Get Ready: Two and a Half Hour Long Dividing Line

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:32

Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. Starting at an unusual time, didn't give you all a lot of warning.

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I apologize for that. But as I started to consider everything that we had to do today,

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I realized we're looking at two and a half hours here, we really are.

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And we'll just see how it goes. In the last hour, so from 6 until 7

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Eastern Daylight Time, Dr. Tony Costa will join us. I suppose that means

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I should fire up the phone program too, huh? And he and I will be talking about a number of things, but we're primarily going to be looking at Islamic apologetics and the consistency or lack of consistency, or the consistent inconsistency of Islamic apologetics.

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He and I are both on an email list, and there are a couple of specific

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Islamic apologists who frequent that list, and pretty well known to us here on this program, specifically

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Yusuf Ismail and Paul Belal Williams. And so we're going to be taking a look at, especially

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Williams, and the, again, the fundamental issue of worldview, consistency of worldview, consistency in apologetic methodology, simple honesty and integrity in dealing with the other side's materials, and how you can't point to somebody else and say, you need to be consistent in using my materials and handling my materials, if then you turn around and do the same thing to them.

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So we'll be looking at that. And I have a feeling up until that time, we're going to be, well, starting hopefully in a half an hour or so, depending.

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We're going to be looking at Andy Stanley's sermon, The Bible Told Me So, and the one that has as the subtitle, and I'm looking at it right here, do you find some of the

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Bible's stories about God unsettling? Do you ever wonder how you can trust Jesus if it requires you believe everything in the Bible is true?

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Does Christianity seem like a fragile house of cards that may tumble down in the face of scientific or archaeological discovery?

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Before you abandon your faith, it's worth exploring this question, what if the Bible isn't the foundation of the

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Christian faith? And I listened to this on, was it

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Tuesday evening? It must have been because I was speaking last evening, so it couldn't have been last evening. And I live tweeted my reactions, and some people thought that was inappropriate.

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I can't do anything. For some people, I can't do anything right, no matter what I do. But I was just absolutely blown away.

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I even asked at one point, did this gentleman go to seminary? Yeah, he did. He went to Dallas Theological Seminary, and in fact,

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Norman Geisler was one of his primary teachers and very proud of Andy Stanley as a student.

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Well, do forgive me, but it doesn't seem to me that he was listening real well in church history.

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Or you can take church history, which is the case, by the way, in the vast majority of seminaries.

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You can take church history without ever having to read much in patristics, specifically in the early church fathers.

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And some of the things that Pastor Stanley are going to say that we're going to review,

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I think possibly Dr. Costa might want to get in on some of that, too. So we'll see if we start off with a little bit of Andy Stanley before we get to Islamic apologetics.

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Because unfortunately, it's the Muslims who are more than happy to use folks like Andy Stanley or Mike Licona as weapons, apologetically speaking, against the

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Christian faith. And so that'll sort of fit together. Before we get to all that, however, there's just so many things that have been piling up that I haven't been able to get to.

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And some of them are just going to start getting so old. And please do not interpret the fact that I have not, for example, been keeping up with some of the court decisions.

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Dr. Moeller does a great job on the briefing. I sort of assume if you take the time to listen here, you're probably listening to the briefing as well.

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And some of the court decisions are just absolutely chilling. This morning, he was talking about the redefinition of parent.

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The revolution is in full swing, and the revolutionaries, we just don't realize how far they're willing to go.

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The totalitarians want our children, and they are going to use every means available to them to get our children.

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And people have been saying, ah, you know, come on, you're just trying to get people all scared.

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When it's happening, when it's happening right in front of us, you sort of got to open your eyes and go, wow, the totalitarians are here.

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And you got to understand, all these people who are talking about inclusivism and tolerance are the most exclusivistic intolerant people on the planet.

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And they will use every bit of force to demand that everyone else think exactly like they think.

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They have no concept of liberty except for themselves. Erotic liberty is their god, and everything else must be subjected to that god.

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I read a couple books yesterday on a ride. They weren't long books, obviously, but it wasn't a short ride either.

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Um, on the French Revolution. And once again, once again, those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

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We're going there again. So many parallels. So, you know, I've talked about the

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Stasi prison. Just so many parallels in history. And yet the vast majority, even of Christians I know, let alone millennials, know nothing of history, do not have anything there at all.

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The fact that I've not discussed those things does not mean that I don't see it. I believe they're very, very vitally important.

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But there are people discussing these things that are covering all the bases, if we're willing to listen.

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And there's, you know, the other reason, and, you know, I want to eventually, maybe next week,

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I want to talk about the Gushy article. And, you know,

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Moeller already wrote a response to him. I guess they know each other fairly well, went to school together, families, their kids played together, so on and so forth.

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It's interesting to get the background there. But the David Gushy article, of course, we've spent a lot of time responding to him.

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And, of course, he doesn't want to take the time to respond to our ilk. I think it's because he knows he really can't engage our ilk very well.

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And his presuppositions aren't going to survive cross -examination very well. But what he has to say, important.

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I listened to a talk at FAIR, the LDS Symposium, from a few months ago or a few weeks ago.

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That was just fascinating. I forgot to link you to it. I think you'd find it fascinating. Absolutely fascinating to listen to Mormon intellectuals basically admitting that, you know, it's fascinating.

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Here's a guy, he recognizes that historically, most of what the LDS Church has been arguing about and trying to defend for a long time, the critics were right all along.

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And yet, the one thing he wants to hold on to is their doctrine of God. And it's like, where'd that come from?

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It came from this alleged priesthood authority and Joseph Smith is a prophet, and now you're recognizing he wasn't all these things, and yet you still want this wacky theology that absolutely makes no sense whatsoever.

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We'll have to, I really would like to queue up at least a few portions of that. It was fascinating stuff.

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So there's lots of stuff on the plate. But first and foremost, we live in a day where news comes at us so fast.

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Almost every generation before ours, almost every generation before ours, news would come to us after it happened.

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We would find out about things and there'd be a buffer. And even the number of people that you would know would be limited.

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It would be limited in a way that social media and the internet has changed.

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Now, of course, how you know people and how deeply you know people has been changed as well.

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I mean, I know certain people, have known certain people for years that I've never met.

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And that's a little odd. I mean, we used to have something called pen pals. Remember that?

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Back in the day when you actually wrote letters with a pen and piece of paper and fold it up with an envelope, you lick a thing called a stamp.

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Um, and, uh, all sorts of stuff like that. And, uh, things have changed.

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Things have changed. And I, I honestly think that in some ways we were never really designed to have the flood of information that just washes over us every day.

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When that happens, you cannot help but decentralize, de -importantize, um, because you can only pay attention to so much.

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You can only absorb so much. You can only prioritize so much. And over the past few months, there's just been so much.

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Started with a relative of mine, um, on my wife's side, only 30 years of age, passes away.

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I do the funeral. Just a few weeks ago, one of the former vice presidents of this ministry,

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Benny Diaz, passed away. And you've got all this type of stuff going on.

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And my mom used to say everything comes in threes. Well, she was underestimating. Um, and then there's just over the past couple of weeks, uh, you know,

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I've, I've, I don't mention this other than to invite the people of God to, well,

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I've, I've, I've reposted this on Facebook. So everybody knows about it, at least long there. But, uh, dear friend of this ministry, uh, dear friends, this ministry,

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John and Nicoletta Wibrew, um, Nicoletta's expecting their second child. And, um, uh, really, if you enjoy this program, there are few people, you know, that, that make it possible.

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Obviously, Rich makes it possible. I'm here. Um, but I, most of you know,

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I spend, you know, I just mentioned just a few moments ago, talked about a couple of books I read on the French revolution.

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When did I do that? On a 60 mile bike ride. All right. How do I do that?

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Well, I have to stay healthy enough to be able to do that. And the primary person that keeps me functioning on that level is

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Nicoletta Wibrew. She is just the best chiropractor around, and I would be so injured and in so much pain that I would have to be a stockholder in Advil.

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Um, and that's not good stuff to be taking on a long, long -term basis, but he stretched the imagination. Um, I just wouldn't be able to do it.

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I just would not be able to do it. She keeps me going. Well, a couple of weeks ago, standard, uh, you know, ultrasound showed irregularities.

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They do the big honking MRI, real problems with little

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Luke and his development, especially with his brain. And it's going to be very serious. And there's going to be all sorts of tremendous financial strains.

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And it's one of those things where you just feel so helpless. Uh, you, you pray to God, you, you turn to God.

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And in this situation you have, you know, they believe in, in what the

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Bible teaches. Uh, and, and look, I know some of you are uncomfortable with what the

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Bible teaches about this, but I'm, I'm not even going to bother arguing it right now. Um, what the

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Bible says in this subject is not, is not arguable. And you just simply have to throw out a good deal of what it says to try to get around it.

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But they are trusting in God. And yet you're, you're looking at all this long -term care and, and everything that goes along with it.

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And, and it's, it's, it's not possible to not say why

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God, uh, you're, you're going to ask those questions and it's, it's going to force you to develop perspective and, and to look outside yourself and, and, and all these things.

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But it's, it's a heavy burden and it, it just saddens your heart. And, um, then, you know,

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I'm thinking about this, thinking about it regularly. And then yesterday, sitting in my office yesterday afternoon, and I look up right as the, uh, or was it the day before?

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I lose track. Was it the day before? Um, it was, I guess it was right after the dividing line.

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It was after the dividing line, I guess it was Tuesday. Um, so I look up on the

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Facebook feed and here is Nabeel Qureshi's, Dr. Nabeel Qureshi's announcement of him stepping aside.

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All I see at first is stepping out of ministry for health reasons. And I, of course, click on it and bring it up.

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And most of you have read, heard that Nabeel has received a diagnosis of a very aggressive form of stomach cancer.

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And Nabeel is a medical doctor. Um, he has his medical degree and he himself says the prognosis is grim.

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Um, and I'm just like,

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I, how do you respond to something like this? I, I need to start by saying how

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Nabeel has responded has, I think, been very glorifying to the Lord, uh, very encouraging to others.

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Yeah, I was, I was even talking with Nicoletta about it today. And, and even she said in, in reading it, she, she said, you know, it was very encouraging, uh, to read, uh, how, uh, the, you know, someone is responding to something like this.

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And they're, they're both medical issues, medical tragedies, but, but of a different, there's a different aura or, you know, development of a child, uh, learning disabilities, physical disabilities.

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And then I don't know how old Nabeel is. I'm guessing about 35, maybe. Uh, to me, that's pretty young anymore.

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It's interesting how your views of what's young and what's not change. I, I, I drove by a sign for some political candidate recently.

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I was, I was actually on the bike when I first saw it and I was looking over at this sign. I'm just like, that person doesn't even look old enough to vote.

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Uh, you know, I mean, oh my goodness. Uh, that's when you really know that you're racing down the other side of the hill at a, at a breakneck speed.

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Um, but, uh, it, it just, you know,

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I, I talked about this a little bit last night. I, I didn't record the study

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I did out of Psalm 42 and 43 last night at, um, at church, but, you know, the psalmist expresses the despair of his soul.

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He, he, you know, why is your soul cast down? Why are you in despair? Why are you disturbed?

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And I just kept noticing that every time the psalmist honestly admitted this, it was right within the context of making a statement of faith.

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I said, you know, here's, here's the nature of saving faith. I'm glad saving faith is not something you have to work up within yourself.

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It's the work of the Holy Spirit. And, and it's, it's not that the people of God don't grieve.

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It's that they don't grieve without hope. That's, that's, that's the difference.

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If you're old enough to, to love, you're old enough to grieve. And, and therefore, if you love other people, then you, you grieve at their loss or you grieve at their suffering.

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But we don't grieve as those who have no hope. That's, that's the difference. And it's just, you know,

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I'm, I'm finding myself saying, Lord, vacation, please, you know, break.

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And I know it doesn't work that way. And, and I know that there are brothers and sisters across the world that would look at, at our difficulties and go, you guys just don't, don't know yet what real suffering is.

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I, I get it. I, I do understand that. I, I do. But, um, uh, your prayers, deeply appreciated for the

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YBrews. And certainly I hope Nabeel knows that, um, we all pray that God would deliver him, that God would heal him.

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Um, and in the midst of, I'm sure the rather aggressive treatments that he's going to be going through,

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I, I, I'm certain given his connections and stuff that he's probably got some good people around him that know what they're doing.

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Uh, but it's going to be tough no matter what, uh, that he will, uh, truly find his comfort in God drawing near to him and that, that beautiful truth that he has been seated in the heavenly places.

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He's been adopted. His sins have been forgiven. Uh, I, I can't help but think of that tremendous, uh, text that I've preached a number of times in Hebrews chapter six, where we have that, uh, um, that anchor of the soul that goes within the veil where Christ has gone before us as our, as our high priest.

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I can't help but think, especially in the, in the suffering of, uh, that kind of situation that, uh, the picture of that, that, that anchor going where we can only go by faith, uh, but, but is a place that demonstrates pure and utter acceptance in God's sight.

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Um, that that would be, uh, uh, a really encouraging thing to those who are, to those who are suffering.

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So I know there are many others that I, I don't know their stories and I, and I just don't know that, that most of us can handle, um, knowing all of the stories that are out there.

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It does make you think a little bit about the fact that, you know, God says, I want you to cast your burdens upon me.

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What must it like to be God in that situation? Um, but we can, as the body of Christ, draw together and, uh, pray for, for these individuals and for all the others that you all know that I do not know that, uh, have just as serious burdens.

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Um, but you know, and I, when I think of Nabeel and I think of, uh, just how, how bright a young man he is and, you know, from my perspective, that's the next generation.

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Um, and it, it reminds me that just, I think it is appropriate from a

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Christian perspective that we recognize what Scripture states, that the outer man is decaying, but the inner man is being renewed day by day.

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And we can't stop that outer decay. We shouldn't hasten it, uh, but we can't stop it.

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And we are dead men and dead women walking, and it has nothing to do with Rick Grimes and a

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TV series either. I think from a biblical perspective, we need to recognize not only have we died in Christ and hence we are the walking dead in that sense, uh, in a positive sense.

