Georgia Southern Baptists, Roger Olsen’s Imagination, and Continued Rebuttal of Ahmed Deedat

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I should have figured this out by now, and I was warned that I'd be wasting my time.

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But this morning I awoke to the news that someone over the evening had posted on our website, on our

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Facebook page, I'm sorry, that I had been accused in a public meeting of seeking to contact minor children of Bruton -Parker

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College trustees. And of course my immediate response was, who said it and when, because, you know, lies, when they're repeated often enough get people elected president of the

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United States, in fact. And that's a lie. It is, anybody who's repeated it, or the person who started it, or if it was just started by some person who doesn't know who's who,

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I don't know. But it's a lie. I, off the top of my head,

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I know the name of a single trustee of Bruton -Parker, and it's only because it's hard to forget the name Bucky.

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I just figure, who on earth ever names a child

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Bucky? But what, what, you have some relatives named

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Bucky? That's one of my hometown heroes. Oh, all right, well, there you go. Bucky O 'Neill, he fought in the, anyway.

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Oh, thanks, appreciate that. Anyway, that's the only person I know of, and I've had no contact with the man.

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I know he's married. I don't know how old he is. All I know is he was the one silly enough to say, I think we need to hire

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Eric and Karen because he's been involved in all these disputes. All right, so I find out who the individual was, and by, fell by the name of Dr.

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Joe McGee, the head of the Consolation Association of the Georgia Baptist Convention.

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And so, I think about it, and I go, you know what,

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I think I need to give Dr. McGee a call, and just let him know that this has been said, and if he has said this, that it's untrue, and hope for the best.

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See if there's someone on the other end of the phone that I can reason with that, you know, might, well,

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I guess I am naive. I talked to Dr.

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McGee, he took the call. He took the call. Went straight through to him. I don't know that I ever got more than one sentence, maybe a sentence and a half in before I would be interrupted.

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And, you know, he went on and on about how he does not respect me, and how I am out to destroy

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Eric and Karen, and who do I think I am, and I'm like, well, sir, am I going to get a chance to, but, and then you did this, and you did that, and you lied about this, sir, are you going to, sir, could

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I, I eventually had to hang up, because it was just, you know, hello, hello, just no, and it's sad.

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But I mean, what, what causes people to engage in this kind of thinking?

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I mean, there's obviously a real problem with discernment in amongst Georgia Southern Baptists.

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Real problem with discernment. I mean, you know, if you can be taken in by Eric and Karen's stuff, then there's, there's real, real, it's one thing to have been taken in by it when no one was raising the alarm, but when there are, when there is a mountain of video documentation demonstrating this stuff, so there's a real problem there.

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But I, one of the things that came out, you know, at one point was he mentioned

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Calvinism, and these folks honestly think that their behavior is, is acceptable, because I'm a

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Calvinist. And if you're a Calvinist, these folks don't believe you're a Christian. They see you as absolute heretics.

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That's just all there is to it. Now, not a one of them could sit down with an open Bible with you and survive for five minutes without walking away.

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There's, I mean, it's just painfully obvious. You'll, you know, we've done enough Radio Free Geneva to demonstrate that, but wow, truly, truly an amazing thing to have to just go,

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I tried, you know, I tried, who knows? Oh, and at one point he did thank me for calling him because he knew

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I was just trying to intimidate him. Talk about guilty until proven innocent, and there's no evidence that can be offered whatsoever that you're, that you're innocent at all.

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It's just, oh, wow. Amazing, amazing stuff.

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It's, it's sad. It's not where we were going to start today. Actually, I had a very serious, well, that's serious enough.

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I mean, I says a lot about the Sun Maps Convention in Georgia, but a few weeks ago, and I guess a few weeks ago, this was only four days ago, an article was posted.

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I don't know why I do this, but I do keep Roger Olson. My Evangelical Arminian Theological Musings.

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I keep his blog in my feeds. It's in the apologetics section along with Roman Catholics and others.

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But he posted an article on August 22nd. God and children.

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Would Jesus, parenthesis, God, parenthesis, command their slaughter? I found it to be a very interesting article, and I think it'd be a good one to look at, to think about.

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And it's not long. That's what's nice about it. And what was really interesting is, of course,

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Steve Hayes got to it before I did. I saw last night that he responded to this. I had this queued up.

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I had it queued up before I saw his article. But anyway, here's what he says.

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Recently, I posted here about God's character and argued that God could not, because of his character revealed in Jesus, command the merciless slaughter of children.

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Several conservative Christians objected, pointing to Old Testament texts of terror, such as 1 Samuel 15, where God is reported as ordering

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Hebrews to slaughter an entire tribe, including infants. Now, since most of us have not memorized 1

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Samuel 15. 1 Samuel 15 says, and Samuel said to Saul, Yahweh sent me to anoint you king over his people

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Israel. Now, therefore, listen to the words of Yahweh. Thus says Yahweh of hosts, I have known that what

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Amalek did to Israel in opposing them on the way when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and strike

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Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.

