in 108 AD.

When Ignatius wrote to the Ephesians, and you know what? I need to, small print. Oh, look at that. It's wonderful to have. I mean, that is so nice and clear. Anyway, Ignatius, who is also Theophorus under her, which hath been blessed in greatness to the plenitude of God the Father, which hath been foreordained before the ages to be forever unto abiding and unchangeable glory, united and elect in a true passion by the will of the Father and of Jesus Christ our God, even under the church, which is an Ephesus of Asia, worthy of all felicitation, abundant greeting in Christ Jesus and in blameless joy.

So that's how he begins his letter to the Ephesians. Now, some people have actually accused Ignatius of modalism. I think that's a gross misreading. And reading all of Ignatius, there are clear differentiations made between the Father and the Son, just as there are in the New Testament.

But just as we have references to the deity of Christ in 2 Peter 1 .1, for example, in introductory clauses and phrases, here you have a discussion of God's foreordination. There's a lot of discussion of foreordination and election and all sorts of stuff in the earliest writings of the New Testament.

People seem to ignore that. Foreordained before the ages to be forever unto abiding and unchangeable glory, united and elect in a true passion by the will of the Father and of Jesus Christ, our God. Strong terminology.

And you have Jesus being associated in terms of deity with the Father. Now, he's a monotheist. So what do you derive from that? Oh, but it doesn't say Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There's all sorts of places in the New Testament that likewise does not use all three persons, although there's over 70 places where they are associated with one another.

There are all sorts of places where you only have the Father and the Son. So the argument has never been from our perspective that it is the, that every single time you have to have a reference to all three divine persons.

Let's read some others because it's the cumulative evidence that I think is so overwhelming. It's not any one particular text. Also to the church at Ephesus, my spirit is made an offscouring for the cross, which is a stumbling block to them that are unbelievers, but to us salvation and life eternal.

Where is the wise? Where is the disputer? Where is the boasting of them that are called prudent? Again, obviously Ignatius knows about 1 Corinthians because he's quoting directly from that. For our God, Jesus the Christ was conceived in the womb by Mary, according to a dispensation of the seed of David, also the Holy Ghost.

And he was born and was baptized that by his person, he might cleanse water, Ephesians section 18. Now, what do you do with that? How do you understand that? One of my concerns is that our Muslim friends are seemingly willing to present as truth that which might help them while disputing at speaker's corner, but not that which would ever reflect a consistent historical methodology that they would then apply to their own faith.

And one of the things that they need to come up with is a meaningful explanation of what positively was Ignatius' doctrine. What was his Christology? What was his theology proper? And to determine that, you need to explain why he repeatedly uses the term theos of Jesus.

And then he does so, he speaks of him as conceived in the womb by Mary. So there's a concept of supernatural conception, which Muslims agree with, of the seed of David, but also of the Holy Ghost. And so now you have this really interesting conjunction of spiritual conception, but he's of the seed of David.

So you have, and we're gonna have very explicitly laid out for us elsewhere, well, the very next section, actually. In Ignatius, there is a very high doctrine of the relationship between the human and the divine in Jesus.

This is not something that develops. You see, it's real easy to find liberal historians, and that's what they did in this video, find liberal historians who will adopt the perspective that Christian theology must be understood as a naturalistic process that developed over time.

Now, was there development in Christian theology? Of course there was, because the gospel goes out into the world. It's encountering things it's never encountered before, questions being asked in languages and categories that have never been asked before, and so of course there's gonna be development.

There has to be to fulfill the great commandment. The commandment says to go into all the world. Well, if you go into all the world, you're gonna have to address the questions that come from all the world.

So of course there is, but the naturalistic idea is that there is no foundational core of divine revelation to which reference is constantly being made. It's just simply, you know, from their perspective, it's human development over time, and that's where a lot of this school or religion thought comes, where you've got the idea that anything in religion just has to be borrowed from somebody else, and of course the BHI guys are into that.

You know, if you worship on a Sunday and anyone else has ever worshipped on a Sunday, then you just must have gotten it from them. There can be no other reason, and this type of thinking is very common amongst conspiratorialists and people like that.

It's very hard to reason with them, but that's what's out there, and so the idea being that the development of this high Christology must have been way down the road, even post-council of Nicaea, but here in 108, you have a doctrine of Jesus that is extremely advanced.