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Um, but we, we, you know, the body of this death, uh, we live in a fallen world.

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These bodies decay no matter how hard we try. Young people, I know you think you're, you're never going to die.

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You never know. You never, you do not have a guarantee of tomorrow. And, um, uh, it does, one of the reasons that we're uncomfortable with these things is it reminds us of our own mortality.

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It really does. And, um, so pray for Nabeel and for his family and for the doctors and, um, pray for the doctors that are going to be working with, uh, the

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Wibrews and little Luke and, uh, may God be glorified in, uh, in those situations and in so many others, uh, that weigh so heavily upon our, uh, upon our hearts.

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So, um, with that, I want to, uh, switch very quickly, uh, switch gears.

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This is really going to burn the clutch out. Um, I may not get all this in even before Tony gets on.

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So we'll do the best we can. We'll do the best we can. I rarely get to jump on something the instant it comes out because we don't do the program every day.

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And especially if this stuff comes out over the weekend, then, you know, normally it's Tuesday. Um, someone, and I'm sorry,

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I didn't see who it was actually through a, a message request thing on, on Facebook that for some reason

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I don't even see on the web app on the, on the, on the browser, but I do see on my phone.

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So I don't know. Um, so sorry if I can't give you a hat tip, but thank you to whoever it was that sent it.

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But just today, an article was posted at a, uh, at textusreceptusbible .blogspot

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.com. Now they are going to be so happy that I'm doing this because when I checked it, they have two followers.

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So automatic, uh, advertisement, and maybe that's why they did this. I don't know.

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But again, this is an awesome teaching opportunity.

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Awesome teaching opportunity. Some of the best teaching opportunities I've ever seen, uh, have come when someone thought they were refuting me.

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And when I can get an opportunity to go, well, this is why you didn't refute me.

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It can sometimes give the greatest light. I have to be brief because the

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Andy Stanley thing is nearly half an hour long. And I'm not, and he was talking fast. So, and offering correction, it's going to be, it's going to be ugly.

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Um, but an article was posted called Beza Vindicated.

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I think this is by an Australian writer by the name of Nick Sayers. I'm assuming this anyways.

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Uh, Nick Sayers, director of Texas Receptus. Uh, I am currently living in Pakistan, working on an

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Urdu Bible translation from the Texas Receptus. And that's just what they need, uh, is an

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Urdu Bible translation based upon, uh, a text that contains errors in it.

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That's just exactly what they needed. That's, that's great. Um, and this article is

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Beza Vindicated quotes me concerning Revelation 16 .5.

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Now I, I did in, in the current edition of the King James only conference, I spent quite some time on Revelation 16 .5.

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And I, I did so because I needed to introduce folks to the concept of conjectural emendation and the fact that by Theodore Beza's own confession, he introduced a textual conjecture at Revelation 16 .5.

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He did not have access to any Greek manuscripts that read the way that he ended up putting his text in the printed edition of his text, his 1598 text.

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And I provided pictures. There's actually some, most of the pictures, uh, appear here.

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Um, and I even, I even knew that there were people that were going to try to get around this, even when

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I did this, because I said on page 240, as one can see the

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King James version reading Revelation 16 .5 arose from Theodore Beza's conjectural emendation and was unknown to history prior to that time.

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Then I gave a footnote. Lest in desperation, a King James only advocate make the attempt, Tischendorf's notes on the term only confirm my assertion.

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He notes that, and then it's C -O -P -A -E -T -H, two different phrases, omit ha -hasias, but the

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KJV reading is not to be found even here, as esaminas, and this is ha -hasias, ha -hasias is the holy one, esaminas is the future form of the particle, of the verb of being, so will be, is not put in its place.

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Instead, Tischendorf's notes indicate Beza as the reading source. Further, Trigellus' text, though indicating some translations omit ha -hasias, again indicates the

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KJV reading is nowhere in the Greek manuscript tradition. Likewise, Hoskier's massive work on the text

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The Apocalypse nowhere indicates the appearance of Beza's conjecture. Quite simply, before Beza, no

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Christian had ever read the text the way the KJV has it today. And I was obviously, in light of the pictures and what

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I was talking about here, talking about the Greek text, not English translations or things like that, the

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Greek text. Well, various folks since then have done their best to try to come up with some way around this reality, and I remember someone saying, well, you know, there could have been manuscripts that we don't have anymore, and someone said, well, you know, there's a commentary that mentions a

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Latin manuscript that has passed away and so on and so forth. And I try to point out to these folks, don't you realize you're proving my point for me?

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On the one hand, you'll use Byzantine priority argumentation, or you'll use majority text argumentation.

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And yet, then you'll turn around and to substantiate any place where the

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TR departs from either the

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Byzantine text or what would be called the majority text, depending on which text we're talking about. Well, you're talking about Robinson, Peer, Hodges, Farstad, et cetera, et cetera.

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Then all of a sudden, all those arguments go out the window. And for this one verse, all of a sudden, a vague reference to a

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Latin manuscript someplace is enough to be the one place where the original was maintained.

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I have more respect for people who just simply say, you know what? God re -inspired the Greek. He took over Erasmus.

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Well, actually, in this case, he took over Beza. He took over Erasmus and did a little bit, then he took over Stephanos, did a little bit, then finally takes over Beza and then basically providentially guides supernaturally the selection of readings by the

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King James translators between 1604 and 1611. At least those folks are consistent because they're not trying to pretend that there's actually a textual basis for this argumentation.

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They are saying, you know what? This is my text. God said it.

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God did it. I'm not going to bother with the manuscripts and all the rest of that stuff. It's all supernatural.

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And yes, I know that puts me on the same level as Joseph Smith's inspired translation or other things like that, but that's what

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I'm going to say. At least I can go, there you go. I appreciate that you're not pretending to do something you're not doing.

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The problem is now there's even a bunch of Calvinists, and you know who you are, who want to pretend that they're being confessional in defending every reading of the

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Texas Receptus, including Beza's conjectural inundation, that this is what it means to be confessional, you see.

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Well, by the way, I would like to invite you guys especially to read a little book here by Jan Kranz, Beyond What Is Written, Erasmus and Beza as Conjectural Critics of the

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New Testament. Very interesting to look at how many places Erasmus and Beza together engaged in conjectural inundation in the production of the text that ended up producing the

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Texas Receptus. Interesting stuff there. Lots of interesting material there.

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Well, what do we have in this new article that just came out today, in fact? I mean,

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I talk about being given instant advertisement. We should almost send a bill for this.

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Look at Twitter. Yeah, uh -huh. Yeah, okay, whatever.

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Well, Mr. James White, it looks like Theodore Beza wasn't the first to have and shalt be a sominos at Revelation 16 .5.

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And then there's a graphic, Revelation 16 .5

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in the 1549 Ethiopic Ge 'ez Bible. Now, remember,

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I was talking about the Greek. So, we have an Ethiopic Bible, and then you have

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Brian Walton, an English priest, divine, and scholar with a polyglot.

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In Revelation 16 .5, his 1549 Ethiopian, known today as Amharic and formerly as Ge 'ez version, has a

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Latin translation with the words, et eris, you will be.

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So, you've got the, so basically what is being said is, here's the specifics.

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The Ethiopic version is cited by Herman Hoskier in Latin. So, the

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Ethiopic version, one Ethiopic version as cited in Latin.

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Uh -huh. Couple of simple questions.

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Did Beza have this information? Answer, no.

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So, was Beza engaging in a conjectural emendation? Yes.

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Um, are you actually arguing for the supremacy of the

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Ethiopic over the Greek for the New Testament? Do you realize what this would mean to the rest of the

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New Testament if you were to make the Ethiopic? Are you actually arguing that the original was lost but only maintained in the

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Ethiopic? See, I've mentioned a number of times in dealing with Roman Catholic apologists on the subject of sola scriptura versus sola ecclesia, that the more the

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Roman Catholic struggles to get away from the reality of sola ecclesia, the more they're entrapped within it, the more desperate they become.

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Well, in this situation, those who attempt to defend the textus receptus while pretending that they're doing textual criticism end up demonstrating their own unbelievable desperation, abject desperation.

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And here is a great example of it. So, think about the argumentation that the

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TR folks use for Revelation 16 .5 and then the comma johannium and then the pericope adultery.

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So, in other words, Revelation 16 .5, what we're looking at right now, whether it's the Holy One or and shall be the first John 5 -7, the comma johannium and then the pericope adultery, the woman taken adultery.

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Think about the form of argumentation that is presented on each one of these texts to defend them.

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And what you'll recognize, what you are forced to recognize is that they are abjectly contradictory to one another, that they are ad hoc.

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There is no consistency. You could never have created a textual critical methodology that then applied to the manuscripts would come up with the textus receptus.

38:05

You couldn't do it. The TR developed over time. It was an accident of history.

38:14

You have to look at what Erasmus had available to him, what Stephanus had available to him, what

38:19

Beza had available to them, the differences and understandings of textual criticism, the rise of Islam, the fall of Constantinople.

38:29

There's just all sorts of things that led into the creation of the textus receptus.

38:37

The point is, there is no consistent textual critical methodology that would ever lead you to the exact wording of the textus receptus.

38:48

And here's the example of it. Nowhere else are they going to run off to the

38:54

Ethiopic. And when the Ethiopic lines up with the Alexandrian, as it often does, they'll reject it because there's no consistency.

39:03

They're not trying to do textual criticism. They have one goal and one goal only.

39:10

We must defend the TR. And it's not even the TR that they're defending.

39:15

It's the strain that resulted in the 1633 compilation.

39:23

Well, actually the Haskir compilation. So it's even just a part of that as it is.

39:32

I mean, they're not defending Erasmus at this point. They're not defending Stephanus at this point. Only that element that ends up in what they call the

39:40

TR. And so Beza vindicated by an

39:47

Ethiopic that he did not even make reference to himself. I gave his own

39:54

Latin terminology in the book. Passed over in silence. No reason to deal with that because that contextualizes things.

40:03

That's a serious history. We're not doing serious history here. We're just throwing stuff out because we're desperate to defend this position.

40:14

And we will use whatever sources we can get. It doesn't matter if what we use for this verse is completely different from what we use for this verse, which is completely different what we use over this verse over here.

40:25

And that we have to have three, four, five hundred contradictory methodologies.

40:32

Doesn't matter because our ultimate goal is simply the defense of this traditional text.

40:41

And we will do whatever it takes to do it. There you go.

40:48

Amazing. Y 'all keep, you know, I really wish you were investing your time.

40:55

You know, doing something that would be useful to the church and advance the truth.

41:03

But if you're just gonna keep digging for stuff like this, you know, you keep handing it to me and I'll keep explaining to folks.

41:11

See what I mean? This is why you need to look at what these folks are saying and stay away from it.

41:18

Because, wow, inconsistency. Sign of that failed argument.

41:23

Big, big, big, big, big time. Came out just today. There you go. There you go. All right. Let's get to it.

41:32

I would, I can't speed this up because I couldn't download the file. We got to play it off of the web.

41:37

But I couldn't speed it up anyways because Andy Stanley speaks faster than I do. Which is why

41:42

I'm never gonna get to all this because I only have 50 minutes, basically. But here is, the

41:48

Bible told me, so August 27, 2016. I'm going to have to be very brief in my comments to get all this done, which is going to be very hard for me to do.

41:58

But let's dive into it anyway, shall we? Here we go. Check with the series because we're picking up where we left off last week.

42:05

And so, previously on Who Needs God? What we said throughout this series is that there are a whole lot of people, in fact, you may fall into this category, and I'm just thrilled that you're either here or watching if you do.

42:16

A lot of people that feel a little bit stuck in the middle. And here's why. Because there are things about God, and there are things about theism, and there are things about Christianity in particular that are unsettling, that leave us with a lot of unanswered questions.

42:29

At the same time, living in a world where you feel like it's a creatorless universe, that there is no

42:35

God, or at least there's no personal God, that's a little bit unsettling. So on one hand, there's doubt.

42:41

And on the other hand, not for everybody, but for a growing number of people in our population, there's a sense of despair.

42:47

And so again, people are beginning to feel, and perhaps you feel stuck in the middle. I mean, atheism isn't all that appealing as you really think through the implications of atheism.

42:55

At the same time, Christianity or religion may have lost its appeal, especially if you were raised in a religious community, or raised going to church.

43:03

And the reason I say that is, as I mentioned in the last couple of weeks, when I listen to stories of deconversion, or specifically stories of Christian deconversion, you begin to hear the same themes over and over and over.

43:14

And I know we all think we're unique, but we're not. The things that we have in common are more plentiful than the things that cause us to be different.

43:23

So consequently, when a person tells their story of, I grew up in church, and I used to believe, and then I met somebody, I grew up in church, used to believe, but I started asking questions, and I got sort of faith -based answers to my adult fact -based questions.

43:35

When you hear those stories, when I hear those stories, there's a tension. There's a tension of, on one hand,

43:40

I really appreciate my upbringing. I really appreciate some of my experiences as a kid going to church.

43:46

I mean, there's even something in me that when I'm married someday, I think even though I'm not sure I believe it,

43:51

I would like my kids to have the same experience that I had. So there's a tension. At the same time, there are questions that never got answered in Sunday school.

43:58

There are questions that never got answered in church. In fact, you may have been brought up in a church where you were not allowed to ask certain questions.

44:05

And then when you began to ask certain questions, people looked at you like, we just don't ask those questions. You're just supposed to have faith.

44:12

So consequently... Now, let me just mention, I fully understand what his intention here is.

44:20

My fundamental concern is going to be that the theology that he has embraced and has always embraced, non -lordship, salvation,

44:29

Arminian synergism, so on and so forth, doesn't have a sufficient basis to be able to provide the strongest answers.

44:40

And again, this could go back to apologetic methodology, centrality of the Word of God, authority of the Word of God. But you've heard me say over and over again, if we're not talking about these things in the church now, we send our children off to university, they're going to get their theological heads handed to them on a platter.

45:00

But how we answer these questions is going to be fundamentally different. And I just don't believe...