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So Saul summoned the people and numbered them in Talaim, 200 ,000 men on foot and 10 ,000 men of Judah.

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And Saul came to the city of Amalek and lay in wait in the valley. And Paul said to the Kenites, go depart, go down from among the

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Amalekites, lest I destroy you with them, for you showed kindness to all the people of Israel when they came up out of Egypt.

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So the Kenites departed from among the Amalekites. And Saul defeated the Amalekites from Havilah as far as Shur, which is east of Egypt.

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And he took Agag, the king of the Amalekites, alive and devoted to destruction all the people with the edge of the sword.

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But Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep and of the oxen and the fattened calves and the lambs and all that was good and would not utterly destroy them.

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All that was despised and worthless, they devoted to destruction. And then after this, the word of the Lord came to Samuel, I regret that I have made

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Saul king, et cetera, et cetera. So there you have the section that is in reference here in 1

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Samuel 15. If there is anything in the Bible with which I struggle more than this, I don't know what it is.

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Going back to Roger Olson now, for those of you listening via audio. I do believe in the

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Bible's infallibility, but not its literal inerrancy. That's one of the things that I struggle with in reading

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Olson, is basically his philosophy determines what he will or will not believe in the

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Bible. It's not the entire content of Scripture.

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I'm going to take these things, I'm going to take them, I'm going to create an overarching system and then use that to look at the

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Bible and what fits, I accept. What doesn't, well, we'll find some way around it.

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And really, Arminianism, if you attempt to defend it, the vast majority of people do not.

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But if you attempt to defend it, it will eventually lead you to a fundamental denial of certain scriptural parameters.

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In other words, I do not think every assertion in the Bible is to be taken literally, even some that on their faces seem like statements of fact.

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A notable example that we probably all agree about is Joshua's battle during which the sun is said to have stood still,

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Joshua 10, 13. I have never met anyone, not even the most conservative Christian fundamentalist who takes that literally.

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And yet when Copernicus and later Galileo argued that the earth revolves around the sun, many Christians argued they were denying the truth of the

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Bible. We have adjusted our interpretation of Joshua 10, 13 to accommodate what we now know about the solar system.

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Now, I'm sorry, but there is not the slightest bit of relevance to that illustration.

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There is a supernatural elongation of time whereby the enemies of Israel could be destroyed.

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From the earth's perspective, the sun stood still. Now what did that involve?

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Did that involve the cessation of the movement of the earth? Was it the entire universe that God just put on hold for a second?

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He controls all of it. Are you saying he couldn't do that, Dr. Olson? The one who created it couldn't go pause?

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You can go pause right now on me. Just that, you know, there's that little two bars, you know, you click that and it stops.

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So you wish you could always do that to me. But you don't think

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God can do that? Raise the dead. He can create the whole thing and finish the whole thing up someday, but can't do that.

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Can't do that. Hmm. That's strange. Anyway, but there are those who still argue that what the story really means to say in modern terms is that the earth stopped rotating for a time.

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But of course, we also know from modern science what that would mean for plant and animal life on earth.

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This is the same stuff you get in saying the flood could never have happened. Is this guy a naturalistic materialist?

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What happened to... Anyway, many Christians take the Bible seriously, do not take every story in it literally.

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That's very nice. Who is to say that a Christian who argues that the Joshua story means neither that the sun literally stood still nor the earth stopped rotating is not a

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Bible believing Christian? Some will say it, but even they do not advocate cutting off hands or tearing out eyes,

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Matthew 530, or even claim that Jesus really meant it literally. And yet there's nothing in the text to indicate

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Jesus didn't mean it literally. Okay.

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I'm sorry, but this guy is considered to be one of the best they've got. And I'm sitting here going, really?

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There's nothing in the text that doesn't mean that Jesus meant this literally. You can't see where the problem is there.

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You can't see the difference between a direct command of God in regards to the punishment of a people and a supernatural event about time and Jesus's discussion of it's better to go into life maimed than to miss life because you had sin in your members and you wouldn't mortify...

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You can't see a difference between these things? They're all... Really? Okay.

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All right. My point is that nobody takes all the

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Bible, all the Bible literally. Well, if you mean by absurdly literally, yeah.

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An old concern of Maxim is that we're to take the Bible as literally as possible and as figuratively as necessary.

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But that only raises the question what necessary means. I know of no more important principle for Christian theology than that Jesus is the perfect, if not complete revelation of God's character.

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Now, I'm not sure that that's how I want to express that. After all, Jesus was God in human flesh or put more technically following the hypostatic union doctrine of Chalcedon.

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He was the son of God, the eternal second person of the Trinity, equal to the father with an added human nature, an added human nature.

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But orthodoxy does not say and should not permit anyone to say that the addition of humanity to the son of God made him any different morally than he always was or than the father is.

