Keep sharing good news without ads.
No description available
Comments are turned off for this media
Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona. This is the dividing line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us.
Yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence. Our host is dr. James white director of Alpha Omega ministries and an elder at the Phoenix reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation.
If you'd like to talk with dr. White call now. It's 602 973 460 to or toll-free across the United States. It's 1 877 7 5 3 3 3 4 1. And now with today's topic here is James white.
And welcome to the dividing line a mega edition of the dividing line today two hours the first hour We will be providing a response To a video that I viewed just this. Well, I didn't view it. I listened to it just this morning.
It was directed to me. I was directed to it, I guess By a gentleman here in the local Phoenix area who said he did not want a hat tip. So, you know get a hat tip fine anyway, that's normally how I encounter such materials is someone drops me a line or an email or a tweet or something in channel and so on so forth as I listened this morning to this presentation.
I Decided that while we had planned a regular dividing line that I would add an hour because And we won't finish this today. I honestly think it would almost be oppressive To try to address this subject for two full hours.
It would be it'd be hard. But what we're going to do is for the first hour respond to a gay Christian presentation Because last time we talked about Dan Savage who doesn't claim to be a Christian at all and just simply says the Bible is filled With bull on this subject.
That's one perspective. That's that's one direction that people go and Then you have this perspective and I think most Christians struggle much more to respond to this perspective and certainly it is this presentation that That Has been extremely effective in Totally neutralizing liberal Protestantism in regards to homosexuality you know that your ELCA PC USA United Methodist Episcopalians, etc, etc, your liberals are as a whole I have completely collapsed and I think you will hear in this presentation exactly why as I listened I was struck by the Erudite speech of this young man.
Having written a book on the subject of homosexuality I Sort of felt like Standing back and and saying Sir did it really take you two years to read John Boswell's book because I know the sources from which he's drawing his Exegesis which is in fact an eisegesis of the text but most people listening to this and And I I know I posted on the blog so people could could watch it and could listen to it.
I think most people who've listened to it have listened to it within a context of not so much listening to Hear what other people would hear and I think that's I should have put that into the blog article try to put yourself in the position of someone sitting in that audience and Try to understand why it is That on the basis of numbers, we're losing this war.
The next generation is buying Both Dan Savage and this fellow Even though they are giving completely different argumentation They're buying them both. What does that tell you? It tells you that most of our fellow citizens are Not convinced by rational argumentation.
It is appearance. It is emotion. It's not a matter of truth. It's not a matter of consistency and That's what's going on Around us and so we want to launch into This particular section and then we'll take a break at the top of the hour and then the the second hour will be more a little bit more normal and I'll be able to Mention a certain Birthday girl out there, but I don't want to do that in this hour because it just wouldn't seem appropriate Attach these things to this particular subject.
So we're gonna launch right into it like we always do listen respond interact educate hopefully prepare you because This is the kind of presentation that I think we need to be very quick to give a clear compelling biblically based non harsh non hateful response to.
So, let's let's start let's start listening graciously agreeing to host the event.
My name is Matthew Vines. I'm 21 years old, and I'm currently a student in college. Well, I've been on leave for most of the last two years in order to study the material that I'll be presenting tonight.
I was born and raised here in Wichita In a loving Christian home and in a church community that holds to the traditional interpretation of Scripture on this subject. Just to offer a brief outline for this presentation.
I'll start by considering and now by the way, I I think that Matt's church is not the church He's speaking at in other words when he grew up in is not the same when he's speaking at now I think it was a it was a Different church that would not exactly allow him to stand up front and explain why?
They're all wrong during some of the broader issues and divisions that are behind this debate. And then I'll move to a closer examination of the main biblical texts that are involved in it. And then I'll offer some concluding remarks.
The issue of homosexuality of the ordination of gay clergy and of the blessing of same-sex unions Has caused tremendous divisions in the church in recent decades and the church remains substantially divided over the issue today.
On the one hand the most common themes voiced by those who support changing traditional church teaching on homosexuality are those of acceptance inclusion and love While on the other hand those who oppose these changes express concerns about sexual purity Holiness and Most fundamentally the place of Scripture in our communities.
Now one of the things that was at least somewhat to be appreciated in this presentation It's not a fair presentation unbiased presentation, obviously but it is well, let's just compare it to Dan Savage and it'll look like it's the model of of fairness and and and balance but One of the issues that we will be addressing Repeatedly in this conversation is what is love?
What is love what is Christian love is is love defined biblically the same thing as love defined by our society and Most assuredly we recognize that it is not. But notice the contrast it was just made one side being concerned about love the other kind other side concerned about purity.
I Am just as concerned about love. And in fact, one of my greatest criticisms of Matt's position is That he never defines what love is and he insists and will within the next few minutes insists that the love that exists between two homosexuals is identical to the love that exists in a married relationship between a man a woman and I remember exactly where I was on North New River Road this In the middle of a 70 mile bike ride when he said that and thankfully there's nothing out there but coyotes and lizards.
That heard me yelling. No, it isn't In between breaths as I was climbing a hill that particular point in time. So this will be central to the discussion.
Are we continuing to uphold the Bible as authoritative and are we taking biblical teachings seriously, even if they make us uncomfortable? I Want to begin tonight by considering the traditional interpretation of Scripture on this subject in part because its conclusions have a much longer history within the church and Also because I think that many who adhere to that position feel that those who are arguing for a new position Haven't yet put forth theological arguments that are as well grounded in Scripture as their own.
Well as an individual who has written on this subject and who has Unfortunately an entire section of pro-homosexual books in his library. However, I will admit let's see the same-sex controversy here is Copyright 2002 it's 10 years old and if I had had to keep up With what has been published in the past decade It would be three times four times the size that it is.
I was amazed even during the writing of the same-sex controversy how many books came out even during that time and I'll be honest with you. I haven't kept up with a lot of this stuff. Because as I listen to people like Matt today, they've not come up with anything new there isn't anything new here and Well as we'll see It's the other side that very rarely takes seriously the refutations that have been written of material starting with John Boswell and others that have come since then.
John Boswell's book Christianity social tolerance and homosexuality is probably the main source for most of Matt's presentation and certainly the books that he has that have been spawned by it all look back to Boswell as the scholarly rock upon which they stand and Review Boswell and you've refuted most of what they have to say and we'll see that as we go along.
In which case the most biblically sound position should prevail. The traditional interpretation in summary form is this. There are six passages in the Bible that refer in some way to same-sex behavior, and they are all negative.
Three of them are direct and clear in the Old Testament in Leviticus Male same-sex relations are prohibited and labeled an abomination and In the New Testament in Romans Paul speaks of women quote exchanging natural relations for unnatural ones and of men abandoning natural relations with women and committing shameful acts with other men and.
So according to the traditional interpretation both the Old and the New Testament are consistent in their rejection of same-sex relationships.
Now I would want to add as we did in our book the fact that if you think that the issue of the Bible's teaching on homosexuality is Solely or even primarily Based upon the negative texts Genesis 18 and 19 Leviticus 18 and 20 and then Romans chapter 1 1st Corinthians chapter 6 and 1st Timothy chapter 1 Those six texts there are others temple some of the male temple prostitutes in the Old Testament things like that.
But those are the primary texts if you think that the the biblical argument relating to Homosexuality is even primarily based upon those you've missed the boat. Because the primary biblical argument is found in Matthew chapter 19 in Jesus's own teaching drawn from Genesis as to the nature of God's creative decree the role of men and women and you must understand that those who like Matt Consider themselves to be gay Christians Do so.
They they take their position Fundamentally through an overthrow of scriptural authority. Now, he's not going to specifically get into those issues, but I've never seen a metropolitan Church of Christ that in the slightest bit Demonstrates an understanding of The consistency of biblical teaching especially regards the positive biblical teaching in regards to marriage.
