Eschatological Madness about Israel, Further Review of Muhammed Hijab

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:33

Well, greetings and welcome to Dividing Line. It's a Friday. We're doing an extra show this week just simply to sort of catch up on stuff,

00:40

I guess. I'm just getting slower with age. That's all there is to it.

00:45

I can't seem to get everything that I need to get to. You hear that? There's lots of stuff going on. I'm not sure. You know, I'm looking at that other camera.

00:52

Is that... it looks like it's aimed like at the back wall or something. Is that...

01:00

Let me see. Yeah, it's sort of aimed behind me a little bit.

01:09

You probably could pan that over, but... Well, I guess it covers pretty much everything.

01:16

There really wouldn't be anything else to see there. Yeah. Weird. Anyway, I just haven't used it in a long time.

01:24

It's got to get both Luther and the thing in the back.

01:29

Yeah, yeah. Well, that Monet back there is striking, isn't it? That is a beautiful Monet.

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Now, the original is not quite that bright. I enhanced it, but it's...

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Well, actually, that looks a whole lot brighter than that one back there. Anyway, hi!

01:49

It's Friday. Casual Friday, so that's how it works.

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I'm watching the insanity flow by on Twitter and and anyways, we got stuff to get to today.

02:03

One of the topics that we didn't talk about at all this week was the the

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Smith Station Mayor and Baptist Pastor F .L. Bubba Copeland. Don't know if you saw that story, but I saw it first on Protestia and it was basically, how do you say this gently?

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You have a late middle -aged, slightly overweight

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Baptist Pastor living a double life.

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I mean, and it's not just a double life. It's It's like he's living two completely contradictory lives.

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One, he's a pastor of a standard Southern... I don't know if it was Southern Baptist, but standard

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Southern as in in the South. Baptist Church. And in the other life, he is a complete sexual pervert.

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I mean, some type of transgender porn writing, picture posting, just the exact opposite of anything that a

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Baptist pastor would be preaching or teaching in the South of the United States. And somehow,

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I mean, he's literally doing this online. I don't... it sort of reminds me a little bit of Ergen Kanner who would just lie outrageously in front of cameras and microphones.

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Sort of like, do you know what? Know what this does? Know what that does? I mean, it was just the other room right over here where Isamah Tala and I, my

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Arabic tutor from years ago, recorded, I remember doing it very clearly, recorded a video responding to all these places where Kanner had tried to pretend to be using

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Arabic. And so here's a guy who was born in Syria, okay? He's a native

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Arabic speaker and it's like, so, he said that said this.

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What did he actually say? I have no idea. How would you say that? And then he'd say it in Arabic. And it was like,

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Ergen, there were microphones right in front of you. There are cameras.

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It's gonna catch up to you. And this guy is posting this stuff.

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And thankfully, I've only seen certain pictures. Oh. He's posting this stuff where he's wearing women's clothing and he's calling himself a curvy transgender and, but then he's also writing stuff.

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And I guess he was, I guess there were victims involved as far as posting women's information online.

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Just all sorts of stuff like that. And it was bad. And on a

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Wednesday night, he, once the article came out, he stands before his people and says, it's not gonna change my life.

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It's all been taken out of context. I don't know how they're, what, what kind of a context can you possibly provide for that?

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Well, and look, it, I have said we need to hold to biblical standards of evidence.

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And so if he came back and said, this is all completely fake and, you know, my, you know, at least there would be the need for further examination, but he admitted it was him.

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Yeah. Yeah. That was, that's me. And, uh, but it's not gonna change anything.

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I love my community. I love my church. And two days later he shot himself in the head. And so all of a sudden, you know, people like Zach Lambert are going, oh, see, this is a, this is a terrible hatred toward transgender people.

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Look, you have a man who was living a lie. And we're not talking about a little lie.

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We're talking about living. This is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. This is as contradictory a lifestyle as you could possibly imagine.

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It's just pure hypocrisy. I don't, I don't even, I don't know how long this lasted. I didn't see any information about that as to how many years has been going on.

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I don't know. But, uh, instead of recognizing that it's the behavior, it's the perversity of the behavior.

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There are people literally trying to say, see, this is what happens when you don't accept transgenderism.

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I suppose the fact that pedophiles likewise have high rates of suicide means that the solution for that is to affirm and accept pedophiles.

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And then, then we'll talk about bestiality and we'll do the whole, again, people without a, a moral framework, uh, no concept of ethics or anything like it at all.

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It, it hasn't really outside of just, uh, the few announcements, it really hasn't had much of a impact.

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I might be people talking about it, but it's a, it's an extremely sad story, obviously, but it reminds us once again, you never, ever ground your faith on the basis of someone else.

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And you just have to wonder what's going to happen to that church. When, you know, you can't, you can't keep that kind of stuff secret.

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And just to the testimony in that community and everything, it's, um, very, very sad to see, very sad to see.