Two natures, one person, the whole nine yards, and it's apostolic. I mean, these are called the apostolic fathers that lived in the period when the apostles had lived in those first few generations, so the Holy Ghost is mentioned there, and so then the very next section in Ephesians, Ephesians 19, from that time forward, every sorcery and every spell was dissolved.

The ignorance of wickedness vanished away. The ancient kingdom was pulled down, quote, or then notice this, when God appeared in the likeness of man, unto newness of everlasting life, and that which had been perfected in the counsels of God began to take effect, and so God appeared in the likeness of man.

What is that if it is not John chapter one, the incarnation, the Word made flesh, et cetera, et cetera, so this is what is expressed to the Ephesians. To the Romans, Ignatius, who is also Theophorus, under her that hath found mercy in the bountifulness of the Father Most High, and of Jesus Christ, his only Son, to the church that is beloved and enlightened, through the will of him who willed all things that are, sounds like a Calvinist to me, by faith and love towards Jesus Christ, our God, even under her that hath the presidency in the country, the region, the Romans.

Now, just really quickly in passing, you'll notice there's no bishop addressed. Elsewhere, bishops are addressed, but there's no bishop addressed, and the reason there's no bishop addressed is because there was no single bishop in Rome at this time.

That really is the clearest evidence, and that's fatal to Rome's pretensions, but it's there. Then we have in section three, only pray that I may have power within and without, so that I may not only say it, but also desire it, that I may not only be called a Christian, but also be found.

Remember, he's on his way to Rome to be martyred. He's going to his death. For I shall be found so, then can I also be called one, and be faithful then, when I am no more visible to the world. Nothing visible is good, for our God, Jesus Christ, being in the Father is the more plainly visible.

The work is not of persuasiveness, but Christianity is a thing of might, whensoever it is hated by the world. He's not writing to the Romans some theological treatise, but his belief in the deity of Christ, and yet the distinction between the Father and the Son, just flows naturally in his description, even here of his coming martyrdom.

And that's why I say Ignatius is so much like the New Testament, in the sense that the references to the Trinity will be just natural. They just flow in your description of what's going on. I've got folks DMing me, I guess.

It's sort of hard to do this, guys, right in the middle of the program. So if you could avoid that, that would be helpful. To the Smyrnians, we read, I give glory to Jesus Christ, the God who bestowed such wisdom upon you.

For I have perceived that you are established in faith, immovable being, as it were, nailed to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ in flesh and in spirit. I emphasize that because it's my Muslim friends that are raising questions about Ignatius, and don't you deny the cross?

Doesn't Surah 4, verse 127 force you to take such a massively ahistorical perspective? And it does. But of course, that is a debate that cannot be lost, to be perfectly honest with you. It's an established fact.

Being, as it were, nailed to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ in flesh and in spirit, and firmly grounded in love in the blood of Christ, fully persuaded as touching our Lord that he is truly of the race of David, according to flesh, but son of God by the divine will and power, truly born of a virgin and baptized by John, that all righteousness might be fulfilled by him, truly nailed up in the flesh for our sakes under Pontius Pilate and Herod the Tetrarch, of which fruit are we that is of his most blessed passion, that he might set up an ensign unto all the ages through his resurrection for his saints and faithful people, whether among Jews or among Gentiles, in one body of his church.

Wow. I mean, that is... That's deep. That is deep theology in the very first generation after the apostles. Look at all the stuff that's touched upon there. The son of God and, you know, two persons, virgin birth, the historicity of the crucifixion, Pontius Pilate, resurrection, Jews and Gentiles, ahem, ahem, ahem, to those who are perverting the scriptures today called the Black Hebrew Israelite movement, um, all within the opening line of his letter to the Smyrnians.

Deep stuff. And that's why if you'll, you know, always remember when people dispute a text of scripture, they dispute early church fathers and things like that, what they will normally do is they'll normally attack a particular text and not the body as a whole.

It's not difficult to twist what a particular writer said by only quoting, you know, a little section here or a little section there. It's when you have to work through, for example, the entire chapter of a book.

You know, you can get around John chapter six as long as you don't have to walk through John chapter six. How many debates have we been in where I've forced somebody to do that and the wheels just fall off their position?

Sounded fine in their opening statement, but then that cross-examination part doesn't work too well. Same thing in looking like it's someone like Ignatius. You know, you can grab a quote here, a quote there, but it's listening to all that he had to say that allows you to understand.

And very clearly in writing the Smyrnians, he lays out a very orthodox, very non-Islamic, non-Hebrew Israelite, I'll throw them in there for the fun of it, understanding. It's an orthodox understanding.