I.
Just I've just never seen it, but it's not just those three verses as well as three others that I'll come to later. It's true that six verses isn't all that many out of scriptures 31 ,000. But not only are they all negative from the traditional viewpoint.
They gain broader meaning and coherence from the opening chapters of Genesis in which God creates Adam and Eve male and female. That was the original creation Before the fall before sin entered the world.
That was the way that things were supposed to be. And so according to this view if Someone is gay Then their sexual orientation is a sign of the fall a sign of human fallenness and brokenness. That was not the way that things were supposed to be.
And While having a same-sex orientation is not in and of itself a sin according to the traditional interpretation. Acting upon it is because the Bible is clear both in what it negatively prohibits and in what it positively approves.
Christians who are gay those who are only attracted to members of the same sex are thus called to refrain from acting on those attractions to deny themselves To take up their crosses and to follow Christ.
And though it may not seem fair to us God's ways are higher than our own and it's not our role to question. But now.
But to obey now I'm not sure I would have put it quite that way, but I Think it is absolutely fair. It is absolutely appropriate throughout the course of this examination to replace same-sex attraction with other Sinful attitudes and actions that the scriptures represent to us and see if The argumentation that Matt presents Is not Perfectly designed to overthrow the entirety of Biblical morality.
People shut you down when you immediately be make connections and They've been taught to do this by example, not because they've thought through why there's actually no connection. But the reality is that today If you're familiar with the historical development of the arguments for homosexuality over the past 50 years Then you know That those who are promoting intergenerational love are using the exact Same arguments that were being used by homosexuals 50 years ago.
If you don't know what intergenerational love is Intergenerational love is pedophilia. Adults engaging in sexual behavior, which of course they will say is loving sexual behavior. With minor children that's intergenerational love and we already have those within the psychology psychiatry community who are drawing the parallels making the arguments that this needs to be removed from the DSM and You know it needs to be seen as as you know, that's the way these people were born.
These are natural proclivities the same thing with polygamy the same thing with bestiality. All of these things we just need to grow past and recognize that these things are acceptable. Everybody gets to define their own moral plane.
Except that You know Maybe stealing or something because I don't want you to take my Mac from me or something along those lines. It is absolutely fair to point out that especially toward the end of this presentation as as Matthew Vines is berating Christians for adding suffering to the life of gay Christians.
That that kind of argumentation is Already being used for almost every kind of Moral overthrow of of God's Commandments and That needs to be kept in mind and then you need to examine. Is there a foundation for differentiating The homosexual argument from these others who are using the same argument and If so, what is it and is it is it just a because I've heard homosexual say I'm offended when you do that.
Well, I imagine you are. But what's the basis for your offense? Can you provide well well. But but they're they're not young enough to make that kind of decision or they're not old enough to make that kind of decision.
That sounds like a rather arbitrary thing. And so keep that in mind as you as you listen to this as it as it develops. And we'll we'll see that.
Within this framework gay people have a problem and that is that they want to have sex with the wrong people. They tend to be viewed as essentially lustful sexual beings.
So while straight people now, let me just mention Again, one of the reasons we need to hear this is that Matthew Vines is is presenting the the monogamous Long-term committed concept of homosexuality, which is almost never experienced by a homosexual while sadly Long-term monogamous marriages are now in the minority.
We all know those glorious cases those glorious couples we see who've been married 50 and 60 and 70 years but the vast majority of Homosexual expression in our society and historically and This would this will even be substantiated by some of the arguments He himself makes later on but the vast majority of homosexual experience is not monogamous it's not based upon long-term commitments or anything of the kind and Unfortunately, once again, all one has to do is do just a little bit of digging on the internet to see the real public face of homosexuality, which is not the face that that Matthew Vines is putting on here, which means it is a multifaceted movement and He may well say I'm not talking about that kind of homosexuality.
But if he's gonna say that then he needs I think to come out and condemn that kind of homosexual behavior. But the problem is on what basis are you gonna condemn it? Because once you start making those kinds of judgments, what's the foundation upon what you're standing? Etc, etc.
Fall in love. Get married and start families. Gay people just have sex. But everyone has a sexual orientation and it isn't just about sex. Straight people are never really forced to think about their sexual orientation as a distinctive characteristic.
That's because there is a natural Sexual orientation and there is an unnatural one and oh, he's gonna go through. You know Paul and does not even nature tell you long hair and try to get get get away from the fact.
That the Bible can actually talk about the fact that because God has created in a particular fashion that there is a necessary Natural function of the male and the female He's gonna he's gonna use that way to get around that as if well if the Bible ever once uses the term nature In some other way then there cannot be any transcendent use there cannot be any thing that flows from the fact that one of the biggest themes in all of Scripture is the Reality that God's the creator of all things and therefore he determines what is natural and right for all things through his decree his creative decree.
But That needs to be that really really really needs to be kept in mind.
But it's still a part of them and it affects an enormous amount of their lives.
By the way, I forgot what I was gonna comment about there. Over and over again in this presentation Matthew Vines is going to talk about his desire to start a family. Again, you know, it's it's easy to say well you could do that if you wanted to but you see Due to the nature of the created order.
There's only one way to do that. Two men cannot start a family. I mean would there be any meaningful argumentation to someone who is complaining and Saying I the God isn't treating me correctly and and and I'm not able to truly fulfill my my my true desires because I Want to be married to my German Shepherd and I want to start a family with my German Shepherd, but I can't.
Well, why can't you? Well, because God didn't create it to work that way. That's why and Two men together cannot create life. Two women together cannot create life. That awesome and wonderful thing that results in the creation of life requires a male and a female.
Not two men not two women to complain about that is to complain. About the Sun in the sky or the moon at night. That's just the way it is now he's gonna say well. But there's an overarching biblical teaching that it's not good for man to be alone.
Yeah that biblical teaching. It's found the context of God specifically meeting the need for that man by creating what another man. No by creating a woman and That woman who is different than him is his helpmate.
If God had created another man Then God might have just done as well to create a mirror. And as I said, one of the key issues is what is the nature of love? The love that exists between a man and a woman is not a mirror image love.
It is the love of one who is different than I am. Homosexuality does not offer that kind of relationship.
What sexual orientation is for straight people. Is their capacity for romantic love and self-giving? It's not just about sexual attraction and behavior. It's because we have a sexual orientation. They were able to fall in love with someone to build a long-term committed relationship with them and.
To form a family. Family is not about sex but for so many of us it still depends upon having a companion a spouse and.
It's not about sex, but it's not separated from it either. If you're gonna talk about family Then you you have to bring that in. It is it is essentially self-centered it is essentially Focused upon me and my desires and my wants.
That's what homosexuality is. When you marry another who is different than you not the same as you different than you that begins the process of quite literally Ripping the selfishness right out of you.
And the more you're willing to give of yourself to that other person The more that's going to be your experience. And then then when the little ones arrive Every little one comes into this world absolutely self-centered.
Me myself and I my needs my wants and. Talk about the most effective way of removing Self-centeredness from an individual and. And then they start going through that process where the design of the family is to remove self-centeredness from them and To make us look to others and to serve others.
That's what I think the great tragedy of Homosexuals adopting children is all about because the only love that that Homosexual couple can demonstrate is mirror image love. There are no male and female.
Oh, I know somebody well that we all can tell and that those lesbians which one's the man which I know I know. But that's not the same thing. When two women adopt a child that child does not have a father.
When two men adopt a child that child does not have a mother.
That's the reality of the situation and that's true for gay people as well as for straight people. That is what sexual orientation means for them to. Gay people have the very same capacity for romantic love and self-giving that straight people do.
