James White vs. Nadir Ahmed, March 21, 2008 Part 4

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James White vs. Nadir Ahmed, March 21, 2008 Part 5

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Now each of our participants will have an 8 minute rebuttal, so 8 minutes, 8 minutes, and then we'll have a 5 minute break.

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So I guess to put it in a nutshell, Paul is a true prophet because the Bible said so.

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The New Testament said it, there you go, see, therefore he's a true prophet. And so what makes the

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New Testament true? Because the church said so. So all he's doing is he's playing hot potato with the proof.

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You ask, why is Paul a true prophet? Well, he takes the burden of proof and he shoves it over to the

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New Testament. What makes the New Testament true? Well then he takes the burden of proof and then he tosses it over to the church fathers.

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Well what makes them true? He brings it right back to the New Testament. So this is circular reasoning. He has now presented a single good reason of why anybody should even believe in the

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New Testament. Now let's talk about the church fathers. Yes, they are all Pauline church fathers.

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Why do I say you just pray? Because all the people who selected the

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New Testament, they all were followers of the Apostle Paul. Is this a true or false statement?

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That is a true statement. So that's why we call it the Pauline church. So he hasn't shown any reason as to why anybody should even believe in this church.

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So anyways, he said that what Paul taught, it was consistent with the apostles.

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Now I don't even have to respond to this. What is he doing? What apostles is he talking about? He's talking about the

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New Testament again. So this is what I told you. The vast majority of Christians, when you really ask them, why is the

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Bible true? The Bible is true because the Bible said so. And because the Bible said so, it's true. And all he's doing is giving us an intellectual version of the same argument.

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But you did not show a single shred of evidence as to why the disciples authored those

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New Testament books. He gave you no evidence at all. All he did was attack the Gnostic church, and we'll get to that in just a second.

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Okay, and also he gave us no evidence of why this man claimed to be evidence why

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Paul is a true prophet. I mean, come on, give me a break here. Some guy just gets up and says, oh,

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I've seen visions of Jesus. And in these visions, he appointed me to become a true prophet, and here's a true message of God.

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Now does this story sound familiar to you? All you have to do is go to the religious studies department here in Old Dominion, and you get the religious studies textbook.

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You ever wonder why that textbook is so thick? Because of people like Paul, because of people claiming to be prophets of God.

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And so I hope at least by tonight's debate, you know, at least this will kind of be kind of like a domino effect where all people can challenge their false prophets.

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The Mormons can challenge their false prophet, Joseph Smith. The Baha 'is can challenge their false prophets, okay?

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So you have produced absolutely no evidence for this man who claims to be a prophet,

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Paul. But what about Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him? Well, I believe I was here two years ago, right?

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And I openly challenged the Christians to debate me on the archaeological, prophetic, and scientific evidence proving that Muhammad is a true prophet, but no

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Christian today has accepted that challenge. So anyways, he said basically, let's see what else reasoning he gave.

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He said that we have to look at the lifetime of the eyewitnesses and what they have to say.

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You don't have that. Where is that? Did he give you any evidence that they have actually the eyewitness accounts?

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He just affirmed it and said it so confidently. But now here's the problem. The Ebionite Church also maintained that they had apostolic authority going all the way back to Peter and James.

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The Gnostic Church also claimed that they had apostolic authority. And we have several gospels like the

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Gospel of Peter and, you know, the Gospel of Judas. And the Gospel of Peter claims to have been written by Peter himself, but he attacks the

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Gnostic, the Gnostic Church. Well, we can attack your church too. You see, the type of scrutiny that you give these other churches, when you do that, all of a sudden that scrutiny comes back on your church.

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You see, the thing is this. If you are telling us that the early Christians were so stupid that they believed in all of these books which came just 200 years after Jesus, and they were so credulous and foolish, then what makes your church,

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Father, so brilliant? So by your own argument, by attacking the other churches, you should not have done that tonight because you exposed the stupidity and foolishness of the early church fathers.

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And so from this era, we have so many churches. The Gnostic Church, we have the

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Marcionic Church, we have the Ebionite Church which testified that this man is a false prophet named

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Paul. He did not show any evidence as to why this man is a true prophet. Rather, he tried to scare us tonight.

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He tried to scare us that if you challenge this man Paul as being a false prophet, then you'll have to accuse everybody of the first century of being cowards.

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No, you are doing that. You are calling every single church in the first century liars, deceivers, charlatans, and I didn't do that, you did, because you automatically do that when you attack these other churches.