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The person of Jesus Christ was not morally altered by the incarnation. That I take it is a basic orthodox doctrine.

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He was a son of God. That is his who, even if his what included humanity.

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Surely in Trinitarian orthodoxy, the son of God, the word, the logos is morally the same as the father.

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That is, there is no difference between them and the Holy Spirit as to their character. They share all the same moral attributes and always have and always will.

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To say otherwise would be to wreak havoc with the Trinity. Be patient. I'm going somewhere with all this.

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Yeah. Um, message there.

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Jesus said, let the little children come to me and do not hinder them for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.

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He gathered them about himself and as they say in Texas, loved on them. I do not believe these were elect children, some select group of children

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Jesus loved while he hated others. But there's a problem. Can anyone imagine

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Jesus turning around and saying, slaughter these little children? I can't.

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But if I can't imagine Jesus doing that to any group of children, what am I to do as 1 Samuel 15?

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Was Yahweh someone other than Jesus, different in character from him? That would, as I said, wreak havoc with the

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Trinity and say that Jesus was not the perfect revelation of God. Then are we not putting a literal interpretation of the

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Bible above Jesus himself? It's all very easy for literalists to shoot arrows labeled heresy at those who do not take every story in the

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Bible literally, but it's harder for them to reconcile all the stories. They may say, well, I don't reconcile them. I just accept them all at face value.

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But as I showed earlier, they don't. They reinterpret some in light of modern knowledge or simply in light of common sense. That is, they don't pluck out their eyes or advocate cutting off hands.

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Ironically, many of them reject whole passages of Scripture as not for today, based on untwisted dispensationalist logic.

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Paul clearly said, do not forbid speaking in tongues, 1 Corinthians 14, 39, yet many of those who insist on a literal interpretation of 1

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Samuel don't even wince when they claim that Paul's command isn't meant for today. Dr.

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Olson really struggles with category errors, leaving dispensationalism out of it.

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There might be some who would go, well, maybe that was a gift for a certain period of time.

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Has nothing to do with dispensationalism. Has to do with the nature and function of sign gifts.

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Anyway, that's another issue. Jesus must be our hermeneutical litmus test whenever we encounter and interpret biblical or extra -biblical texts that claim something about God.

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He was and is God, Yahweh. If I cannot imagine Him doing something, then neither can I imagine any person of God doing it because they are the same in substance and character.

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And there was the substance of the argument. If I can't imagine

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God doing it, then God can't do it. That's what he's saying. I will edit

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God to fit what I imagine God to be. That's what he's saying. That's what, look, when you listen to what the major Arminians are saying today, that's what they're saying.

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They're saying, well, you know, we just don't like a God who does the things that you say he does. I'm not going to worship a

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God that chooses one and doesn't choose another. That's what they're saying.

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I don't like that. And so I'm just not going to believe it. I've said over and over again,

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Arminianism in its core is naturalistic and it's rationalistic and it limits

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God. Now, let's ask ourselves a simple question here. All right. First Samuel 15 bothers folks.

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It's not the only one. You know, the Amorites and the Amalekites and people say it's genocide.

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And I mentioned a few weeks ago in that dialogue, sort of, that discussed the destruction of entire cities and so on and so forth, that Paul Copan has posited the idea that what we have here is a form of rhetoric, that it's not meant to be taken literally.

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That when you say wipe them out, man, woman, and child, what you really mean is defeat them utterly militarily.

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And that there are examples of this in Egyptian secular writings and things like that.

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Let me ask you a question. If God wiped out a populace by volcano, would you have a problem with that?

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Well, many people would. In fact, some people trace the rise of atheism in Europe to an earthquake that took place that just destroyed an entire population.

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So you know, we just had an earthquake up in Napa Valley. So let's say the big one hits. All right.

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The big one hits. Is God in charge of that?

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I mean, most people, most people still recognize that God's at least still in charge of the natural realm.

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They'll at least give him that much. He may not have much to do in the human realm and is completely limited by human actions and so on and so forth.

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But at least when it comes to tsunamis, volcanoes, earthquakes, okay,

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God, we'll let God, we'll call those acts of God. So with that in mind, if God wiped out an entire people with an earthquake, does he have a purpose for that?

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Does he have the right to do that? Or are you going to say, no, I can't imagine God doing that.

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And when an earthquake hits, and especially, you know, when

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I was in Ukraine, we were looking at apartment buildings, they were sitting at a at a

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McDonald's on the way to the airport when I was leaving. And we were looking at apartment buildings that were built during the

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Soviet period. And the lines go like this, because they were prefab.

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And so they bring in parts of it and plop it down. And the lines are just, they're just, they're 10, 15 story tall buildings that are like Legos.

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And I said, man, you ever have a decent earthquake here? And those things are just going to fall down on top of each other.

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And he said, yeah, that's why we don't have earthquakes here. But if there was one, when the building falls down, do only the guys die?