The emotional bond that gay couples share. The quality of love is identical to that of straight couples there.
That's um, that's what I was mentioning before. That's where I Have to say no. That is not true. You can talk all you wish Matthew about the depth of feeling that one has. But it is not. And since you call yourself a Christian it is not Christian love.
Because it's not defined within biblical parameters within the parameters that the Creator Himself Designed you may not like those parameters. You may have given yourself you say you didn't choose this but you have chosen to let it define who you are and.
So when you say that it's identical I say to you you are wrong. It is not it cannot be. It cannot be. It's impossible.
Gay people like almost all of us come from families and They too long to build one of their own. But the consequence of the traditional interpretation of the Bible is that while straight people are told to avoid lust casual relationships and promiscuity Gay people are told to avoid romantic relationships entirely.
That is not that is not the result of the traditional interpretation the Bible that is the result of the way that God created men and women and Even though he only dealt with it as it's found in Genesis.
He didn't mention and I could be wrong about this. I'll stand corrected if I'm if I am but I don't think that he made mention of Jesus's reaffirmation of the specific teaching of Genesis in Matthew chapter 19 and That says a lot to me.
It is unfair to say well. This is be due to the the traditional interpretation of the Bible. No, it is due to the way that God created men and women. Would it be fair for those who promote intergenerational love.
To say that it's due to the well, of course, the Bible doesn't even mention that that's an abomination beyond even even the imagination of the scriptural writers. But but would it be fair for them to to blame the Bible and the traditional interpretation of the Bible?
For their inability to publicly celebrate their intergenerational love if you think it's too wild and crazy to imagine a push someday by intergenerational lovists. For public recognition of their relationships in a marriage context.
Then you haven't been paying attention to what's going on in our world.
Straight people's sexuality is seen as a fundamentally good thing. It is as a gift it is it can be used in sinful or irresponsible ways correct, but can also be harnessed and Oriented toward a loving marriage relationship.
Yep. It's called discipline.
It's called controlling the urges that are ours and limiting yourself to monogamy. For the glory of God and the love of the person to whom you are committed.
Yes, quite right that will be blessed and celebrated by their community. Yes, it is. That should be. But gay people though. They are capable of and desire loving relationships that are just as important to them.
Are told that for them even lifelong Committed relationships would be sinful. They would be.
Because it would involve a fundamental denial of the created order a Fundamental turning inward of oneself rather than outward toward that which is other and It would be a fundamental giving into the desires that are specifically defined as being in opposition to God's truth and so again.
There are so many sins that we could we could plug in here and And put into Matthew's Matthew's argumentation and Then fault the Christian community for being so narrow-minded as to not see the pain that we're causing To these individuals because we will not celebrate Their consummation of their sinful desires.
It it it is an amazing thing to listen to because their sexual orientation is completely broken. It's not an issue of lust versus love now, by the way.
He will say that sexual orientation is really something. That's a it's it's a trans biblical category. It is it is something we've only come to understand the past about 50 years. So they couldn't have understood it back in the in the days of the Bible, of course which Fundamentally says what?
About the Bible and its origination. Because if if if. Gender and sexual orientation and all this stuff that has that has come into vogue. If that's true if it really does represent something about humanity.
Then didn't God know about it even back when he? inspired the Bible. Remember we're talking to someone who claims to be a gay Christian. Which means I would think that scripture is normative and a scripture is inspired.
But what does that inspiration mean? Well, we'll see a little bit more as we continue on. I've only gotten through. How far have I gotten so far. Six minutes and 52.
Seconds. Yeah at this rate. Mm-hmm. Or of casual versus committed relationships. Because same-sex relationships are intrinsically sinful. No matter the quality and no matter the context quality and context quality.
What does that mean? Are there quality thieves versus low qual ty thy every versus low quality thievery? Is there high quality anger versus low quality anger. High quality adultery versus low quality adultery is?
High quality adultery less sinful than low quality adultery. How about high-quality bestiality versus low-quality bestiality? How is that relevant to its violation of God's standards?
Gay people's sexual orientation is so broken, so messed up, that nothing good can come from it. No morally good, godly relationship could ever come from it.
I agree. I agree completely.
And so they are told that they will never have a romantic bond that will be celebrated by their community.
They will never have a romantic bond that is defined by their perversion of the sexual decrees of God, the created order. It sounds like these terrible, horrible people are denying to them something. No one's denying them that if they will but repent of their sin, recognize the sinfulness of it, confess it, and turn from it, and seek restoration and healing, which of course is the very thing that most of the folks in the homosexual movement, if you want to see a homosexual get angry, tell them it's possible to be an ex-homosexual.
The results will be absolutely amazing to you. But if they will turn from those things, they can experience those relationships. But the point is, by definition, those relationships are defined by the creative decree of God.
And that's the whole issue. They are told that they will never have a family. Philippians 2 verse 4 tells us to look not only to our own interests but also to the interests of others. And in Matthew 5, Jesus instructs that if someone makes you go one mile, go with them two miles.
And so I'm going to ask you, would you step into my shoes for a moment and walk with me just one mile?
I really don't think either text actually had anything to do with exhorting us to try to understand what it is like to be a sinner who is so defined by one's sin that you will actually define the entirety of your life thereby.
I don't think either one of those texts really can be stretched that far. Even if it makes you a bit uncomfortable. I am gay.
I didn't choose to be gay. It's not something that I would have chosen. Not because it's necessarily a bad thing to be, but because it's extremely inconvenient.
Now, it's interesting. Bigelow and Channel, I guess, has found a transcript to this entire talk. And he's posting it in Channel as either that or he made it. I doubt that. But I guess there is a transcript online someplace.
I'll have to get the URL and attach that to the blog article. But I didn't choose to be gay. How do you respond to that? I suppose it could be said that there are people who did not choose to experience particular sexual desires.
I did not choose to be impatient. I mean, I look at myself and there are some people who think I'm very patient. But no, not always. No, no. Ask my kids. There have been times I've not been a patient man.
I'm not overly patient with people in traffic, for example. One of my favorite lines in the car is, It's the long one next to the brake. That's a little bit of a sarcastic type thing. But it's the long one next to the brake.
And Bigelow just said the transcript. I guess he's got a MatthewVines .Tumblr .com address, so you can find it there. I didn't choose to be impatient. I didn't choose to be angry. I didn't choose to be lustful.
I didn't choose to list any of the sins that we might experience. And certainly we recognize that there are certain sins that we, as individuals, recognize are our besetting sins. I mean, people who have been given great physical talent as athletes, it's very easy for them to look down upon other people, to experience arrogance, pride, until that torn ACL brings you back down to earth.
But none of us chose those things. But does that make you gay? If a person has a tendency toward anger, does that mean they were born a murderer? And I'm not talking about Jesus saying, if you hate your brother, you've killed him already in his heart.
There are a lot of us who have experienced anger on a level like that that never killed anybody. But are you born a murderer because of that? Are you born a fornicator? I've had guys who said, I can't help it.
I've just got to have sex with every woman I see. And what do we say to someone like that? You're a human being, for crying out loud. You're a man. Keep it zipped. Show some discipline. Demonstrate that you have a mind.
You have something between your ears that can control the urges of your body. That's what being a human being is about. The Bible says, don't be angry. Therefore, control your anger. It's a part of being a human being.
In the same way, if you have lustful desires for the same sex, you repent of them and you don't act upon them. You recognize that they do not come from God, just as I recognize that any of the temptations and desires and lusts of the flesh that trip me up are not an excuse for indulging in that activity, let alone defining the entirety of my life.
So much so that I can then go around blaming others for denying to me the ability to have a family. Because I won't, well, I won't toe the line as to what a family is. I demand everyone change the definition of family so I can have one.