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So again, I'm going to have to ask you for the evidence that this man Paul was a true prophet.

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And you have to show evidence that these books that you have in the Gospels, these were really written by the people who it claims to have been written.

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And please don't play hot potato with the proof. Don't come up here and say, the New Testament is true because the early church fathers authenticated it.

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So when he does that, he's taking the burden of proof, and he's just passing it to his team player, the church fathers.

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So when I turn my attention to the church fathers, okay, what makes them true? He takes the burden of proof and he passes it to the disciples, because the disciples of Jesus said that they were his students.

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Okay, where's your proof of that? Then he goes right back to the New Testament. So a lot of Christians will play these type of games because they're hoping that you get tired of asking these type of questions.

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So really, you know, my argument stands, you know, that's why I didn't even need 20 minutes.

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I mean, what am I going to really say up here? There is absolutely no, not a single shred of evidence for the

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New Testament. There's not even a good reason why you could even entertain the thought that maybe, maybe these books could have been true.

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All right, so you got to come up here and you got to show us some evidence. Because remember, I'm not an executioner.

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I'm not attacking your Bible. And someone comes and asks you, please give us just a little bit of evidence.

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That is not a bad thing to ask. Okay, now you don't have to prove that your church, the Pauline Church, is a true church.

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You don't have to prove that. You don't have to prove that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, these are really the authors of those books.

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And the epistle of Peter, those are really, who really wrote that. You don't have to prove anything.

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God, I made this so pathetically easy for you. All you got to do is come up here and show us just a little bit of evidence for this.

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Just a little bit, okay? So, he talked about the Quran. He said the Quran, you see, why should you use the

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Quran as a standard? Because of the scientific, prophetic, and archaeological evidence, which we have substantiating that Prophet Muhammad is a true prophet.

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So we have a situation where you have absolutely no evidence. Did he show any prophecies being fulfilled from the

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New Testament? Did he show any archaeology being fulfilled from the New Testament? He showed you absolutely nothing, okay?

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So, anyway, when we get to our cross -examination period, I think this point is going to be very clear.

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Now, he talked about that, you see, nobody in the first generation believed in the corruption of the

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New Testament. That's not true. You just go to the Quran, chapter 5, starting with verse 110.

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I think my time is up. And from 110 to 115, it clearly talks about the corruption of the

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New Testament and how the Christians, they are hiding scriptures from us. Okay, that's the allegation what the

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Quran makes. So, anyways, my time is up. Well, I am disappointed that my presentation was not listened to very closely because I did really respond to every question that was asked.

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It's just that Mr. Achmed does not accept what it is I have to say. I did not say that Paul is a prophet because the

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Bible says so. I'm not sure what standard of evidence Mr. Achmed would like. Evidently, he believes

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Muhammad is a prophet based on some type of scientific interpretation. So, the people who interpret science differently than him don't need to believe that Muhammad is a prophet, right?

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And prophecies. Well, there's all sorts of prophecies fulfilled in the New Testament. That wasn't the issue this evening.

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The issue is not, can God give prophetic information about the future? Now, I would be happy to respond to any alleged prophecies about Muhammad, but that's not the subject this evening either.

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I believe that those can be very easily refuted. I was asked, were all the early church fathers, did anyone hear me talking about the early church fathers?

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I actually hadn't gone there. I mean, I think that's an excellent point to bring out, is that there were many, many, many people who were willing to die for their faith and who continued across a wide spectrum of time to believe the things were taught by the original apostles.

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I think that's an important thing, but I didn't go to them and say, ah, there's your proof. It's one of many things a person would go to, but would it be able to demonstrate the consistency of the

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New Testament text itself? But I was asked, were they all followers of the apostle Paul? They were all followers of Jesus Christ, and since they all accepted

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Paul as an apostle along with Peter and Luke and everybody else, well, of course they were. Upon what basis, then, do you then reject the apostleship of Paul just because Christians believed that?

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I mean, the promise of the Koran, is it not that the followers of Jesus would be victorious until the day of resurrection?

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What happened to them? Why didn't they refute Paul? If Paul was this terrible creator of Shirk that created a whole new religion, where were these people?

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If you're going to claim they were Ebionites, then grab the Ebionites. Let's start looking at the Ebionites. If you're going to claim they were the Gnostics, did we not look at the

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Gnostics? Do you really believe that people who think Allah is an evil demiurge are the people we should be looking to as the true followers of Jesus?