45:08

Well, first of all, I'm going to say right now, so much of what Andy Stanton is going to say about church history, especially, is just so far off the mark.

45:16

I mean, anyone who has listened just to the first 13 lessons in the church history series

45:22

I'm doing right now at PRBC would be able to go, whoa, wait a minute, two weeks ago,

45:28

I heard White reading Ignatius or Clement saying something completely different.

45:33

What are you talking about here? That's going to be one of the problems. But then the theological issues are going to come up as well.

45:39

So, yeah, unfortunately, what you win them with is what you win them to.

45:46

If you preach a man -centered gospel, don't be overly surprised if that falls apart.

45:54

Of course, in a Reformed church, I fully understand that there are people sitting out there that are not truly converted.

46:03

And they're looking for a reason to disbelieve. And they, especially, if they're young people, they go off to university, the hormones hit and it's easy to start looking for reasons to disbelieve.

46:17

Get it, understand. Yeah, you bet. From the church or stepping away from Christianity, again, not embracing atheism, but kind of in that middle where we live with that tension.

46:28

There are generally, as I said last week, there are two threads or two themes in almost all of those stories.

46:34

The last one, the first one we talked about is somebody told me so, God. So last week, we looked at a list of the gods that we grow up believing in that don't exist.

46:44

And I even said, hey, if you've quit believing in these gods or one of these gods, good for you. Because you're right, that God does not exist.

46:52

But we concluded last week by saying that if you lost or you're losing your faith in God, it could be that you've lost or you're losing your faith in a

46:59

God that never existed. That was last week. Today, I wanna move ahead and talk about this, the

47:06

Bible told me so, Jesus. A Bible told me so, Jesus. A Bible told me so,

47:11

Jesus, again, is one of the threads that we hear in deconversion stories all the time. And I have a feeling that for many, many, many of you who are losing faith or who have lost faith, especially in the

47:20

Christian faith, this is a bit of a part of your story. Now, today is gonna be complicated, okay?

47:27

So I need you to think and I need you to track. If you listen casually, you will misunderstand me as hard as I've worked to make this as clear as possible.

47:34

But I think what I'm gonna talk about for the next few minutes is one of the most overlooked parts of the

47:41

Christian faith. In fact, some of you are gonna go, why didn't anyone tell me that before? I've never heard this before. And if you don't believe me,

47:47

Google is your friend. I'm not, I've not made any of this up, okay? I wouldn't do that.

47:52

I'm not smart enough anyway. So I need you to listen really, really carefully. And the reason is this, perhaps you were taught as I was taught,

48:01

Jesus loves me, this I know, and let's all finish it together for the, yes, this is where our trouble began.

48:15

I didn't see anybody leave yet, good. And here's why this is where our trouble began.

48:20

And this is a precious song and we should teach our children this song. But do you remember last week, I said, part of the problem is you grew up, but your faith didn't grow up with you.

48:29

You grew up, but you outgrew your faith. Your childhood God could not withstand the rigors of adulthood and the questions of adulthood.

48:39

And part of it is because our understanding of the Bible and our approach to Jesus did not grow up.

48:45

And we find there's an extraordinary conflict of information and conflict of facts when it comes to the childhood version of Jesus in the

48:53

Bible and what we learn as adults. So Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so is problematic for adults.

49:01

And here's why, because the implication is the Bible is the reason we believe.

49:07

The Bible is the reason we believe. In other words, I can believe that Jesus loves me because it's in the

49:12

Bible. Well, how do you know Jesus loves me? Well, it's in the Bible. How are you confident that Jesus loves you?

49:17

How can you say that? Because it's in the Bible. The Bible says it. I grew up with this. The Bible says it that, anybody fill in the blank, the

49:24

Bible says it that settles it. That's right. The Bible says it that settles it. Now, when I say that, that's unsettling for some of you because that's your whole perspective on Christianity.

49:35

The Bible says it that settles it. So I want you to listen really, really careful, okay? Everybody listening? The problem with that is this, if the

49:44

Bible is the foundation of our faith as the Bible goes, so goes our faith.

49:50

This is why you sent kids off to college or grandkids off to college and they came back with no faith because you sent them to college with the

49:59

Bible says it that settles it. And then a professor got up and says, well, there's problems with the

50:05

Bible. And they begin to talk about things that maybe aren't true or historically verifiable.

50:11

And your smart son or daughter that you spent thousands and thousands of dollars to get them educated come home and suddenly they're smarter than you.

50:17

And they already thought they were smarter than you, but now they have a professor saying, hey, you really are smarter than your Sunday school teacher and your parents.

50:24

If the Bible is the foundation of our faith, here's the problem. It is all or nothing. Christianity becomes a fragile house of cards religion.

50:35

Christianity becomes a fragile house of cards that comes tumbling down when we discover that perhaps the walls of Jericho didn't.

50:42

When somebody in an archeology class or an ancient history class says, you may have heard in Sunday school that the

50:49

Israelites marched around the walls of Jericho and the walls came tumbling down. But we've excavated the city of Jericho and there's no evidence that the walls came tumbling down.

50:57

By the way, while we're on it, there's no evidence that Hebrew people made some sort of trek from Egypt to Canaan, what they call the

51:05

Holy Land. There's no archeological evidence of that. Do you know there are all kinds of contradictions in the Old Testament? There's all these facts and figures that don't add up from Kings to Chronicles to First and Second Samuel.

51:15

By the way, the Bible seems to teach that the earth is only 6 ,000 years old. Everybody knows that the earth is four and a half or 4 .55

51:23

billion years old. The universe is 14 and a half billion years old.

51:29

If the Bible, if the entire Bible isn't true, then the Bible isn't true.

51:36

And if the Bible isn't true, Christianity comes tumbling down. So consequently, during your whole lifetime and during my whole lifetime,

51:46

Christians have felt compelled to defend the Bible because the only way to defend the

51:51

Christian faith is to defend the Bible. Now, can I just point something out? I mean, there's so many things

51:56

I wanted to say up to this point, but we only have so much time. That wasn't just us and our generation.

52:03

That's been from the start. The criticisms of the Christian faith have always been focused upon Scripture.

52:12

The apologists dealt with issues. This has been down through all of Christian history, not just fundamentalism in the

52:23

United States. And obviously, I hope, you know, we have an audience that is made up of folks that have walked with us through a lot of apologetic issues.

52:34

I mean, we started this thing off talking about a conjectural inundation in the Texas Receptus. You're sitting here going,

52:41

Pastor Stanley, you do realize that what you do is you provide your children with a solid foundation to recognize category errors in criticisms of the

52:53

Bible. You help them to understand that we don't have to be ourselves infallible and have an answer to every single thing in every single language.

53:02

But you start off with teaching your young people to have the view of Scripture that Jesus did.

53:11

And you remind them of Jesus' own words in Luke chapter 24, for example.

53:19

The very first things he says to the apostles when he meets with them is he points them to the

53:28

Scriptures. And he upbraids them for their unbelief, but it was their unbelief in not accepting what the

53:37

Scriptures said. Not an unbelief of some experience, but the unbelief of being able to hear what the

53:46

Scriptures themselves were saying. And so you help them to recognize what a

53:51

Christian worldview is and to examine the foundations presuppositionally of the approaches of the critics and so on and so forth.

54:01

And so you look at these archaeological issues and you point out, we don't have evidence of almost anything that happened that far back.

54:12

The idea that you'd expect to find trash in the wilderness after three or 4 ,000 years is a little bit on the silly side, isn't it?

54:22

And so you point these types of things out and then you point them to the positive evidences that do exist in regards to major events in the

54:32

Old Testament. And you disabuse them of any kind of simplistic understanding of the nature of the

54:38

Scriptures themselves. But the fact remains that if the

54:45

Bible is untrue, yeah, the Christian faith is untrue. How do you get around that?

54:52

I mean, you know, from Jesus' perspective, the Scriptures cannot be broken. If they can be, then

54:58

Jesus was wrong. So what's he going to offer in place of this?

55:04

Well, we'll see. The Bible and what your students have discovered, and if you read broadly, you've discovered it is next to impossible to defend the entire

55:16

Bible. But if your Christianity hangs by the thread of proving that everything in the

55:21

Bible is true, you may be able to hang on to it. But your kids and your grandkids and the next generation will not.

55:30

That sounds like capitulation to me. On one side, no single person can defend everything that's in the

55:41

Bible, but whoever dreamed that any one single person could. That's why you have something called the church.

55:48

That's why you have something called Christian scholarship. You have elders in the church, and there are people who have expertise in certain areas and then other people in other areas.

55:59

And when you dig in, you are able to recognize the fundamental problems with so much of the criticism.

56:09

But there is that perspective of Christian apologetics that has pretty much retreated to a very narrow isthmus of mere

56:25

Christianity and has said, you know, we'll give you all the rest of the stuff.

56:30

We're not going to defend inerrancy. We're not going to defend. No, no one can really do that. What we're going to do is we're going to boil everything down to this and build our wall around that.

56:42

And that's how we're going to do this. Simple problem at the end of the day is going to be, you know, for example,

56:53

Pastor Stanley is going to say, well, we don't believe this stuff because the Bible says it. We believe it because Jesus believed.

56:59

He's going to talk about Adam and Eve. And how do you know what Jesus believed again? Well, it's all about the resurrection.

57:07

And you know about the resurrection from where again? And you're back to this idea that many people have today that you can establish these incredible overarching claims for the resurrection and the deity of Christ.

57:24

And therefore, if Christ believed that Adam and Eve existed, then he's got the authority to tell us so. Yeah, where did he tell us that?

57:31

Oh, that's in Scripture. Well, the idea being that we can view

57:38

Scripture as merely generally reliable historical records.

57:47

So you're admitting that there could be problems in it. Well, yeah, if we want to be accepted by the academy, we can't, you can't say you believe in inerrancy or something like that.

57:57

Okay, so how do you know that the sections of Scripture that tell you that Jesus believed in Adam and Eve are not inaccurate?

58:12

I don't know either. Because there really isn't an answer to that because it's not really a coherent apologetic.

58:18

But your kids and your grandkids and the next generation will not. Because this puts the

58:25

Bible at the center of the debate. This puts the spotlight right on the Bible. Everything rises and falls on whether not part, but all the

58:35

Bible is true. And that's unfortunate. And as we're going to discover today, it is absolutely unnecessary.

58:42

Absolutely unnecessary. 32 ,000 people get exposed to this presentation.

58:51

32 ,000 people. Not sitting in that room. It's one of these multi -campus, you know, pastorless campus stuff, which

58:58

I don't, anyway, I wouldn't get into that right now. But 32 ,000 people are basically being, having their apologetic foundation sold for a farthing right here.

59:14

Look up here for a second. If you deconverted from Christianity, if you walked away from Christianity, and part of the reason, it's not all the reason, we're going to talk about that in a few weeks.

59:24

But if part of the reason was, or if part of what you use to justify your decision was, well, there are problems with the

59:32

Bible. We know parts of the Bible aren't true. And if parts of the Bible aren't true, then all of the Bible can't be true.

59:37

And if all the Bible isn't true, then why should I trust any of it? If part of it isn't true, why should

59:42

I trust any of the parts? Besides, I grew up in a church, you would say, where they were told me this is the word of God.

59:47

It's the inspired, infallible word of God. And I found out part of it isn't as fallible. So consequently,

59:53

I don't want to have anything to do with it. If you left Christianity because of any, or part of that kind of thinking,

01:00:00

I want you to listen carefully because you left Christianity unnecessarily.

01:00:08

Now, I, at that point, I just, there's such a level of naivete here in one sense.

01:00:16

Are there people who, you know, the whole idea of left

01:00:25

Christianity. There's so much here that if we really wanted to get deeply into it, we would have to address what

01:00:33

Andy Stanley believes about how a person is a Christian. His anti -lordship stance, his very understanding of synergistic salvation, that the whole idea.

01:00:44

Theology matters and you're seeing it right now. And when you really hear what he's going to say in this presentation, you really understand how vastly different it is to introduce someone to the

01:01:03

Christian faith where God speaks authoritatively. And you understand that God has a purpose and you understand that the word of God has been given to the church for a particular purpose.

01:01:15

And you understand God's sovereign decrees and you have a foundation for recognizing these things.

01:01:23

That foundation is often referenced, but it is substantially weakened within modern

01:01:34

American evangelicalism. Once again, I really wonder, you know, he has basically stood there and said, well, you know, your

01:01:45

Sunday school teachers taught you that the Bible is the infallible word of God, but did they go beyond that? Did they explain why?

01:01:51

Did they go into the nature of inspiration? Did they discuss

01:01:57

Jesus' words in Matthew chapter 22? Have you not read what was spoken to you by God?

01:02:04

John chapter 10, the scriptures cannot be broken. All those texts, do they know what theionistos means?

01:02:13

Have they worked through Peter's men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit, the absolute centrality and final authority of scripture in Jesus' own teaching?

01:02:24

Do they understand that, you know, this was Jesus' view of scripture? I realize that's unfortunately uncommon in many evangelical churches,

01:02:35

I get it. But there's a reason for why it's uncommon. And one of the reasons is in so many of these churches, you have to entertain people because you've brought them into the church on false premises.

01:02:48

You brought them in with entertainment, now you got to keep them entertained. And hey, having Bible study classes and stuff like that is not going to continue to entertain them.

01:02:55

Therefore, you send them out with this same hobbled, challenged foundation, and it's no wonder that they leave.

01:03:07

The question is, were they ever in it in the first place? But you would think that one of the first things you discuss is whether that person actually truly knew.

01:03:17

But you see, once you have a synergistic, non -lordship salvation, tip of the hat type view anyways, then you can just sort of, it's just all up to you anyways.

01:03:27

You don't have to bring in stuff like regeneration and all that highfalutin theology stuff because that just sort of confuses things as we're going along anyways.

01:03:36

The Christian faith does not exist because of the

01:03:42

Bible. In fact, if you forget everything else I say or it just gets confusing from this point out, you just need to know this.

01:03:48

That Christianity does not exist because of the Bible any more than you exist because of your birth certificate.

01:03:57

Okay, think that one through. Think that one through. The Bible is to Christianity what a birth certificate is to you.