That is petulant childishness. So when someone says, well, God just made me this way. Well, I do not deny the existence of the desires. What I deny is that as human beings, we must be mastered by them.
There is a giving in. There is a point in time when you stop the struggle. And that's when someone, quote unquote, becomes gay.
It's stressful. It's difficult. And it can often be isolating and lonely. To be different. To feel not understood. To feel not accepted. I grew up in as loving and stable of a family and home as I can imagine.
I love my parents and I have strong relationships with them both. No one ever molested or abused me growing up. And I couldn't have asked for a more supportive and nurturing childhood than the one that I had.
I've never been in a relationship. And I've always believed in abstinence until marriage. But I also have a deeply rooted desire to one day be married. To share my life with someone. And to build a family of my own.
Again, do you hear the emotion? Do you understand why this kind of presentation has far more impact in a society such as ours today than anything I will say in response? Now if we're pragmatists, that's why we'd give up on this.
And one of the reasons I chose to take this hour was because of my viewing of that Andy Stanley clip that Al Mohler mentioned yesterday or the day before. Where Andy Stanley, in a sermon, talks about a situation in their church where there is a man, there are actually two men, who are married to women.
One left his wife, they were in the church, and entered into a relationship with the other man. And they left that campus of Stanley's church, went to another campus of Stanley's church, and became leaders in it.
And Stanley found out from the former wife that they were now at the other campus, but that the other man was still married. The divorce wasn't final yet. And the amazing thing is, the church said to them, you can't be in leadership because he's still married, not because of the homosexual relationship.
And by the end of this story, up on the screen, you know they don't have pulpits and things like that, but up on the screen, you've got two guys, then a little girl, then a woman, and then a man, and then a little girl, and that's the new family.
Because the divorced woman then married another guy, and he already was divorced and had a daughter. And nowhere was there the slightest discussion of the fact that this is all, every single bit of it, an utter rejection of God's revealed will, and a complete dishonoring of his teaching about marriage.
And never anything about homosexuality, nothing about it at all. It was amazing to me. That was one of the things that actually prompted me to go ahead and listen to this when the link was sent to me, because I'm like, well, this is what's happening even in quote-unquote evangelical megachurches.
Amazing stuff. But according to the traditional interpretation of scripture, as a Christian, I am uniquely excluded from that possibility for love.
Please hear how this presentation assumes its own conclusion. I am uniquely excluded from this kind of love. Again, intergenerational love. Those people promoting pedophilia make the exact same argument.
By your tradition, you are excluding me from experiencing what God has made me to experience as love. There are just so many, it's just wrong on so many levels. It's a complaint against the created order.
I don't want to do it your way, God. I don't want to follow the natural order here. And I'm going to complain because you're telling me I should. And there are people who actually listen to you, and I'm going to be angry with them because of their listening to you.
For companionship and for family. But unlike someone who senses a calling from God to celibacy, or unlike a straight person who just can't find the right partner, I don't sense a special calling to celibacy.
And I may well find someone I grow to love and would like to spend the rest of my life with. But if that were to happen, following the traditional interpretation, if I were to fall in love with someone, and if those feelings were reciprocated...
Now remember, the someone here has to be gay. Not the someone in the biblical context. Not the someone of the biblical definition of a man leaving his father and mother, being joined to his wife, and the two becoming one flesh.
No, not that. This is specifically already assuming the reality of appropriate, loving homosexual relationships, which is the whole point.
My only choice would be to walk away. To break my heart and retreat into isolation. Alone. And this wouldn't be just a one-time heartbreak. It would continue throughout my entire life. Whenever I came to know someone whose company I really enjoyed, I would always fear that I might come to like them too much.
That I might come to love them. And within the traditional interpretation of scripture, falling in love is one of the worst things that could happen.
Or, or, what Matthew Vines, I wish someone had explained, maybe interacted with him, he needs to understand what love really is, and that he's not showing love for another man to engage in that type of relationship.
You've already allowed the twistedness of the desires to be victorious. You haven't repented of them. You've embraced them, decided that they are self-definitional, but you need to recognize you are not loving that other person when you are encouraging them in their rebellion, and leading them into a relationship that can never produce life.
It's not life-affirming in the lives of the people who are engaged in it. It is self-destructive. But it also cannot produce life. It cannot create a family.
That's what needs to be understood. To a gay person. Because you will necessarily be heartbroken. You will have to run away. And that will happen every single time.
How about being heartbroken over the fact that you have allowed your lusts and desires to determine your humanity, rather than allowing your humanity, by the grace of God, to defeat your lusts and desires.
How about being heartbroken over that?
You come to care about someone else too much. So while you watch your friends fall in love, get married, and start families, you will always be left out. You will never share in those joys yourself, of a spouse, and of children of your own.
You must understand, you will not experience that as long as you buy the line. And you've evidently bought it completely. That you cannot experience the God-ordained desire for another person who is a woman, who is complementary to you, and with whom you can create life.
That's your decision. But it's not grounds for complaint against God, or against anyone who then points out the fundamental truths regarding that.
You will always be alone. Well, that's certainly sad, some might say, and I'm sorry for that. But you cannot elevate your experience over the authority of Scripture in order to be happy. Christianity isn't about you being happy.
It's not about your personal fulfillment. Sacrifice and suffering were integral to the life of Christ.
How about obedience, repentance, and confession? You know what confession is? Hamalageo, to say the same thing. To say the same thing. There is, in a part of confession, an admission that God was right and I was wrong.
And the fundamental element of homosexuality and the gay Christian movement is a refusal to confess that God is right and they are wrong when it comes to this issue of human sexuality, and God's right to determine what is right and wrong in it.
And as Christians, we're called to deny ourselves, to take up our crosses, and to follow Him. This is true. But it assumes that there's no doubt about the correctness of the traditional interpretation of Scripture on this subject, which I'm about to explore.
And already two major problems have presented themselves with that interpretation.
Now here's where it starts getting, at least biblically, interested. The first problem is this.
In Matthew 7, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus warns against false teachers, and he offers a principle that can be used to test good teaching from bad teaching. By their fruit you will recognize them, he says.
Every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Good teachings, according to Jesus, have good consequences. That doesn't mean that following Christian teaching will or should be easy.
And in fact, many of Jesus' commands are not easy at all. Turning the other cheek, loving your enemies, laying down your life for your friends. But those are all profound acts of love, that both reflect God's love for us, and that powerfully affirm the dignity and worth of human life and of human beings.
Good teachings, even when they are very difficult, are not destructive to human dignity.
Which is interesting to note that Paul identifies as shameful acts, those acts that homosexuals engage in, in Romans chapter 1. And he's going to have a way around that. It's going to be the, well, these are heterosexuals who actually aren't homosexuals, but they're engaging in homosexual activity, and that's why it's an abomination, and so on and so forth.
He's got a way around that. We'll deal with it. There wasn't anything in his presentation that had not been thoroughly refuted in the same-sex controversy a decade ago, when he was written when he was, what, 11?
Yeah, when he was 11. I'm not going to hold my breath to see if the book ends up in the bibliography, but we'll just listen to a little bit more before we take our top-of-the-hour break.
They don't lead to emotional and spiritual devastation, and to the loss of self-esteem and self-worth.
So, if biblical teaching results in someone feeling devastated, then that means it's not a biblical teaching. I'm pretty certain that thieves convicted on the basis of God's law of thievery lose a lot of self-esteem because of that.
I don't like being called a thief. I don't like being called an adulterer. I don't like being called an idolater. Well, it must mean all those teachings. We shouldn't embrace those teachings because they have bad fruit.
