November 15, 2005

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The world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is
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The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.
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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602, or toll free across the
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United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
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James White. And welcome to The Dividing Line today on a Tuesday morning or afternoon, depending on where you are, lots of stuff going on in the world.
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If you were looking at the blog this morning, I mentioned the sad news of the death of Adrian Rogers.
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You may have heard that he had prostate cancer, as I recall, and of course, chemotherapy is,
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I suppose it's saved a lot of lives, but oh my goodness, that's not only not something you want to go through, but it's just not good on the body either.
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And it suppresses the immune system and then you can get all sorts of other things. So he succumbed to double pneumonia, you'd heard about that yesterday as far as double pneumonia, and that's not a good thing when you're 74 years of age to get double pneumonia.
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So anyway, his website asks for prayers for the Rogers family, of course, it's sad when anyone passes away, and of course, some of you have a little bit of a difficulty with the fact that I mentioned on the blog, the fact that even when we reviewed his sermons, his sermons, which were very inaccurate and not sound in their presentation of the
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Doctrines of Grace, we mentioned that when he talked about justification, all of a sudden he used a completely different hermeneutic and was right on target with it.
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And so as I have said many times, I remember the first time that my fellow elder
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Don Fry used this analogy with me, I'm sure it's not original to him, but first place
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I heard it, and that is that God can draw a straight line with a crooked stick, and that is something we need to keep in mind, he certainly can do so.
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And so Adrian Rogers has passed on, there is much to be said about the fact that there is in essence a changing of the guard within the
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Southern Baptist Convention, and what is the next generation going to look like? What is the role of theology going to have?
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What's the role of the emergent church, the seeker -friendly movement? What is the future for the
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Southern Baptist Convention? The fact of the matter is the numbers demonstrate a weakness. We've talked about the fact that in some churches you have to baptize tons of people to get one regular member, and what's the long -term result of that?
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That's a good question, and one that I don't know that I'm in a position to answer, but it's one that I think people need to be considering and taking a look at.
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What is the future there of the largest single denomination?
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But is it really that large? I mean, how do you really determine the size of any of these denominations anymore?
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Is it showing up on a Sunday morning once a month, does that really make someone a member of something?
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Is that real? Does that have any meaning down the road? I don't know. I personally don't think so.
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I think that those numbers are grossly inflated, and when they talk about 16 million members,
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I think if you can't get them to show up at a special meeting on a Friday evening to talk about something important to the church,
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I think the people who show up for that, those are the members of your church. That would mean that those numbers would probably be more like 2 million than 16 million, functionally.
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Be that as it may, Adrian Rogers has passed on. We also provide a link there to one of two excellent articles on Steve Hayes' blog in reference to Paul Owen.
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Steve Hayes has been very faithful in investing the time, and it is a time -consuming thing.
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I don't know where he gets all the time. Evidently, he's not married, doesn't have kids, because I don't know how you'd be able to keep up with all that stuff if you were, but he has kept up with Paul Owen's continuing spiral off into the outer reaches of unorthodoxy, and there are some excellent articles on his website right now, and didn't
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I see he's joining up with somebody else? Some other blog?
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I don't know how you keep up with all that. I can't keep up with my own, let alone keep up with all that. Those things are available on the blog.
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If you take a look at it right now, we are continuing the Da Vinci Code series. By the way, the phone lines are open at 877 -753 -3341, continuing the
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Da Vinci Code series right in the middle of the heart of the most important stuff. I will be presenting the
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Da Vinci Code PowerPoint presentation here in the Phoenix area on the night of January 8th out at John Drizzo's church out toward the
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Gilbert Chandler area out there, and arranging,
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I'm going to guess, probably the next Sunday morning, I would assume, a little bit closer to home, another church, we haven't gotten all that figured out yet, but I'll try to remember to mention these in the blog and the calendar, things like that.
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Oh, by the way, on the calendar, my itinerary for United Kingdom 2, hopefully
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United Kingdom not sick 2, some of you remember
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I went over to England and promptly got myself tremendously ill and still had one of the best trips of my life to the perfect hospital, still enjoyed it just tremendously despite the sickness, so I might explode if I get over there and I can actually be healthy the whole time.
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I got online and ordered face masks, surgical masks, I'm sorry, I don't care what
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I look like with a guy sitting next to me starts coughing on me, I'm putting a face mask on, I don't care, that's all there is to it, there just ain't enough air moving around in that metal tube six miles up in the atmosphere to keep me happy, just not going through that again, ain't happening.
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So anyways, the itinerary, and it's a busy one, is on actually
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Pastor Brazier's website, Edmonton Baptist Chapel in London, and there's a link from the blog, there's a link on the calendar page both, so for our friends in the
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UK, we will be over there in February for about two weeks approximately, and we'll be both in the
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London area as well as in Scotland as well, and it'll be nice and cold,
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I'm actually looking forward very much to that, and addressing a number of different issues.
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A number of different things to look at today, of course open phones so we can go the direction you want to go, but I was just scanning through and I feel like every time the subject of Fuller Seminary comes up I feel like I have to apologize.
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I went to Fuller Seminary, I went to the Phoenix Extension Fuller Seminary, extension seminaries are always more conservative than the main campus thankfully because the people involved in it are already involved in ministry and so all the silliness that goes on on main campuses doesn't work real well when you're already involved in ministry.