01:04:09

Compare that with, again, let's go with Luke 24 because what was he saying to Russell Moore?

01:04:19

Resurrection, resurrection, resurrection. Okay, there's only a couple chapters that specifically talk about Jesus' resurrection and what he did afterwards.

01:04:28

And they are filled, filled with Jesus directing his disciples to what?

01:04:38

The birth certificate of Christianity? Well, one of the problems is here is he's going to say the early church didn't have a

01:04:45

Bible. It sounds just like many Roman Catholics I know. Problem is they did. They did.

01:04:53

And the Bible of the early church was called the Greek Septuagint. It's the Tanakh, the Torah and the

01:04:58

Nevi 'im and the Ketuvim. And they had a Bible. And they had had a

01:05:04

Bible for a long time. And Jesus directed them to that Bible.

01:05:11

And every sermon that we have from the early church recorded in Acts, soaked in Scripture.

01:05:19

Final authority in those sermons, Scripture. Scriptural fulfillment, prophecy,

01:05:25

Messiah, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So what does it mean?

01:05:32

I didn't mean to freeze his face like that, but it is somewhat appropriate in light of what he's saying.

01:05:40

But birth certificate, that's really a meaningful parallel to the centrality of Scripture to the

01:05:49

Christian message. Do you have to have a spiritual nature to understand your birth certificate?

01:05:58

Is your birth certificate called God speaking, Theanoustos? It cannot be broken, et cetera, et cetera.

01:06:04

Yeah, I didn't think so either. More than you exist because of your birth certificate.

01:06:13

Christianity does not exist because of the Bible any more than you exist because of your birth certificate.

01:06:18

Your birth certificate documents something that happened.

01:06:25

And if you lost your birth certificate, the good news is you do not go out of existence.

01:06:33

So exactly how do you know? About the promises of God in the old covenant that give rise to the incarnation, the fulfillment in Jesus Christ and the death, birth, and resurrection of Christ, the meaning of death, birth, and resurrection of Christ without the

01:06:48

Scriptures? Exactly how do you know that? What is... See, there is no parallel here.

01:06:56

You can say that the Scriptures are the covenant documents, but they are the very embodiment of what the promises of God are.

01:07:08

And they're described as the very words of God, as God's very breath. Every denomination that has ever lost its way began here.

01:07:23

Because see, he's got... And I had somebody on Twitter this morning got into it with me.

01:07:29

I was insulting Andy Stanley because I said his church history professor needed to be whipped with a wet noodle. Well, you know, again,

01:07:36

I'm not allowed to have any type of humor or anything like that. I thought whipping with a wet noodle, that was something my mom used to say.

01:07:44

But we're going to see some of these just horrific errors in church history here in a minute. But he's got...

01:07:52

You need to understand he's got the right motivations. He's got nice motivations. Every single heresy in history of church started with a nice motivation.

01:08:00

Started with a nice motivation. You can have all the proper motivations in the world and still go about fulfilling those motivations untruthfully.

01:08:12

You do not exist because of a birth certificate. Listen, it documents your birth.

01:08:19

The New Testament documents something that happened.

01:08:25

To catch that, automatically, New Testament. What happened to the Bible? What happened to the centrality of the

01:08:33

Tanakh as the Bible of the New Testament? This is exactly what Roman Catholics do.

01:08:40

They will say, well, the church didn't have a Bible. Yes, it did. You better believe it did.

01:08:46

So why make the focus of... Well, you know, resurrection. What does 1

01:08:52

Corinthians chapter 15 say? You know, the scriptures, according to the scriptures, according to the scriptures, according to the scriptures, over and over again.

01:08:59

In the earliest creedal statement of the church, according to the scriptures, according to the... Doesn't seem they had the same view that Pastor Stanley has.

01:09:07

The Christianity does not exist because of the Bible. It's actually the other way around.

01:09:13

The Bible that you purchase in a Christian bookstore, the Bible that you have in your home, the Bible that you may be carrying or looking at today, the

01:09:21

Bible that you have online exists because of the Christian faith.

01:09:26

Now, I wanna explain why I'm saying that, but it's gonna require a history lesson, okay?

01:09:32

Is everybody thinking hard? And there's no better way to start a history lesson than with a timeline.

01:09:39

So here we go. You ready? This is probably a message where instead of taking notes, you may just wanna take pictures, okay?

01:09:45

Just turn off your flash, okay? We got plenty of light up here. So just make sure your flash is off.

01:09:50

Now, to get started, I have to say something real quick. We use what's called the Gregorian calendar. You probably know that.

01:09:55

In the first century when Jesus was alive, they used the Julian calendar. So the whole ADBC thing, you know, not to be confused with ACDC, a whole different thing.

01:10:04

The whole ADBC thing started about 500 years after Jesus, that whole

01:10:09

AD, you know, dating the world or dating history with the birth of Christ. It was incorporated into the

01:10:15

Gregorian calendar in about the 16th century. All of that to say Jesus was born about two years or three years before he was born.

01:10:26

Okay, here's what I mean by that. Jesus wasn't actually born in zero because when they went to the different calendar and they were trying to base it off something that had happened several hundred years before in the 16th century, they got it wrong by a few years.

01:10:37

So here's what that means. Here's our calendar. Jesus is born two or three, you know, years

01:10:43

BC, which means, and the reason I make a big deal out of that, is everybody pretty much believes that he was crucified in 30

01:10:49

AD, not 33, crucified in 30 AD. Two and a half days, three days later, he rose from the dead.

01:10:57

And a few weeks later, a few weeks later, the church is launched. A few weeks later, a group of people go into the streets of Jerusalem and they begin to say, we saw him die.

01:11:08

We peered into an empty tomb. He's alive, he's alive. They confronted the people who crucified

01:11:13

Jesus and they say, you crucified him. God raised him. We've seen him say you're sorry. And people began to repent and thousands of people in the city of Jerusalem joined, not officially, but became a part of the church in 30

01:11:27

AD. Now the next big important date, and if you're a Christian, you just need to, this is one of the biggest dates in Christendom, even though it is not referenced in the

01:11:34

Bible, is 70 AD. In 70 AD, Titus had surrounded and built a ditch all the way around the city of Jerusalem.

01:11:42

And on August the 6th, 70 AD, the walls were breached and the Roman army went into the city of Jerusalem.

01:11:50

They burnt down the temple, destroyed the temple, enslaved the Jews, banned Jews eventually from the city.

01:11:56

Thousands were crucified. Hundreds of thousands were shipped off into the slave markets. And this was one of the most sorrowful, chaotic, painful, just unimaginable moments in the history of Judaism.

01:12:11

But it didn't even happen, it culminated in 70, but in 66, in 66 AD, four years before this,

01:12:19

Vespasian, Titus' father, came from the north through Galilee and just rolled up city after city after city after city and village after village after village, enslaving

01:12:27

Jews, enslaving Jews, and herded all the troublemakers down into the city of Jerusalem. He goes to Rome, eventually becomes the emperor, leaves his son to clean up the mess.

01:12:36

Now the reason that's a really, really, really big deal is because nothing around this event is referenced in the

01:12:43

New Testament. Nobody mentions it. And the question is, if you understand history and if you know anything about the

01:12:49

Jewish wars, I mean, this was an unbelievable event and there's no reference to it in the

01:12:56

New Testament. And so one of the big questions in history is why did no one in the New Testament reference it?

01:13:02

And the most logical and probable explanation is this, it hadn't happened yet.

01:13:09

It hadn't happened yet. That's why none of them mentioned it. The reason that's important is this, once the church was launched in 30, the followers of Jesus began to write down the things that Jesus said and they wrote down the things that Jesus did.

01:13:25

That's where we got our gospel called Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and eventually

01:13:31

Acts that follows what happened after Jesus rose from the dead and the church began. And then

01:13:36

Paul began to write his epistle. So between about the years 49 and I believe 70, but let's give some super smart scholars the benefit of the doubt.

01:13:46

Between the year 49 and 89, between 49 and 89, the New Testament manuscripts, the manuscripts that were gathered and became part of your

01:13:54

New Testament in your Bible were written. They weren't written together. They were written by several people.

01:14:01

As you know, several of them are letters that the apostle Paul wrote to specific churches. And so during, and the thing that makes this so important is that all of these documents were written during the time that eyewitnesses were alive.

01:14:15

Now, when you were in school, in fact, you can pick up some books today that say, no, no, the documents were written after 90.

01:14:21

There is zero, zero, zero actual historical evidence for this.

01:14:26

In fact, it is the very opposite. But the reason people wanna push the writing of these manuscripts way out here is because the only way for the legend of the miracles and the legend of the resurrection to have developed would be after all the eyewitnesses were dead.

01:14:42

But all the historical evidence points to the fact that these letters were written early.

01:14:47

In fact, everyone agrees, everyone agrees that the apostle Paul's letters were written in the 50s, like 52

01:14:54

AD, maybe 55 AD, that part of Luke or Acts had to have been written or Luke had to have been written.

01:15:01

Now, let me just jump in here for a second. I appreciate what's trying to be said here.

01:15:10

There's gonna be some pushback, for example. What about people who have a limited

01:15:16

Pauline canon? Ehrman functions on a seven -letter canon of Paul's works and argues that the rest are forged and so on and so forth.

01:15:30

Definitely, I think there are stronger arguments for the earlier dating.

01:15:38

I think one of the strongest, excuse me, arguments for the earlier dating, especially of the

01:15:43

Synoptic Gospels, is that they do reference the destruction of Jerusalem, but not as a past event, but as a future event.

01:15:53

But the way they do it leaves questions as to how the fulfillment could be. If they're written afterwards, they wouldn't leave questions that this is exactly what the fulfillment was, blah, blah, blah, blah.

01:16:03

But since there are questions about that, it would seem to be written before that. The criterion of embarrassment, so on and so forth.

01:16:12

So I know he's going really, really fast. He's being very, very simple in what he's trying to say.

01:16:18

And I appreciate the effort to push the vast majority of New Testament documents to a pre -70 date.

01:16:26

I don't think you need to do that with Revelation, for example. There are people who do, and then that ends up impacting their interpretation of Revelation as well.

01:16:39

But there are some questions I have, and some of the things are being said. Always be careful when someone says, everybody, everybody, everybody.

01:16:49

Because you can always find an exception to the everybody rule. They have been written, or Luke had to have been written, really either in the early 50s or the late 40s.

01:16:58

I mean, there's just no evidence to the contrary. And the only reason to push those dates later is to explain, how did all these miracle stories crop up?

01:17:07

Because you can't have miracle stories rising up and being raised up while all the eyewitnesses are still alive.

01:17:14

Well, Ehrman would definitely argue against that in his most recent book. That's interesting.

01:17:20

Here's something even more amazing. And this is the kind of thing that if you're a Bible reader like I am, I love to read the Bible. I read the

01:17:25

Bible every day. Old Testament, New Testament, love the scriptures. When you read the scriptures, you get to verses like the one

01:17:32

I'm gonna show you, and you just skim over it, and you just read it fast because you say there's nothing here for me. The New Testament authors,

01:17:39

I'm not talking about the whole Bible. I'm talking about Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, First, Second Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, you know, the

01:17:45

New Testament documents. Especially the gospels. The gospel writers pin themselves down to a specific historical, not allegorical context.

01:17:55

They pin themselves down. In other words, the way they wrote the gospels, if they were not true, it would have been so easy to discredit.

01:18:04

It does not read like story. We have lots of first century illustration, second century, third century illustration of story.

01:18:11

It was not written in a story motif. It was written in a historical motif. And I just wanna give you one example.

01:18:16

This is from the book of Luke chapter three. Look at the lengths Luke goes to pin himself down and to pin his story down to a specific historical context.

01:18:27

Look what he says. In the 15th century of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod Tetrarch of Galilee, his brother

01:18:36

Philip Tetrarch of Etruria, and Trachonidas and Lysanias Tetrarch of Abilene during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas.

01:18:43

Now, if you're reading the book of Luke and you get to this part, it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Look at this, this is amazing, okay?

01:18:50

This is a historian's way of saying, fact, check, me,

01:18:56

I, double dog dare you. What I'm about to unroll, what

01:19:01

I'm about to lay out, the story I'm about to tell is narrative. It's history, it happened.

01:19:08

And I'm willing to go so far as to pin down the historical context. This does not read like fable.

01:19:14

This isn't, well, back in the day, you know, we're back in the Roman empire or back when, you know, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

01:19:22

He says, no, no, no. I want you to know exactly when I'm writing because I want you to know when these things happened.

01:19:31

He pins these events to a specific historical context. Now, let me tell you what, this is risky if you're lying.

01:19:39

This is, this makes it so easy to discredit everything you say. Now, there's so much

01:19:44

I could say on this, but I got to move on. But if this is something you're interested in and I hope you're interested in it, I want to refer you to a book.

01:19:49

First week, I put some books up here, you know. I want to refer you to a book. My friend Frank Turek has written a fabulous book called

01:19:56

Stealing from God. In fact, this book references and addresses many of the things we're talking about in this series.

01:20:03

But in chapter seven of this book, Stealing from God, if you want to take a picture, in chapter seven of Stealing from God, he deals specifically with the reliability of the

01:20:12

New Testament documents. Because if the New Testament documents are reliable, it is a game changer in terms of the authenticity and the credibility of Christianity.

01:20:23

Now, isn't that sort of different than what he said earlier? A lot of folks are really confused here.

01:20:33

Are we talking about reliable just in the sense of generally historically reliable? Or are we talking about, if they're reliable about, let's say, about history, then are they reliable spiritually?

01:20:48

You know, how are you not avoiding the house of cards argument here?

01:20:55

Because, for example, Luke, oh man, all sorts of discussions of the census and stuff like that.

01:21:01

And what if your professor comes along and throws that out? What do you do then?

01:21:07

I'm just, I don't know about you, but it sort of lost me at that point while you say the one thing and then spend all this time saying this.

01:21:15

It seems strange. Moving on with our story. These documents, you know, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, all these documents were copied, and this is amazing, were copied and distributed from Jerusalem to Rome to Alexandria, Egypt to Constantinople, all around the

01:21:33

Mediterranean Rim. During this whole part of history, these documents are copied and copied, and they're distributed.

