A Little Bill Johnson, a Bunch of Islamic Material, and an Intro to the Ehrman/Licona Debate

Greetings and sort of welcome to The Dividing Line, if you could have seen Rich running around a few seconds ago, turning on the cameras.

Nothing like preparation to get things going and give me lots of confidence that, though I've spent hours preparing for this program, that the support cast is ready to go.

I mean, literally, literally, the music was playing, and it's like, oh, no, there's nothing there.

There's a reason for that. We sort of forgot to turn the cameras on. But hey, you know, we didn't need cameras back when we first started doing this.

We just we we had a stick and a rock. And that's that's how how we did it back in my day.

I was I was at the top of I still call it squat peak. Sorry. I always will. It's just that's what

I grew up with. I was not a squat peak this morning. Hadn't climbed that thing in a long time. And just to make it fun,

I ran like two miles to get there and then two miles afterwards. So just make sure you're nice and tired when you get there.

It's a if you haven't done it, it's a it's a pretty tough climb, especially in the dark.

I had a light, but the light doesn't really give you a depth perception real well. So it was it was tricky.

But I was talking to to some young people up at the top, and one of them said something like, maybe

I had never done this before. And I said, son, I I think probably the first time I climbed this was about nineteen eighty one or so.

And he just looked at me and I said, you weren't you weren't around nineteen eighty one, were you?

I said, no, I was born in ninety seven. And yeah, OK, yeah. So he didn't offer to, like, carry me down or anything, you know, just, you know, help the old man across the street, help the old man down the mountain or whatever else.

Actually, he got down just a little bit before I did, because going down is tough, man. That's tough on the knees.

I remember when I was much younger, I would run down that thing. And now I think about doing that and go, no, no, no, no.

That's that's called that's called stupid. Anyway, good to be with you.

We have a lot to get to today, a bunch of stuff to get to today. One of the things that I did on that little two hour jaunt this morning was yesterday on Twitter, some stuff developed, a conversation developed that Michael Brown jumped into.

And so I spent a little time yesterday that I grabbed a couple of files.

And what I did is I as people were chatting on Twitter and thankfully it stayed civil, which is

I don't even know how that happened. Well, it's possible that it seemed civil to me because I've blocked so many or muted so many people that I just don't see that part.

Sometimes I fire up my phone. And for some reason, whatever I use on my phone could care less about my ban or mute list.

And so I see everything. And so I didn't look there. But anyway, it was it was it was interesting enough that someone had someone mentioned that Bill Johnson, who is the lead elder at Bethel and Reading, had spoken in Dallas at a church near them, and that they had written up sort of a review.

I didn't read the review. I read part of the first page was broken up into parts. But I sort of found the the sermon to be sort of a summary of of his thinking and stuff.

So I grabbed it. I grabbed the audio of it. And I threw that on my iPod. And then

I grabbed Michael Brown's interview with him and put that on the iPod as well.

And that's what I listened to, at least on the climb up. The rest of the way

I was listening to Carl Truman lecturing on inerrancy in church history, which was a pretty interesting lecture as well.

Anyway, had nothing to do with it. I'm not sure I could think of more different topics than what

I listened to there. But anyway, I do not have the time to grab more and more stuff and listen to more and more stuff and become an expert in Bill Johnson.

One thing that I the sense that I got in listening to what

I listened to was that at least what

I have seen as criticism of him seems to be missing the most important point, and that is what

I heard was a really sharp guy. And the real problems are theologically presuppositional from my perspective.

In other words, the criticism I'm seeing is all based on the stuff that's easy to see.

Let's talk about glory clouds and gold dust and feathers. That's easy.

If you want to get people all riled up to support your jihad or whatever, that's the easy stuff.

The hard stuff, and I'd like to know if someone out there has done the actual hard work. Well, what would be the hard work?

Well, as I'm listening to this guy, and again, I think I do have an advantage here.

And the advantage was the years I spent doing my first master's degree at Fuller Seminary.

And that made me hear things that I've heard before.

It's been many years now, been many decades now. And I'm recognizing where some of the theology of all this is coming from.

And what that allows me to do is to sit back and go, the real issue here, and he even said it,

I think he said it in the interview with Michael Brown, is how we are going to experience

God depends upon what we believe about him and who he is and what he does. And my biggest concern with Bill Johnson is the imbalance at that very point.

At that very point. I did yesterday watch a testimony he'd been given. It said

Bill Johnson's testimony. So what do you expect that to be? You expect that to be a person's testimony of salvation.

Well, it wasn't. It was from up at Toronto, and it was much more a testimony of Toronto than anything else.

But what did come out in that was this,

I came back to my church and we made the decision, and we have lived in light of this for, I think it was like 14 years at this point in time.

We made a decision that we were going to live in the light of the presence of God.

And the whole context was this was going to be our thing. This is it. And it was in the context of not any of the other things we had been doing.

In other words, we are not even seeking to be balanced. We're not even seeking to be balanced.

I mean, obviously, I believe very strongly, and I think this is, and I can only allow,

I can only enunciate this and illustrate this and then let the spirit of God make application to his people.

But I believe very, very strongly that the central act of worship of the church is the full and careful and balanced ministry of the

Word of God to the people of God gathered together to hear what

God has to say. So, meaningful, sound, solid exegesis.

Everything we do before and after, if there is anything after, everything we do before and after is simply meant to heighten and to prepare us, to put us in the proper frame of mind, to be obedient and to have hearing ears.

Anything that we put into that worship service that closes our ears, distracts us, in any way shuts down our ability to hear the

Word is wrong. It's going the wrong direction. And the most important thing that a shepherd of the sheep can do is to faithfully communicate not just the part of the message that you think is all -fired important, but if you really believe that Scripture, that all

Scripture, not just some, but all Scripture is theanoustos, God -breathed, then you need to deliver all of it.

All of it. And that means covering some stuff that ain't going to make people see gold dust coming out of the ceiling.

I mean, there's some tough stuff to handle. There's some difficult stuff in there. And that means that there are going to be services that are highly instructional, there are going to be services that are incredibly uplifting, there are going to be services that do bring you into the very presence of God in heaven, and then there will be others that absolutely smack you down into the dirt when you realize how much of God's grace you take for granted, and how few of the duties that are ours we actually pursue with the proper zeal of redeemed people.

In other words, it's going to be balanced. And the balance is determined not by us, but by what is found in the

Scriptures given to us by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. That canon of Scripture that God has given to us, that is where our balance is to be found.

And so as I was listening to all of this, the stuff I listened to yesterday and then this morning,

I see fundamental imbalances on the theological level in the theological underpinnings.

This is not a stupid man. I mean, honestly, just sitting back, listening to videos and stuff that I've seen,

I just sort of figure you're going to get sort of an airhead -type weird guy.

No, this is not an airhead weird -type guy. He can speak very soberly.

And that's the problem. When you don't respond presuppositionally, and I would say in this case, the only way you could,

I think, provide a meaningful critique here is from a Reform perspective, to be perfectly honest with you. I could expand upon that, but I won't.

When you don't respond to the best the other side has, and you go for the cheap stuff, you're not helping anybody.

And you're making it so much easier for them to defend themselves. That's really one of the problems here.

So maybe somebody has done the deep theological, and if you can't see that the glory clouds and all that stuff is just out here, and the real issue is in here, theologically speaking, you're missing the whole thing.

You're missing the whole thing. And I don't want to go into a bunch on this.

I just want, I saw just a few minutes ago on Twitter that certain individuals,

I'm not even giving them the free airtime, certain individuals had posted an article, am

I finally getting it about Bill Johnson? There are certain people, they don't have a place to table.

They don't deserve it. They haven't earned it. They don't have the credibility, the history, nothing. I'm not interested in what they have to say any longer.

They're done as far as I'm concerned. But my concern here is, why do you take the position you do about Bill Johnson?

If you do it because you've just heard what somebody else says, if you do it based upon a five -minute clip, you're probably not actually putting yourself in a position to actually help anybody who's actually involved with that.

There's a little bit more to it than that. There's a little bit more to it than that. And so I just wonder if anyone has gotten into what is at the foundation.

Because see, from his perspective, it's what we are called to be in light of who

Christ was. This is a theological issue that ends up having very practical ramifications as to how things are done at Bethel Church.

There's got to be somebody out there that's done that work. And maybe somebody will send me a link and I can direct you to it or something like that.

But it was useful for me anyways to listen and to go, yeah,

I'm not overly shocked that most of what I've heard is just missing the point.