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Or do the women and the children die as well? And when the tsunami swept in, was it just the men that were killed?

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Or did women and children die in it as well? Earthquakes, tsunamis,

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Mount St. Helens, could women and children just stand there as the blast comes by and they're not hurt, but the guys are blown away?

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Well, we all know the answer to those questions is no. So if he was consistent, wouldn't

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Roger Olson have to say, well, and as a result, since I cannot imagine

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God doing this, then God doesn't, God doesn't even have control over natural disasters.

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I can't see that any of this is the wrath of God being revealed against sin because God doesn't have any control over it.

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When a, when an earthquake happens, and this again, this would make sense if he was an open theist.

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He's not an open theist to my knowledge. But the only consistent Arminian is an open theist. It's just, it's just painfully obvious, isn't it?

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Because if, if God, if God's sovereign decree has nothing to do with earthquakes and the natural realm and things like that, then wouldn't it be better if he just didn't see these things coming and was just as shocked as anybody else?

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And if you could go there, yeah, you've got to go the whole way because now God can't, you know, God can't see the things leading up to earthquakes and things like that.

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God wouldn't have knowledge of the, of the pressure in the tectonic plates and all that kind of stuff.

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And he'd have to be taken, taken by surprise. You're going to have to deny his exhaustive knowledge of the physical realm at, as it exists right now.

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That'd be the only way to go. I mean, really the only, there's no stopping place. Once you've denied who

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God is, eventually you're just stuck with Mormonism. You know, you might as well just get down to where he's just an exalted man.

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And, and therefore you don't really have any grounds for accusing him of anything because hey, he's just doing the best he can, you know, when you don't know what's happening.

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Hey, it's a weird world he, he didn't really create. But anyway, there's no consistency here.

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Because if he does, if he's, if he's remained, if he still has some orthodoxy in regards to natural events in the world, then he's got no basis for making this objection.

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Because God has brought his wrath to bear upon entire populations, men, women, and children via natural means many times.

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The tough part here is that this is a judgment upon another nation.

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It's specifically stated in 1st Samuel 15. This is a judgment for what they did and their destruction is to be total.

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Now, one of the main reasons for this, which we see over and over again in the narrative is that when

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Israel didn't do this, just as Saul did not obey, but kept stuff for himself, what did that become?

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It became that hook that eventually led to what? Idolatry. Idolatry and false worship.

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And eventually you've got the altar to Mulloch, you know, right next to the altar of Yahweh.

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And that's what the warning was from the start. You either have purity or you're eventually going to have degradation into idolatry.

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That's what's going to happen. And so what you need to hear is that for the consistent

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Arminian, the ultimate authority is my imagination.

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If I cannot imagine him doing something, then he can't do it.

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Now, do I really think Roger Olson sits around going, oh, I finally got it. I've got, I've got the

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God of my own imagination. No, I don't think that's what he's thinking, but that's what he's got. So he's got, if I cannot imagine him doing something and that's the young fellow

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I dialogued with on Unbelievable, same situation, same situation.

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You know, I can't imagine God doing those things. And so I'm going to come up with a God that fits my imagination. There it is.

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There it is. And it's right out there on the, on, it's right, it's right there.

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That's a shame. All right. We, we continue on. And I promised that we were going to get to, and we will get to the 30 reasons, the 30 arguments that are presented by Sheikh Ahmed Didat against the crucifixion of Jesus.

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Once again, if you've not heard those programs, the reason we cover this is because Ahmed Didat has influenced more of the

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Muslims that you would be talking to in everyday life than anyone else, than anyone else.

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Didat is certainly not the best they have. And you might say, well, you should only respond to the best they offer. Well, that you, we should, we should definitely look for the best and be prepared for the best.

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There's, there's no question about that. And if you're prepared for the best, then you're going to be prepared for the not so good.

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But at the same time, if we are wise, we will ask the question, what are the greatest influences upon the largest number of Muslims with whom

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I might have the opportunity of speaking in my everyday life, in seeking to bring the gospel to these people?

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And Ahmed Didat is going, is right up there at the top as far as the influence that he has had upon the

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Muslim people. And his presentation, Crucifixion or Crucifiction, is widely read and widely viewed.

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And therefore, to know the answers to these, to be able to point out the fundamental problems with these is, is very important.

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So we've already looked at a portion of what led up to this. And I think we are about, yeah, we're about a minute,

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I'm sorry, one hour and about an hour and 10 minutes into the presentation before he gives this summary.

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As I said, he's a showman. He was a showman. And he would spend 10 minutes making a point that didn't need to have 10 minutes spent upon, but that's how he did it.

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And so we're going to dive into the 30 reasons. Now some of them, I'll have to give you some background on, but most of them will be fairly, fairly straightforward.

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Here is Ahmed Didat. I'm not going to, I'm going to stop and start, obviously. It only goes, it goes about 10 minutes.