01:21:39

Now, let me just tell you what a big deal this is. Nothing parallels this in history until the creation of the printing press.

01:21:45

There is nothing that even comes close to the explosion of literature and copies of copies of copies of literature.

01:21:53

I mean, nothing with the Roman emperors. They had to hire people to chronicle their lives and their wars and their battles.

01:21:59

There is no example of anyone of no renown having anything written about them, much less this much literature.

01:22:07

It's absolutely amazing. Now, let me ask you a question, because you know this. What do you make copies of?

01:22:15

I mean, when you go to Kinko's or you got a copy at home, what do you make copies of? I mean, you get a handwritten something, it's like, oh,

01:22:22

I'm gonna type this or maybe you actually hand wrote something to copy. What do you make copies of?

01:22:27

The answer is things that you wanna preserve. You make copies of important things.

01:22:35

These documents were considered so important, so important that the people who were copying them were username and password careful, because this was a big deal.

01:22:47

Now, you'll hear sometimes, oh, there's so many copies to errors and so many variations. I have some great news. If you buy any, any

01:22:53

English study Bible, all the major variant readings, you know, this person said this, but this person said this, looks like a copyist edit.

01:23:01

All of the major discrepancies are in the footnotes of your English study Bibles. Do you know why they're in there?

01:23:08

Because there's no secrets. There's no magic. There's no, I hope nobody finds out. That's why sometimes you read your

01:23:14

English Bible and you'll see a footnote or you'll be down at the bottom reading the notes. It'll say, an earlier manuscript says this.

01:23:20

All of those important discrepancies and all those variants are in there and they come, they make no theological difference.

01:23:26

I mean, it's not like one group of manuscripts said Jesus was crucified and another group said he fell off a ladder cleaning the gutters.

01:23:31

And it's like, ah, we don't know what happened. You know, nothing like that, okay? It's an interesting way of putting it.

01:23:38

And I have defended many times that if you apply the same exegetical methodology to Byzantine manuscripts as you do to Alexandrian manuscripts, you've obviously come up with the exact same theology.

01:23:53

You're going to have a different list of verses that support certain teachings between the two.

01:24:01

But again, I'm a little uncomfortable with just the speed and the, you know, it's sort of like a rock skipping over the surface here type of a situation.

01:24:12

You know, give them kudos for even trying, I suppose. Most people just avoid it like the plague. But in general,

01:24:20

I would agree with sort of the conclusions that are being offered here.

01:24:28

All of the variants are minor, minor, minor, and the ones that might make any little bit of difference, they're actually in the footnotes of your

01:24:35

English study Bible. Yeah, they are. There is a tendency to underestimate the importance of a variant like John 1, 18, whether it says monogamous hwios or monogamous theos, only, you know, unique son or unique God, I think is sort of important.

01:24:58

But the deity of Christ doesn't stand on that. But there is a tendency to say, well, you know, they don't really matter.

01:25:06

Well, actually some of them do. It's due to the fact that Scripture doesn't give us vitally important dogmas in only one verse that you can generally state they don't impact things.

01:25:22

But that's not to say that textual variants are not important. Variations had no consequence. Now, here's the thing that I want you to understand.

01:25:29

Do you follow me? The men and women who copied these important documents, they did not make copies because they thought they were inspired.

01:25:41

How do you know that? We don't know the name of a single scribe, to my knowledge, of early manuscripts.

01:25:53

So how do you know that? How do you know what the scribes thought? So you've fallen into the same trap of Bart Ehrman, where he seems to think he can mind read scribes, too.

01:26:04

How do you know that? In fact, given that fact, from 255 onward, and earlier in some areas, much earlier in some areas, but empire -wide, even the possession of these

01:26:17

Christian scriptures was illegal and could cost you your life.

01:26:24

You're telling me that they were making copies of documents they thought were important but uninspired? How do you know this?

01:26:35

If you're going to make it a bullet point, you might want to explain it. They made copies of the

01:26:40

Gospels because they believed they were true. So there's a difference between being inspired and being true.

01:26:50

Huh? Where's this coming from? Because they knew eyewitnesses, or they knew people who knew eyewitnesses.

01:27:00

God had done something in history. Wait a minute, wait a minute. The scribes knew eyewitnesses or someone who knew eyewitnesses?

01:27:07

How do you know these things? He'd been going along, you know, I'm going, okay, I wouldn't put that way, but okay, and all of a sudden, and I have no idea what happened here.

01:27:20

Just like the video hiccup or something. I don't know. Oh my gosh, are you kidding? I'm going to be, you mean you're going to let me hang on to this for an hour and copy as my view?

01:27:29

Wow, I get to take this home unless it was so expensive, and then, you know, there wasn't like paper, there were wax tablets, it was so, and...

01:27:36

Huh? What? There wasn't, there wasn't paper, there was wax tablets? What?

01:27:42

You were just talking about the New Testament manuscripts. They were made of papyri. All the manuscripts we have from, we don't have any manuscripts in the first century, but from the beginning of the second century are papyri, not wax tablets.

01:27:57

Again, at this point, I started going, okay, it almost seems like up to a certain point, he had a foundation, and now he's gone off into some stuff where I don't know what he's reading, but it's sort of weird.

01:28:08

That's what I mean. There was this explosion around the teachings and the life of Jesus.

01:28:15

Okay, back to our timetable. Then something extraordinary happens. In 312, Constantine, at the

01:28:20

Battle of Milvian Bridge at the Tiber River, he destroys Maxentius' army.

01:28:26

There were actually three emperors at the time, so Constantine gets rid of his primary enemy, his primary adversary, the third guy nobody cared about anyway, and in 312, essentially,

01:28:36

Constantine becomes the undisputed emperor of Rome. The Tetrarchy comes to an end, and the church, during this time, this is what's so amazing, is between the time of Jesus' death and the destruction of the temple and the time that Constantine became emperor, the church, this is one of the unexplained mysteries of history, the church had gained extraordinary and unexplainable influence in the world, and during most of this time, the church was persecuted.

01:29:07

During most of these times, you could not be caught with fragments and scraps of these documents, and most of these times, the emperors from time to time would just make it open season on the

01:29:16

Christians, and yet, in spite of all that, between 30 and 312 when Constantine became the undisputed emperor of Rome, Christianity had spread so far that before it was legal, before it was legal,

01:29:30

Constantine's mother had converted to Christianity, so he lifts the religious restrictions, allow a lot of religions to become a reality in the

01:29:39

Roman Empire. He personally, ultimately, as you know, embraced Christianity, but here's one of the most fascinating things.

01:29:46

In your ancient history classes and in most ancient history books, do you know what the explanation is as to why

01:29:52

Constantine made Christianity legal? It was not his personal faith.

01:29:59

Constantine, this is a showstopper. Constantine legalized

01:30:05

Christianity to unify the empire. There were so many

01:30:12

Christians in the Roman Empire that became Christians between here and here that when he had the power, he realized,

01:30:19

I need something to unify this empire. Oh my gosh, I think it might be this new

01:30:25

Christian faith. How in the world did that happen? Here's my point.

01:30:31

Christianity made its greatest strides during the 282 years before the

01:30:36

Bible even existed. Well, that would have been really surprising to all the early church fathers who during those 282 years had been teaching the

01:30:56

Bible. It's again, fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of scripture than the centrality of the

01:31:07

Greek septuagint to the early church, the centrality of the teaching and preaching of scripture to the early church and all the rest of that stuff.

01:31:17

Christianity made its greatest strides during the 282 years before the Bible even existed. Unbelievable.

01:31:26

I'll tell you what we're going to do. We're into the second hour and as I promised, we're being joined by a man who amazingly does such tremendous work despite being a

01:31:44

Canadian. That is what is so amazing. How do you like that introduction,

01:31:51

Dr. Costa? I thought you were talking about somebody else. Who?

01:31:59

Maybe D .A. Carson? Well, you know, it's a burden you have to bear, but some of you have done such a great job anyways.

01:32:08

Thank you. Thank you for joining us, Dave. I hope you don't mind, but I'm still talking about Andy Stanley and I sort of got the feeling you probably wouldn't mind commenting as well as we're getting into some of the juicy stuff.

01:32:21

So I thought, hey, as soon as Tony gets online, we'll bring him up. And I don't know if you're watching or if you can see it or you're just hearing, but we have the video frozen with Andy standing in front of his 47 -inch widescreen

01:32:38

TV. And it says, Christianity made its greatest strides during the 282 years before the

01:32:44

Bible even existed. So I guess the

01:32:49

Bible just came into existence in 312. Maybe Constantine found it at the

01:32:55

Milvian Bridge or something. I'm not really sure. But I was just commenting on the implicit misunderstanding that Brother Stanley has of the centrality of the, especially the

01:33:09

Greek scriptures to the early church. And then, of course, by 312, you had, ever since Chertullian and onwards, you have the

01:33:16

Latin taking a, the old Latin specifically, taking more and more of a role.

01:33:22

And that's basically where we are. Did you get a chance to listen to this sermon at all? No, I did not, unfortunately.

01:33:30

Okay, well, you'll get to listen along with us here. We're at, let's see, 26 minutes of 37 in the last few hours.

01:33:40

So we're, it shouldn't take us too long to get through this, but we'll just sort of have you join in here.

01:33:45

Let's continue on with Andy Stanley here. There was no Old Testament, New Testament put together where somebody could say, the

01:33:52

Bible says, the Bible says, the Bible says. Christianity was not born on the back of the Bible says, the Bible says, the

01:33:58

Bible says. In fact, that I quoted on Twitter and got in trouble for that. The Christianity was not born on the back of the

01:34:05

Bible says, the Bible says, the Bible says. And I made the comment, and as you saw on Twitter, at least one fellow by the name of Will Stewart just thinks

01:34:14

I'm a terrible, horrible man and unloving for making the comment that Andy Stanley does not seem to have done any reading in the early

01:34:23

Church Fathers. No, no, it's pretty abysmal. And so I think that has a profound effect on his theology, as you could see, that that affects his theology.

01:34:36

And you've always rightly pointed out, James, that it's your theology that should define your apologetics, not the other way around.

01:34:43

Yeah, and that's, obviously, like I said, anyone who's listened to the

01:34:48

Church History series I'm doing at PRBC, or even the Church History series I did years ago back in the 90s,

01:34:53

I've just done some reading in the early Church Fathers. I mean, you look at the controversy at the time of the

01:35:02

Council of Nicaea, which is only 13 years after this. Was this some new thing that they had the ability to now start arguing about the

01:35:10

Scriptures? I mean, it's just sort of like, has he not read Ignatius or Clement or how many citations there are from the

01:35:20

Scriptures from the beginning? It's just part and parcel of what we have in the early

01:35:28

Church Fathers. And so for him to say, oh, hey, there wasn't, no one was saying the Bible says the Bible says.

01:35:34

Well, they were saying the Scripture says, you know. Okay, so there wasn't a 66 -book canon until the 39th

01:35:42

Festal Letter of Athanasius. Okay, I got it. But that doesn't mean that the

01:35:48

Scriptures were not functioning from the very beginning as the very Word of God within the

01:35:54

Church. I don't know where you get this type of stuff. That's right. I don't know where he studied his Church history.

01:35:59

I really don't. I do. Oh, you do? Okay. Dallas Theological Seminary. Oh, okay.

01:36:06

Yeah, well, and that's the other thing I got in trouble with, because I said his Church history professor needs to be whipped with a wet noodle 50 times, which again,

01:36:15

I'm not allowed to have a sense of humor about any of these things. But something tells me his

01:36:21

Dallas prof did tell him these things, but Church history doesn't necessarily stick with all seminary students, is my experience.

01:36:28

No, no, it doesn't. That's the problem. All right, let's go back to Andy here. Timetable. The Jewish Scriptures, the

01:36:34

Jewish Scriptures that we call the Old Testament, which is, listen, it was such an insult to Jewish people to basically say, hey, the

01:36:41

Jewish Scriptures, we're going to take those. Thank you very much. We're going to put them with our Scriptures and put a new name on it. Highly offensive to Jewish people.

01:36:47

The Jewish Scriptures were not combined with these New Testament documents until 350

01:36:54

A .D. because it was extraordinarily expensive. It was an entirely Greek version.

01:36:59

Almost nobody could read it, basically. It was not for... Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Did you? I had missed that before.

01:37:06

It was an entirely Greek Scripture. No one could read it. What? What was the lingua franca here?

01:37:12

What? Oh, my. You know,

01:37:18

James, I think of Justin Martyr in his apology where he talks about how a common

01:37:24

Sunday gathering was the reading of the prophet. He goes into detail about reading from the apostles and epistles and so forth.

01:37:32

So to say that the New Testament was crammed into the canon until 350

01:37:39

A .D. is just absolutely historical nonsense. Oh, it doesn't make a bit of sense. And now he's just put up Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus.

01:37:46

At least he's got the dates pretty much right on that. Mid -4th century, that's good. But no one could read these things.

01:37:52

Why were they being produced then? The point was that they could be read. And we have... It's only, what, another 40 years until Jerome starts working on the

01:38:02

Vulgate at this point. But we have the Old Latin at this time. It may not be as consistent as the Vulgate becomes.

01:38:08

But the idea that this was not readable to someone or that... Wow. That's incredible.

01:38:16

But remember, Tony, 32 ,000 people watch this each

01:38:21

Sunday. And how many of them are nodding their heads while he's saying this? Well, actually, to be honest with you, the few times the camera's gone out to the audience, it's been most people just sort of...

01:38:32

I don't know what he's talking about. It's the wrong kind of head nod. Yeah, yeah,

01:38:37

I don't think... Well, but again, the speed he's doing this at, though, I must give him props. He can talk much faster than even

01:38:43

I can. And most people would say that I'm actually rather skilled at talking quickly. But anyway, we press on here.

01:38:49

I had not caught that before, that no one could read it anyways. But wow. Oh, it's about this thick.

01:38:54

There's no telling how much money it costs. Nobody was going to own one. But it's the first time that we know of, there may have been some other copies that have been lost.