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But be that as it may, we have talked about Fuller Seminary before, we've talked about Richard Malle, the president of Fuller Seminary and his rather self -destructive activities in the field of Mormon evangelism or seeking to end
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Mormon evangelism, and we've talked about that on the blog, we've talked about that on the program, especially a year ago, actually that was a year ago yesterday, wasn't it?
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Yeah, it was November 14th of last year, it's been exactly a year, I hadn't even thought about that. And yes,
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Jason, we'll see you in London, pop on down to London, we'll probably do another London version of the
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Dividing Line where we'll adopt our British accent and do things like that and that'll be lots of fun.
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But anyway, don't worry, I'm not going to do the whole program, but I guess
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I'll give you up in Scotland more this time, so we'll have to do a Scottish Dividing Line as well, you can practice all your glottal stops and things like that.
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Anyhow, Fuller Seminary, that was a year ago, I hadn't even thought about that, the meeting in the
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Tabernacle, and what's the main thing that's remembered a year later? Was it what
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Ravi Zacharias said? No, it was what Richard Malle said.
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He pretty much sank the whole evening on that one. But anyways, that's neither here nor there.
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I am actually addressing that in trying to finish up the additions to Is the Mormon My Brother, which we're trying to put back in print, and I actually am taking the blog articles
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I wrote on that and editing them and addressing that issue, and the Erdmann's publication of the
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Millet book in the new edition of the book that we'll be putting out as well. And I can see the end of the tunnel on that little project and hopefully have it done here in a few days.
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But anyway, the reason I mentioned Fuller Seminary is some of you may... Here's a little trivia for you.
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Some of you have heard the name Mel White, right? Mel White is a homosexual activist, and he's written on the subject.
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He was a conservative speech writer, a number of folks back in the 80s, he would write speeches for them and so on and so forth.
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Where was the first place that Mel White was told that he was a Christian homosexual?
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Who told him that you can be a Christian homosexual, that that's an acceptable conjugation of terms, sort of like Christian adulterer,
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Christian fornicator, Christian thief, that it's okay? You know where that was? Yes, you're right.
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It was a Fuller Theological Seminary professor, female professor, who told him that he was a homosexual
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Christian. And so it's not overly surprising that as I was scanning through my blogs today, over here,
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I have one set of blogs that I've got on my laptop and a much fuller set of blogs over here at the office.
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And I was looking at one of the blogs that makes reference to, actually this is the
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World Magazine blog, that makes reference to an article that appeared here in the
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New York Times, which you know normally would give you a rash to even look at anything the New York Times has to say, but the
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Ideas and Trends article says, on abortion, it's the Bible of Ambiguity, the
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Bible of Ambiguity, and this is, I think it's one of the most effective attacks that the enemy has launched against the
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Church in Western culture, is to rob
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God's people of the certainty that God has spoken and He has revealed
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His truth. If you can get a Christian to not believe that God has spoken with clarity, you've got
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Him. You've got Him. He's going to be silent. He's going to be quiet. He's going to be compromising. And of course,
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I'm just using the he here in the generic. He or she are going to, that's going to, you've got
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Him. They don't have a foundation upon which to stand. Look at what has happened to the liberal denominations, the mainline denominations that have lost confidence in the statement that God has spoken and He's spoken with clarity.
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They've lost confidence. They no longer have a message to proclaim. They no longer have anything really to say, in essence, and as a result, well, you can see what's happened.
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So the approach of many in Western culture today, then, is to rob you of any confidence that God has spoken to the key issues.
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And this particular one, of course, is on the subject of abortion. Now, I wrote a little piece on abortion.
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I've preached on abortion. I think that link is still on the PRBC .org website if you'd like to hear that.
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But let me just read you some portions from this article to give you an idea of why I even mentioned Fuller Seminary.
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We have a quote, I can't take you to a text that says don't commit abortion, said
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Michael J. Gorman, a professor of New Testament and early church history and dean of the Ecumenical Institute of Theology at St.
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Mary's Seminary and University located in Baltimore. It just doesn't exist.
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Does that mean the Bible has nothing to offer on the issue, Mr. Gorman, who calls himself an evangelical? That's interesting, being the head of the
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Ecumenical Institute of Theology at St. Mary's Seminary. Anyways, Mr. Gorman, who calls himself an evangelical, cites the early church's opposition to abortion and broader themes suffuse the scriptures rather than specific verses.
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There is an impetus in the Bible toward the protection of the innocent, protection for the weak, respect for life, respect for God's creation.
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For evangelicals, who are defined in large part by their reliance on the Bible, the question of how the scriptures should be interpreted is crucial.
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Catholics depend more heavily on the church's moral teachings, which are often drawn not from the Bible, but what they call natural law, the innate sense of morality that they believe is written on people's hearts and can be divined by human reason.
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But evangelicals, or at least the members of the vocal religious right who have dominated the issue over the last two decades or so, use the words of the
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Bible to make their case. In many ways, what the Bible actually says and according to whom is where the battle over abortion begins.
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I hope you hear that, because if you listened to or read the live blogging of the
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NBC special Friday Night on the birth of Jesus, all this stuff should sound pretty familiar, because we're talking about the same things here.
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It's interesting to me, a lot of Christians say, well, there's just so many things up there, I can't keep up with all of them. In reality, if we would teach our people fundamental skills in interpretation of the
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Bible, especially in light of modern attacks on it. For example, I've been doing a whole series, what, two, three years now, on the
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Synoptic Gospels at PRBC. If you go to the Sunday School page at PRBC .org, you'll see that that's there.