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So 30 in 10 minutes is 3 per minute. And so try to imagine, you know, when you stop, start, stop, start, respond, respond, respond, by the end you're going to be going, oh, grief, really?

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But remember the story I've told, well, some, a lot of you are new, but Algo remembers the story that I told many, many times before.

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When I first heard Gerry Madetik's speak on the evidences for the immaculate conception from the

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Old Testament, I was amazed. Now, if you don't know who Gerry Madetik's is or was, more like was anymore,

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Gerry Madetik's is the fastest talking guy I've ever debated.

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He doesn't have to take breath between words. And we've, we debated,

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I think, 13 times. I think it was a total number of times we went back and forth. Convert to Roman Catholicism, then became unorthodox, obviously from his perspective, he veritably defines orthodoxy.

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But when I listened to the tape, yeah, yeah, the cassette tape of his presentation back in the 90s on Mary, I was like, wow, because it was just rat -a -tat -a -rat -a -tat, boom -ba -boom -ba -boom -ba -boom -ba -boom.

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And it wasn't until I put the tape into the tape machine and stop, start, stop, start, there's the claim.

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We go, we look. That's not true. I see what he's saying, but it's not true.

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He's got the wrong word. Or there's this, there's that. Only once you took the time to take it apart was its fundamental error easy to understand.

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But man, we just took it, and I'm just afraid so many people today, so many people today are convinced of the truthfulness of what someone says because of the way it's said, not because of the substance.

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A lack of discernment, both within the Christian church as well as within Western culture as a whole, will lead to its downfall, lead to Western culture's downfall, and certainly lead to many problems in the church.

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So it would be impressive to just play this all the way through, but I really don't have time to do that.

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We're going to need to take them point by point. So let's dive in. It would help if I selected the program and...

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Now, I will give you a quick summary. I give you a quick summary.

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Number one, that this crucifixion is a fiction, that it didn't happen.

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The way the Christians claim, those things didn't happen. Number one, he was reluctant to die.

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He didn't want to die. He didn't come prepared to come for any type of sacrifice. Luke, chapter 22, verse 36, you'll find he's preparing for a fight.

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And had he come to die, there was no need for him to tell his disciples to go and arm themselves.

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Okay, we've already seen that this is false. He says they were armed to teeth. They had two swords amongst 12 people.

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Hello, that's not armed to the teeth. There's nothing about defensive barriers, fighting with the

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Jews, anything like that. Any honest reading of the text would reveal that Jesus' entire, the whole content of his prayer has nothing to do with fear of death, but with the atoning sacrifice that he is about to accomplish.

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That's the focus. If you read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, you take them together.

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There's no question about this. If you read any one of them alone, there's no question about this. But we've already seen that D -Dot's methodology is to take a sentence here, a clause here, a word here, and string them all together.

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Now, if we did that to his books, if we did that to the Quran, if we did that to the

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Hadith, he would be very upset with us. But when it comes to the Bible, totally different standard.

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Inconsistency, remember? Sign of a failed argument. And certainly sign of a failed apologist on the part of Ahmad D -Dot.

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So, point number one, untrue. The whole content of his prayers, the whole content of the evening is not preparing for a fight, but preparing, what has he told them?

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The son of man must go to Jerusalem, be betrayed in the hands of men, crucified, rise again the third day.

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Starting all the way back in Matthew 16. He ignores all that. Ignores all that. Number one, refuted.

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Number two is short. Number two, he beseeched God for help. Matthew, chapter 26, verse 39.

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He beseeched God for help. For what? For what? Again, the prayer is in regards to the accomplishment of the atoning sacrifice.

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Has nothing to do with beseeching God to keep him from his enemies or anything else.

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It's communion between the father and the son. The son is about to accomplish the very purpose for his coming in the flesh.

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He has told his disciples what that is. They struggle with that because their understanding of what the Messiah is to be is a conquering hero, not a suffering servant.

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Number two, irrelevant and refuted. Number three, God heard his prayers. Hebrews chapter 5, verse 7.

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Yes, God heard his prayers. Hebrews 5, 7. Saved him by resurrection, which is the only meaningful reading of Hebrews chapter 5.

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If you could quote Hebrews chapter 5, then you need to look at it in the context of the book of Hebrews. Do not do to our book what we would not do to yours.

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Point number three, refuted. Number four, an angel of God came to strengthen him. Luke, chapter 22, verse 43.

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Yes, an angel of God did come to strengthen him. It has nothing to do whatsoever with the crucifixion being a fiction.

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The angel came and strengthened him as the indication of the father's having heard him, the propriety of the purpose that was the father and the son in going to the cross, the whole nine yards, irrelevant to the crucifixion.

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Point refuted. Pilate finds Jesus not guilty. It's a good reason to keep Jesus alive. John chapter 18, verse 38.