01:39:01

But the first occasion we know where Old Testament Jewish scriptures was put together with New Testament, these

01:39:06

New Testament documents, is 350 years after the birth of Christ.

01:39:13

But any serious historian goes, but you look at the writings of the early church fathers, you look at the writings before this time period, and it doesn't...

01:39:25

Look, even the Septuagint existed in multiple volumes at times.

01:39:31

It doesn't have to be in the single cover of a single book for that to have anything to do with canonicity or authority or anything like that at all.

01:39:41

I mean, when someone copied P72, which is the earliest copy we have of 1st, 2nd Peter, and Jude, it didn't matter what it was bound with as to what its authority was.

01:39:53

The issue was apostolic authorship and consistency and so on and so on. The idea of the binding of it just doesn't...

01:40:01

I don't even know where this stuff is coming from. I really, really don't. Well, I think, James, we need to get someone to send

01:40:07

Andy, Dr. Michael Kruger's book and visit it. Oh yeah, oh yeah. Desperately get it registered and send to him

01:40:14

ASAP and get him to read through that. Maybe we could get Dr. Kruger to go up there and have lunch.

01:40:19

I think that'd be a good thing. Here's the clincher. This was not even referred to as the Bible until about 30 years later.

01:40:28

Now, here's my point. Okay, is his point only that the terminology of the

01:40:35

Bible is the issue? I mean, is he really honestly saying that the reason that he can say that Christianity can be true, even if there's problems with the

01:40:51

Bible, is because the term the Bible becomes of a single large volume is something that's later in church history?

01:41:02

I guess that's what he's saying. I don't know. But look, should this be known by most of the people in our churches?

01:41:10

Should we be going over this stuff? Should there be an interest in it? Yes, of course. And I don't know about you,

01:41:17

Tony, but I know that when I teach Sunday school, we cover a lot of this stuff.

01:41:24

And that probably bore some of my people to death. But it's a great thing. I know one young man went off to university after listening to me for years and years.

01:41:34

And it was a couple of years in, I get a note from him that says, you know, I used to think you were a little bit weird because you kept saying that you're going to hear this and you're going to hear that.

01:41:46

And I went off and he went off to a Christian university and going to a Christian university, says, guess what?

01:41:52

I heard everything that you had said I was going to hear and I was prepared for it. Thank you very much.

01:41:58

Yeah, well, I'm thankful to God, James, that when I did my graduate studies, some of my undergraduate studies at the

01:42:05

University of Toronto, God literally threw me into the critic's den. Oh, yeah. And I know you did the same at Fuller.

01:42:11

At the University of Toronto, I had the great opportunity to come under the teaching of some prominent liberal theologians.

01:42:19

And so I've learned their language. I understand the terminology. And so I just thank the

01:42:24

Lord that I had that opportunity because now I can teach my students what to watch out for, know the buzzwords, and there's how you respond to it.

01:42:33

It does seem that when you, if you encounter these folks without a meaningful foundation, so many end up spinning off.

01:42:43

But people like you and I who have dealt with these things, I mean, I've told the story many times of my

01:42:49

Pentateuch teacher assigning us to read, for example, Gerhard von Rath's commentary on Deuteronomy.

01:42:56

And I did. And I listened. I read it carefully. I didn't just put it off or didn't go,

01:43:04

I'm not going to read this heresy. I read it very carefully. I tried to understand the worldview implications and exegetical implications, all the rest of it.

01:43:12

And then we had to write a positive negative review. And honestly, the only thing

01:43:18

I could say positively about it was that it had a very nice binding. And then I went into the negative and I got a 98.

01:43:25

Now, I don't think you could do that at Fuller anymore because the professor could tell that I had actually read the book and I was interacting with it in an accurate fashion.

01:43:34

That has given me a tremendous advantage that a lot of people, I think, who become enamored with this stuff, if they had had a solid foundation in the first place, maybe they wouldn't have, you know, gone flying off into outer space.

01:43:50

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, we send, you know, we don't send our women into military operations without military training.

01:43:57

Oh yeah. And yet we send our young people into college and university with no spiritual training in these areas.

01:44:04

And so many parents, even up here in Canada, I can't even count on my hands how many times parents bemoan the fact that their children, after completing secular university, walk out the other end as agnostics and atheists because they feel that their faith has been disproven.

01:44:19

So it's a very important calling to teach our young people. I think Wilberforce put it correctly that in his day he said that our young people, we're losing them because we're not training them in defense of their faith.

01:44:31

Well, the scary thing is, I think Andy Stanley would agree with what you just said, but he thinks what he's doing is actually accomplishing that.

01:44:39

And that's the, there's obviously more than one way to try to do this. And this way is a little bit scary.

01:44:46

But let's press on here. This is so, if you left Christianity because, oh, the Bible, just look at this, it's so important.

01:44:52

Okay. My point is this, this is unreal. Before the Old Testament, and it wasn't even called the

01:44:59

Old Testament until about 130 years after Jesus' resurrection. Before the Old Testament and New Testament, and it wasn't called the

01:45:06

New Testament until about 250 years after Jesus' birth. Before the Old Testament, New Testament were combined and titled the

01:45:13

Bible. This is unbelievable. Christianity had already, before there was a

01:45:20

Bible, had already replaced the pantheon of Roman, barbarian, and most Egyptian gods.

01:45:25

And it was the state religion of the Roman empire. And no one had ever held in their hand a

01:45:34

Bible. Do you understand that?

01:45:42

No, that was a lot of heat there, James, but no light. Because is he saying that those scriptures were not absolutely central to every theological dispute that they had been quoted for from the beginning as having authority, whether we're talking about, was there anybody who questioned the authority of a citation from Isaiah or from the

01:46:07

Pentateuch, anything? What does it matter what the printed form and bound form of a book was?

01:46:17

It is so painfully obvious that the early church fathers knew that there was such a thing as scripture, what they called it, where they used our modern language.

01:46:28

Obviously, for example, many of those manuscripts do not have the same canon order that we have.

01:46:34

Would that be relevant? Would it be relevant if we said, well, you know, in manuscript

01:46:40

P46, Hebrews comes right after Romans, and that proves that you don't have to worry about anything.

01:46:47

What is, I don't understand the relevance of any of this. I really don't get it. You have to not understand how the early church dealt with,

01:46:56

I mean, the Eastern church had dealt with Sabellianism in the second century. How did they do it?

01:47:03

What did they base it on? What were they arguing over? Well, it was the scriptures. So what does it matter what they were bound in or anything else?

01:47:11

I just, I don't follow it. And you can't, if you can't see it, unfortunately, once again, the video froze at a very, thanks,

01:47:19

Rich, a very, you'll have to go back and watch, Tony, because it's rather interesting.

01:47:25

But we press forward here because time is short. Ever held in their hand a

01:47:31

Bible. The first, second, and third century Christians who faced tremendous hardship, don't miss this, believed

01:47:41

Jesus loved them before the Bible told them so.

01:47:47

So who told them so? Is this, you know,

01:47:53

I can, I can understand, I've heard arguments like this from Roman Catholics. For the, for the centrality of oral tradition.

01:48:01

Okay, I've gotten that. But that's not where he's going here. So is he just not grasping that you can have the scriptures vitally functioning within the church, even if they are in, you know, you have a gospels manuscript, and then you have the epistles and the general epistles.

01:48:27

You have Paul's epistles. Is he not understanding that that, I don't, I don't follow it.

01:48:33

It doesn't make a lick of sense to me. I wish I knew what his influences were, what he thinks he's reading.

01:48:41

I don't think Frank Turek is saying anything like this in that book that he referenced. I just don't get it.

01:48:47

I really don't. Do you, Tony? No, I don't get it. Sorry. Certainly sound like the

01:48:53

Roman argument for the, the sola ecclesia. I thought about it. It does. Yeah.

01:48:58

Yeah. But that's not where he's going to go with it. Thankfully, anyway. Peter believed Jesus loved him. James did.

01:49:03

John, Luke, Paul. They listened. Look, this is huge. Peter, James, Paul, the apostles, they did not choose to follow

01:49:10

Jesus because of an infallible Old Testament or a non -contradicting New Testament. What does that mean?

01:49:20

Again, they did not choose to follow Jesus. And yet they're the very ones that constantly tell us that Jesus taught them to look to the scriptures, that all the prophets, in one of Peter's very first sermons, what does he say?

01:49:39

That from Moses through all the prophets, they testified that Jesus is the

01:49:44

Christ. So what does that mean? Are you telling me that they believed the scriptures were able to be broken?

01:49:53

That they were filled with error? Uh, there was no New Testament at that time. No, no question about it.

01:49:59

No one's arguing it there was. But the scriptures remained absolutely central.

01:50:06

I, I don't, I don't, I don't get it. I'm, I'm lost. I'm, I'm completely confused as to how he thinks.

01:50:15

See, what I want to know is if, if, if he's talking to someone who's lost their faith, how is this supposed to help them?

01:50:22

What is he directing them to? I, I don't, I don't get it. In other words, imagine this conversation...

01:50:27

Oh, I'm sorry. Sorry, sorry, James, I was just going to say, I mean, even in John 1, I believe it's verse 45, where the disciples say, listen, we have found him whom the

01:50:36

Law and the Prophets spoken about, either. And so again, why would they be following just any run -of -the -mill

01:50:42

Messianic claimant? Exactly. It makes absolutely no sense. Even Peter says, in 2 Peter 1, I think you mentioned this already, that we did not follow clearly devised fables, but that we followed, we saw him, we were witnesses, and this witness wasn't scripturated, it was written down.

01:50:56

Yep, there's no question about it. I mean, there is, there is a serious scriptural problem with Andy Stanley.

01:51:03

Station. You know, somebody with all this information, you know, comes to the, to Apostle Peter, let's say the

01:51:09

Apostle Peter, and says, Peter, hey, before you get all geeked out on this following Jesus thing, do you realize there's no evidence for a worldwide flood?

01:51:17

Hey, Peter, before you get all crazy about the Jesus thing, do you know that there's no archaeological evidence for the Exodus?

01:51:23

Hey, Paul, before you get all going, Peter, before you go crazy about the Jesus thing, you realize, okay, the earth is more than 6 ,000 years old, that whole genealogy and Genesis.

01:51:32

Peter would have looked at you like, I'm not really sure what you're talking about, but, but, I followed a man for three years who spoke like no other man spoke.

01:51:42

He was arrested and crucified, and we thought, game over, because he said too much to be a good teacher, he claimed too much about himself to be a good teacher, game over, we're all in hiding, a bunch of women come babbling that the tomb is empty, the tomb is empty.

01:51:56

I looked into an empty tomb, and do you know what I concluded? Somebody stole the body.

01:52:04

And a few days later, I had breakfast with my risen friend on the beach.

01:52:09

So I'm not sure about 6 ,000 year old earth, I'm not sure about archaeological evidence, I'm not sure about all that.

01:52:15

The reason I'm following Jesus is because I saw him die, and I saw him alive, and I went into the streets of Jerusalem to say,

01:52:23

God has done something among us. For the first 300 years, the debate centered on an event, not a book.

01:52:34

For the first 300 years of the existence of Christianity, the debate was about an event, not a book.

01:52:41

The question was not, is the Bible true, is the Bible true, is the Bible true? The question was, did Jesus rise from the dead?

01:52:49

Well, that's a rather simplistic statement that I think Celsus probably would have disputed.

01:52:57

This, again, was why I was saying on Twitter, did he take church history? Because, okay, the issue was not post -Enlightenment questioning of the existence of supernatural revelation, that's true, because the

01:53:12

Enlightenment hadn't happened yet. But there was so much discussion of these very, he's obviously not read

01:53:18

Justin Martyr, he's obviously not read Tertullian, any of these folks that were having to deal with the consistency of the

01:53:29

Gospels, the consistency of the narratives, the relationship between Paul and Jesus and their teaching, it's all there.

01:53:37

What I don't, to say it was about an event, not about a book, is to try, it seems they're trying to turn the resurrection into something that can be separated from its scriptural narrative and turned into some sort of esoteric thing that maybe they think can't be attacked, maybe it's safe or safer than Scripture because you don't have to deal with Exodus issues or whatever else he's talking about.

01:54:05

I don't know. I know there are people who do sort of take that apologetic perspective to an extreme, but that kind of statement is amazing to me.

01:54:19

Yeah, I agree with you, James. I mean, the event, we know about the event because of the book. And when we consider the fact that the early

01:54:27

Church began to, when the threat of Gnosticism raised its ugly head, what were the

01:54:33

Gnostics doing? Well, they were interpreting the event, but they were saying that Jesus was not a real human being, he was a divine teacher who came down amongst us, and they started producing their own

01:54:43

Gospels, the Gnostic Gospels and so forth, which led the Church, of course, to start defining the boundaries of its canonicity.

01:54:51

So this idea, you're absolutely right, he is verging off into this Gnostic, esoteric, experiential thing.

01:54:59

And he's detaching it from the book. And that, I think, is a dangerous thing.

01:55:04

Well, of course, Peter, Paul, James, and John are not going to be talking like that because they're inspired writers who wrote the text for us.

01:55:10

They bore witness to what they saw. But it's a very dangerous slide, James.

01:55:15

I think the slippery slope that he's on, I think he's going to end up at one point just denying inerrancy altogether.

01:55:21

Well, yeah, I think he already has. But we're going to get to something else here in just a minute that I think will help illustrate that.

01:55:28

And we're making good progress. We're almost there. Maybe I can't speed him up much because he talks so fast.

01:55:34

If I speed him up, then no one will understand a word he's saying anyways. So back to it here. Rise from the dead.

01:55:42

And Matthew said he did, and Mark said he did, and Luke said he did, and John said he did, and Peter said he did, and James, the brother of Jesus, said he did, and the apostle

01:55:50

Paul, who hated Christians, eventually came to the conclusion Jesus rose from the dead.

01:55:56

There is no explanation for the success of the early church if it had not been so.