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I was mentioning to folks in class Sunday morning, I had wondered how many had seen the
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NBC thing on the birth of Jesus, because if they had, what we have talked about in the
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Synoptic Studies, looking at such things as telescoping, and what happens when you have different people narrating similar events, and when you have authors that are attempting to make a certain point, and what happens in those situations, etc.
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etc. If they had been listening during the Sunday School classes, they would have been in a tremendous position to pick apart much of what was being said in that particular program, but sadly, going through the
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Synoptic Gospels the way we're going through them, with a Harmony of the Gospels right in front of us, that isn't really normal in a lot of churches.
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You try to avoid that stuff because that can raise all sorts of very uncomfortable questions. But the fact of the matter is, if you get that foundation, all this stuff, here we're talking about abortion, all these issues, the birth of Christ, and the
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Da Vinci Code, and all the rest of this stuff, you've got a solid foundation upon which to stand.
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You don't have to be reading everything there is to know out there if you're spending your time studying upon the foundation, the foundational issues.
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That's really important. Yeah, that is the key issue. I cannot tell you how many people
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I'm encountering who agree with me. Someone in Channel who's actually off in another land,
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I don't know if I can mention where he is right now, has God spoken and has he done so in such a way that he can be understood?
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That's the key issue. Modern theology says, no, no, and we see this because they don't just go running, screaming out of our churches when they've come to the conclusion that God has not spoken and he's not done so in such a way that he can be understood.
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They stay in the church, and they try to drag the church their direction. That's why every generation has these battles over and over again.
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That is the key issue right now. But anyways, back to the article. We've already got two callers. I appreciate James and Paul.
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Hold on. We'll get through this article as quick as we can and get to you. One anti -abortion group,
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Michigan Christians for Life, for instance, sells bumper stickers and blazing the Deuteronomy 3019. The verse reads,
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This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life so that you and your children may live and that you may love the
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Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. Now immediately, hopefully, the listeners to our program go, all right, that is applicable in the sense that you come to the issue with a recognition of what is life, what is human life, the fact that God is creator, etc.,
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etc. The passage isn't specifically talking about the subject of abortion in its original context, but it enunciates concepts that are relevant.
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Well, notice what the New York Times does. But some evangelical scholars say the passage has nothing to do with abortion.
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Instead it is an exhortation to Israelites who fled Egypt and are wandering the desert to obey God's word, the way to true life, said
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John Goldingay, a professor of Old Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary outside of Los Angeles.
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It's saying to Israel, choosing life means choosing the way of life, choosing to obey God's word, which has been revealed over the last 30 chapters,
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Mr. Goldingay said. Like many professors at evangelical seminaries today,
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Mr. Goldingay teaches his students to pay attention to the genre of the biblical passage they are studying before interpreting specific verses.
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Well, my comment here, duh, going back to the quote, some passages in the
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Bible are written as poetry, really, I'm sorry, full of metaphoric language and imagery, and were never meant to be taken literally, he said.
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Others, especially in the Old Testament, are written as history and detail God's relationship with his chosen people, the Israelites, and need to be read as such.
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It really bothers me when people like the New York Times try to get into biblical questions. It's just like, duh, who's arguing that?
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What does that have to do with anything? It's when you then throw all that out and decide that God can't speak in any fashion at all that you get into problems.
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We're always trying to work out legal implications from them as if they were a legal kind of text like interpreting a constitutional document,
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Mr. Goldingay said. The problem is that wasn't what they were designed to do, end quote. Now, you notice the difference between those two statements?
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You can have poetry, and you can have metaphor, and you can have imagery, and you can have all that stuff, and no one's questioning that. If you've read the
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Psalter lately, if you've read Isaiah lately, if you've read anything in the Bible, you know all that's true.
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But that next statement goes way beyond that, doesn't it? Because now, when you say, well, we're always trying to work out legal implications from them as if they were a legal kind of text like interpreting a constitutional document.
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The problem is that wasn't what they were designed to do. Whoa, wait a minute. What they were designed to do. What do you mean?
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What were they designed to do? There's where the question comes in. There's where so many people today say, well, you know what?
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You can't create systematic theology out of the biblical text. It wasn't intended to function in that way.
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There's where the shift takes place, and there's where the doubt as to whether God has spoken comes in.
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I continue with the article. But other evangelical scholars at seminaries that read the Bible more literally disagree.
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What do you mean more literally? Okay. I mean, definitely. The quote here, just because it's not primarily about abortion doesn't mean we shouldn't draw anything from it, said
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Craig V. Mitchell, assistant professor of Christian ethics at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.
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Okay. Southwestern is going to be more conservative than Fuller. No question about that. But does that mean that at Southwestern you don't recognize genre, poetry, et cetera?
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Of course not. Of course not. Those are two different issues. The issue is, can
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God communicate using those different genres in a way where you can come up with a consistent testimony from Scripture?
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That's where the question is, and the writer obviously is utterly unaware of that. He pointed to a passage in the
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Book of Psalms often cited by anti -abortion groups. I wonder where this writer's coming from.
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Anyways, the verses from Psalm 139 read, For you create my inmost being, you knit me together in my mother's womb.