The church is made up of Jews and Gentiles. There is no race. There is nothing like that. And it's all based upon his passion. That is his specific work upon the cross. His resurrection, everything is there.

In verse six, I'm not sure if we call it verse or anything like that. Section six, let no man be deceived. Even the heavenly beings and the glory of the angels and the rulers invisible and visible. If they believe not in the blood of Christ, who is God, judgment awaiteth them also.

Now that's put in brackets. So I do not have my, I'm traveling. And so what I normally would have done would have been to check my five or six volume apostolic fathers set to look at the textual data on the phrase, who is God?

Wasn't able to do that while traveling. So I just mentioned that in passing. I do wonder if there's a textual issue there. If not, there's another reference there. Also to the Smyrnians, he said, for he suffered all these things for our sakes that we might be saved.

And he suffered truly as also he raised himself truly. Not a certain unbelievers say that he suffered in semblance being themselves mere semblance. Now this is really important. And I'm seeing that this is taking up a lot of time.

Rich, are you available to go jumbo today? Let me know on a Facebook message if we can go to, I really, okay, I got a thumbs up on my phone. So Facebook gives me a thing. And then this other program gives me a thing.

And they sit on top of each other. And I can't read either one, it's brilliant. But it eventually fades away and I can see it. Good, I don't wanna rush this. And again, I know, I'm sorry for those of you who wish that we would cover things a little less in depth than we do.

But I've taught church history a lot. And so you just have to survive with it. But to be honest with you, you also need to deal with these things at this level to be able to respond to the abuse of these things, whether it be by Muslims or Unitarians or Hebrew Israelites or Mormons or whatever.

And to me, I don't know about the rest of you, but to hear someone who's going to his death, professing the same faith I profess today, if that doesn't get you going, if that doesn't make you go, wow, it looks like Christ has been building his church for 1 ,900 years.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. I mean, think about it. He's speaking a different language, dressing completely different, different culture on the other side of the world. And yet what unites us today is the same thing that he is talking about to the churches as he's going to his death 1 ,900 years ago.

Yeah, pretty amazing stuff. So what he's talking about here is as also he raised himself truly, not as certain unbelievers say, but he suffered in semblance being themselves mere semblance. He's talking about the Docetics.

So there is already, as we see in the New Testament, a Gnostic movement. We can call it proto-Gnostic if you want. There is development in Gnostic belief over time. But there was obviously a conflict going on at this time as it was in the New Testament with the Docetics who denied the true physical incarnation of Jesus Christ.

And so he emphasizes the reality of his physical passion, his giving of himself over against those that taught that Jesus only seemed to have a physical body. That's what dokain means in Greek is to seem.

So he seemed to have a physical body. This would be one of the greatest elements of the battle of the early church for quite some time. And it was in this day as well. I keep taking my glasses off because, all right, there we go.

In Troleans 9, he also confesses his belief that the Father raised Christ from the dead. So just like the New Testament where all three persons are involved here for Ignatius, he can at one point refer to the son's role, the father's role.

Again, just like the New Testament and just like Ignatius ain't a Muslim. That's not how a Muslim speaks, but it is how a Christian speaks. So, you know, again, certain people out at Speaker's Corner may think themselves highly wise, but they're not dealing with the text in a meaningful fashion.

And I don't even know if you can deal with the text in meaningful fashion standing at Speaker's Corner the way people interrupt others. But here's where we're trying to do so. In writing to Polycarp, Ignatius says, await him that is above every season, the eternal, the invisible, who became visible for our sake, the impalpable, the impassable, who suffered for our sake, who endured in all ways for our sake.

Now, again, clearly Ignatius is not going, hey, you know, I've come up with a new doctrine here. No, he's writing to his fellow Bishop Polycarp. And when you write to someone like this, you make reference to commonly held belief, commonly held faith.

And that's what he's doing. And so what do we have? We have the eternal, the invisible, who became visible for our sake, the impalpable, the impassable, who suffered for our sake. Again, you've got the two natures thing going on.

Just as Paul can talk about, they crucified the Lord of glory. Well, how can you crucify the Lord of glory? Well, because the Lord of glory became flesh. Two natures, one person. Here, right at the beginning of the church, it's not the result of evolution over time.

Look, you can find all sorts of historians that will say it is, but they won't be walking through Ignatius while they're doing. That's the difference. That's what must be kept in mind. Now, back to his letter to the Ephesians.