Is that really what Jesus was talking about when he talked about a good tree bringing forth good fruit? A bad tree, bad fruit? Or was he talking about the hypocrisy of the Jews and the Pharisees? Well, the Pharisees were Jews, obviously.
Maybe that's what he was talking about. Yeah, I think that's probably the case.
But those have been the consequences for gay people of the traditional teaching on homosexuality. It has not borne good fruit in their lives.
Actually, in the lives of those who have heard it, accepted it, repented, turned, and been changed by the grace of God, it has. It has. This argument fundamentally is unrepentant. People who are hurt by their unrepentance should be able to say that the biblical teaching that calls them to repentance is bad and produces bad fruit, and therefore we should reject it.
Well, there you go. We'll look at the second argument when we pick up the next time in our response. We've only gotten 13 minutes in, but that was a whole hour that already went past. So we're going to take a break.
We'll be right back.
Under the guise of tolerance, modern culture grants alternative lifestyle status to homosexuality. Even more disturbing, some within the church attempt to revise and distort Christian teaching on this behavior.
In their book, The Same-Sex Controversy, James White and Jeff Neal write for all who want to better understand the Bible's teaching on the subject, explaining and defending the foundational Bible passages that deal with homosexuality, including Genesis, Leviticus, and Romans.
Expanding on these scriptures, they refute the revisionist arguments, including the claim that Christians today need not adhere to the law. In a straightforward and loving manner, they appeal to those caught up in a homosexual lifestyle to repent and to return to God's plan for His people.
The Same-Sex Controversy, defending and clarifying the Bible's message about homosexuality. Get your copy in the bookstore at aomen .org. This portion of the dividing line has been made possible by the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
The Apostle Paul spoke of the importance of solemnly testifying of the gospel of the grace of God. The proclamation of God's truth is the most important element of his worship in his church. The elders and people of the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church invite you to worship with them this coming Lord's Day.
The morning Bible study begins at 9 .30 a .m. and the worship service is at 10 .45. Evening services are at 6 .30 p .m. on Sunday and the Wednesday night prayer meeting is at 7. The Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church is located at 3805 North 12th Street in Phoenix.
You can call for further information at 602 -26-GRACE. If you're unable to attend, you can still participate with your computer and real audio at prbc .org, where the ministry extends around the world through the archives of sermons and Bible study lessons available 24 hours a day.
Ah, a little gray level to get us back into the second hour today. A little, well, it's serious stuff, but it's good to step aside from that. I'll admit, the year I spent writing, well, co-authoring the book, Same-Sex Controversy, was rather oppressive.
It's not enjoyable to think about or deal with that subject on a lengthy period of time, and so I'm not going to subject you to it for another hour. We will switch topics today, and of course we do in the second hour today.
In case you're just joining us, if you didn't notice the blog or my tweets, today is a mega edition of The Dividing Line. We've already had an hour, and now we are into the second hour of the program, and we start off with a shout-out to the birthday girl, LaShawn Barber, who I think said that she's one year younger than my wife, so she's 28 again.
And I know how that works, because every year all I have to do is get a 29th birthday card for my wife, and I just have a supply of them, and I don't have to really worry about anything. So we'll dedicate the second hour to LaShawn, because she had a hard time listening to the first hour for some reason.
But it's nice to have LaShawn as a Twitter friend and follower on The Dividing Line, and we enjoy her tweets and articles and things like that. And so she was just given ops in channel. Look out! She probably doesn't know what to do with them, but don't even bother trying to kick me out, because it won't work.
But anyways, I should tell LaShawn that both TurretinFan and Ralph Provence... Did I say Provence? Big Ralph man! I said Provence. Why did I say Provence? That's not even how he pronounces his last name.
We'll just call him Ralphie. Okay, I'll go with Ralph. I guess I was trying to be British and trying to exaggerate a certain syllable. Anyways, don't worry, I won't go there. What was I saying? Anyways, they both texted me and said, remember to do something about LaShawn's birthday.
So there were two people that reminded me that I needed to do that. And I needed that because I need reminders these days. Lots of reminders. Anyway, before I listened to Matthew's presentation, I listened to one of the more entertaining debates I've ever listened to from ABN.
And that was the debate that put Robert Spencer and David Wood together, debating Amjad Chowdhury and the sheikh from Lebanon. I forgot what his name is. And the two Muslims were on by Skype, and Robert Spencer and David Wood were in studio, which makes it easier for them, obviously.
The Lebanon connection kept, let's just say Internet speeds in Lebanon obviously aren't all that good. And there were a number of times the sheikh went, disappeared, and they had to say, okay, Anjum, why don't you pick up at that point, because we've lost the sheikh yet once again.
But the debate topic was, did Muhammad exist? Now, Robert Spencer has put out a book called Did Muhammad Exist? And possibly later this week, David and he will be debating that because David does think that Muhammad existed.
I think Muhammad existed too. And so it was a little bit weird that David and Robert were together. In fact, I guess about the only point that Anjum Chowdhury ever made was to say, even you guys aren't on the same page on this.
That was about it. Here was the debate in a nutshell. Muslims. Well, of course Muhammad existed because the Quran says so. And the Quran is inimitable. The Quran is the word of God. And if it says Muhammad existed, then he existed.
End of discussion. Christians come back saying, but the Quran has got errors in it, and it's not inimitable. That whole argument in the Quran about no one can produce a surah like it is purely bogus. It's purely subjective.
There's no way it could ever be falsified. It would not matter what we presented to you. There's even a website out there. I'm going to have to look up the name. I didn't take a look at it. Maybe somebody on the channel can find it.
But there's even a website out there, I think called LikeUntoIt or something, where in Arabic things have been posted that are very similar to what you have in the Quran in Arabic. Because, of course, once David challenged them on this particular point, they did surah like it.
Thank you, Hiob. H-I-O-B. How do you say that? Anyways, surahlikeit .com. I haven't looked at it yet. But anyway, as soon as they came back, they said, well, David had said, well, here's a rap. And no Muslim can rap like I can rap.
And we're going to be the judges of this. And so that means I'm a divine rapper. I'm divinely inspired because my rap is the best rap, and we decide that nobody else's rap is as good, which means I must be divinely inspired.
And it's a good argument. It's a logical argument. All the Muslims could come back with, well, it has to be in Arabic. I guess God's stuck to speaking Arabic. But as it may, listening to the sheikh and Amjam Chowdhury spinning in this tiny, tiny, tight little circle, no matter what they were challenged with, they could not, you know, the best they could do was talk about, well, you know, the hadith are wonderful, and we've checked out all the hadith, and we've verified all the hadith, and the hadith are great.
And then they'd quote hadith that contradicted their position, and then they'd ignore that. It was the most lopsided encounter I had ever seen in my life, except possibly to be paralleled only with the absurdity that was my one encounter with Nader Ahmed, because that was more lopsided, because both the sheikh and Amjam Chowdhury could at least string more than three sentences together on one particular topic.
And that was the problem with Nader Ahmed. But it was actually humorous to listen to. Now, I really want to hear the encounter between David Wood and Robert Spencer, because Robert Spencer admits basically what he's doing is he's dug out all, you know, the old haggarism and some of the orientalisms, and he's grabbing some of Pop's stuff about the coins and the study of the coins, and the coins show a slow development of recognition of Muhammad over time.
But I'll have to admit he defended his positions knowledgably, more so than I expected, more so than I expected. And so it truly was amazing. And then to listen to Amjam Chowdhury, well, you know, at the Council of Nicaea, they suppressed this and they did this with the cannon and just all the old, completely fraudulent, purely based on utter ignorance stuff that is just the essence of the vast majority of Islamic apologetics out there.
And it was very interesting. So you can go over to the Act 17 website, to the blog, and you'll find the video there. And it was well worth listening to. Now, of course, I listened to it at double speed, and everybody sounds so much smarter at double speed than they do at regular speed.
