Who Can Speak Truth?

Who Can Speak Truth?

Who is able to speak the truth? Seems like a rather obvious answer could be given to that question, and that is anyone created in the image of God can speak truth. But it seems that many Christians feel that only Christians can speak truth.

And if what we mean by speak truth is to speak truthfully, consistently with the entire revelation of God's purposes, okay. But if Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins looks outside and says, the sky is blue, do we have to argue with them?

Well, they're an atheist. They can't speak the truth. That seems rather silly. The examples were meant to be silly. To make a point, very often Christians engage in a form of bigotry. It really is a form of bigotry.

Truth, Bigotry, and Listening Carefully in Witnessing Situations

In thinking that people who are not Christians cannot say anything that's true, especially in the religious realm. I have seen this many, many times in the past in witnessing situations. For example, in Mesa, Arizona at the LDS Easter pageant or up at the temple in Salt Lake City during General Conference.

I would walk up on a conversation and I would be listening in. And especially if it is a fairly intense conversation, the tendency is to get into a mindset, especially when it's sort of becoming the ping-pong match where you make your point, they make their point, back, forth, back, forth, back, forth.

Especially when other people are listening. To fall into a trap of thinking that whatever the other person says, you have to refute it. Rather than analyzing it and saying, is that a truthful statement?

Is it a relevant statement? And so what happens is, let's say listening to a Mormon speaking. The Mormon may say something true, let's say about what an early church father said at some point. And the Christian is immediately put into a defensive position of trying to refute that particular citation.

When in reality, the best response might be, so? I agree. What's your point? Part of it is, well, you don't want to give the advantage to the person in giving them more time to speak. It's a mindset that we get into.

But part of it is this errant idea that if someone is a part of a false religious group that we believe is fundamentally in denial of God's truth, that means they can't say anything true. Now let me emphasize at this point that what our real belief is is that they cannot be consistently truthful.

They may say many true things. Atheists say many true things. Christopher Hitchens is right. False religion has poisoned all sorts of things. He's wrong to take it as far as he does, and he's wrong to not make the distinction between true and false religion.

But false religion poisons all sorts of things. There's no reason to argue those matters. And so with that in mind, we recognize that since God has created man in His image, that man has the ability to see His truth.

In fact, Scripture says in Romans chapter 1 that man is suppressing the truth. You've got to see something before you can suppress it. And so unregenerate men, men who are not believers can say all sorts of truthful things.

They can have all sorts of true knowledge. But they cannot be consistent in the application of that knowledge outside of the Christian worldview, because the Christian worldview is derived from God's revelation of what the world is in reality.

Responding to the Ergun Caner Scandal Without Prejudice

With that in mind, I have been very, very troubled by a form of bigotry on the part of many Christians that has come up as a result of the Ergenkanner scandal. What I mean by that is some of the first documentation that was produced in this matter was produced by a Muslim.

And there have been many Christians who have just automatically gone, well it's produced by a Muslim, it must be a lie. Have you thought about what that means? If a Muslim looks outside and says the sky is blue, does that automatically mean you're going to argue with them about that?

There's a cloud over there, and that's not totally blue. It has been very disturbing to see people absolutely dismiss video evidence, audio evidence, documentation of the first rate, first level information, the most reliable stuff we can get hold of.

Just dismiss it because of who presented it. Rather than looking at it and asking serious questions about what it means and how it relates to other things. The reason I raise this, of course, obviously I have been attacked by many people for becoming chummy with the Muslims and taking the Muslim side and things like that.

Things that even the Muslims find to be rather not only ironic, but just outrageously silly. Far below any type of what should be Christian thought. Christians should be people who think with clarity and consistency.

We're supposed to have the mind of Christ, not befuddled minds that do not think clearly. Beyond that, I wanted to bring up two points and I'm going to be straight up front in saying they're pointed out to me by a Muslim.

By a Muslim with whom I've had some fairly strong correspondence. I get along with some Muslims and this gentleman and I though we've tried we don't get along very well. And I'm going to do what I can to try to get past that.

I think it would be worthwhile for he and I to debate some time. But he wrote to me today and pointed out two things that I had missed. Despite what people think I'm not spending all of my time doing nothing more than combing through every single word Ergen Kander's ever said to try to find something.