There are real problems here, but the real problems are much more presuppositional. They're much more foundational. And I really think, honestly, the older I get, the more

I recognize now why it is that God kept us where we were and had me go to school where I went, because I'm like, oh, yeah,

I know where that comes from. And oh, okay. Which I wouldn't have been able to do if I had ended up in a seminary that just mirrored what

I already believed. There's good things about that. Dr. MacArthur has said, you shouldn't go to seminary to fight a war.

Well, for a lot of people, they're just simply going into pastoral ministry.

That's true. Obviously, that's not what the Lord called me to do. So it was good that I had to fight the war and that's given me some advantage here.

So just wanted to briefly mention that. We've got so much other stuff to get into today.

I'm not gonna spend much time on it, but all right. I need you to hear this.

You better be careful here. I know. I know. And look, you wondered why it is that I suddenly had this theological journal push and dragging up the old articles and getting out the scans.

Plus, we've been doing this for over a year, but I finally found a way to get them out there. But one of the reasons why, actually the main reason why

I felt the urgency right now is because I wanted to see us go back to reminding people why and how you do apologetics.

And the very first article we ran with was from 1990 and how apologetics is to be done.

I'll give an example. When in the late 1980s, when I was training and studying with Mike Beliveau to teach the

How to Witness to Mormons class. Oh, come on now. Stop this. I'll look the other way.

I was going through and learning the material, but then I had to actually go into class with Mike and see how he was doing things.

And in the very first class I sat through, I'll never forget the first thing he said.

It was not in the notes. And he looked around the room and he said, if you're here to get ammunition, you need to leave now.

That's not what we're doing here. And two guys in the front row took issue with him over that statement.

They went back and forth for about 10 minutes and he put them out of the room.

He kicked them out. And the point was, look, we're here to reach these people, not to get ammunition so that we can have something to go after our friends or relatives that are

Mormons. We're here to actually learn things so that we can communicate with them and that we can actually reach them.

And I see that ammunition thing going on within groups today.

And in The Theological Journal, I'm putting out articles from 30 years ago.

Which make me nervous. That show how this is supposed to be done. We've been doing it for 30 years and we've been doing it the same way.

I think we've learned something along the way. I think the fact that I put out an article two weeks ago that you wrote when you were 26 years old that a lot of these young whippersnappers couldn't even touch with a 10 -foot pole today.

26 years old? Yeah. So there's an example that needs to be set.

Apologetics should be done surgically, not with a machete. That's my comment for the day.

Thank you very much, Rich, who has to answer the phones. What you need to understand is that was therapeutic.

You know, Rich has to say this to so many people on the phone. That this way he can just go, go listen to what

I said on the dividing line. Here's the time index. Leave me alone. Go away. And it's true.

But it's also true that it makes me nervous. This stuff from the 90s or something like that. Because I'm sort of like going, have

I learned something since then? Someone could call up and go, hey, you said and such.

Oh, I'd forgotten that. So we'll see. I haven't had that happen yet. So we'll see.

Anyway. All right. It's going to be an eclectic program. Got a lot to get to.

I'm going to try to not preach, but also try to be clear. It's fascinating to me that a bunch of stuff all hit at once.

And I said, I'm going to take this indication. This is something we need to address.

Let's go ahead and start with this one. I guess

I need to put this over. I think this is the one that I think this is the side you need to use.

Okay, so if we can go with that. Okay.

Okay. Now, this was posted by a Muslim friend of mine.

But he stole it from somebody else. He admitted that. And the person that posted it said,

Dr. David Wood's career ended in one quick question. And I responded that by saying, drama much?

I've lost track of how many videos there are on YouTube talking about how I was destroyed in 20 seconds by this person or that person.

And maybe there are a few millennials that are impressed by that, but I can't possibly imagine any thoughtful person who could be impressed by that kind of language.

And I'm thinking right now, not so much about this video, as about my son's experience over the weekend.

Some of you may have seen where he did a discussion with, you know, there's different kinds of Black Hebrew Israelites, okay?

There's all these different camps and all the rest of this stuff. And there are some that aren't vile in all their language.

And, you know, we've talked a little bit about a few of them. But there's a clear gradation and it goes really low.

Well, these folks are about as low as you can get. I mean, they wouldn't refer to my son by his name.

He was either Edomite or White Devil, U -Devil, White Devil.

I mean, these people are racist in such a way that the KKK looks like amateurs in comparison to these guys.

They get away with it because they're of a different color and you can be racist if you're that color. But these people are just, this is the worst example of using and abusing religion as a cover for racism that you'll ever see.

And it's hard to take these people seriously. I mean, when they said Paul was a Jamaican, to me, I mean, you can't take this stuff seriously.

I mean, it is just so far out there. And they're the worst example of the kind of titling of videos and stuff like that.

And the sad thing is, people are influenced by that. They shouldn't be. I mean, in this day, you would think that by now, everyone would be taught homeschool, public school, anyplace else, public school, yeah, to think logically, to analyze arguments.

But if we were, half the advertising that's being done wouldn't work on us. We'd see right through it.

So I guess that's why it's not the way it is. But anyway, right at the exact same time that my son was dialoguing with these guys who are wearing,

I don't know what they're wearing. I think they're trying to look like Jewish high priests or something. But they've got short finger gloves and sunglasses on inside.

They're inside. And these headband things and these robes and oh my, it's like, seriously, wow.

It's just, it's so laughable. It's hard not to. You get past a point where it's just, extending respect to that kind of stuff is just next to impossible to do.

Anyway, he was very patient with all of their abuse and everything else, though my suggestion in the future would be you've got to have a moderator, because they talked for 50 minutes out of the hour.

So you got to have a moderator. There's just someone who can control it and make sure that it's done in an even fashion.

But at the exact same time that was going on, David Wood had a debate with Shabir Ali.

And I could have told you, since it was on the crucifixion, exactly what was going to happen.

I debated Shabir on this. Though it's interesting, I think there has been some change. I think Shabir has gotten more and more and more and more and willing to use a wild range of ultra liberal, utterly incoherent scholarship.

I mean, Shabir has given up, quite honestly, on even trying to present, even pretending to present a consistent perspective.

I mean, I remember quoting to him, maybe in our first debate, maybe in a second, his own quotation to Robert Morey years and years and years ago, when

Morey made an attack upon the Quran. His response was that, you know, you need to engage in meaningful exegesis.

You can't force external sources upon the text of the Quran. So he knew exactly what needed to be done.

But since he just won't do that with the New Testament at all, I think he's just given up on even bothering.

And so I was, I mean, when you're when you're quoting people who don't even believe

Jesus existed, as some of your sources, Dr. Price, who I've debated, when you're quoting

Price as one of your sources, as a Muslim, I give up. I mean, you aren't even pretending any longer to use any kind of consistency in the sources you're using.

It's just, I'll throw everything at you, including the kitchen sink. And it doesn't matter if everything

I throw at you is utterly contradictory to everything I believe, I'll still use it. It's a shame.

Anyway, so I didn't get to watch most of that debate because I switched over once I heard about what Josh was doing.

But there's always Q &A, always Q &A in debates. It's sort of how many debates die slowly.

Instead of ending, they just die slowly. And so here is a question that was asked.

And so I'll let you hear the question. Then we'll listen to David's response.

Then I'll go more slowly through Shabir's reply, because both of the things, two of the things we're going to look at on the subject of Islam today are relevant to the crucifixion.

And what they both communicate to us, and what we're going to see is, here's

Shabir Ali, Dr. Shabir Ali, educated in the secular university up there in Canada, widely read, can quote all sorts of different sources, even though the sources all contradict each other, but he can quote from all of many ways.

And then we're going to have a Muslim from down in Australia who clearly hasn't read almost anything from the

Christian perspective at all. And yet both completely miss the heart of the

Christian perspective. And Muslims that will watch this and are watching it right now, you need to understand, when you guys tilt at windmills, when you burn straw men, where'd my straw man go?

When you're going after guys like this, especially when it comes to the cross and consistently, that tells us that you don't have a real good argument against the reality of what we believe.

Now, I will admit, this is not the case with Shabir, because almost everything Shabir says, I have dialogued with him about and refuted him on in the past.

So that doesn't matter. But the fellow down in Australia, maybe all the Christians he's talked to have really not had a meaningful understanding of the atonement.

I've often said, you can hear in the sermons that I've delivered on this subject over the decades, that I think most evangelical

Christians have a sentimental doctrine of the atonement, not a biblical or theological doctrine of the atonement.

Okay. So maybe if that's, it's like when I talk to a Muslim in South Africa, I cannot assume that they have dialogued with a

Christian who's even properly Trinitarian, given the state of the church in South Africa.

Now, there are good churches in South Africa, just not many of them. They're in a small minority, unfortunately, in comparison to the word -faith stuff and the general shape of charismatic churches in South Africa, which is pathetic.