01:56:02

That's why every single Easter, every single Easter, I begin our service by saying we believe that Jesus rose from the dead, not because the

01:56:10

Bible says so. It is way better than that. Christianity, don't miss this,

01:56:16

Christianity does not hang by the thread of the Bible tells me so. And if your church sent you off to college with that house of cards,

01:56:26

I apologize. And if your entire life, your whole thing has been, I gotta defend the

01:56:32

Bible, I gotta defend the Bible. Uh -oh, there's information that looks like it contradicts the Bible. I can't look over there. Honey, don't look over there. I'm so sorry you were left with that fragile version of our faith.

01:56:44

Because the original version, the pre -Bible version was defensible.

01:56:51

It was endurable. It was persecutable. It was fearless. It was compassionate.

01:56:59

And it was compelling. Wow, I guess that's what he thinks he's offering is the pre -Bible version.

01:57:08

But I have no earthly idea how he thinks that what he believes is pre -Bible anything.

01:57:15

I mean, outside of, well, not to quote Sinaiticus Vaticanus, do you have Bible? But that doesn't make a lick of sense to anyone who's read anything in the early church fathers.

01:57:25

So what about having the scriptures in smaller portions makes that vital and defensible and no longer a house of cards?

01:57:40

I don't know. And I don't think Tony knows either, do you? No, I don't.

01:57:47

But he's emotional about it. And if you're a millennial, that means everything. Because evidently, you know, the fellow on Twitter thinks that I'm terrible.

01:57:59

Because since he's emotional about it and he's very sincere about what he's saying, then that makes it good.

01:58:07

Unfortunately, obviously someone who holds that position has never talked to a Mormon missionary before either, unfortunately.

01:58:13

So now that you're an adult, now that you've grown up, now that I'm challenging you to embrace the grown up God and the grown up version of the precious, precious, precious scriptures that I take so seriously, not because they're in the

01:58:29

Bible, but because Jesus rose from the dead and Jesus talked about the

01:58:36

Jewish scriptures. So now that you're an adult... Oh, wait a minute. Jesus talked about Jewish scriptures.

01:58:43

I agree. And I've often said we need to have Jesus's view of scripture. But how do we know

01:58:50

Jesus's view of scripture? How does he know Jesus's view of scripture? In the very

01:58:57

New Testament that he just said that we need to have a faith that's before that? I...

01:59:03

Okay, I'm getting luster and luster as time goes by here. Let me just say this to you.

01:59:11

Jesus loves you. This you know. For John, who watched him die and had breakfast with him on the beach, tells you so.

01:59:21

Jesus loves you, this I know. For Luke, who thoroughly investigated the events, wrote them down meticulously and interviewed eyewitnesses, made sure it was so.

01:59:34

Jesus loves you, this I know. Because a Pharisee who hated

01:59:39

Christians, who was gonna arrest Christians, who was gonna single -handedly stop the Jesus movement, became a

01:59:44

Jesus follower and risked his life traveling all around the Gentile Mediterranean rim to make sure that you'd know.

01:59:53

Jesus loves you, this we know. Because his original followers were martyred believing it was so.

02:00:01

And Jesus loves you, this you can know. For the early church defied, this is so amazing, because the early church defied an empire and the temple because they were convinced it was so.

02:00:16

See, the reason you should consider following Jesus is not because the

02:00:22

Bible says so. It is not about the Bible, it is all about a who.

02:00:28

It is not about a what, it is not about a book, it is about a who. Okay, am

02:00:33

I being unfair, Tony? I'm finding this absolutely incoherent.

02:00:40

Yeah, I agree with you. Everything he just said, I agree with in the sense of Matthew and Luke and Paul, but the only way

02:00:52

I know anything about Matthew, Luke, and Paul is from the scriptures.

02:00:59

Yeah, exactly. I don't... There's a disconnect here, James. I don't understand what it is, but there's obviously a disconnect here.

02:01:07

He's saying that John told us so, Paul told us so. Well, where do they tell us? So how does he know what he knows?

02:01:13

He knows it because it's written down. I mean, if these guys were martyred and they did not write down these letters and the gospel accounts, we would not have their testimony.

02:01:25

Their record would not be available to us. So I don't understand this anti -Bible attitude that Andy is proposing here.

02:01:33

I don't get it either. And of course, I would even go beyond this to point out, look, if there is not a supernatural harmony and unity to these documents, you can't tell us what the meaning of the resurrection is.

02:01:48

You can't tell us what the meaning of the cross is. If there's not that... It almost seems like he's afraid of the supernaturalism of inspiration because, well, you know, we all know that you can't start there.

02:02:01

And that's actually something we're going to get into here in a moment when we talk about our Muslim friends, but it almost sounds like he's afraid of it and doesn't want to allow that in.

02:02:10

He's getting right to the end here. He's just... He's wrapping up. We've got about two minutes. Here we go. It has everything to do with who

02:02:16

Jesus claimed to be and the fact that he punctuated his claims by dying on the cross and rising from the dead and predicting his own death and resurrection.

02:02:25

And fortunately for us, the eyewitnesses of those events documented those events, but they did...

02:02:32

This is important. They did not document what they believed. They documented what they saw.

02:02:43

Again, epistemological chaos. Having a coughing fit over here,

02:02:49

James, as we're speaking. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to spray this on you, but I'm just... I mean, when

02:02:54

John tells us in his gospel that he who sees this testifies that this is true, he tells us over and over and over again, the one who writes it, the one who gives testimony is telling you the truth.

02:03:05

I mean, it's incredible. And that by believing these things, you can have eternal life, which means he obviously is not pretending this is some kind of dry

02:03:13

Reuters News article either. Yes, and these things, these things in John 20, 31, these things is the gospel.

02:03:21

It's the record. Yep, yep. And see, I just don't understand why he thinks this is going to be helpful to the person that I'm not questioning.

02:03:31

He wants to help the person, but he's actually giving them pablum.

02:03:36

He's giving them the exact opposite of what they need to hear. He's sawing off the branch on which he's sitting on.

02:03:43

Yep. He's basically getting rid of the basis, the testimony of Scripture. Jesus died on the cross for me.

02:03:50

How do you know that? Where did you get that idea from? Well, it comes from the Scriptures. So I mean, the guy is simply sawing the branch off on which he's sitting.

02:03:58

It's amazing. Well, hopefully there won't be any more explosions like that here before then.

02:04:04

If you stepped away from Christianity because of something in the Bible, if you stepped away from the

02:04:10

Christian faith because of Old Testament miracles, if you stepped away from the Christian faith because you couldn't reconcile 6 ,000 years with a four and a half billion year old earth and something you heard in biology or learned in biology,

02:04:22

I want to invite you to reconsider because the issue has never been, is the

02:04:29

Bible true? The issue has always been, who is

02:04:35

Jesus? Christianity, Christianity did not disrupt the

02:04:42

Roman empire because of a true Bible. Christianity disrupted the

02:04:47

Roman empire because of a resurrected Savior. And again, the two statements have, the man is committing category errors that are absolutely astounding.

02:05:02

And how, and when they proclaim that resurrected Savior, did they not proclaim that resurrected

02:05:08

Savior based upon the prophetic fulfillments? Of the true scriptures?

02:05:13

Or was it just the not so true scriptures? Or they may be true scriptures or that you can take them or leave them scriptures. Again, the disjunction, it's not something the early church made.

02:05:26

It's something he's making up. And I do not see what this is supposedly supposed to grant to someone who is actually in the position that he is talking about of whose quote unquote lost their faith.

02:05:40

Now we would need to have a theological discussion of what faith is in the first place, but I just don't see where he,

02:05:47

I don't get it. Almost there, a minute and a half here. We can survive. We can do it.

02:05:54

So, Jesus loves you. This you can know. A resurrected Savior who loves you, this you can know.

02:06:03

He died for your personal sins to prove. It was so.

02:06:10

If you have stepped away from Christianity because of the Bible, I want to encourage you to reconsider.

02:06:19

I'm convinced you may have stepped away unnecessarily. Well, thank you,

02:06:24

Pastor Stanley. I, well,

02:06:30

Tony, that's the world we live in. And you well know that every day we have to deal with unbelief and expressions of skepticism and everything else.

02:06:44

It's one thing dealing with those expressions of skepticism when they are coming from unbelievers and those who are promoting another religious perspective.

02:06:54

But there is honestly a much more burdensome, onerous element when it's, you know, we're on the front lines trying to advance the kingdom, and it's friendly fire from the rear that we have to deal with all the time.

02:07:14

Exactly, exactly. So, you know, my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge, and to reject the

02:07:20

Word of God is to reject the knowledge of God. So, yeah, it's a tough job, James, but I thank God for you as you press on and the work that you do.

02:07:28

Well, we're both doing the same work in different areas, different fields.

02:07:33

Obviously, you like colder weather better than I do. I'm not sure you could handle the temperatures that we have here.

02:07:43

You'd probably melt, and I would freeze probably up there right now in reality.

02:07:51

But be it as it may, you and I are both on a email list that I did not voluntarily subscribe to.

02:07:57

Did you, by the way? No, I didn't. I wonder who created that email list.

02:08:03

There have been a couple of times I've hovered over the reply thing to say, please stop.

02:08:10

I can't take this anymore. But I haven't, mainly so I can sort of keep an eye on what certain people are saying.

02:08:18

And in what transpires, you've spent more time.

02:08:24

Every once in a while, you can sort of tell I just, the frustration factor gets too large, and I go ahead and fire off a missive.

02:08:32

But generally, I try to stay away from certain people on the list that basically are not doing anything more than Achmed Didat did.

02:08:40

And I just, I can't go there very often. But there are two individuals on the list,

02:08:48

Paul Williams and Yusuf Ismail, who do attempt to throw in certain discussions of scholarship.

02:09:00

And I just wanted to invite you on. We could have a brief discussion about some of the things that you and I have both said on that list.

02:09:11

Let me just give you a one example. It's a short little email.

02:09:18

One of the, I think, South African participants had presented a,

02:09:23

I don't know, what was it about five, six paragraph, a little thing on Mathian authorship of the

02:09:31

Gospel of Matthew. And here was the response from Paul Williams, who by the way,

02:09:36

I think this is relevant. He'll probably call this just ad hominem, but I think it's relevant. He is an apostate.

02:09:42

That's a technical term. He was a member of a

02:09:47

Baptist church in London and became a Muslim. And so he has left the faith.

02:09:54

And as such, I'll be honest, if someone uses that as a part of their argument, then

02:10:00

I hold them to a higher standard. They should know what they're talking about. There should be no misrepresentation of the

02:10:06

Christian faith. If you once were one, then accurately represent it. Just as if you were a former Muslim, you should accurately represent the various views of Islam and so on and so forth.

02:10:15

So here is Paul Williams' response to that email where various arguments for Mathian authorship were put forward.

02:10:26

Unfortunately, Wallace, who's the author, and this is not Daniel Wallace. Unfortunately, Wallace is not a biblical scholar.

02:10:32

The Bible translator, Reverend J .B. Phillips has this to say about the authorship of Matthew's gospel. Quote, early tradition ascribed this gospel to the apostle

02:10:40

Matthew, but scholars nowadays almost all reject this view, end quote.

02:10:45

In other words, Matthew did not write the gospel which bears his name regards Paul. So there is the response.

02:10:53

It's short. It's, I can almost hear since I've listened to a number of things that Paul Williams has done,

02:11:01

I can almost hear the almost British condescension oozing through every word, especially because he doesn't view anyone who is basically a believer as someone who actually believes in biblical scholarship.

02:11:19

He's dismissed me because I actually believe in such things as inerrancy and inspiration, and I think there is a strong argument for Matthian authorship.

02:11:30

That's not something that defines the Bible, to be perfectly honest with you. It's not like somewhere else in the

02:11:35

Bible says, thou shalt believe in Matthian authorship to be an Orthodox Christian. But he dismisses all the rest of us, and he dismissed you as well with these words.

02:11:49

Tony, this highlights an important methodological difference between our views. You start from the premise that the New Testament is a unified body of teaching and authoritative scripture, all of which is the inspired

02:11:58

Word of God. I start from the historical, critical method. I will let the historical chips fall where they may.

02:12:11

Does Paul Williams really do that? Well, let's put it this way, James.

02:12:16

This is the double standard that you and I keep talking about. Of course, everything he said about accepting inspiration of Scripture, I do.

02:12:24

Except, but he uses the historical, critical method only when it applies to the

02:12:29

Bible. He will not use the same method when it comes to the Quran or the existence of Muhammad or the

02:12:35

Sunnah or the development of the Hadith and so forth. So what Paul is basically saying here is I prefer the historical, critical method only when it applies to the

02:12:44

Bible, but not to the Quran. Exactly. And you've said that to him.

02:12:51

I have said that to him. I have written that to him. I've written articles about it.

02:12:57

I've talked about it on The Dividing Line. I know that he knows. I would imagine at the very least he will get a small summary of what we say from somebody who does listen to The Dividing Line regularly.

02:13:15

But it doesn't seem to matter. It doesn't seem to matter how often we point out that Shabir Ali in his debates and you and I have both debated

02:13:23

Shabir. How many times have you debated Shabir? Well, I think about 11 times now and I'm going to be debating him in about a month again.

02:13:33

You've done it more often than I have. I think we've only done five, six, something like that. It's not like we...

02:13:38

You live in the same area. Yeah, we live in Toronto. Yes, that helps. But you and I both know exactly how this works with Shabir.

02:13:49

The Shabirian approach... I've just coined that phrase.

02:13:55

The Shabirian approach is you cite a scholar and you say, such and such a person has shown us this.

02:14:07

And then within about 90 seconds that one single scholarly citation becomes the given view of scholars as a whole and by the end of the debate, scholarship as a whole.

02:14:23

When it in fact was a single citation of a single scholar and generally Shabir is coming to a conclusion based upon that that that scholar themselves didn't actually come to a conclusion in that same way.

02:14:37

And yet this becomes scholars and scholarship. Am I exaggerating that at all?

02:14:46

You are absolutely... You've hit the nail right on the head, James. This is the modus operandi that my good friend

02:14:53

Shabir uses. I've called him out on that as well, as you have. But it simply goes from one scholarly citation becomes the general consensus of all scholarship.