Most of what's been found, other people have found. Sure, I've listened to his testimony. I've been listening for major things. Major inconsistencies. But there were two items that I had heard didn't catch him.

He did. So, kudos to him. But it was a Muslim who pointed them out. And before I even point out what they are, I just have to ask some of my radical critics who call themselves Christians. Does it matter who points it out?

If it was a... You know, we have some Arabic speakers in my church. If one of those Arabic speakers had pointed these things out to me, would it be more true? More relevant? Than if a Muslim points it out?

How can something be more true depending on who points it out? Isn't the point, whether it's true or not, isn't that the point? At least I thought that way until this situation and discovered that there's Christian truth and then there's non-Christian truth.

It shouldn't be that way, folks. It's wrong. I repudiate it and I say to a watching world every time Christians think and act in that way we're wrong to do so. We have to be consistent all the way along.

Arabic Terms, Caner’s Claims, and the Need for Accuracy

So what was pointed out to me? Well, first of all, both were things I should have caught. Both are things that I have sufficient resources. You know, my Oxford Arabic Dictionary and over here I have my, this is the grammar that I've been using less than I should be using.

Arabic for the Quran by Alan Jones for Study of Arabic. Should have caught both of them. As soon as he pointed them out, I went, yeah, right there. But he as a practicing Muslim found them both to be sources of laughter, sadly.

And it's amazing how many Christians say, see, we shouldn't be talking about this because the Muslims... No, we should be talking about this because the only people the Muslims should be respecting are the people that have the guts to stand up and say, but I'm a part with this.

I am not going to be a part with people who misrepresent others even when they say they're doing it for the sake of Jesus. If Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life then treat him that way. But, anyway.

The first had to do with the Canor brothers repeatedly saying that their father could have been part of the ulema or actually the way they put it is he could have been an ulema. Really. And my Arabic correspondent my Muslim correspondent pointed out the fact that even in their book that's how they put it, an ulema.

The problem is ulema is a plural term. It refers to a class of scholars. The singular is alim. Now I'm sure that Peter Lumpkins will now make a video of my pronunciation of alim. But ayin is the very same Arabic letter that I was referring to in my video with Brother Issam at the end of Sharia that is not easy for English speakers to pronounce.

It comes across sounding rather harsh. And it's there at the beginning of alim. But it means a learner in one context, scholars. And again, I checked this out in the dictionary. And so in other words, what they've been saying all along is their father could have been a scholar.

What they should have said all along and in print was that if he had wanted to I guess he could have done the level of study required to be an alim. Which is sort of the entry level toward becoming a shaykh or something like that.

Caliph, Caliphate, and the Implausibility of Caner’s Testimony

That was the first thing. The second thing was, and again it just went right past me back on March 29th of this year I played the audio from the Focus on the Family program where Ergin Kanner's testimony was given From Jihad to Jesus was the name.

And tracking down this particular citation again I did notice more contradictions. Here he's 17 when he's converted. In other places he's 15. And it keeps changing. But he talks about how for 17 years he had believed that Christians hated him.

Well, did he actually come to that conclusion when he was born? Again, more exaggeration. Just a regular part of what it means to be Ergin Kanner it seems. But let me just play very quickly the clip that I had played.

I'm playing it straight from the dividing line here. And I hadn't caught this, but my Muslim friend did. Listen to what Ergin Kanner has to say.

We showed up like King Henry IV at Canossa with the Pope. I'm standing outside in the snow barefoot just hoping he'll let us in. And he lets us in. My father was surrounded by Muazzin and Mullahs and Caliphates and Imams.

They were all just they didn't want us to get to our dad. But for three days we got to witness to our father.

What is a Caliphate? The reason I should have known this is, here's my grammar again. And if you want to check it out, page 13 lesson 1, vocabulary 1 we have successor vice-roy caliph and its caliphate is the singular.

And then you have and this is the same thing in Hebrew which is why frequently those of you who have learned Hebrew, when you learn your vocabulary you learn the singular and the plural. The reason being that there are vocalic changes between singulars and plurals.

There are patterns but especially when you're just beginning, you don't know what those patterns are. And sometimes they break the patterns, they become irregulars and it can be extremely difficult it's part of the process.