So I understand if that's all you've ever heard. And my hope is that in providing a response, maybe you'll be prompted to do some serious reading.

I don't expect the vast majority of Muslims to go read John Owen.

They're not going to understand John Owen. Most Christians don't understand John Owen. But there are good works on the subject that would help them to understand a whole lot better than the way they are.

So anyways, let's dive into this. Here's the question and the dialogue.

How do we understand the claim that Jesus, peace be upon him, was crucified on a cross, tree, or pole in light of Deuteronomy, chapter 21, verses 22 and 23, and Galatians chapter 3, verse 13, which states that whoever is hung on a tree or pole or cross is cursed.

Thank you. Well, I'd say you're about that close to understanding the gospel, right?

Because we know, we know Jesus is righteous according to both the

Bible and the Quran. Muhammad in the Hadith said that Satan touches everyone who comes into the world, but he couldn't touch

Jesus or his mother. Everyone else, Muhammad, everyone, Satan could touch him but not Jesus. I didn't see all the ads when I first watched it.

And so you're right. How do we reconcile our belief that Jesus was righteous with the

Old Testament claim that anyone who's hung on a tree is cursed? And it seems that we would have to say that Jesus...

Now, yeah, I don't, I didn't even notice all this because I could care less about, like I said, these are the guys that had the weird, hey, it gets destroyed and all this stuff.

What was useful is the stuff over here on the side. And that is Deuteronomy 21.

And if a man has committed a sin worthy of death, and I didn't even put it up there, and he be to be put to death, and thou hang him, they even use

King James, hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in any wise bury him that day, for he that is hanged is cursed of God, that thy land be not defiled, which the

Lord thy God giveth thee for inheritance. And then Galatians 3 .13, Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us, for it is written, cursed is every man, everyone that hangeth on a tree.

So the point is that Muslims struggle at this point with understanding what

Christians believe about this. It's a shame to me that many

Christians struggle to answer. But what you need to understand, what we're going to see a couple times here over this video and the next, is that the voluntary nature of the self -giving of the

Son in perfect union with the will of the

Father through the work and cooperation of the

Holy Spirit is not a part of the

Muslims' understanding of Christian theology. Even though you can, all

I gotta do is go read Augustine. Augustine wrote hundreds of years before your prophet came along.

So here's somebody, we don't even have to argue interpretations here. Very clearly, the most important Christian writer between Paul and the days of Muhammad made this very plain.

It's not difficult to find. This is not a disputable issue. Christians believe that Father, Son, and Spirit together were involved, that the

Son voluntarily, I mean, it's directly stated in Scripture.

He made himself of no reputation. That uses what's called a reflexive pronoun.

This is something that the Son himself did. He took on human flesh.

He had the divine power to be able to do that. I know it's not the Jesus that you believe in, because you don't believe in the

Jesus of the apostles. But the Jesus of the Bible had the ability to do that.

He does it voluntarily. And so all this stuff about God committing suicide and the

Son being abused by the Father, all the rest of this stuff, utterly irrelevant to what

Christianity actually believes. It's straw man. It is not worthy of being repeated in the future on your part.

When you repeat it, what you're doing from your perspective is a little more than what some

Christians do in attacking the worst misunderstandings of Islamic theology and practice and making them normative for all

Muslims, ignoring the fact that there are Muslim scholars, there's

Muslim jurisprudence, there are Muslim works down through the ages that have obviously expressed many of these beliefs in a much more consistent and meaningful fashion relating various elements of Islamic tradition and theology together in a much more consistent whole.

You're just doing the same thing in reverse. As long as all of us keep doing that, we're never going to accomplish anything unless it's your purpose just to keep

Muslims, Muslims, and Christians, and we just keep lobbing bombs at each other. I guess I shouldn't use that term, but verbal bombs on the internet.

If that's what you want, then that's what we'll get. But the real question is, do you want to be truthful?

I've mentioned many times before one of the 99 beautiful names, al -Haq, the truth. You want to be truthful?

Your own faith seems to indicate that this should be something that is of a high priority to you.

So this is where the confusion is coming from, and David is seeking to address that in his response.

Jesus was cursed in spite of being righteous, and that's exactly what the gospel says, right?

The one who was without sin became sin for us. So yeah, if we left those things out and you would wonder, oh, was

Jesus cursed? Well, Jesus was righteous, and yet he was cursed. And notice, he was hung on a tree according to Shabir as well.

So he's under a curse according to both. Now let me just mention, it's one of the reasons that makes it difficult to debate

Shabir Ali on this, is he does not hold the standard Sunni position on this. He does believe Jesus was crucified. He just swooned.

He didn't die. Vast majority of Sunni Muslims do not believe that Jesus was hung upon a tree.

They believe he was taken up to heaven, someone else was made to look like Jesus. I think Shabir recognizes the...it's

actually impossible to defend that idea from a historical perspective. So maybe that's why he takes...the

Akhmedi take a similar perspective. It wouldn't be identical, but similar perspective as Shabir.

So when you debate Shabir on the subject, you end up not really addressing most of the

Sunni Muslims in the audience. That's what he was just mentioning, that even Shabir believes that he was hung upon a tree.

Views on the stage tonight, and so if Jesus was under a curse, well, what do we do there?

In Christianity, he's under a curse for a reason, right? He's under a curse for a reason, because he's becoming a curse for us, right?

So that we can be forgiven. See, what I would emphasize there in David's response is the freeness, the voluntariness of this action, both on the part of the

Father and the Son, that this is not the Son being forced to do something, that this is the central mechanism whereby

Father, Son, and Spirit bring about their own self -glorification, and this was chosen.

They chose to do this in eternity past. And so when you have a strong doctrine of the atonement and understand the book of Hebrews and what it teaches, then it is that freedom of God that is expressed, that freedom of God that is expressed in the cross that I think can really help

Muslims understand this. Now, let me just mention something, especially when we look at the second video.

The second video, honestly, is it's not on the level of the

Black Hebrew Israelites, but as far as understanding of Christian theology, it sort of is. And I don't say that disrespectfully.

It's just the fact, as we're going to point out. And for a lot of people, especially if you don't live in an area where there's a lot of Muslim immigrants or something like that, where you just haven't had any interaction with folks, the question might cross your mind, why even bother?

I mean, this is so far out from a truthful representation, but you have to recognize.

Remember, what year was that? 99. That long line of Muslims staying there, getting ready to ask me questions in a very warm, humid church building on Long Island.

And, you know, the guy asking about the fiqh tree and, you know, the fiqh tree question. And then, to me, still one of the most hilarious of my debate experiences, the guy who goes on and on and on to eventually get around to asking, was

Jesus a white man or a black man? It took him five minutes. And the process, he's gesturing so much that he hits the microphone, which is a wireless microphone, and it goes flying down.

And he has to go run after the microphone and go get it. It was hilarious.

But what it illustrated all the way back then, and I look back on it now and go, oh, man, did

I have a lot to learn at that point in time? And here was the beginning of my education, was what are you going to do with these folks?

The sad tendency, let's be honest. Let me talk to my fellow

Calvinists here. The sad tendency amongst us is to go, beneath me, not worth my time, not worth my time.

They are worth your time. There is a huge difference between the errors we're going to see in the second video we're going to look at in a moment, which is on the same subject.

And the attitude of those black Hebrew Israelites. This is based upon ignorance, it's based upon tradition.

It's not the kind of white devil stuff. Now, there are Muslims that get down there too.

The ones that every other word is koffer and just have this obviously deep detestation of any

Christian at all. They don't make any distinction between us or anything else. There are some that get down there too, obviously.

But there are many, especially those who come from other nations. It's all they know. It's all they know.

So keep that in mind as we address this. As far as other interpretations,

I guess he's under a curse because he was hung on a tree, but I don't know.

Shabir's about to answer so he can explain what he would think about Jesus being hung on a tree.

I agree that Jesus was righteous and I don't agree that he was a curse. And the

Deuteronomy passage actually refers to a person who was hung justly for his crimes. So he's under the curse of God, according to Deuteronomy.

Paul misunderstood this. And though Jesus was unjustly hung, Paul said Jesus became a curse, but he's a curse for us.

But that's problematic because... Now, notice, for Shabir, Paul is the big baddie.

Now, I've never seen Shabir even attempt to be fair to Paul at all.

There are excellent works. In fact, I would suggest that for anyone who's going to be involved in Muslim apologetics, the books,

Paul, Apostle, The Heart Set Free, FF Bruce, and then those that have been done since then that are fair biblical examinations of just a chosen servant and apostle of Jesus Christ.

When you're dealing with Muslim apologetics today, you're going to be dealing with people who have been poisoned, incoherently poisoned against the

Apostle Paul. They will not give, they will not read a word he says with the slightest bit of fairness.