They really do. And you can get through it really fast. It only took me 25 miles of riding. That's how you measure it. It took me 25 miles of riding to get through the entire thing. And that was uphill.
So it was well worth the listen, and I would recommend it to you. All right, so with that having been said, we have been listening to the debate between Jay Smith and Adnan Rashid. We're in the audience questions.
I want to get through this. It wasn't all that long of a debate, and we're over halfway through. And so I want to get through this. There were some good questions there, because then I want to get to a debate that took place between a Roman Catholic apologist and Abdullah Kunda just last month, I think, maybe March, so it might have been two months ago now since we're into early May, on the deity of Christ, because there were a number of statements that were made by Abdullah that need to be challenged, corrected, and hopefully for his benefit and everyone else's as well.
But to get there, we need to finish up with Adnan Rashid first. And so we had gotten to an interesting point in the cross-examination, where, as I pointed out, I felt that Jay had stumbled, that he had stumbled in that he had not made the appropriate theological distinctions in regards to Jesus' two natures and the fact that he needed to explain what death was in affirming that Jesus died.
What does that mean? There needed to be a much clearer affirmation that death is not cessation of existence. And then the issue would come up, did Jesus die in his divine nature? Did the divine nature die?
And Jay had actually said, don't limit God. God can do whatever he wants, which was even more exacerbated by the fact that he had not defined death as the giving of life, but it was obviously hanging in the minds of the Muslims, the cessation of existence.
So I was concerned as to exactly how that took place. That's around the time that we stopped, and we'll pick up from there.
So again, so that was how many you gave me? Three? 40 verses. Can I ask you, is one of these verses when the adulteress was brought before Jesus? That's not chapter 7, verse 3 in John.
Okay, so here is a Muslim questioner. And once again, he is, and this was one thing, I forgot to mention this. One of the callers on the ABN debate called in and was asked a question, concerning the fact that the Christians, and specifically David Wood, had raised the issue of variant readings in the Koran, differences between the Harfs and Warsh readings.
They didn't start talking too much upon the actual variations in manuscripts and stuff like that. But basically they've been saying that there are differences in versions of the Koran and things like that.
So a guy calls in. And he says, well what about the Bible? Do you believe that the Bible has been perfectly preserved? And that's what this guy is basically going for in this debate. And my fellow apologists, I think, need to be able to enunciate a much clearer definition of the means by which God has preserved and transmitted the New Testament than they seem comfortable giving.
That is, if I were to answer the question that had been asked on ABN, I would have said that God has completely preserved His Word, but He has not done so without allowing textual variation. Everything that He inspired is still a part of the manuscript tradition.
But He did not engage in such a minute providential control of the transmission of the text as to preclude textual variation and the fact that in the transmission of the text to a wide number of people, especially in the early centuries, there were copyist errors.
What He's done is He's preserved His Word. It's still there. But He did not use a photocopy methodology of transmitting that text. And if you want to flesh that out, then listen to what we've been doing in regards to Bart Ehrman and his debate with Dan Wallace.
And that will help to sort of flesh some of that out. But that's where this question's coming from. Now notice the interlocutor, the person asking the question, skips from asking a meaningful question about a textual variant to using the term concocted, which of course is a term laden with inappropriate terminology and meaning and baggage and so on and so forth.
Concocted. As if someone actually has control over the text and they can insert things and take things out willy-nilly. That is not how that works.
So why do you say then that this is the Word of God?
Okay. Excellent question. It's a fair question. If it's not in the earliest manuscripts, why is it in the Bible? Well, it shouldn't be, but it should be in the printed text for historical reasons. Because it has been in some texts without any notification of the fact there's a textual variant.
So it's a matter of full disclosure. It's a matter of recognizing that people carry different translations of the Bible and therefore it should be noted with an explanatory note as to what that issue is.
Just as the Quran should make reference to the different readings in the different versions and to the textual variants that we know from the Fogg's Palimpsest manuscript and things like that. There should be a critical open edition of the Quran too.
That's how it should be done. Don't hold your breath waiting for it in an Islamic country, but that's how it should be done.
If I can pick and choose what I want from the Bible, I can be drunk, I can be a sodomite. Yes, I can do that.
Listen now. Just complete jump into utter irrationality here. From the recognition that Christians have appropriately recognized that the Pericope Adultery of John 7 .53 -8 .11 is not in the earliest manuscripts, therefore it should not be recognized as Scripture.
And it should be set apart, textual variant noted, etc. You jump from that to, I can pick and choose whatever I want? How do you even connect those two together? That is utterly and completely irrational.
Sir, I mean, if you just list the whole pile of conversions that are missing out of the Quran too. Do you want me to go through them? No, it's okay. Let's go through them. They did not know of those that survived then, nor were they written down.
None of you say, I have acquired, know what all of it is, when much of the Quran has disappeared. Rather let him say, I have acquired what has survived. That's a Suyuti. Is he a scholar? Yes, he is. Sahih Muslim, is he a scholar?
Would you use him? Sahih Muslim, I have however forgotten some of it, with the exception of this, which I remember out of it. Look at what Sahih Bukhari says. We used to read a verse in the Quran revealed in the connection, but later the verse was cancelled.
Then it goes on to say about the verse of Rajab. Have you heard about the verse of Rajab? No, please give it to me. This is Sahih Bukhari as well. And among what Allah revealed was the verse of Rajab.
The stoning of buried persons, male and female, who committed adultery. And we just recite this verse and understood and memorized it. Allah's Apostle did not. He did carry out the punishment of stoning and so did we after him.
I am afraid that after a long time someone will say, by Allah, we do not find the verse of Rajab in Allah's book. And that's true. If you go to Surah 24, Ayat 2, it's now 100 verses. That's been changed.
And I could go on and on and on. Arthur Jeffrey is a good one to read. Look and see all the enormous amount of variances, scriptural variances, according to the earliest traditions, which are your traditions about your Quran.
Look at what Bukhari says again about the manuscripts that were destroyed during the time of Uthman. Why did they destroy them? Where are they today? So we can look at them to see why they were destroyed.
And they only kept one. Showing that the standardization of the Quran was done very early. I'm going to give this book actually to Adnan. This is a great book that you need to read about variance. May I have one, please?
No, I'm sorry. I don't have one for you. Okay, that's good. Adnan, a little bit more points, please. But Adnan, this is a very important verse.
Very quickly to respond to Jay's point. Textus Receptus is not the original text. Textus Receptus was formed in the 16th century based upon late Greek manuscripts. Today what we have is much better than Textus Receptus because we have access to early manuscripts.
Now this is interesting to me because you may recall, I did, I think I stopped. I remember when I was writing and I listened to this, I remember I didn't stop. But I do remember noting this. But I'm pretty certain I stopped and I said, I'm not sure why Jay just said what he said.
Because he talked about the Textus Receptus. My guess would be that he was thinking United Bible Society's text. And he just said the wrong thing. That's my guess. I don't know. But Adnan is correct. The Textus Receptus, 1633.
It's based upon the five editions of Erasmus, the 1550 Stephanus, and the 1598 Beza, primarily. And so he's right here. But notice he says we have much better text today. Well, is he being consistent there?
Because he's then going to turn around and say, oh, well, you just let people put things in. Men control the text of your Bible. No one controls the Quran. Well, if the modern texts are better than the TR, how did that happen?
What process could have happened, Adnan, that you would not criticize that would lead to better text today than we had in the TR? Because you're right. We do have earlier manuscripts. But how do you allow for the discovery of earlier manuscripts?
I mean, what if we found a real Uthmanic codex? What if we found a real Uthmanic codex? I mean, remember when the Sa 'ana manuscripts were found, they were found in the ceiling of a mosque in Yemen that was being refurbished.