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Pilate finds Jesus not guilty. That's a partial truth. It does not change the fact that Pilate lives in a political situation where the

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Jews say this man claimed to be a king, therefore in opposition to Caesar, and therefore he must be killed.

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And so, again, you take one part of the story of Pilate, ignore the rest of what the same writer says

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Pilate did, and then use that as an argument, inconsistency, gross misuse of sources.

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Point refuted. Number six, Pilate's wife shone a dream in which she was told that no harm should come to this just man.

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In other words, that he should be saved alive. Matthew chapter 27, verse 19.

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Yes, she had such a dream and Pilate did not act upon the dream as the rest of the text specifically states.

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Point refuted. Number seven, supposed to be on the cross for only three hours.

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According to the system in vogue, no man could die by crucifixion in so short a time, which means that even if he was fastened to the cross, he was alive.

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He was alive. What does the same text that Sheikh Didat is pretending to deal with say?

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Jesus gave up his spirit. He gave no.

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What did he himself say? No man takes my life from me. I give it of my own accord.

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This is a supernatural event. Are you saying that a prophet of God did not have that kind of power?

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Upon what basis? Where do you get that? This whole thing is supposed to be based upon what the

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Bible says, right? And so not only has Jesus been flogged and beaten and up all night and beaten to a level to make him almost unrecognizable, that was

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Pilate's idea to maybe get some sympathy. Didn't work. So you have all of that.

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But again, is this guy a naturalistic materialist? Remember, this is a guy who thinks the moon got split in half and put back together again.

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This is a guy who thinks that Muhammad rode a wing donkey to heaven. But Jesus can't give up his life.

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Do you see why it gets a little frustrating, my Muslim friend? When on the one hand, you will accept supernatural stories without even giving it a second thought.

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And then you'll buy this kind of stuff. You're not being consistent. If the text says he gave up his spirit, and really as even a part of prophecy in the sense that he spoke to the thief, said, today you'll be with me in paradise, so on and so forth.

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God had a purpose in having Jesus die at a particular time in a particular way.

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You're saying God can't do that? God can't do that, right? Point refuted.

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Number eight. The other two, his crossmates on the respective process were alive.

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So Jesus too, for the same period of time, must be alive. John chapter 19, verse 32.

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But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was dead already.

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Saw what? That he was dead already. You know, on page 37 and 38,

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I give you a list of 11 different persons in the newspapers who were certified dead and they were not dead.

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By doctors, with stethoscopes, they were pronounced dead and they were not dead. They came back to life. And there is a society in England, I've given you the picture of the society of people who have come back from the dead.

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Were they all resurrected? No. But they were certified dead. This man, seeing a person, he thought he was dead and he saw that he was dead already.

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I said, what does it mean? And saw when doctors make mistakes in the hospital where Chris Barnard operates.

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A white woman was put, certified dead and put into the mortuary. Next morning, she came out alive. When you make mistakes by the day, certifying people dead when they're not dead.

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What this means? That he was dead already. So I said, Jesus was John 19, 33.

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That there was a mistake there in seeing. So all that is, is an assertion that, well,

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I realize that the texts I'm using all contradict me.

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That every author I'm citing, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, all say I'm the one that's wrong.

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And so that's just simply saying, well, so there's some mistakes. Yeah, it says he died.

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But that happens all the time. I mean, people die all the day, you know, considered to be dead all the time and just pop up out of mortuaries all the time.

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This is a common element of Islamic argumentation. That everybody who saw

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Jesus. Well, except Mary, because remember, we already saw, we already saw the massage lie.

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Remember last program that Mary was coming to massage Jesus because she had seen a sign of life.

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We found that was a lie. That that was a falsehood. So let's think about this for just a second.

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Crucifixion is an ugly thing. And who was it that in the

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Gospel of Mark verifies that Jesus has died?

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The man's a centurion. Centurions didn't rise to that position without a fair amount of experience.

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This is a man who's seen a lot of death, and he's a man who has brought about a lot of death. And he knows what a dead man looks like.

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He knows what death looks like. I'm not going to claim any expertise here, but in the few short years that I was a hospital chaplain,

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I learned what death looks like, too. And if the centurion had been wrong, it would have cost him his life.

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But the centurion wasn't the only one. Did Jesus just beam from the cross to the tomb?

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No. Think about it. They have to be taken down from the cross. Do you have any idea the damage done to a physical body, not just by crucifixion, but by decrucifixion?

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We have found skeletal remains of people who were crucified, and they couldn't get the nails out of the bones, so just buried them with the nails still in their bones.

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Do you really think that when you're trying to rip someone's arms off of the nails or ripping the nails out and leaving them in, that the person's just going to lie there and all's well?

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No. And it wasn't necessarily the friends that did this. I mean, the

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Roman soldiers are going to be standing there as well. So you'd have to have all these people, and there'd be no sign of life.

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And then you take a person who is so out of it that they can have nails ripped out of their bones without reacting and stick them in a tomb without medical care and water, and they're going to survive and get out on their own.