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I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful, I know that full well. Now, of course, that is one that is quite often cited, refers directly to the moment of conception, about when life begins, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
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We continue, I'd summarize Psalm 119 as suggesting that in the womb, that in the womb, from the very first point of conception, it's
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God at work, said Scott B. Ray, a professor of Christian ethics at Talbot School of Theology and Biola University, an evangelical school outside of Los Angeles.
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Everything is outside of Los Angeles. Why don't you just tell us where it is? Anyway, but again, other evangelical Bible scholars differ.
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In this case, the writer of Psalms, which is essentially a collection of songs, get the feeling that's supposed to make it somehow less important, is using poetic imagery to celebrate
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God's special relationship with his chosen people, the Israelites, and his promise to be with them for a thousand generations, said
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Willem A. van Gemmeren, yes, a professor of Old Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, an evangelical seminary outside of Chicago.
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The issue is not so much of when the moment of conception is, or the beginning of life, but rather they cannot see life apart from their relationship with the
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Lord, Mr. van Gemmeren said. For their part, some abortion rights not, let me just stop there, can you see what's going on here?
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The whole point is to create ambiguity. It's to say, see, no one really knows. No one can actually cite the
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Bible and support all these things because you have all these different voices. And I've said many times, one of the greatest evidences of God's judgment upon the church in America is the fact that this is what's taking place.
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You are seeing a lack of confidence in what the word of God says, and anybody who wants to go looking for all sorts of different perspectives is going to be able to find it, and that results in a lack of confidence in what the word says.
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For their part, some abortion rights supporters frequently turn to a passage in Exodus 21 that sets out guidelines for these
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Israelites on how to resolve a dispute in which a pregnant woman intervenes between two men fighting and is struck. If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely, but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined, whatever the woman's husband demands and the court allows.
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But if there is a serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.
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Abortion rights activists argue the passage shows the fetus is assigned a lower value than the woman because if a premature birth occurs, they say the baby dies.
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Then the punishment is only a fine compared to life for life, eye for eye, if the woman is killed. You can't make everything of that passage, said
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Paul D. Simmons, an ethics professor at the University of Louisville who once taught at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
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What you can establish is there is a clear distinction between a fetus and a woman. But Mr. Van Gemmeren of Trinity said the conclusion is shaky, arguing the passage remains shrouded in ambiguity.
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We don't quite understand what exactly happens to that child, he said. According to Mr. Van Gemmeren and many other evangelical
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Bible scholars, no single passage in the Bible clearly supports the anti -abortion stance, but they argue that the broad narrative of the
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Bible, with its themes of creation, God's blessing, life, and humanity bearing the image of God, speak against abortion.
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Of course, nothing addresses abortion directly, Mr. Van Gemmeren said, but the biblical inference as accepted over the centuries is a witness that cannot be ignored.
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Interpreting the Bible as difficult as it is becomes only more so when theologians are asked how abortion should be legislated, if it should be legislated at all.
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Some scholars speak in absolutes, others cite exceptions, still others wax eloquent about the need to turn society away from its individualistic ethos and the need to pay equal attention to other biblical priorities.
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In the end, as it turns out, it is a complicated business bringing a complicated Bible into a complicated world.
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Now, I've written on this subject before, and in point of fact, wrote specifically on the
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Exodus 21 issue for the CRI Journal, and have addressed that in that context if you'd like to take a look at that, and we've also addressed it on the blog as well, but this is the kind of thing that people just truly enjoy doing.
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Let's get together a bunch of folks and, you know, make this as confusing as possible, say that no one can really know, and then just leave it with disagreements.
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Don't actually get these folks together and see if they can come to a conclusion. Just leave it as if there are disagreements there that simply cannot possibly be answered.
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877 -753 -3341. The phone lines are open today.
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Let's talk with James down in Baton Rouge. Hi, James. Hello, Dr. White. How are you doing? I'm doing pretty good.
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What's going on today? Well, I've got a question about Mormonism and what the best way to respond to some of these people that come to my door are saying to me.
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All righty. I talked with a few of them last week, and of course they wanted me to commit to read the
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Book of Mormon and pray about it, and so I did James 1 and things about that. What I was wondering is, is the best method to respond to that, would it be to try and show specific
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Mormon doctrines and how they disagree with what the Word teaches, or to say,
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I reject any new revelation outside the Bible categorically? Well, a couple different ways to go here.
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If they're actually willing to talk with you for any length of time, and that approach they've used with you,
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James 1 .5, showing you Moroni 10, and the alleged promise found there in regards to praying about the
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Book of Mormon, verses 4 and 5, that's the old style way of doing things, and there's a couple different ways that you can respond to this.
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If you'd really like to have the opportunity of talking with them over a period of time, simply saying, well,
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I'm going to start off by saying the canon of Scripture is closed, and I reject all further revelations, and blah, blah, blah, probably is going to shut that door fairly quickly as far as talking with these guys.
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There's a couple different ways that you can handle this. On our website, in the apologetic section under Mormonism, you will see a very old document.
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I wrote this on a 4 megahertz 8088 compact computer with about an 8 -inch green screen.
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I think I still have sight damage from the effort. It is a 100 -verse memorization system, and there's a specific section on the
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Mormon testimony and also on praying about the Book of Mormon. You might want to take a look at that. Also in Letters to a
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Mormon Elder, there's a whole section on that specific issue and praying about the Book of Mormon and being able to give a reasoned response as to why you believe that is tempting the
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Lord and that it is not the means by which we come to know what the truth is. But to open a door to these fellows, what
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I have often suggested, if you have the time to do it, if you are in a sound church and you're sound and rooted where you are, the way to open the door to these fellows would be to...