But you learn the singular and the plural together. And so a caliph is sort of an anglicized version of this term, of caliphate. The plural for that term has a change. Instead of it becomes again a standard singular to plural change in certain roots.

So I should have caught that for more than one reason. Not only the pronunciation but beyond that there is no caliph today. No Sunni Muslim. Maybe there's some weird odd group off someplace that thinks that they're following their caliph or whatever.

But anyone who knows, again, anything about Islam knows that there is no caliph today. There's no caliphate. If there were, you'd have a caliph who could actually declare a state of jihad. This was pressed home to me in listening to Sheikh Yasir Qadhi's lectures on shirk.

And years ago I heard this where he was discussing the fact that one of the reasons that he does not believe that Muslims can be doing the things that radical Muslims are doing today is because there has to be a stated condition of jihad.

And to have a stated condition of jihad requires a caliph. That singular supreme Muslim leader who can declare these things. Now again, you're going to have various disagreements amongst Muslims as to some of the fine shades of meaning.

But the point is there is no caliph. No Sunni Muslim would say there's a caliph today. Let alone caliphates surrounding their father trying to keep you from getting to him. It just doesn't make any sense.

And I played that and I didn't even catch that. So, the real question here for anybody is not only the pattern, the repeated pattern I just saw today a Turretin fan had tracked down more references to Erdogan referring to Ramadan having 40 days, not just one.

And I never really agreed with Turretin fan in thinking, well, he was just confusing this with something else. Now, let me tell you something. When you have to fast during the day from sunrise to sunset and not even drink water, you remember exactly how long Ramadan is.

Not only that, but if you really engaged in Ramadan you know what Laylatul Qadr is. And Laylatul Qadr is a night that Muslims look for. They believe that it is an extremely, the night of power where their prayers have the greatest opportunity of being heard by Allah.

And then you have the celebrations that come after Ramadan. You would not have forgotten how long Ramadan is. No matter how many years it has been, you would not go, oh, lunar month to 40 days. Sorry, it's just not possible.

Well, he's tracked down two more, three places now. Three places where you can document that Erdogan has said Ramadan is 40 days long. Sorry. The pattern here is ubiquitous. It is broad. It is deep. It is contextual.

It crosses all sorts of different boundaries. It is consistent that this man does not understand the religion that he has been proclaimed an expert in and has indeed claimed that expertise in what he has written and what he has said and what he has done.

Truth, Consistency, and Christian Witness

So, the whole point again is, does it matter who points that out? I mean, really? Does it? Put the shoe on the other foot for just a moment. I'm trying to talk to you Christians who just don't seem to be able to think rationally about this particular subject.

What if you had a former member of your church who, let's use Erdogan as an example, sometime around age 16, not even out of the high school group, leaves the faith and becomes a Muslim. You mourn that.

You feel badly about that. Let's say it caused some disruptions in his family. And then, about 20 years later, you see him on the Dean show. You see him on television. You see him standing in front of a whole group of Muslims and they're looking to him as an expert on Christianity.

And so you listen in. And you hear him making systemic, consistent, widespread errors about the basics of the faith. Simple errors. Aren't you going to go, he was a kid when he converted. He didn't understand.

He was immature. Why are these people looking at him as an expert? Folks, that's exactly what I do when I watch the Dean show. And I see these people who call themselves former Christians and they don't have a clue.

It's hard to even recognize what they're calling Christianity. Well, if we're going to point to them and say, what are you doing? You're misrepresenting our faith. You're looking to people who converted when they were kids as experts.

Come on. Deal with the real issues. Folks, if we're going to do that, we've got to be consistent. We've got to be consistent. And when we can see and identify consistent errors over a broad spectrum of things, what does truth demand that we do?

It doesn't matter who pointed it out. It could have been an atheist, a Buddhist, a Muslim, a Hindu. It doesn't matter. Facts are facts. And if we're Christians and serve him who is the truth, we have to be consistent.

That's the only way you can define truth is by consistency. And so I would ask you to think about these things. And for those of you who have found yourself engaging in this activity, put aside the prejudice and the bigotry.

Honor truth first and foremost. It's vitally important. It's important to our witness, to the Muslim people, and to all people. The world's watching, folks, and we have to live in light of what we profess to believe.

Thanks for watching.