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Right. There's a reason why the swoon theory is a joke in serious scholarship.

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There's a reason for this. It's because it is ridiculous. It requires you to believe absurd things.

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And that's what we just got here was Ddot recognizing, well, you know, the text says he died, but it was just wrong.

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Point refuted. Number nine, Encyclopedia Biblica and the article cross column 960 says that when the spear was thrust,

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Jesus was alive. We didn't write the Encyclopedia Biblica. Encyclopedia Biblica.

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Let's say that it says that I would. I would disagree that anyone could come to that conclusion, but let's say that it says that what does it say happened after the theory of spear thrust that he stayed alive after that, too.

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Why even raise an issue like this? Was this Encyclopedia Biblica actually saying that Jesus swooned or that he was alive until the final blow and then died?

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I mean, the the utilization of partial. Facts separated from everything around it is the very mark of a dishonest man.

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And to try to twist the text of the Bible into a denial, the crucifixion. Requires an amazing amount of dishonesty.

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Number 10. And when they launched him on the side with a spear support with they came out blood and water, which is a sign of life.

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Yeah, think about that one for a second. It's a sign of life. If you're dead, nothing will come out.

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Really? Really? Refuted by itself by pure absurdity on that one.

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Number 11. His legs not broken as a fulfillment of prophecy. I said legs can be of any use only if Jesus was alive.

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And this is the fulfillment of prophecy, says the Christian. He keepeth all his bones. Not one of them is broken.

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Psalms chapter 24 verse 20. He's alive because his bones weren't broken because fulfillment of prophecy.

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Did any of the authors that know these things intend to communicate that? No, they didn't.

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Now, one of the things you're going to hear and you're already hearing it. He's alive. He's alive.

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One of the arguments that's going to become repetitive here in a few seconds is alive means something other than resurrected.

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Flash news article here. If someone is resurrected, they're resurrected to life.

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So someone who's resurrected is now alive. And so we're actually going to hear a bunch of evidence that after the resurrection,

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Jesus was alive. And that means he never died. I'm serious, folks.

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You go, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. How? How could someone present an argument like this over and over and over and over and over again for years and have tens and hundreds of thousands of people listen and not go but yeah if you're resurrected you're alive.

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When you want to disbelieve something or want to believe something in the sense of want to believe that Muhammad was a prophet but Muhammad contradicted the prophets that came before him and so what do you do?

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The Muslim says I'm going to take Muhammad and do what I need to do with his other stuff. Power of self -deception.

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Very, very, very strong. Point refuted. Number 12. There was a thunderstorm, earthquake and darkening of the sun all within three hours to disperse the sadistic mob to enable his secret disciples to help keep him alive.

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Did you catch that? Now we're getting into the conspiracy stuff.

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So there is a, evidently God was behind this. There was a thunderstorm and lightning to scare away the crowd so the secret disciples could come steal away his body while he was alive.

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I don't know why this doesn't go with the standard Muslim substitution theory here that somebody else was put in the place of Jesus.

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That's what most Muslims do is Jesus was never put on the cross. He was taken up to heaven and Judas was put on the cross.

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Makes it a whole lot easier than having to explain how because now God is miraculously intervening with thunderbolts to scare people away so that Judas' disciples could come and steal his body away and then start preaching shirk.

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Point refuted by utter silliness. Number 13.

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The Jews doubted his death. They suspected that he had escaped death on the cross, that he was alive.

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And now the next day, the next day they go to Philae. The chief priests and Pharisees come together into Philae saying,

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Sir, we remember so and so and we don't want to make another mistake like we made in the first, that the last error shall be worse than the first error.

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What was the first error they made? You know what? They allowed the body to come down without breaking his legs. Now they want to make doubly sure, but they missed the bus.

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The Jews missed the bus. You know, yesterday, last night, there was in the Agus that they didn't miss the bus.

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In Palestine, you know, within 24 seconds, 25 seconds, they killed three Arabs and, you know, who were out to do some terrorist business, they killed three.

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They didn't miss the bus there. But here in the Bible, Matthew chapter 27 verses 62 to 64, they missed the bus because the next day they go along to make the sepulchre secure.

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Next day, after the horse has bolted, you go and lock the gate. There's something wrong with you.

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The Bible says next day. Okay, Matthew chapter 27, now on the next day, well, let's back up just a little bit.

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And Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out on the rock, and he rolled a large stone against the entrance of the tomb and went away.

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And Mary Magdalene was there and the other Mary sitting opposite the grave. So you've got witnesses, you have the burial of a body, you have

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Matthew plainly indicating that a death has taken place. Now, on the next day, the day after the preparation, the chief priests and the

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Pharisees gathered together with Pilate. And by the way, when it says the next day,

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Metatein Paraskewane, Paraskewane means Friday. It is the very day, the very name of the day.