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Did they give you a Book of Mormon? They tried to, and I actually have a copy of it on my computer.
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I told them I would not pray about it and ask God if it was a new revelation, and that's pretty much where the conversation ended.
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Are they going to be coming back? I believe I'm going to invite them back. Here's what
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I've suggested to folks. I don't suggest that everyone just sit down and read the Book of Mormon. If you're moving to Utah, you sort of need to do that.
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But in a situation like this, what you can do is you can read a portion of the Book of Mormon, specifically the book of 3
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Nephi. The reason is 3 Nephi records the alleged ministry of Christ amongst the
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Nephites here in this hemisphere. What that allows you to do is to compare and contrast the
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Jesus of Mormonism, even the Jesus of the Book of Mormon, recognizing, of course, the Book of Mormon was written long before Joseph Smith developed the polytheistic perspective that became orthodoxy for Mormonism after that.
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But still, the Jesus of Mormonism differs from the Jesus of the Bible, and you can use the differences found in Jesus' ministry amongst the
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Nephites. The fact that, for example, before he comes, there's this huge earthquake and darkness for three days, and in essence, what happens in the
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Book of Mormon is all the evil people are destroyed, and all the righteous people are left, and then Jesus shows up.
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And it's like, wait a minute, that seems backwards. Jesus is coming to minister to those, you know, it's not those that are righteous that need the physician, it's those who are unrighteous, and he's not coming to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.
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And so I used that even years and years and years ago when I first spoke to the Mormon missionaries and before I'd even had a chance to read all the
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Book of Mormon. I read Third Nephi, and the fact that I was willing to do that and then use that as the bridge to go into a discussion of the biblical view of who
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Jesus Christ is over against the Mormon viewpoint opened a huge door. Because let's put ourselves in their shoes for just a moment.
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If someone came to you, or if you were seeking to speak with someone, let's say you have a
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Muslim neighbor that moves in, and he doesn't have a Bible, and you seek to try to give him the
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New Testament to read about Jesus, he's like, I'm not going to do that, I'm not going to look at that, so on and so forth, the door's going to be closed.
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Really it is. And you're going to be like, well, wait a minute, why wouldn't you be willing to listen to what the
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Bible has to say to look at this? Obviously coming from the other direction, when they find someone who is willing to at least read
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Third Nephi, if not the whole Book of Mormon, which doesn't really take a whole period of time to do that, but at least read
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Third Nephi and say, you know what? When I look at my Bible, now I've looked at what Third Nephi says, here's the questions.
32:25
That's something that's going to be most likely to cause them to stick around longer than just simply not making any effort whatsoever to show a willingness to dialogue and to go both directions.
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Now, if that is not a possibility, or if it's not something that you desire to do, then what you need to be prepared to do is to deal with the materials that I mentioned in Letters to a
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Mormon Elder on the 100 -Verse Memorization System, and that is to explain why you believe that the
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Bible is the Word of God in its final form, and that anything that comes after that is going to be contradictory to that.
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Of course, the problem is you then have to be prepared for the question, well, where does the
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Book of Mormon or the Dr. Conesberger Price contradict what the Bible says? Where does it substantiate that? And you can certainly do that, but if you haven't actually read it, then they're going to be able to say, well, you're just taking those things out of context.
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That's where the problem comes in at that point. So that's what I've suggested to folks. I mean, there's lots of different directions you can go, even standing at the doorstep in regards to going to Hebrews chapter 1 and see the old way of revelation was
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God spoke to us through the prophets, but now in these last days, he's spoken by his son.
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Why have you gone back to an old way? That's really the case with both Islam and Mormonism, is they step away from the high standards of the
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New Testament. They go back to the old ways of human religion, and they go back to the old ways of, well, we need to have prophets or imams or whatever it is, and so on and so forth.
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And they step away from that high standard of the New Testament. So you can do that, but the chances that they're going to be really sticking around for any length of time are diminished unless you can somehow demonstrate that, you know what, guys,
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I'm not just here to debate you. I'm concerned about you. You're out here given two years of your life and a very important part of your life.
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And I really have a message for you, and I really do believe that you've been misled, you've been led astray.
34:38
But I'm not just doing this because I saw a movie at my church once that says you all are a bunch of, you know, cultists or something like that.
34:48
Instead, by doing it that direction, you lay a foundation and you're able to hopefully build upon that foundation.
34:54
Though of course, you know, more missionaries are more missionaries, and many of them are very resistant to any type of conversation where there's going to be any contradiction of their beliefs.
35:04
It's going to be aired over the long term. And they also try to mix up the people that are coming to you.
35:13
They're not going to want to have the same two guys meeting with you over and over and over again unless you are giving very strong evidence that you're ready to be baptized or something, which of course isn't going to be taking place.
35:23
So, you know, so those are some of the ways to try to get a conversation started.
35:30
All right. All righty. Thanks a lot. That helps a lot. Okay. Thanks a lot for calling. All right. All right. God bless. Bye -bye. 877 -753 -3341.