And unfortunately, they draw from a whole range of anti -Paul rhetoric that is common in modern day theology.

And so he says, you know, Paul did not understand. Paul perfectly understood this.

Paul read Hebrew better than Shabir ever will. Paul was trained to feed of Gamaliel. He fully knew what the context was.

The point was that the methodology of death demonstrated the cursedness of the person who died in this fashion.

And Paul's whole argument in Galatians 3 is Christ has borne the curse of the law in his body upon the tree in our place.

Therefore, the idea of our having to enter into the old covenant and keep the law and be circumcised and do all the rest of this stuff so as to actuate something on Christ's part, there is nothing we can add to what

Christ has accomplished in his voluntary self -giving upon the cross.

He has borne in himself. Now this requires Jesus to be a whole lot greater than the

Muslim Jesus. There's no question about that. A Jesus who, where, is it, going off the top of my head,

I didn't look it up, but I think in that hadith where Muhammad goes to the levels of heaven and, you know, when he finally gets to Allah, he's given, you know, 50 prayers and 30 prayers and he and Moses have that thing that sort of looks like it's sort of based a little bit on what happened with Abraham and Yahweh in regards to Sodom and Gomorrah and stuff, you know, finally whittle the number of prayers down to five and all the rest of that stuff.

But if I recall correctly, Jesus wasn't on the top level of heaven. If I recall correctly, he was on the second, wasn't it?

I'm just going off the top of my head. I didn't look it up. I think he was on like the second level. A second level of heaven

Jesus is not who Paul's talking about. It's not who

Mark's talking about, as we'll see here a little bit later on the program. It's not who anybody in the

New Testament is talking about. The de -deified, de -prophesied, de -exalted

Jesus that Muhammad came up with is not the

Jesus of the New Testament. This is one of the primary issues anyone examining the truth claims of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam has to recognize.

Again, that massive chasm that exists between the fulfillment in the

New Testament of the prophecies of the old and the utter lack of knowledge on the part of the author of the

Quran of what's in what the Quran says was sent down by God.

This is the issue. And the Jesus of the Bible, the mighty

God of Isaiah 9 -6, the Emmanuel of not only Isaiah 7, but all the way through Isaiah 11, that one who is seen then in the

New Testament consistently as a fulfillment of that Old Testament prophecy, no knowledge of that going into the Quran.

The Jesus of the Quran is not sufficient to explain the cross, no question about it.

And as long as all you have is the Jesus of the Quran, the cross will be absolutely mysterious to you.

But the wonderful thing is, and you know, the really wonderful thing is, there are going to be

Muslims who are going to listen to this, and they're not going to hear a word that I'm saying. And that's sad.

But the wonderful thing is, when the Spirit of God chooses to reveal the

Lord of glory to a Muslim person, there's no power in heaven and earth that can stop that from happening. When the powerful

Spirit of God applies the gospel, raises that person from spiritual death to spiritual life,

I feel sorry for anybody who has a rationalistic view of doing apologetics, where you're looking at numbers and stuff like that.

All we've got to do is proclaim the truth, and the Spirit of God can make that come alive in people's hearts and minds.

So no, Paul didn't misunderstand anything. And it is a misunderstanding of Galatians 3 and of the gospel as a whole that is at play here on Shabir's part.

Dr. William Lane Craig asserts, you cannot just simply say that Jesus got up and rose from the dead on his own.

God had to raise him from the dead. But as I pointed out... Now I'm not sure why he's mentioning...

Shabir name drops. Any Christian scholar will tell you that the resurrection is a

Trinitarian act. The Spirit of God raised Jesus from the dead. The same

Spirit is active in believers. Jesus received his life back. The Father raised the

Son from the dead. Father, Son, Spirit. Oh, Trinitarian action. So why even throw

Craig's name in there? I don't know. What's the point there? I don't know, but there you go.

To him, for God to raise him from the dead, God has to want to raise him from the dead. The Father has to want to raise the

Son from the dead. So the Son is doing the exact will of the Father. This is exactly what the

Father, Son, and Spirit have covenanted together to do in eternity past. Every one of the

Gospels, including Mark, makes it so obviously plain.

Jesus says it is necessary for the Son of Man to go to Jerusalem and to be betrayed in the hands of men and to die and to rise again the third day.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, they all say the same thing. Nothing that comes from the first century contradicts it.

Nothing historically at all. Zip, zero, nada. You got zip.

Everything consistently points to the same thing. And so there's no way to honestly deal with any of the

New Testament documents. And the Quran has no knowledge of these things, so it can't give you any information. All you got is the weird 40 words in Surah 4 from 1 to 7 that no one really knows what it actually means.

And if you accept that as historically valid and then reject the stuff that comes from the first century, don't even pretend to be doing history because you're not.

You're just doing religion at that point. Everything from back there says the same thing.

The consistent teaching is that this was the intention. And so the Father has to want to raise the

Son. The Son's done exactly what the Father and the Son and the Spirit determined was going to take place.

Even the early church confesses this in Acts chapter 4. And so here's introducing some kind of odd thing that has no basis in anything that comes from the first century at all.

What do you accomplish by doing that? If all we know is that he died under the curse of God according to your scriptures, you have no reason for thinking that God would want to raise the cursed person from the dead who died under the curse of his own law.

Except for the fact that the Son voluntarily took that law to bring about the redemption of all of God's people, which was

God's purpose before creation itself. I mean, honestly, this is only meant to keep

Muslims confused and to have an impact upon Christians who are, in the very words of the

New Testament, untaught and unstable. Untaught and unstable. When your apologetic is aimed at the foot of your opponent rather than the head, it tells you a little something about the nature of your apologetic.

Really does. Really does. So you have a contradiction here and it's a major one and that's another reason for...

Where? We haven't heard a word. Where is the contradiction? We haven't seen anything. Not a shred in everything that's been said at this point.

Shabir hasn't given us anything in this answer that is at all a contradiction. We're believing that Jesus was not raised from the dead and it's better to think that he did not die in the first place.

Again, thank you guys so much. Appreciate it. Okay, so there you go. There's that.

How anybody could go, wow, oh man, just wiped him out. It's just like, you're not really listening with critical thinking capacities operational here, are you?

I mean, the only way you could look at that and go, oh, that was awesome, is if you have such deep prejudice that you're just desperately searching for something to hold onto.

Now, I cannot maximize this little teeny tiny bit of nothing here.

Don't touch it, you'll break it. Okay. All right. I said, hey, you got quoted on Twitter.

Did you see that? Congratulations. Apologetics should be done surgically, not with a machete.

Dash, dash, dash rich. You win Twitter today. Congratulations. I'm not sure what it means to win

Twitter. I'm not sure I would want to own Twitter. I certainly wouldn't want to win it, but there you go.

You just won. Of course, I'm sort of wondering where you got that from. I think I've said something similar to that over the years, but hey, anyway.

Okay, so this is going to be even though it's really goofy sized. That looks great.

That looks fine because there's nothing more. It's just audio. So yeah, that works. It just happens to have some of the text on it that's relevant.

So that's good. Okay. I saw this Mustafa Mohammed Sahin, who is from Australia.

So he's got a wonderful Australian accent. I don't know if I've met him.

I've certainly done some debates on Islam down in Australia, but he could be in Perth or something or Melbourne or whatever.

Melbourne. I put way too much effort into pronunciation because they don't do that.

Anyway, sort of like you're supposed to say Brisbane, not Brisbane or anything like that.

Anyway, I saw this, I listened to it and I went, oh yeah, we need to respond to that.

Not because, again, as I said, I've already used this as an example. This is an example of really bad argumentation and it's really bad argumentation because it's based upon just no seeming understanding at all of what

Christians believe. And my hope, I mean, the guy seems like a nice guy. So my hope is, hey, you know, you got to pick your game up here.

This is really bad. And we'll explain why it's really bad and you'll be able to hear that as we get into it here.

But this is talking about the father being selfish, being selfish.

So here we go. Here's this section. Welcome to Muslim Apologetics Australia.

We're going to continue on with our episodes on the irrationality of the crucifixion.

And I want to touch on this point, which I think is quite important.

And hopefully our Christian friends can take knowledge from this and rectify and think about the faith they're in and whether they want to change and move away from that faith, which does not make any theological sense at all in Christianity.

Okay, so what we're hearing or being told is whatever question this is going to be is going to demonstrate and document for us that the

Christian belief is irrational. It makes no sense at all. None at all.

All right, so what is irrational about Christian belief? Let's find out.

We are told that the father loves Jesus so much that he sent his only begotten son to the earth.

Okay, immediately we got a problem. That's not what the Bible says. You're confusing for God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son, not for God so loved the son that he sent his only begotten son.