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The chief priests and Pharisees gathered together with Pilate and said, Sir, we remember that when he was alive, still alive, that deceiver said, after three days,

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I am to rise again. Therefore give orders to the grave to be made secure until the third day, otherwise his disciples may come and steal him away and say to the people, he has risen from the dead.

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And the last deception will be worse than the first. Pilate said to them, you have a guard, go make it as secure as you know how.

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And they went and made the grave secure and along with the guard, they set a seal on the stone.

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Now, what is the second error? Well, the

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American Standard translates it, and the last deception will be worse than the first. The last deception would be the resurrection.

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What's the first? That Jesus was the Messiah. They call him a deceiver. Had nothing to do with breaking his legs.

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The first deception was the proclamation of Jesus as Messiah.

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The second deception would be resurrection. Again, that's just allowing Matthew to speak for Matthew. That's just doing meaningful.

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And if anything is painfully clear at this point, it is that D -Dot had no interest in honestly dealing with the text of the

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Quran, the text of the Bible. Once again, for the serious minded

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Muslim in the audience, compare the way that I and others have dealt with the text of the

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Quran with the way that the vast majority of your apologists and leaders deal with the text of the

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Bible. Huge difference. Huge difference. Why? I just ask you to think about it.

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Why? Why? Pilate, number 14. Pilate marvels to hear that Jesus was dead.

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So Pilate marveled if he were already dead. And calling to him the centurion, he asked him whether he had been any while dead.

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Mark, chapter 15, verse 44. You only marvel if you know the thing that they're talking didn't happen.

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If you take a man to a firing squad and you put six bullets through him and if he dies, there's nothing to marvel. But if he didn't die, you marvel.

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Now Pilate marvels that, look, no man can die within three hours. In other words, according to his experience, the man is alive.

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Okay, it's a rehashing of a previous point. It's not actually a new point. And it's also ignoring the rest of what is said in the

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Gospel of Mark. He asks the centurion, is he dead? And the centurion says, yes, he is.

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And as a result, Pilate then releases the body. That's just allowing it to speak for itself.

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He marvels. Yes, Jesus gave up his life. But the centurion verifies the death.

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And that's the intention of what Mark is communicating. No one who is reading Mark to actually understand

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Mark would come to any other conclusion. Number 15, big and roomy chamber, big roomy chamber, close at hand, and big and airy for willing hands to come to the rescue.

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Providence was out to keep Jesus alive. A big roomy chamber. How do you know how big this chamber was?

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The body would be placed in there for a certain period of time. It would be anointed.

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And then about a year later, they would go in and collect the bones and put them into an ossuary. That was the standard way of burial.

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So it wouldn't be a big, airy chamber. It would be a cold, damp, dark place with no one to help.

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Sheikh Didat, if you think that's how you can make people get better, I would suggest you try selling that to the medical community.

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Or if you think that Didat is just all that, then I think you should start treating people who have been gravely injured in the way that he's suggesting.

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If someone has a grave traumatic injury, then if you think

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Didat's right, then you should stick them in a cold, dark closet for a few days.

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They'll get better. No water, nothing. Just stick them in a cold, dark closet and they'll get better, because Sheikh Didat told us.

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Grrr. Nyeh -heh -heh. Nyeh -heh. Let's get one or two more done here before we run out of time.

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Number 16. Stone and winding sheets had to be removed. Only necessary if Jesus was alive.

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John chapter 20, verse 1. Okay, here's where we get into the, really?

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Seriously? You should have stopped at five. Isn't it better to have a good list of...

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Oh, see, I'm a Calvinist. Five points than it is to have a really bad list of 30 points?

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Yes, they had to be removed because he was alive. That's what the resurrection is. Now, one of the problems is

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Didat, likewise, grossly misrepresents New Testament teaching in regards to the nature of a resurrected body.

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He says it's a spirit. A spook, as he likes to say over and over again. He does not understand

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Paul. Would not accept correction. He says the resurrected body is a non -physical body.

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That's why he's saying you don't have to have the winding clause. He doesn't understand what resurrection means. The Greek term, anastasis.

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I would suggest to anybody who suffers from his misunderstanding, take a look at the debate that Dr.

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Renahan and I did against John Dominic Cross and Marcus Borg on the nature of resurrection.

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There's all sorts of stuff that would help you to understand where the problem lies on that.

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I think that was number 15 or so, if I recall correctly. We only have about 10 more to go.

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We'll be able to get through them very, very quickly because they're all, almost all of them are,

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He was alive. He was alive. We go, Yes, he was. It's called resurrection. It won't take us a whole lot of time to work through those.

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But we'll finish them off on the next program. Thanks for listening to The Dividing Line today.

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Next program, we'll wrap those up and who knows what will happen. Maybe there will be some new theory being floated around amongst some very interesting people in South Georgia that I'm actually behind ISIS or something.

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Who knows? You never know with these folks. We'll find out.