And they had been stuffed up there and sealed in there for a thousand years. More than that. What if some other archaeological site is found or some other mosque is refurbished, and all of a sudden we actually find what could actually be identified by its script and by what's found around it as an Uthmanic codex?
What then, Adnan, what if it differs from today's Quran, from the standardized 1924 Egyptian? What do you do then? I mean, for me it's real easy. For me, that's why I like, that's why so many of us are so excited about the announcement that Dan Wallace made.
About the finding of a number of very, very early fragments of Mark and Luke and other New Testament books. First and second century stuff. We're excited about that. We're not sitting around going, oh, I wonder if this could be anything.
It's just going to overthrow everything we believe. Wringing our hands. No. We're like, yeah, cool. But it doesn't seem, I don't find a lot of Muslims that are just, boy, I sure hope we find an Uthmanic codex.
That would be great. Because what if it differed? You see, from the Christian perspective, we find these early manuscripts, and unlike the King James only folks, we want to know what John wrote. We want to know what Paul wrote.
And there's a greater probability that something that was copied within 100 years of when they wrote has got that right than something that was copied 1100 years from when they wrote. I don't want 20 generations between what I'm dependent upon and the original.
One or two is nicer. But what about Muslims? What if an Uthmanic codex were to be found and it contained even minor variations from the standardized 1924 Egyptian printing that's available today? Would they do the right thing and say, we need to change our current printings to match this?
You know what I've always been concerned about? A number of years ago, I forget how long ago it was now, but it's been, it was probably 2007, 2008, somewhere around there. There was a palimpsest manuscript.
Palimpsests are really important manuscripts when it comes to Quranic studies. A palimpsest is where the original has been wiped off and something else has been written over top of it, but you can still read the original using ultraviolet light or things like that.
The Fogg's palimpsest, very, very important, gives testimony to the early existence of the Ibn Masud readings and things like that. A palimpsest manuscript was up for auction at Sotheby's or one of those big auction houses in London.
It was purchased anonymously and immediately disappeared. We have no idea where it is. In fact, to be honest with you, we have no idea whether it even exists anymore. There is a vested interest on the part of many Muslims to do anything they would need to do to suppress evidence of early textual variation in the Quran.
There really is. Now Christians, have you looked at the Nessie Olin 27th edition? Not only would we not have the money to do it, but no, it wouldn't happen. But there I can certainly see why a conservative sheikh someplace would be willing to part with a lot of petro money, a lot of petro dollars to hide away forever, maybe even destroy a vitally important textual resource in the study of the Quran.
And that is, I think, a real reason for concern. Something tells me that Adnan is interpreting and interpolating just a little bit. I mean, it's one thing I think most people would say that fundamentally we have the text of the Quran, but what we'd like is something other than the Uthmanic version.
We'd like to know more about its primitive history. It's not a matter of some kind of massive change to where, like the atheist had Bart Ehrman on and asked him, well, Bart, in light of all the changes in the Bible, the New Testament, what do you think it originally said?
And Bart Ehrman's like, well, pretty much what it says today. Just a bubble popped. The balloon was totally deflated. And that's not what we're talking about. I think anyone who suggests that the original Quran had different gods and a different message and all that stuff, nah, you're missing the boat.
That's not what it was. But there were changes. There were variants. And it would be very, very useful to understand what those changes are. And it'd be very, very useful to understand the nature of the changes and the extent of the changes and things like that.
Now, again, Adnan struggles with utilization of technical terms. Really does. He doesn't seem to understand the terminology of corruption when Christians use it in regards to the New Testament. And what does authentically mean?
Does that mean perfectly? Without variation? Is that what he's saying these individuals are actually asserting? See, there you go. There's exact example. They're telling you the Bible's corrupted. What does that mean to Bruce Metzger?
I know what it means to Bruce Metzger. But Adnan either doesn't or refuses to accurately represent what corruption means in technical, textual, critical usage.
This is some comment to our brother, Adnan.
The first one, you say that if Jesus died for everyone, for the Muslim too, that means I'm killing my sin is wiped out. No, it's not like that. Your sin may be that. The God wants to do that for you. But you have to put your faith in Him.
That's only for the people. If they put their faith in the Jesus, they're saved.
See, here's an example of where even Christians do not understand what a question is. This is why I don't really mind, honestly, skipping audience questions. Once in a while, you get a good audience question.
I'll admit that. And people like them. But I don't feel like I've really missed anything if we actually skip the audience questions. Because here you have a Christian. And he heard something that was said before.
And he doesn't really have a question here. He just wants to get up and preach to the Muslims for a little while. Now, he may be saying the right things and things like that. But I would think that Christians especially would like maybe follow the rules a little bit.
In the book of James, you say that Paul says something, James says another thing. But because you say just the verse, you don't go and look around what happens. The one verse that James says that faith without war is a faith.
If you have a faith, you war. You don't have it, but you do it. It's a desire come out of it. And you have to look at it that way. That does not say that, okay, you have a faith. We are, as a Christian, we are saved by grace of God.
And not by our deeds. But because the love of God is inside us. Because the God is inside us. Drive us. We love to do that. We love to act. This is another thing. Sorry, do you have a question?
Is it just a comment? Is that all right? Just a second. No, can you keep it brief, please? Okay, one second. See, and even when the moderator says, ask away. Well, no, no, no, just one second. This just bugs me.
Christians, do not do this. Do you not understand that you are undercutting the value of the debate? You're undercutting the Christian debater. It really bugs me. When I'm in a debate, and Christians do this, it really, really bothers me.
I want to join with the moderator and say, look, you're a Christian. You're supposed to understand the rules. And you're supposed to be willing to follow the rules. Sit down. Stop it. But they're just people that just, they're convinced they should have been in the debate, not the guy who's in the debate.
Okay, that's what's really going on.
Some verses from the Bible. From one side, you say the Bible is not right. From the other side, you bring a quote from it. And the other thing is that in a book of John Rich.
See, he's just listening to the debate, and, well, I want to comment on this, and I want to comment on that. You've got to have a moderator, either that or a gorilla guy, who is controlling the microphone, who is willing to simply snatch it away and say, sorry, you didn't ask a question.
Next person. That's what you just really, really have to have.
On which you say that they asked the Jesus, and the Jesus didn't know about it. But the Jesus, the disciples, you have to think about it. You're not debating me. No, no, no, I'm telling you.
See, this guy has just been shut down. Just move on.
The disciples, they didn't know anything in that. They weren't ready. In that same Gospel of John, the Jesus says that I will go and send a counselor. He should tell you everything about me. And you, or the other, my Muslim brother, they use the same verses around the street, and send a counselor himself.
Can you finish the last one? No, no, no last one. I'm the... That's why I'm sorry. I'm not allowed to practice my faith in Islam. You said a second. You took a minute.
On faith, you said faith, if you have to have faith in order to get that privilege, I'm saying unfaithfulness, if it's a sin, then it's already been paid for by Jesus Christ if he died on the cross. Because unfaithfulness itself is a sin.
And if that's the case, if it's a sin, then he paid for my sins on the cross.
Now, you may recall, when I first started my response to this, I responded to his argumentation at this point, and demonstrated that it has some merit against those who present a universal atonement concept, but it's pretty obvious that Adnan hasn't debated too many Calvinists on that subject.
With regards to the God saying, I already made my point very clear, that the Bible that it stands for is death. You simply don't want to see someone's book being sealed, even though it should be.
Now, have we actually heard anything from Adnan that was proof? We've heard an awful lot of misunderstanding on his part, we've heard a whole lot of assertion, we haven't heard much in the way of actual proof.
See, there you go, I refuse to use the term corrupted in the context of the authors I'm citing,.