So you're missing what the object of God's love is. Now, the Bible says the father loves the son.

There's no question about that, but that's not the motivation of the sending. So I mean, if you disagree, maybe you could find a text that says the father loved the son so much that he sent him to the earth.

Then make sure, because you'll want us to do this with the Quran, right? You want us to listen to everything the

Quran says. In a moment, I'm going to be looking at a section of the Quran, and I'm going to try to allow it to speak for itself.

I'm going to try to let it, you know, function in that way.

You need to do that with the Bible. And so you need to deal with the reality that the New Testament likewise teaches that the son, out of his great love with which he loved us, also that's a motivation for why he entered into human flesh for the specific purpose of giving himself redemptively.

So there is great love on the part of the father and the son for God's people that is part of the motivation, no question about part of the motivation of why the son comes.

So he can be a lamb sacrifice in order for your sins to be forgiven.

This is the most unjust and selfish law ever imaginable.

I mean, think about it for a moment, folks. The father, if he really loved his son so much, he would have brought himself to the earth and sacrificed himself.

Now let me stop right there and ask, why? What's the reason?

Again, the son loves the father, the father loves the son. The issue of the love between the

Trinitarian persons is not relevant. The issue is that each of the divine persons has taken a different role in bringing about redemption itself.

And so the son voluntarily takes this role.

He is not forced to do this. And as Philippians chapter 2 says, he made himself of no reputation.

He became obedient to the point of death, even the death on the cross. This was something he chose to do.

There is nothing irrational, unjust. Why is it unjust that God provides in and of himself through the loving condescension of his son the redemption price necessary to redeem his people?

Why is that unjust? I mean, I hear it said all the time. And if you say, well, because no one can take your place is generally the idea.

Well, then there will be no salvation. And this is where I would say to you, your idea that God's law can simply be broken and a law just says, eh, no problem.

Kill 99 people, kill 100 people. Come on in. No problem. Means you don't really have a basis for having a coherent view of how

God's law represents God's being, because you're saying God's law can be just dismissed and yet God remained holy.

Doesn't work. I mean, I would like to take this opportunity to ask you,

Mustafa, Mohammed, whatever. I don't know what name you go by. Maybe you have a name that your friends call you by.

I'm sure we could, I'd like to get down to Australia again and spend a little while.

Maybe we get together, something like that. But I would challenge you. I think the real issue here is on your side, not mine.

I mean, you have a serious misunderstanding of what Christians believe, but I would turn around and challenge you.

Where do you have a way of explaining how you can maintain the justice of Allah's character while allowing his law to be broken and not satisfied in the demands it makes for moral and ethical righteousness?

What's the basis of Allah simply being able to forgive while his law remains broken? If you can have a mass murderer who's killed a hundred people arbitrarily enter into paradise, and you know which

Hadith I'm talking about. I've narrated it numerous times before on the program. If that person can simply...

What about all those people that died? What if some of those people that died ended up in hell under God's judgment and their murderer ends up in the presence of God, simply arbitrarily?

You see, from the Christian perspective, because Christ is the God -man and he lived a perfect life, he fulfilled all of God's law.

Therefore, the elect of God can be joined to him so that his death becomes their death.

His resurrection becomes their resurrection. Their sin is imputed to him. His righteousness is imputed to them.

That does not mean they have a license to sin. The Bible directly says the whole purpose of God in doing this is our sanctification, making us holy.

We want to live as Christ. We want to live as he lived. This is not a license to sin.

But it is the perfect mechanism for providing redemption of sin so that we can enter into the presence of God and God's law is perfectly fulfilled.

There is no injustice. I would submit to you there is injustice in your system, and I would ask you to think that through on your side.

Instead, he gets his son to do the father's dirty work.

Yes, we will punish the son. We will torture him. We will banish him.

We will humiliate him. We will put him on the cross to rot just so Christians in the future, those sinful

Christians, so they can get a free ride to paradise. Free ride to paradise means that those who turn from their sin and repentance and faith toward the resurrected

Jesus Christ will find in him everything that they need.

That is, his righteousness is perfect. And that is the standard that God has.

Your righteousness is not perfect. So if your righteousness is going to avail before God, then what you're saying is your

God has a lower standard. It's not perfect righteousness. It's not a free ride.

It is God reaching down in resurrection power and taking rebel sinners and turning them from rebel sinners into lovers of God who love him, love his son, love his ways.

The description of the Bible is God writes his law upon their hearts, takes out a heart of stone and gives them a heart of flesh.

That's not exactly what free ride to heaven sounds like to me. So who are you trying to communicate with?

I mean, I don't know any Christian who has almost any understanding of their faith that is going to recognize their own faith in your words.

So why are you doing this? I thought Dawah, in a sound understanding from the

Islamic perspective, means not just a defense of Islamic claims, but a calling to follow after Islam and to say the

Shahada. Do you expect to call people to confess the truthfulness of one thing by misrepresenting something else?

I find that inconsistent. I find that inconsistent. It doesn't make any sense.

Why is the father so selfish? He does not come down himself to suffer on the cross.

There's nothing selfish about this. It is simply the freedom of God to choose for the father to take one role, the son to take another role, and the spirit to take another role.

Would you say the spirit is selfish in not having taken the role of the one who works out redemption?

Each one takes a different role. There's nothing about selfishness there. You have not provided an argument, any meaningful argument whatsoever, as to where there's any selfishness here at all.

It just doesn't follow from what you said. Through pain, he makes his son suffer instead in order to forgive your sins.

Here is an additional question. Why are Christians like the father also?

See, they take after the father. Why are they so selfish like the father?

They are like a coward. They make Jesus pay for their sins while they all run off to heaven.

Again, this whole idea, it's painfully clear to me that our

Muslim interlocutor here has had very few conversations with serious

Christians, or if he has, he hasn't listened very well at all. Like a coward?

What do you mean? I couldn't pay for my own sins anymore, and you can pay for yours.

There is a just and holy God in heaven, and you have sinned.

Even if you reject original sin, it doesn't matter. You've sinned. You have sinned in thought.

You've lusted. You've lied. You've stolen. That means you're an adulterer, a liar, and a thief.

You have sinned in the sight of a holy God, and he knows. He knows the anger you've had in your heart toward others, and Jesus said you have anger in your heart toward your brother.

It's like murder, and you accept Jesus as a prophet, so you're stuck one way or the other. So you're a sinner, and so you can't save yourself.

You are justly condemned. You have nothing. What are you going to do? Buy God's justice? How are you going to buy him off?

Where is this coward stuff coming from? Again, any serious

Christian hearing this is just going, this person is not trying to reach me. They're trying to repel me.

That's why I don't understand this. This is supposed to be dawah. This is supposed to be calling to. You can only call with truthfulness.

You can only call by accurately representing what somebody else says, right? So they run off to heaven?

No, they become the servants of Jesus Christ. They take up their cross and follow him.

That's the call of Jesus. It's not just, let's go party in heaven. So again, there's just, as a

Christian, I just listen to this and I go, you know, I try. I want a

Muslim, and I'm going to show this in just a second. I want a Muslim to hear an accurate representation of Islam when

I speak about Islam. Why don't you want to have a Christian hear an accurate representation of Christianity when they hear you speaking?

I think that's very important. So this is why we say the best justice is in the justice of Islam.

Everyone pays for their own crimes. No cowards in Islam. As they say, you do the crime, you pay the time.

Okay, then how are you going to stand before a holy God? What do you have to give to a holy

God to pay for your sin? What filthy rags do you have to offer him?

I mean, I know, well, you know, you've got the scales. The scales are against you. Well, you know, you can put the shahadah on one side and that'll outweigh all the sins in the world.

What is the moral and ethical weight of saying the shahadah without atonement?

God's law remains broken. Saying words means nothing. What, how can you as a sinner buy your own redemption?

You seem to think you can do it, but having said the shahadah, how many times do you have to repent even after that?

How is it you continue committing the same sins? You who are married, how often do you mistreat your wife?

How often are you selfish toward her? You don't do the things toward her you need to be doing. How about your children?

Look into your own heart. You know it's true. And you think these religious things are somehow going to avail before God, before a holy

God whose standard is perfect righteousness? Really? Do the crime, do the time.

You don't want that. You do not want that.

You see, the difference is in Christianity, you have something called mercy and grace. But that mercy and grace does not violate

God's law because God's law has been fulfilled in the cross of Jesus Christ, the very thing that you reject.

That's the difference. That's the difference. And just in case a

Christian apologist says, oh, but the Father did come himself. He came through the incarnation of Jesus Christ on the earth.

That's called a heresy known as modalism. It was not the Father who was incarnate.