35:38
I guess we'll go ahead and take a real quick break and then come back with Paul and a question about the
35:44
Da Vinci Code and your calls as well, if you'd like to get in. 877 -753 -3341. We'll be right back.
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The Trinity is a basic teaching of the
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38:23
And welcome back to the Dividing Line. We continue on with our phone callers and we're going to go down to, actually up from Baton Rouge to Paul.
38:31
Hi, Paul, how are you? Good. How are you, Dr. White? Doing good. I'm currently reading The Da Vinci Code.
38:36
Oh, well, it's actually, you know, as far as fiction goes, it's not a bad read. Yeah. Thank goodness for that.
38:45
Yeah, just carrying it through the airport last week, I was approached by three different people. Really? Yeah. What did they say?
38:51
Well, one that had read it and two that hadn't. Ah. The two that hadn't just asked, you know, what I thought of it and I tried to use some ambassador skills and show them that, you know, the inaccuracies were huge and took them to the, um, you had written about Ignatius last year and I had that in my palm pilot set in, like, 107.
39:16
Ah, you're a guy after my own heart. Let me get my palm pilot out here and I'll tell you all about it. Yeah.
39:22
Well, yeah, and also last week I was working with a King James only fella and I had your
39:27
PowerPoint of the King James version only in there and I pointed some things out to him in that and I was wondering if you were possibly going to make the
39:36
Da Vinci Code PowerPoint available. Oh, I don't see a reason why we couldn't do that, especially since it does have a lot of stuff.
39:43
I keep changing it. I'm adding to it fairly regularly and I need to actually make one that's just the
39:49
Da Vinci Code because mine goes into Funk and Crossin and other things like that.
39:56
I have the opportunity, because sometimes I have more time than others. The brief 45 -minute version for Sunday school obviously can't contain as much stuff.
40:04
But yeah, I don't think that that would actually be something that would be good to do because I certainly can't get to all the churches
40:10
I'd like to get to. And so we probably should do what we did with the
40:16
LDS Law of Eternal Progression thing where we let everybody know that we were going to be doing a particular thing.
40:24
We made it available for download and then went through it on the dividing line and if people recorded that, then they'd have the presentation and they'd be able to present their own churches, too.
40:33
So that sounds like a good idea. Yeah, I think. Indeed, so we'll probably do that.
40:39
So, you know, it's funny, I had the book with me at an Olive Garden a while back when
40:45
I was... What was I writing on that? Hmm. Oh, I wrote a review for somebody.
40:52
I don't remember who it was for now, but I wrote a review for somebody and the waiter did the same thing.
40:58
He was like, hey, what do you think of that book? And he was a little taken aback when I said, well, and then
41:03
I started launching into some of the some of the stuff that was wrong with it. And he was like, wow, oh, well,
41:10
I'm not going to waste my money on that. And I was like, oh, OK, I didn't expect a little more of an argument on it, but I didn't get one.
41:17
So that was that was interesting. So do you have a question about it? No, just that about the availability of PowerPoint.
41:23
OK, well, we'll look into making that available. And then once we've done that, then we can just go through it on the dividing line the way that I did it with the eternal law of progression.
41:36
And maybe we'll come up with a little tone or something to go to the next slide or whatever and go through it that way.
41:42
And then folks could listen to that and then present it in their own churches. So I appreciate your blog entries regarding that also.
41:47
Yeah, that's a lot of folks are reading that. And I need to press on with that and then finish up the
41:54
Islam series that I was doing a while back on the Saifullah and Azmi and their their stuff. They've updated their their thing there, too.
42:01
So got to keep working. Hey, I hear that in the background. So I'll let you go. All right. God bless.
42:06
Talk to you later. Eight seven seven seven five three. I'm normally the one has the phone going off and it hasn't gone off this particular program yet.
42:15
Eight seven seven seven five three three three four one is the phone number if you would like to call in today.
42:21
We'll have to do that probably more toward January, February, that area, because the program will be coming out in May and the program, the movie obviously will be coming out in May.
42:34
And it's amazing how many people don't know this. They don't know it's coming. It's like a freight train.
42:39
Everybody knew the passion was coming, but this one's coming at us like a freight train.
42:45
And a lot of folks just don't even know they've heard of it. You know, they've seen it, but they don't even they just don't know that it's there.
42:52
That's a shame. While the phone lines remain dark here,
42:59
I brought up on my screen a. A quotation from the
43:06
Koran, I just mentioned that I need to finish someday the twenty how many twenty four so far, twenty four installment series in response to Saifullah Nazmi.
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And I guess they have even added to it in light of some of my responses. So some things like that could go on forever and ever.
43:24
But need to once we're done with Da Vinci Code, start focusing on one thing at a time and finishing the whole thing up, basically.
43:33
One of the most famous citations from the Koran is from Surah four,
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Aya 157, we would we would just basically say chapter four, verse one fifty seven.
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But if you're going to dialogue with Muslims, you might want to know what terminology they utilize.
43:53
And Surah four, Aya 157, remember that for the believing
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Muslim, the Koran has existed for eternity in the
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Arabic language, that this is a divine language. And therefore, you can understand why.
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A translation of the Koran is always, well, it's it's it by necessity must be secondary.
44:22
So I have a program called the Aleem, which provides what we might it's the closest thing
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I have found, to be honest with you, to to compare to something like what we have.
44:34
Very funny. Something like what we have with Bible works or something along those particular lines.