But I'll beat you over the head with it anyway. But you don't want to listen, you don't want to pay attention, because why? I don't know why, maybe you like Christianity, maybe you like to go to the churches and sing to Jesus Christ, or maybe you are not for these books to show you that even these books, even if we accept them from God...
I do understand, but it is sad for me to listen to Islamic apologists. And I'm going to have to criticize Abdullah Kunda on this, because he used some of the same really bad argumentation against the Trinity.
At one point he said there's no evidence in the New Testament, and I'm like, seriously? Really? I didn't expect that, I really didn't. Because he'd have to know. Even if he just listened to the programs we did a couple of months ago when I did the debate with the Unitarian, and we went through the I Am sayings.
That's one thing that he tried to argue in this debate, and I'm going to have to just take his position apart, because on any scholarly level he's just completely wrong. But I hold Abdullah to a higher standard than Adnan.
Adnan doesn't really understand this stuff. I'm sorry, but it's very surface-level argumentation. He may bring the book in, but I don't see any serious evidence that he actually tries to enter in and understand what the books are saying.
And he just proof-texts them, and doesn't really understand what they're saying. And yet here you have these wild assertions being made. Most people think that John the Apostle became John of Ephesus, and he went to Ephesus, didn't he?
Now you might want to bring up the Richard Balcom discussion of John the Apostle versus John the Disciple. That's an interesting discussion. But Muslims think that unless you have an Isnad chain, you've got nothing.
They anachronistically take a later convention from their background, which actually has almost no meaning at all. That was one of the things that came up in the other debate that I was talking about.
And Jim Chowdhury at one point. We've gone back, we've meticulously checked every Isnad chain and confirmed them. How do you do that? Because everybody in the Isnad chain is dead. Exactly how do you pull that off is what I would like to know.
You can't do that. It's not possible. You can't go back and do that. So in Isnad chain, every Hadith that was ever rejected by Imam Muslim, by Imam Bukhari, had an Isnad chain. And I've heard arguments about this, but I think it's fairly safe to say, being very conservative here, that a majority of the Hadith examined by both Bukhari and Muslim were rejected by both.
That means the majority of stories with Isnad chains in the Hadith were rejected as untrue. Unhistorical. They're not Sahih. Or any of the other categories that would be close to that. So just having an Isnad chain means nothing.
And they'll demand that you know exactly who wrote John. There are books in the Old Testament. I don't know who wrote them. Jais didn't have any problem with that. Why do you have a problem with that?
Well, because I anachronistically demand that you tell me who wrote these books. I need to know. Why? I just need to know.
And that's how the argument goes. Did you catch that?
Jais says, look at his conclusion. And all Adnan can say is, look at the title. In other words, allow me to read an inappropriate definition into the title. I don't care what he says in the book. I'm just going to look at the title.
I'm going to say corruption means it's been lost. And that's it. That's all you've got to do. Now I'm not sure who's laughing here at what, but I think it's probably both sides laughing at the other.
Let me just comment on this because it is a common, common question.
There is no question that Muslims are claiming that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is Allah. Now it's interesting that the divine name Yahweh is very obvious by its lack of centrality in Muhammad's understanding, which would make sense because by that period of time the Jews weren't using it, and so he wouldn't even be familiar with it.
But again, that goes back to the origin of the Koran and where the Koran actually comes from. But the Muslims claim that Allah is Yahweh, that the God of Abraham is the God of Muhammad. And they believe that the Christians have engaged in excess in going beyond the revelation that was given to Jesus in the Injil.
And that's why we have the Trinity and things like that because we've just misunderstood some really basic things and just aren't really all that bright. And so the claim is, but the more clear-thinking Muslims will admit, okay, yeah, we're claiming to worship the same God, but the God we worship is very, very, very different.
Very, very different indeed. Even the name, the divine name forever, God, because that shows that we live into prophethood. I don't consider Muhammad to be a prophet. He's a priest. He's a king. The son of God.
The son of man. These are divine names, and he also claims the name Yahweh. That holy name that no Jew is supposed to pronounce, he takes it in John 8, verse 58, and look at how the Jews...
The word Allah is in the Bible.
Okay, here we go. Here we've got something we can really listen to. Will Adnan allow Metzger to use his own vocabulary, or will he insist on squishing Metzger into his anti-New Testament mold? What do you think?
Okay, does he understand what any of that meant? Does he know what these parameters are? Does he understand the concept of the more difficult reading, the shorter reading? Does he understand internal evidence versus external evidence?
Does he understand what the manuscript families are? Does he understand earlier versus... I understood everything Metzger just said, but I can understand how a Muslim, ignorant of textual critical issues, could completely misunderstand what he just said.
But Adnan is an apologist, right? So he doesn't really have a grounds for being ignorant of this. None of that even began to define what corruption restoration means, or substantiate his insistence that corruption means that the original has been lost.
You mean like Uthman? Probably this, maybe the original reading.
This is what Metzger just said.
So that's the answer to your question. I read the rest of the quote now. Let's read the rest of the quote.
In the early time, in the Latin, Syriac, Baltic, beyond that, we have what we may call secondary translations made a little later, like Armenian, Gothic, and lots of other Georgian, Ethiopian, of great variety.
Even if we have no Greek manuscript today, by piecing together the information from these translations, from a relatively early date, we can actually reproduce the contents of the New Testament. Read the rest of it.
You need to read the whole quote. In addition to that, even if we lost all the Greek manuscripts, and the early translations, we can still reproduce the contents of the New Testament from the multiplicity of quotations and commentary, sermons, letters, and so forth, of the early church fathers.
So read the whole quote. I can't respond to his comment, but I can respond.
Did you notice the word reproduce? If the word reproduce is there in that quote, what does that mean? Who is reproducing? Here, we are told, editors are reproducing. Can the word of God be reproduced?
Can the word of God be reproduced? Any ancient document that was handwritten has to be printed. That's called reproduction. Every Quran that Adnan holds in his hand has been reproduced. Hello? Now, I assume, of course, English is not Adnan's first language.
But it still is amazing that even when faced with these things, he just doesn't hear it. Can it be reproduced? Even if you've lost it. See, that's not what Metzger is saying.
Metzger is saying that we can reproduce it. My question is, we can reproduce it.
Doesn't that provoke you? Does that provoke you to say that your creator has been humiliated and his dignity humiliated by a bunch of weak, arrogant, unfaithful people at the time? I mean, I can understand if that was a prophet, a messenger from God, a leader.
And he suffered like that for us. And we know that messengers have suffered. But my question is, is that the God that will help you, will help us, will help anyone? Is that the God that, you know, when I'm in a state of weakness, I can lift my hand up with certainty and know that He has the power to save me.
I know that. Is that the God who we can worship with full trust? God bless you. I love your question. That's probably the best question tonight.
And I'd love to answer it. I'm a father. I have three sons. I think we're out of time. I'm going to need to stop. It's a very good question. And it is a question I think Muslims must be challenged to think about.
How do you know that the God that you are turning to for mercy and grace will be merciful and gracious toward you? Is it just the repetitive use of calling Him Rahman, Rahim? Or what about proof? The cross is the proof from the Christian perspective.
Thanks for listening to The Dividing Line today. Lord willing, next week, probably Tuesday afternoon because I fly back from California on Tuesday morning. So should have a fairly straightforward... Oh no, no, next week's going to be a mess.
We'll let you know on the blog. We'll figure it out next week. We'll see you then. God bless.
The Dividing Line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries. If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at P .O. Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can also find us on the World Wide Web at AOMIN .org.
That's A-O-M-I-N .org. Where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates and tracks. Join us again next Tuesday morning at 11 a .m. for The Dividing Line.