It was the Son. That is a Trinitarian heresy. And so, once again, that's not what

Christians believe. Really? What, in a spiritual form where he didn't feel pain?

He didn't feel the bodily pain and the bruises and the cuts and the whips and the nails going through the arms?

Oh, he just came in the artificial spiritual form where he didn't feel that sort of pain.

Is that what you're saying? That sounds like Gnosticism to me. And I can see why you might have an affinity toward Gnosticism because the

Quran utilizes a number of Gnostic sources as if they were actually a part of what we believe.

I think that's one of the key issues that maybe in future debates need to be dealt with.

Why does the Quran cite from the Arabic infancy gospel and the infancy gospel of Thomas and stuff like that?

I think that that'd be something that would be really good to approach. But it sounds like you're talking about Gnosticism here.

It has nothing to do with what the New Testament teaches. So again, an Orthodox Christian is sitting here going, what are you talking about?

What does this have to do with me? And you want to now defend your father for not being selfish.

Yeah, right. You see, folks, the father is so selfish that if he loved his son, he would have protected his son.

He wouldn't go throwing his son under a moving car. He would move his son out of the way and sacrifice himself for his son if he loved his son so much.

So again, the key here, and I think we've covered most of this needs to be covered. Something else I've got to get to is still got to get to Bart Ehrman, Mike Licona.

Sorry, this is going to be a mega edition. I sort of figured it probably would be, but we'll keep it and it will go a lot longer than that, especially since I skipped lunch.

So eventually, I'll just go and follow. What you see here is the necessity of communicating to Muslims and you

Muslims need to understand the self -giving of the son he gave himself.

It is not the father who forces him to come against his will and is cowardly or selfish or anything.

All of this completely demonstrates that you aren't even taking the time to read the

New Testament and certainly not with any kind of fairness, accuracy, seeking to understand, anything like that.

That does not say to us that what you're saying should be taken seriously.

And I say to a Muslim, if you encounter a Christian that's just simply repeating prejudicial statements, you probably shouldn't take what they're saying seriously either.

I'm consistent at that point. I've read the Quran and I've studied the

Quran and there's much more for me to learn about the Quran, yes. But the point is, this kind of material does not move forward the discussion we're having.

So very quickly, Ijaz Ahmed put out an article.

I believe it says, I think it says by Ijaz, it's on calling Christians.

And I just wanted to briefly address something here and just sort of ask a question.

Let me read a section. And for those of you who are sitting here going, I thought you're going to be talking about Laikona and Ehrman.

I'm going to. We're going to be starting a series, but that Laikona -Ehrman series is going to be portions in numerous programs to come.

Because in the past, we'd sit down, we'd just listen to the whole thing. We'd go two or three programs and a lot of people just wouldn't listen to hours and hours and hours and hours worth of stuff.

So we're going to do the introduction here at the end of the program, but I wanted to get to this stuff first.

Let me read a portion of the Quran. Yeah, we're pulling a 24 -hour with this one.

It's going to get funny in about eight hours. Yeah, right. I'm looking at the channel there. Yeah, right.

My neck's getting a crick in it. I don't know why you're not playing with the screen.

There we go. Constantly looking to the left. My chiropractor is going to get angry with you if you don't stop.

You need to start doing that. Okay. Surah Yunus is

Surah 10 in the Quran. I want to read the context of a particular verse, beginning basically 10 verses earlier.

And Moses said, O my people, if you have believed in Allah, then rely upon him if you should be Muslims. So they said, upon Allah do we rely.

Our Lord, make us not objects of trial for the wrongdoing people and save us by your mercy from the disbelieving people.

And we inspired to Moses and his brothers, settle your people in Egypt and houses and make your houses facing the

Qibla and establish prayer and give good tidings to the believers. I just stopped to mention, boy, could we have a discussion about the archeological reality of whether there was such a thing as a

Qibla at that point in time. But anyway, we continue on. This is

Surah 10, Ayah 88. And Moses said, Our Lord, indeed you have given Pharaoh and his establishment splendor and wealth in the worldly life, our

Lord, that they may lead men astray from your way. Our Lord, obliterate their wealth and harden their hearts so they will not believe until they see the painful punishment.

I stop again. It is interesting the term hardened hearts occurs in this narrative in light of the hardening of Pharaoh's heart.

But anyway, Ayah 89, Allah said, Your supplication has been answered.

So remain on a right course and follow not the way of those who do not know. And we took the children of Israel across the sea and Pharaoh and his soldiers pursued them and tearing in enmity until when drowning overtook him, he said,

I believe that there is no deity except that in whom the children of Israel believe and I am of the Muslims. Now, let me just stop.

This won't make any sense to you unless I give you at least some explanation. This is Pharaoh saying this.

The Muslims believe that Pharaoh, though he was killed, his body didn't sink.

It was displayed as a sign from God, but that this repentance was too late.

This is him allegedly speaking here. Because Allah says back to him now, and you had disobeyed him before and were of the corruptors.

So today we will save you in body that you may be to those who succeed you a sign. And indeed, many among the people of our signs are heedless.

That's what it's talking about. There's a background to it that goes to other places. And we had certainly settled the children of Israel in an agreeable settlement and provide them with good things.

And they did not differ until after knowledge had come to them. Indeed, your Lord will judge between them on the day of resurrection concerning that over which they used to differ.

Here's the key text. So if you are in doubt, O Muhammad, about that which we have revealed to you, then ask those who have been reading the scripture before you.

The truth has certainly come to you from your Lord. So never be among the doubters and never be of those who deny the signs of Allah and thus be among the losers.

Indeed, those upon whom the word of your Lord has come into effect will not believe, even if every sign should come to them, until they see the painful punishment."

And then it goes on from there to talk about Muhammad, I'm sorry, Jonah. Then has there not been a single city that believed so its faith benefited except the people of Jonah?

So in other words, Nineveh repented. When they believed, we removed from them the punishment of disgrace and worldly life and gave them enjoyment for a time.

And had your Lord willed, those on earth would have believed, all of them entirely. That we could really talk, find an interesting discussion about as well.

Sort of hard for me to put together the free will Muslims with this one.

Then, O Muhammad, would you compel the people in order that they become believers? And it is not for a soul to believe except by permission of Allah, and he will place defilement upon those who will not use reason.

Now, there's lots of stuff we could talk about here. Lots of things, so on and so forth. But all of that to look at verse, at Ayah 94.

So if you're in doubt, now, O Muhammad is not in the text.

So let's just say, but it is singular. So even

Islamic sources recognize Muhammad as being addressed here. So if you're in doubt, O Muhammad, about that which we have revealed to you, then ask those who have been reading the scripture before you.

That's the people of the book. The truth has certainly come to you from your Lord, so never be among the doubters.

Well, one of the problems that I have with the

Quran is it is very rarely capable of providing in and of itself a contextual interpretation of its own words.

The vast majority of instances, it is dependent upon external sources. And in Islamic theology today, it is the

Hadith that provides the context, the interpretation of many passages in the

Quran. It is not, I just don't understand how anybody can say that it is

Mubinun. It is clear, it is perspicuous in its teachings on many subjects.

People say, well, it's only certain parts. There are other parts that are unclear. Okay, whatever. Here's the issue.

Reading from many missionaries often quote Quran 1094 as proof that they have true knowledge about God, and that this verse proves that Muslims must depend on Christians and Jews to understand the

Quran, Islam, and God. How do we respond to this? Now, I have never personally heard anyone make that argument.

I have heard people say that Surah 1094 is consistent with the understanding that I think we get from Surah 5, 44 through 48, that the message that was sent down to Muhammad is consistent with the messages sent down to Moses and to Jesus.

And that therefore, the people of the book will confirm the message that was sent to them that is the same message sent to Muhammad, which frequently is sort of boiled down to a basic monotheism, but it's that consistency.

And so the idea, I don't see how Surah 10 would be that Muslims must depend on Christians and Jews to understand the

Quran. But I do believe that the Quran asserts that there is consistency in revelatory status between the

Torah, the Injil, and the Quran. I don't think there's any way around that in Surah 5. But it does seem to me though, so if you are in doubt, this seems to be a little embarrassing to many

Muslims. And in fact, I was looking at some of my tafsir, tafsir is commentary on the Quran. There ain't much, there isn't, it's almost like to skip over it.

Like, Muhammad in doubt? But it's interesting.

When Robert Spencer came out with this book questioning the actual existence of Muhammad, I said at the time,

I don't buy this. And one of the reasons I don't buy this is you have certain things in the hadith and in the

Quran itself that fit what's called the criterion of embarrassment. In other words, there are still things, even though there is an effort to try to get rid of them, but there are still things in this literary tradition that wouldn't be there if someone was just trying to make this up out of whole cloth.