Incredible, incredible stuff here. When I went through Ephesians before, I was just looking at the uses of theos, of God. But in my opinion, not only is this one of the most beautiful sentences in patristic literature, but it's just astounding the depth of the mature Christological understanding that this next section I'm going to read gives us, primitively, without opportunity of development of doctrine or anything like that.

Listen to this from his letter to the Ephesians, verse 7. There is only one physician of flesh and of spirit, generate and ingenerate, God in man, true life in death, son of Mary and son of God, first passable and then impassable, Jesus Christ our Lord.

You know, I hate to say it, but I think a large portion of Bible school and seminary graduates would have a hard time if challenged, to come up with a pithy Christological statement that would even hold a candle to that single sentence that Ignatius wrote to the church at Ephesus on his way to his martyrdom.

1908 years ago, might've been 107, we don't know the exact date, but I mean, that's just incredible. Anyone who sits around and says, well, sometime after Nicaea, they started having to deal with, you know, is Jesus a God?

If he's God, then what's the God man? And this has developed over time. Hey, just go back and read Ignatius. Now look, don't get me wrong. You can go listen to the church history series I'm doing at PRVC right now.

I already laid some of this out. We'll lay more of it out. Not everything in the early church is of the same quality as this, but very plainly, Ignatius has had in-depth, accurate, orthodox, advanced teaching in regards to who the Father is, who the Son is, the relationship with the divine, the human in Christ.

Very, you can't, you can't ignore the text. And that's why so often these arguments take place out in the street corner. As long as the text isn't being cited, well, people can get away with it and you can quote your scholar and somebody quotes their scholar.

That's what makes me weird. Is that I go, let's, let's, let's look at what was actually said.

Maybe that would, that would help. Then in Ephesians 9, check this out. For as much as you are stones of a temple, which repair beforehand for a building of God, the Father, being hoisted up the heights of the engine of Jesus Christ, which is the cross and using for a rope, the Holy Spirit.

Now think about that. What is that? It's a Trinitarian passage. Just as you have in, well, interestingly enough, Ephesians chapter five, you have a number of Trinitarian passages in Paul's letter to the Ephesians.

So it's not overly surprising or shocking that you would have Trinitarian passages when Ignatius is writing to the very same church because he plainly, I think, would have been familiar with the letter that was sent to the church at Ephesus.

It was a circular letter passed around through the Lycus River Valley. So it probably was fairly well known. But listen to that. You are stones of a temple, which prepare beforehand for a building of God, the Father, being hoisted up the heights of the engine of Jesus Christ, which is the cross.

I remind every Muslim that would try to play with Ignatius. If you're going to be honest, you better say, by the way, he was wrong about the cross. We reject what he says about the cross. You know, just be honest about it, which is the cross and using for a rope, the Holy Spirit.

Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Ephesians chapter nine. It's right there. Is it a creed? No. But if what B .B. Warfield says and I have said all along is true, you wouldn't expect it to be. These are experiential Trinitarians.

This is the language that naturally flows from those who experience the doctrine of the Trinity. And there it's, you know, compare that with Matthew 20, 19. First Thessalonians 1, 2 through 5. Second Thessalonians 2, 13.

First Corinthians 2, 2 through 5. 6, 11, 12, 4 through 6. Second Corinthians 1, 21 through 22. 13, 14. Romans 8, 26, 27. 14, 17 through 18. 15, 16, 15, 30. Colossians 1, 6 through 80. Ephesians 2, 18, 3, 16 through 17.

And 4, 4 through 6. For just a few of the allusions to the Trinity found in Paul's epistles and then one there in Matthew. And so you have incredibly high statements being made by Ignatius. And the reality is, to my Muslim friends who are trying to argue that Ignatius is not supportive of our belief, will you honestly come out and say, this man was not a Muslim.

He believed in the cross. He believed in the atonement. He believed Jesus was the son of God. He believed Jesus was virgin born, like you do. But he believed Jesus had two natures, divine and human. And he believed Jesus was God.

Now, you may want to argue, yeah, but there's not enough there. I mean, you know, he says, he talks about the Trinitarian passage and the three persons, but that's just not enough for me. Well, what would be enough for you?

I honestly don't think anything would be. If you can look at 1 Corinthians chapter 8 and not see that Paul is rewriting the Shema, if you can quote Matthew 15 while ignoring Matthew 28, I would suggest to you that there is no evidence that you actually would accept because you have an overriding presuppositional commitment to the understanding of the author of the Quran and the author of the Quran did not understand what the New Testament contains.