44:45
And that's odd. I have no idea what that was all about. But anyway, my son just sent me a picture and I'm going to have to blow it up to figure out what in the world he's talking about.
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Anyhow, it's nowhere close to Bible works. I mean, I have not found anything that can even come close to to librarianics
45:02
Bible works as far as Islamic stuff goes. But at least you have the Koran, you have multiple translations of you've got the
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Hebrew, Hebrew, the Arabic text. You have the the Hadith. You've got all sorts of stuff here in one program.
45:15
And so I'm going to read you the same Aya in a couple of different translations.
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I'm going to start off with a more literal rendering and then some of some of the others.
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They even say we have killed the Messiah, Isa, that's Jesus, son of Mariam, the
45:36
Rasul of Allah. Rasul is a is an apostle, one sent by. Whereas, in fact, neither did they kill him nor did they crucify him, but they thought they did because the matter was made dubious for them.
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Those who differ therein are only in doubt. They have no real knowledge. They follow nothing but merely a conjecture.
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Certainly they did not kill him. That is Jesus. That's the Malik translation. The picked all translation is.
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And because of their saying, we slew the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, all his messenger. They slew him not nor crucified, but it appeared so unto them.
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And lo, those who disagree concerning it are in doubt thereof. They have no knowledge thereof, say, save pursuit of a conjecture.
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They slew him not for certain. The use of Ali translation, which is normally the one that's.
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That is, I would recommend if you're looking at it to have a copy yourself that they said and boast, we killed
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Christ Jesus, the son of Mary, the apostle of Allah. But they killed him not nor crucified him.
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But so it was made to appear to them. And those who differ therein are full of doubts with no certain knowledge, but only conjecture to follow for of assurity.
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They killed him not. And then probably the most. NIV ish TNIV ish, shall we say translation.
47:03
And their boast, behold, we have slain the Christ Jesus, son of Mary, who claimed to be an apostle of God, however, they did not slay him and neither did they crucify him.
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But it only seemed to them as if it had been so. And verily, those who hold conflicting views thereon are indeed confused, having no real knowledge thereof and following mere conjecture for a certain of a certainty.
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They did not slay him. That's the Assad translation. Now, there is a tremendous amount of confusion, even amongst
47:33
Muslims. Concerning what is actually going on here, the
47:41
Ali commentary on this says. Thus, the Quran categorically denies the story of the crucifixion of Jesus.
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There exist among Muslims many fanciful legends telling us that at the last moment,
47:54
God substituted for Jesus, a person closely resembling him. According to some accounts, that person was
48:00
Judas, who was subsequently crucified in his place. However, none of these legends finds the slightest support in the
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Quran or an authentic traditions, which would be the Hadith and the stories produced in this connection by the classical commentators must be summarily rejected.
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They represent no more than confused attempts at harmonizing the Quranic statement that Jesus was not crucified with the graphic description, the
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Gospels of his crucifixion. The story of the crucifixion, as such, has been succinctly explained in the
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Quranic phrase. And then you, which doesn't make any sense to anybody here. Walakim, Shubia, Lahum, which
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I render as, but it only appeared to them as if it had been so, implying that in the course of time, long after the time of Jesus, a legend had somehow grown up, possibly under the then powerful influence of myth, myth, realistic beliefs to the effect that he had died on the cross in order to atone for the original sin with which mankind is allegedly burdened.
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And this legend became so firmly established among the latter day followers of Jesus that even his enemies, the
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Jews, began to believe it, albeit in a derogatory sense for crucifixion was in those times a heinous form of death penalty reserved for the lowest of criminals.
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This, to my mind, is the only satisfactory explanation of the phrase, the more so as the expression is idiomatically synonymous with became a fancied image to me, i .e.
49:25
in my mind. In other words, it seemed to me that is the footnote that is provided to the
49:33
Yusuf Ali translation. And then if you pick that one up, it has a fairly extensive notes, somewhat similar to what we would call a study
49:46
Bible, a study Quran, providing various and sundry interpretations of the passages.
49:51
Of course, in Islam, you have, you know, just like if you picked up a
49:57
Dake's annotated Bible and tried to use that and talking to me, I'd go, oh, good grief, you know, get something that's worthwhile.
50:02
There are people who don't like what Ali has to say. There are people have different perspectives. There's all sorts of what we would identify as denominations or divisions within Islam of people taking different viewpoints.
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And of course, we look around our world today and we see the difference between the Shiite and the
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Sunni and the fact that they're more than willing to kill each other, et cetera, et cetera. So you have all sorts of divisions there that come into whether a person will accept that as a reliable source or not.
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The reason that I mention all this. Is that you need to understand that as you as you listen to to Shabir Ali and to others who are apologists for the
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Islamic faith, the idea of substitutionary atonement, crucifixion, resurrection.
50:48
The cross theology of the New Testament is a tremendous scandal. It is at the very core of what
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Islam finds to be reprehensible about the Christian faith.
51:02
I remember when I first started looking through Maulana Muhammad Ali's work, the introduction to the study of the
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Holy Koran within, let me see here, 10 pages.
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You have an attack upon the Christian faith and you have an attack upon the concept of substitutionary atonement and the whole idea of the cross and resurrection is just it's central to actually the self -definition of Islam.
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Remember, Islam comes along over 600 years after the time of Christ. And it has to, in essence, differentiate itself from that which came before it.