02:15:04

And the approach is basically divide and conquer. You just try to divide, bring in a source that seems to attack.

02:15:12

For example, just recently, I was moderating a debate with Shabir in Toronto and he kept quoting Bruce Chilton that Jesus, when he spoke of the

02:15:19

Son of Man, he was not speaking about himself, he was speaking about someone else. And that's

02:15:24

Bruce Chilton. And all of a sudden, that became the consensus of all scholarship. So you're absolutely right,

02:15:29

James. Absolutely right. Well, now when you get to someone like Williams, though, who doesn't come out, you know, he'll go out the speaker's corner and do that kind of stuff, but he's significantly less willing to do the thing where you actually have to provide sustained argumentation type stuff.

02:15:48

Yeah, but he likes speaker's corner because he's crowded with his friends. Right, right, right. And so he likes to yell and scream and so forth.

02:15:56

But, you know, I've recently challenged them. I think you may have read the email that I've recently challenged them that next time

02:16:02

I'm in London, I would love to debate them on these issues. So, yeah. Well, I've done the same thing and he's just dismissed, well, you're not, you know, you should be ignored.

02:16:11

We can't take you seriously. But people there in London know that we can do really good

02:16:19

Muslim debates that are extremely fair. I mean, I don't know if you saw the debate we did at Kensington Temple a few months ago with Adnan.

02:16:27

Yes, I did. That was amazing. It was really, I mean, look, Adnan's, I don't want to get

02:16:33

Adnan in trouble, but Adnan actually has a heart. And we sat down afterwards and we had lunch together.

02:16:46

And I love to get to know these folks. And I'll be perfectly honest with you. I have a feeling,

02:16:51

I don't know that this is true, but I have a feeling if I could sit down at that same little

02:16:58

Mexican restaurant at Trafalgar Square with Yaya Snow and with Paul Williams, not necessarily at the same time, maybe alone, maybe we could work out some of these debates because they might find out what a number of Muslims have already found out.

02:17:15

And I know this is true for you as well. These guys have got to understand the reason you and I are doing this program right now is not because we want to take digs at somebody or anything else.

02:17:25

I want to see Paul Williams and Yaya Snow and Adnan Rashid. I want to see these men come to know the same savior that I know.

02:17:33

I really, really do. We do this because we believe these are issues of truth. But I think what they are almost afraid to find out is that you and I do this for pure motivations.

02:17:47

We really, really, really do desire to honor our Lord, honor His truth, honor the gospel, be obedient to what our

02:17:54

Lord says to us. And what that means is we need to show love for them and that we really do care for them and we want to pray for them.

02:18:03

I just think sometimes in apologetics, that element gets lost.

02:18:09

And when I can sit down with someone and get to know them and express that to them, it makes all the difference in the world.

02:18:15

I would love to have that opportunity. And I hope that Paul Williams, if he won't debate you, try this.

02:18:23

See if you can find the time to get together. And by the way, the Little Mexican Restaurant at Trafalgar Square, if you come straight up from the road that goes past the

02:18:36

Horse Guards Hotel, straight up to Trafalgar Square, and over on the right -hand side, right across from the bookstore, is the only

02:18:46

Mexican restaurant I've found in London that I will trust. Because trust me, eating

02:18:53

Mexican almost anywhere outside of the Southwest United States is a little bit of a dodgy thing to begin with.

02:18:59

But honestly, this place is really good. And invite them to meet you there.

02:19:05

And near that are the Sherlock Holmes Pub down closer to the Thames. That was a great place too.

02:19:11

Okay, I'll bear that in mind for sure. And if he's listening, Paul, the invitation is open. Yeah, let's do it. I would love to get to meet these guys.

02:19:18

But one of the things that has to be discussed is this absolute fascination that Paul Williams and Yusef Ismail as well have with people whose worldview, which he calls the historical critical method.

02:19:36

Okay, as you pointed out, and I wonder sometimes if why

02:19:43

Paul won't answer this question, but because I wonder if maybe he holds to a more liberal perspective than would allow him to even be out amongst his fellow

02:19:51

Muslims. But if you apply the historical critical method of a

02:19:58

Bart Ehrman, and he just loves Bart Ehrman. He loves Bart Ehrman's forgery and counterforgery, for example.

02:20:03

He specifically mentioned that. If you apply that same methodology to the text of the

02:20:10

Quran, it's going to have unorthodox results. Yes, absolutely.

02:20:17

We are made in the image of God. We understand the law of non -contradiction. God has made us, you know,

02:20:25

Paul, when he's in London, drives down the left side of the road, not the right side of the road.

02:20:32

And there's a reason for this, okay? How can someone not recognize when they're using different standards and different weights, different scales?

02:20:43

How can they not see it? Do you have, do you, can you understand it? No, no,

02:20:48

I can't. Unless there's a, there's just an agenda here. And the agenda is, I've said this before, don't bother me with the facts.

02:20:55

I've made up my mind already. And the agenda is to divide and conquer disproved

02:21:01

Christianity and just assume that Islam just wins by default. It does not just win by default.

02:21:08

You have to prove your case, and you have to use the inconsistent standards. And that is the problem.

02:21:14

I've noticed this way back in the early 90s when I debated Shabir. I noticed that this inconsistent is, well, you will quote the

02:21:20

Jesus Seminar to disprove the New Testament, but we won't quote Islamic scholars who call into question the

02:21:28

Sunnah, Muhammad's existence, and so forth. So this has been going on for a long time,

02:21:33

James. A long time. And I think our Muslim friends need to bear with the fact that, you know, one of Allah's names is

02:21:39

Al -Haq. He is the truth. And therefore, we have to, if you love truth, if one of Allah's names is

02:21:46

Al -Haq, you're the true one, the truth. And our Lord Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and life. We must be lovers of truth.

02:21:51

And that means we have to be consistent. Well, I think the exact argument that I have used many times in most of the lists of the 99

02:21:59

Beautiful Names, Al -Haq is normally either 49 or 51, depending on different printings that I've seen.

02:22:05

And I've used the exact same argument. I've said, if you're going to seek to worship a

02:22:10

God whose one of the 99 Beautiful Names is Al -Haq, then truth, you can't define the word truth without using the word consistency, or at least without using the category of consistency.

02:22:22

And in this situation, it just seems they don't seem to recognize that if you're going to embrace the kind of, we can assume the guilt of the

02:22:36

Christian scriptures rather than their innocence right from the start, don't you realize that some of your students might ask the question, well, why don't we do that with the

02:22:47

Quran? Or if they might notice, for example, the development that is, if you read the

02:22:55

Quran in a chronological order as best you can, they might notice development.

02:23:03

Or if they read the Hadith in this way and start applying critical methodology, they might notice that there was inconsistencies in the perspectives and maybe some ignorance on the part of Muhammad or all sorts of things like this.

02:23:18

They don't seem to realize that they are injecting poison into the very bloodstream of the faith that they think is simply going to win by default because no one's ever going to think to apply the same standards.

02:23:31

But it's natural for us to do that. It's natural for us to think along those lines.

02:23:36

I just wonder if they realize the danger of that. Yeah, I don't think they do, James. I don't think they do.

02:23:43

And that's why we have to keep challenging our Muslim friends to be lovers of truth and to apply the same methodology that they would expect us respectfully to apply as well to the

02:23:56

Qur 'an. I don't know how many times I've heard my Muslim friends say, no, Tony, you're taking that out of context or you're ignoring this and you're ignoring that.

02:24:03

And so they're calling for consistency. And so I think they always know less than to be consistent with their

02:24:08

Christian friends. Well, yeah, I mean, I call for it's become some

02:24:14

Muslims I've had to block on Twitter simply because they just get sick and tired of my call for consistency and just and razz me about all the time.

02:24:24

It's like, I don't know what else I can do. There's no way that we can, if we want to advance the conversation and to be honest with you, it's one of the reasons that I like to try to meet with folks and try to communicate to them the necessity, the need to advance the conversation.

02:24:45

I mean, yeah, okay. There are times I will go back over a subject that I've debated. You and I have both debated was

02:24:50

Jesus God or a mere prophet of Islam? How many times you've done that one? I've lost track of how many times

02:24:56

I've done it. Oh, probably five times or so. Oh, at least, yeah. And that's pretty much what

02:25:02

Shabir and I did at the mosque up there in Toronto a couple years ago. That's right. I will keep doing that because I recognize that there are always new people on both sides who either haven't heard that or I recognize listening to stuff in a live context is sometimes more powerful than watching it on YouTube or a phone or something like that.

02:25:24

So I'm not saying there is not a reason to continue talking about the primary issues, but I do think that we need that there are topics that need to be being debated that almost no one's addressing.

02:25:38

And I want to try to advance the conversation beyond the level of Akhmed Didat.

02:25:45

If it stays at the Didat level, that doesn't say much about either one of our sides, to be perfectly honest with you.

02:25:52

And one of the things that really disappointed me, I really had thought I'd communicated that and had someone that wanted to do the same thing with Yusuf Ismail when

02:26:02

I went to South Africa the last time, the time before last. And unfortunately,

02:26:07

I discovered that wasn't the case when we tried to do peace and war and Islam and things like that and the parallel accounts.

02:26:15

I mean, you've got to have, both people have got to be involved if you're going to do parallel accounts, both in the

02:26:20

Gospels and in the Quran, because one side can sabotage that. It requires discipline on both sides.

02:26:27

And unfortunately, that's, you know. And I've only found a couple Muslims who really have joined with me in trying to advance the conversation.

02:26:37

And that's disappointing to me, but I don't give up. I keep hoping and praying that that type of thing will happen.

02:26:44

And by the way, I should mention something. I was going to mention this and our time's running out, but I, and you can testify to the truthfulness of this.

02:26:53

When the news about Nabeel came out, I personally was encouraged by the fact that on that very same email list that we were talking about, the first person to express a concern and a desire for healing for Nabeel was

02:27:16

Yahya Snow. Yes, he was. And I have been very critical of Yahya Snow.

02:27:22

But I want to tell everybody, the very first person that announced it and said, this is terrible.

02:27:30

Let's, you know, may God be merciful to him, so on and so forth, was Yahya Snow. I believe

02:27:37

Paul Williams may have said something as well, positively. And then this morning, I saw Shabir had likewise.

02:27:44

And all of them, none of them were rejoicing, none of them were doing anything like that at all.

02:27:49

They were all, I think, in a very appropriate fashion, because obviously if word came out that any of them had some type of life -threatening disease,

02:28:00

I think they all know. You and I would be the first people to be saying, and everybody else, every other

02:28:06

Christian, Rudolph and everybody else on that list, would be saying, we are praying for God to draw near and for healing and so on and so forth.

02:28:16

So I do want to mention that, and I want to thank Yahya and Paul and Shabir for doing that.

02:28:25

I think it's important. Yeah, and I'd like to thank them as well. I'd like to register that. I want to thank them as well.

02:28:31

And one of them made a good point that when Ahmed Didat passed away, there were some nasty things by a number of Christian apologists against Ahmed Didat.

02:28:43

But I do thank our Muslim friends for their well -wishes for Nabil Qureshi, and I would be the first, and I know you would as well,

02:28:51

James, but if it happened to them, we would return the favor and the compliment, and pray for them. I know when

02:28:57

I debated our friend from Trinidad, Ides Efrat, he suffers from a debilitating disease, and I always tell him that, look,

02:29:04

I'm praying for you, I've called on Christians to pray for you, Jaz. Well, Jaz and I have corresponded personally, and I've also expressed that to him that I recognize he has those physical issues.

02:29:21

There's no way to actually address these issues in a meaningful fashion with any level of consistency if you have malice in your heart and want the destruction of the people, the very people you're talking to.

02:29:32

It's just, it doesn't make any sense at all. We have to love our enemies, and we need to speak the truth in love.

02:29:40

Well, Tony, I'm sorry that we only did a half an hour, but I don't know if you know this,

02:29:45

I started two and a half hours ago. Yes, I did. I knew that the

02:29:52

Andy Stanley stuff was just going to take a little bit longer, and I had seen you commenting on it, so I thought, ah, just let him call in and we'll let him comment on it in the process.

02:30:02

We didn't even get a chance to talk about your book. How, real quickly, how can folks get a hold of you and tell us about your publications?

02:30:14

Well, my website is very simple. It's not as nice as yours, but anyway, it's

02:30:21

TonyCosta .web .com. That's TonyCosta, all one word, dot web dot com.

02:30:27

My book is available on Amazon, and it's Worship and the

02:30:32

Risen Jesus and the Pauline Letters. My publications are also mentioned on my website, so I have some other stuff there if people are interested.

02:30:40

Well, I'm sitting here looking at some of the things that Paul Williams said to you, and I know you were probably exercising tremendous restraint, given the amount of information you probably could have posted in response.

02:30:52

But who knows, maybe that debate will be able to take place sometime in the future. I know it would be useful if it would happen.

02:31:00

But I know that you are traveling right now, and I appreciate your taking the time to join with us today.

02:31:07

And I'm looking forward to the next time we get a chance to get together and maybe someday do something together.

02:31:14

Would love to, James. Would love to. That'd be great. We appreciate you, Tony. Thank you very much. Thank you, brother. God bless. All right.

02:31:19

God bless, Tony. Thank you very much. Bye now. All right. Bye -bye. All right. Thank you for Tony Costa joining.

02:31:24

Thank you. If you've stuck around for two and a half hours, you're a glutton for punishment. You truly are. I can't go much farther than this.

02:31:30

Anyways, I am tired, and I need to stand up and things like that. So hopefully this has been useful to you.

02:31:37

I will admit just very, very quickly, some of the stuff toward the end of the Andy Stanley thing,

02:31:43

I'm not sitting here trying to be facetious. I don't understand how he thinks what he was saying.

02:31:50

Is it all helpful? And it does not. It's epistemological chaos. I don't get it.

02:31:57

Maybe someone can come along that would be of assistance to him. I don't know, but 32 ,000 people in all those campuses being exposed to that.

02:32:10

Wow, it's scary. Thank you very much for listening. We'll see you next time on The Dividing Line.