This is one of them. This is one of them, I would say. That's how I see it. So, I just wanted to read some of what

Ijaz says here real quickly, because we're, I really got to wrap this up. We're going way too long. I'm sorry.

The passage does not state that the prophet was in doubt, nor does it state that the

Muslims should be in doubt. Well, that's true. It doesn't say he was in doubt. It simply says, if you are in doubt.

And when you do look at some of the hadith, when the angel Jibril first appeared to Muhammad, what was his response?

I think that's got to be kept in mind. The passage then concludes by commanding that we should never doubt the

Quran, so never be among the doubters. The passage, therefore, does not give authority to modern day Christians to be judges about the truth of Islam.

To argue this would be to ignore the entirety of what the Tafsir, the marvelous

Quran, comments about this passage, quote, in the third verse, 94, the address is obviously to the holy prophet, but it goes out saying that there is no probability of his doubting the revelation.

Well, then why does it say what it says? Therefore, the purpose is to beam the message to the

Muslim community through this address, where he is not the intended recipient. Yeah, I would get that by just reading the text.

Then it is also possible this address may be, now notice, I think the writer of the

Tafsir here recognizes this is stretching it, because when you immediately provide a secondary possibility, then it is also possible this address may be to human beings at large, asking them if they had any doubts about the divine revelation sent to them through Saidina Muhammad al -Mustafa.

If they had, let them ask those who recite the Torah and Injil before them, they would tell them that all past prophets and their books have been announcing the glad tidings of the last among the prophets.

This will remove their scruples and suspicions. So now all of a sudden we have this idea that what is being mentioned here, and this is not the only place, is that if Muhammad doubts that he is the fulfillment of the prophecies of this coming prophet, about which there aren't any, but is central to the

Quranic narrative. So you do have a couple of the texts in the Quran that talk about how the people of books see in their scriptures this coming prophet, this unlettered prophet, they read of it in their scriptures.

We've talked about that a number of times in the past. In fact, we've done debates on that particular issue, in fact, with Shabir Ali in London a number of years ago, we addressed that.

So the idea being, well, if you doubt that you're that prophet, then ask the people of book, well, if you did, sorry, the people of book were not looking for some type of prophet.

I mean, the Jews that rejected the Messiah would be looking for the continuing coming of the

Messiah, but even the Quran assumes that's wrong, and so the

Christians are not looking for someone else who's coming. Jesus is the final revelation from God.

Hebrews 1 .1, a book that evidently had impact whatsoever, zero upon, well, there's just the

New Testament as a whole did, but especially that book. Ijaz goes on to say, the Quran specifically identifies who is to be asked.

This may come as a surprise to many people, but the missionaries who often misuse this verse are unaware that there is a specific person the

Quran referenced to at the time of its revelation in nascent Islamic Arabia. The Quran in 46 .10.

So we jump out of Surah 10 all the way over to Surah 46.

Say, have you considered if the Quran was from Allah and you disbelieved in it while a witness from the children of Israel has testified to something similar and believed while you were arrogant?

Indeed, Allah does not guide the wrongdoing people. Okay, so it seems here that the argument from Surah 46 is that the children of Israel, a witness from the children of Israel has testified to something similar and believed while you were arrogant.

So is this a Jewish convert to Islam that is being referenced to here?

Well, Ijaz comments, the Quran clearly states that there was a witness from among the children of Israel who testified to the truth of the

Quran at the time of the prophet. Therefore, when the Quran, now who is this? Do we not know?

I'd be interested in knowing. Therefore, when the Quran in 10 .94 speaks of asking those who knew the previous messages sent by God, the

Quran directly informs us that there was indeed a witness that confirmed what the Quran said from the people of the book.

Except 10 .94 says, ask the people of the book. I mean, this seems like a real stretch.

The Quran, therefore, does not identify modern -day Christians, whether they be Protestants or Catholics, as the people that the

Quran in 10 .94 referred to. Well, okay, but who were the people of the book at that time?

And what did they have in their possession is one of the issues. The same tafsir says, this is also interesting, the same tafsir says, this verse was revealed about Sayyidina Abdullah ibn

Salam. So I guess that would be who they're identifying it as. And the same statement from Ibn Abbas, Mujahid, Dahak, Qadda, et cetera, is not against this verse being maqi, as in this case, it will be a prophecy for the future.

But wait a minute, is it this Ibn Salam or is it prophetic?

We're getting a whole lot of interpretations here real fast. In conclusion, Quran 10 .94

asks a hypothetical and rhetorical question. If anyone is in doubt about what the Quran says, actually it says, if you,

Muhammad, are in doubt, so we've gone from the actual words of the text to a real paraphrase of the text, then they should ask those who know the previous revelations.

The Quran then tells us who should be asked over in 46 .10. Well, which came first?

Are you sure? Had 46 .10 been revealed before 10? Are you certain of that?

And it identifies a witness who was known at that time to be the one who was knowledgeable about the previous scriptures.

So now this witness is no longer the people of the book that you ask, it's this one guy who's converted to be the one who is knowledgeable about the previous scriptures and that this person confirmed the teachings of the

Quran. Either way, this verse does not give authority to modern day

Christians to judge about the truth of Islam. Such an interpretation ignores the verses context and its overall message as it fits into the

Quranic narrative. Such a missionary, should a missionary raise Quran 10 .94, they should be duly informed of Quran 46 .10.

Now I I go through this just simply to say that it raises the question, if I could debate a

Muslim as I did in London years ago on whether the Quran misrepresents Christians, and at the end of the debate, what had clearly come out was,

I think you can actually look at Surah 5 and follow an argument through, and that argument misrepresents

Christians, and the Islamic position is you can't follow the Quran that way. Where is the objective methodology of doing tafsir?

Is there an objective methodology? It just seems that when you get to looking at grammar, context, background, and trying to create a consistent methodology of interpretation, we call it hermeneutics, it all goes awry, and it sort of becomes a grab bag.

My experience in having been given at least five different interpretations of Surah 5 itself in that one section by different Muslims, well -meaning men, well -read men, you say, well

I've been given all sorts of interpretations of the Bible too. Yeah, but how many of them were actually based upon the original language, brought up by people who know those backgrounds, believe everything that's in the

New Testament, actually seek to harmonize those things together, I'm assuming that's what you do with the

Quran. I see a huge difference. The nature of the

Quran is very different than the nature of what, from the Islamic perspective, is previous revelations.

Obviously, that's one of the reasons that we don't believe it's revelatory itself, and I think that is a solid argument.

Okay, now, finally, to get to what all of you thought we would be talking about all along, and we've gone for an hour and 35 minutes and haven't gotten to what you wanted to hear in the first place, but look, like I said, switching gears here,

I listened to the Laikonah -Urman debate. I was gonna say there was nothing new.

It is vintage Urman. There are a couple of things. Let me just make one statement straight up, then we're just listen to a short section and we'll be done.

We're gonna start, we're gonna lay out a few things here, but then we're gonna just make this a part of future programs and cover the primary argumentation that Bart Urman uses, because I think in providing an answer to the specific arguments that he presents, we can really help a large audience with dealing with this kind of stuff.

First of all, there are many, many things that Dr.

Laikonah said that I completely agree with. The fact that I have criticized what

I believe to be compromises with vitally important issues on his part does not change the fact that, interestingly enough, even though he would repeatedly say, sure, that could be wrong, sure, that could be wrong, but then he would give them a meaningful argument for why it might not be an error at all.

It does seem to me that there is the standard. Look, I know in the academy, you are not allowed to believe that scripture is theanoustos as a presupposition.

You're just not allowed to do that. You can't believe it's inspired. The idea of harmonization is considered to be merely a fundamentalist relic, and therefore, don't even bother with it.

I get it. There were a number of examples that Dr.

Laikonah gave that I very good. I don't want anyone to hear the criticisms that will inevitably have to be voiced to be a simple statement that he never said anything that was worthwhile or anything else, because that's not the case.

At the same time, however, I think Bart Ehrman has him in the sense that he gets up in his rebuttal period and he says, it sounds like we agree about this, because the thesis of the debate is, are the

New Testament documents historically reliable? And it sounds like Mike Laikonah just said, no.

Now, I recognize what Ehrman does is he says, I am using the modern standard of historically accurate.

And so though I know that there's really nothing in ancient history that is historically accurate using that standard.

In other words, basically, you need to have mp3 recordings minimally, video would be good, that kind of stuff.

Therefore, there can't be anything that's historically accurate from his perspective. That's why we've identified this as a hypercritical perspective on his part.