51:45
And the first number of decades, first number of generations, I'm sorry, of Islam is very involved in that differentiation.
51:53
And they like to say that Paul is the originator of this concept, that this was not a part of,
52:02
I was listening to Shabir Ali debating a student of E .P. Sanders, Dr. Shillington, which in and of itself is rather interesting.
52:12
It was somewhat of an ecumenical love fest, even though Shillington made a number of good comments.
52:17
He would frequently vitiate them by what he would say thereafter. But part of the issue, the debate was, was
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Paul the originator of Christianity? And Shillington made some really good points. And that is that when we look at Paul, we see that in his writings, there are numerous references there.
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We can discern pre -Pauline material, 1 Corinthians chapter 15, which became central in the debate we had on the ship, which we are going to put out eventually, right?
52:49
Ye on the other side of the wall, that's is that is that sort of like next on the line or something like that? Because I'm getting a lot of folks saying, didn't you have a debate with Borg and Crossan?
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And are you going to make that available and working on it? Good. We need to get that one out because that was central. 1
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Corinthians chapter 15, the summary of the gospel, clearly pre -Pauline.
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It's pre, this is not something Paul makes up. This is something that Paul is, it is delivered to Paul out for Christmas.
53:17
Good. That make a great Christmas present, wouldn't it? The day of the resurrection of Christ on board ship.
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That'd be very good. Obviously, not something that is of Paul's creation.
53:32
The Carmen Christi, Philippians chapter 2, again, not something of Paul's creation.
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It comes before that. And both of these contain summary doctrinal statements that show a very high doctrine of the cross and a very high doctrine of Christ long before the time period of the writing of the
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Gospels. And no, we don't want to make it for Easter.
53:58
We want to make that Christmas be very, very, very good. So you have this material there.
54:03
And I was thinking about that the same time I was watching that silly movie that just came out, The God Who Wasn't There, because at one point we're going to have to play this at some point.
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They do this timeline thing and they create this huge gap between 30 and 70, 40 years.
54:20
And they say, Paul is all we have here. And Paul knows nothing about the virgin birth and the ministry of Christ and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
54:28
And so I'm thinking about I'm listening to Shabir Ali and his arguments, and then I look at this and I go, they're all on the same thing.
54:36
They're all on the same page. They're borrowing from one another. And it is so easy to respond to this stuff if you just if you just do some studying, if you just know what's going on.
54:48
You have in Paul, pre -Pauline material that goes back to when
54:53
I mean, we're really talking within, and Shillington made this argument, three or four years of the resurrection.
55:02
Now, I'm sorry, three or four years is not enough time for any type of meaningful, quote, unquote, evolution.
55:09
And so when I listen to, you know, Paul here, no, you're wrong. Ye who wants to try to be the new
55:17
Michael Moore in the religious realm. And when Shabir Ali is saying, well, you know, Paul is it's the
55:23
Antioch group and this has nothing to do with the original followers of Jesus. Original followers of Jesus didn't believe in the deity of Christ and believe in the cross resurrection.
55:30
Again, if this goes back within three or four years, where is this huge battle over the cross and over the death of Christ and the resurrection between the original followers of Jesus and these new people that took it all over and messed everything up, which is the theory that he's trying to present?
55:46
Now, I might mention in passing, if he were to apply the same standards of the Koran, you'd know nothing of Muhammad.
55:53
If he were to apply the exact same standards to his own hadith, his own traditions, things like that, he would not be able to say he has any certain knowledge of anything
56:02
Muhammad ever said. But of course, he doesn't do that. He's not going to be consistent at that point.
56:07
But again, going back to the the original point here, the idea that somehow
56:13
Paul comes along and you've got these Antioch Christians and they and they completely muddle the message as if the cross was not a part.
56:22
And therefore, the Gospels are written from a Pauline Christian perspective rather than from the original followers of Christ.
56:29
This is the type of theory that's being thrown out there. And it crosses over into all these other areas.
56:37
And they they say, well, see, you know, anyone who thinks that Jesus was crucified, they hold conflicting views.
56:43
They're confused. They don't have any certain knowledge, etc. If anything is certain, isn't it odd that the one thing that John Dominic Crossan, even with his view of the scriptures, would agree is did happen and is known was the crucifixion of Christ.
57:01
It's it's odd, though, though they'll pick and choose. Critics will pick and choose out of these folks what they will and will not use.
57:08
But the one thing that they would say is absolutely certain is the one thing the
57:14
Quran says is absolutely certain didn't happen. And I remember reading an article, I think I mentioned this previously, that most complex, complicated, convoluted argument.
57:27
I think it's on the Answering Christianity website. I need to I need to track this thing down. Trying to prove that Simon of Cyrene was the one who was crucified.
57:36
You would not believe the handstands and the cartwheels done to try to turn the biblical text into something that would say this actually was what was going on in the crucifixion stories.
57:50
Absolutely, positively incredible. But that's all found. That's the one key passage. And write it down if you want to be able to find it.
57:57
Surah 4, 157, Surah 4, Aya 157 is the text. And that's it. That's that's all it says about it.
58:04
And Ali is right. The amount of conjecture that's come out of that within Islam is truly incredible.
58:10
Indeed, we'll be back Thursday evening. Five o 'clock our time, open phones.
58:17
Who knows if we won't have some clips to be playing and your phone calls here on the dividing line. See you then. God bless.
58:22
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59:35
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