They are using different standards of reliability. Dr. Laikonah's position is that given what the

Gospels are, that they are not meant as modern transcripts from a a court trial, that they are literary works, that they have a beginning, a middle, and an end, that they are organized in such a way that obviously everybody who writes anything, whether it is a dry historical piece or a passionate appeal for faith, which is what the

Gospels are, has to order, the author has to have the freedom to choose what they're going to include.

How they're going to order things. When you're talking about someone's ministry, do you start at the end? Do you start at the beginning?

How do you order things? Do you go topically? Do you go chronologically? There's just all sorts of things that enter into a meaningful discussion of this particular subject.

And so Dr. Laikonah's argument in his new book is that in reality the

Gospels fit very well with Plutarch and this historical, biographical category of writing, and that in the ancient context that they are reliable for what they were intended to be.

And obviously, I agree that Dr. Laikonah's categories are the only rational categories to apply.

I think it's laughable that Bart Ehrman would apply the standards of today, which could be different as was brought out in the debate 200 years from now, but apply the standards of today to documents that are 2 ,000 years of age.

At the same time, that then raises the issue of truth. And you see, Ehrman doesn't want to get into—he does not want to be held accountable for providing a theological basis for his theological conclusions.

He makes theological conclusions as an agnostic, but he doesn't want to be challenged on theological issues, as I discovered when we did our debate in 2009 and the run -up to that particular thing.

So with all that said, what I want to do—one of the things that—Bart

Ehrman is a very bright man. Everybody knows that. So is

Mike Laikonah. So is William Lane Craig, for that matter. He's a bright man, but I am deeply troubled by the way that he handles the arguments that he has produced that obviously work really well on freshman students in his classes, but shouldn't be being repeated in this context, to be perfectly honest with you.

Now, I mentioned on the last program that I had been watching the video.

We're not going to be using the video, just the audio. And while Dr.

Laikonah is behind the podium, he reads his opening statement. Ehrman has no notes, and he's talking off the top of his head, and he's prowling around the stage, and he's gesticulating.

It's just vintage Ehrman all the way along. But in these debates, when you state the thesis the way that it is, the

Christian is in pretty much a no -win situation. And I'm going to do this.

It's going to take time. I don't know when I'm going to have time to do it. But if you want to make the argument—and

Laikonah sort of did this in some of his statements. Ehrman's written a lot of stuff, and it's not difficult to go through that large body of literature now and pick on stuff, sometimes validly, sometimes not.

It's real easy to create the sense of contradiction between his particularly scholastic work and his more popular work.

And you can even present contradiction between things he said in misquoting

Jesus and in his work on how Jesus became God, because even he admits he's changed his view.

So you can create contradiction in Bart Ehrman. And what

I'd like to do sometime is to come up with 50 seconds, maybe one minute, of contradictions, allegations of contradiction in Bart Ehrman, and then say, and you only have 50 seconds to respond.

Because that's what you get in these debates. It's always easier to present allegations of contradiction than it is to respond to them.

It always takes at least five times as long as it takes you to announce an alleged contradiction to explain why it isn't, at least in a truthful fashion, in a meaningful fashion.

That's why these debates are so easy for him. He can just simply throw out the old...

I responded to his, John has the crucifixion on a different day than Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

I responded to that. That was one of the presentations I made at the Jeremiah Cry thing in New York in, what, 2011?

Like six, seven years ago? He's still throwing it out. And Licona agrees with him.

So, but how long does it take me to make a credible case against that perspective?

Much longer than it takes to simply announce that it's a contradiction. Much longer, in a truthful sense.

Part of this is just, we live in a day of soundbites, and you just don't get any deeper in your level of knowledge if you're satisfied with soundbites.

That's why I try to avoid soundbite argumentation against, like, the

Quran. That's why I read a bunch of the Quran today, to try to...

Is there a context here? Soundbite stuff... Anyway.

So here, I want you to listen to how

Ehrman presents something here. I'm going to point out the problems, and then point out that he knows the problems.

This will be our introduction to debunking the

Bart Ehrman methodology of attacking the Christian faith, which he says he's not doing, but facts are facts.

So let's listen in here. The Gospel writers want to emphasize different things.

And the problem with thinking that they're all accurate is that it means that you read one of the

Gospels as if it's saying the same thing as another one of the Gospels, when in fact they might be emphasizing different things based on different stories that they've heard.

Now, I can simply...

I'm not even sure that they're up, unfortunately, but I spent nine years teaching through the

Synoptic Gospels at PRBC. And in the introductory material, which

I'll probably have to redo someday, we specifically laid out the fact that Mark has a particular audience in mind,

Matthew has a different audience in mind, Luke has a different audience in mind, and John is writing at a later period of time and has yet another audience in mind.

And that we must give each of the Gospel writers the freedom to pick and choose who they're going to speak to, how they're going to speak to them, what they're going to include, how they're going to arrange their material, how they're going to use language that is going to be the most effective in reaching their particular audience.

Which is why, for example, you find very Jewish style of argumentation and Scripture citation in Matthew that you do not have in Luke.

You do not have it in Luke. They have to have that freedom. You have to allow

Mark to be Mark and Matthew to be Matthew and Luke to be Luke. And when you squish them all together, as what happened in the second century in what's called the

Diatessaron, when you create one Gospel out of the four, that is an artificial and misleading document, no question about it.

But notice the presuppositional error in Ehrman's thought.

Did you catch it? I want you to listen a second time. Let's see if you can find the presuppositional error in what

Bart Ehrman says. The Gospel writers want to emphasize different things. And the problem with thinking that they're all accurate is that it means that you read one of the

Gospels as if it's saying the same thing as another one of the Gospels, when in fact they might be emphasizing different things based on the different stories that they've heard.

Did you catch it? It's the use of the term accurate. What he's saying is, if you have—let's just talk about the synoptics here, let's leave out

John for the moment—if you have three writers who have different emphases, they have chosen to write different length versions, that they cannot be accurate in describing the same event.

I read a book my junior year in high school called

Incredible Victory, The Battle of Midway by Walter Lord. And it's a long story about how that ended up allowing me to get my wife, but that's a completely different story we won't get into right now.

But it is sort of historical fiction in the sense that it quotes people when you wouldn't be able to quote them.

But it's all based on research, and it was very accurate in its historical material and stuff like that.

So it is a book about the Battle of Midway, and it moves along really well.

And if you want to know about The Battle of Midway, and I'd highly recommend it to you, it's a great book. It really, really is.

It's a page turner, as we used to say. Or a Kindle clicker, I guess, is what you'd have today or whatever.

Now, I have another book at home,

I don't have it here in my library, I have it at home, called Shattered Sword. And it's been written since then, and it really sort of is currently the standard work on The Battle of Midway.

It is four times longer, at least, than Incredible Victory.

But you know what? If all I had was

Shattered Sword, I never would have learned about The Battle of Midway, because I'm not going to read a book that big. And it ain't a page turner.

It's dry, scholastic history. Does that mean

The Battle of Midway didn't take place? Does that mean they're both inaccurate?

No, it just means they're different. Ehrman presuppositionally assumes that if you have different authors with different purposes, writing different length books with different emphases, that they can't be accurate.

Why? Why? So when you hear a news report that takes place immediately, and gives you just the outline of what happens, and then you hear two months later, there is a half hour program on the same thing.

They can't be accurate because they're of different lengths and have different purposes? No, not at all.

Just because the authors are emphasizing different things does not mean that the historical events that are part of the fabric of their story did not take place, and that we cannot determine the nature of those historical events.

I now realize that having given you all this background information, that it's almost four o 'clock.

So what I'm going to have to do... I was going to say, you're in takeoff mode, man. You're like, let's go!

I want to get to this, but it's marked. So I'm going to pick up right here, and I'm going to give you his example and demonstrate how having an overriding presupposition...

and guess what? Bart Ehrman thinks that we have the overriding presuppositions that twist the scripture because we believe in inspiration.

As a former Christian, he may have some overriding presuppositions of his own. So we will pick up with exactly that on the next program and spend more time on this than on the

Quran or anything else. I promise we'll do that. But this is important stuff.

Every time we have addressed these issues in the past, people have said, that's relevant to Islamic apologetics,

Mormon apologetics, not only just dealing with skeptics and people like that. This is the issue of our day, the reliability of the text in the

New Testament. And debates are wonderful in that they can allow us to bring these things out, but they are not wonderful in that I would much rather engage

Ehrman on a very narrow, specific subject, where instead of getting less and less in -depth as the time goes by in the debate, you go more and more.

But that's not normally how these things end up taking place. So anyway, with that, we will go ahead and wrap things up because we've covered a lot already today.

We'll be five minutes short of a full mega edition. Oh well, that's okay.

We'll pick up with Bart Ehrman's illustration that proves the presuppositional nature of his argumentation and the error thereof on the next program.