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I'm seeing all sorts of stuff. Likewise. Um, uh, yeah, uh, sorry, uh, being distracted by family stuff.

08:42

Um, asking if I can get a, uh, signed copy of John Cooper's book. He's, he's actually sending me the hardback when it comes out, but it's not, it's not ready yet.

08:51

So, uh, he will be on, um, the dividing line next Thursday, the 16th.

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Uh, John Cooper will be joining us in the big studio, uh, to talk about his new book.

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And it's a big book. Uh, I think it's about the size of, um, um,

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God who justifies. Uh, so it's a, it's a, it's a beastie. Um, it seems like Wednesday, someone flipped a switch and things got really weird in social media.

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Lots of just, just nastiness all over the place. And I'm looking at a, at a woman who this just happens to be on the screen.

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I wasn't scrolling. I think it just happens to be there. The replacement theology crowd reminds me of the time writer

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Donald Miller told another Christian writer that he doesn't attend church anymore because he's moved beyond the need for it.

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And I'm, I'm just looking at it because this, the language of replacement theology rather than fulfillment theology, uh, the whole issue of, well, it's just amazing.

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I'm going to read you something from a guy named Aaron. Um, the, the people who are committed to a certain form of primarily dispensational premillennialism, and I was raised in it.

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Um, I was never challenged at that time to even think about what

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I was being committed to, but it just seems like there is this absolute commitment to the idea that the modern state of Israel is somehow on every other page of the

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New Testament. When you think of how different the modern state of Israel is from the

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Israel of the days of Jesus, when you think of how it came into existence, there are people who just believe it's absolutely miraculous.

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The UN is absolutely miraculous. Um, the realignment of borders, governments, empires after World War II, absolutely miraculous.

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Well, okay. Um, if you want to go there, but personally,

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I don't see any connection whatsoever between a secular

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Jewish state, because that's, that's what it is. Are there religious Jews in Israel? Well, duh. Are they majority?

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Are they the majority of people in Israel? Well, no, they're not, not by a long shot. And in fact, from what

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I understand, Israel is the, the island in, obviously in that area, it's an island in many different ways, but sociologically, um, that's the, the island of LGBTQ plus flourishing and support and activity.

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And it's just, I just wonder outside of the name, why, okay, it's the location and the name,

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I guess that that must be it. But there are so many other differences. So few people who are even semi -observant.

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I mean, okay, they've got Shabbat. Um, all right. So you've got, you've got elevators, you've got a

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Shabbat elevator. All right. I guess that makes it a fulfillment of some

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New Testament, something or other. I don't know. But anyway, the result is that, you know, there's this woman on Twitter a couple of days ago talking about how disappointed she was in me.

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Uh, because I dared to go, you know, what's going on over there doesn't make any sense to me at all.

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The initial attack, everybody had the same, everybody was saying the same thing. How did that happen?

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How did one of the most advanced, um, monitoring satellites, drones, computers, walls, the

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IDF, tanks, how on a

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Jewish holiday, which is normally when the other side attacks, hello, do you think they don't know that?

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Um, could be so taken by surprise, right as the

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Israeli prime minister is about to get kicked out. And there might be a major governmental meltdown in Israel.

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And by the way, um, you want to check this out, check the weeks out prior to October 7th on the briefing with Al Mohler.

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He was talking about the constitutional crisis in Israel and how

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Netanyahu's days were greatly numbered. And so I'm just sitting here going,

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I'm joining with everybody else going, so people from Gaza somehow had paragliders and drones and they didn't know anything about this and they weren't prepared for this.

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And then other governments come out later and said, well, we tried to tell them, um, you know, and they don't want to say it overly loudly, but, but, uh, like Egypt, for example, depends on Israeli, um, control to keep, they, they don't want the

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Palestinians. None of these other countries want the Palestinians. Palestinians have, look at what the, the precursors to those, those individuals did.

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Look what they did in Lebanon. Um, they, they've, they have created havoc everywhere they've gone, uh, because they, well, they won't build anything and they won't behave basically.

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And so they don't, Egypt doesn't want them and none of the other, nobody else wants to take them.

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And so there was, there was a lot of reason to go, yeah, I, there's, there's stuff going on here that we don't know.

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And, and I said, and some of the, some of the video just seems staged. I'm so disappointed in you.

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And I'm like, wait a minute, remember the scene of all the dead bodies in Italy from COVID that was actually from years earlier and it had nothing to do with COVID.

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And yet they, they, they fake that. And, you know, when you see, when you see dead bodies, uh, you know, getting a cigarette, you know,

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I mean, there has been lots of staged stuff and every side does it.

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Ukraine, there's all sorts of staged video in, in the, in that war.

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You, if you're sitting there going, everything I see on Twitter is 100 % accurate.

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I've got some, some land I'd like to sell you, uh, out along the Colorado river or something.

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Um, you're just naive and all this, but then, but then there's a theological naivete, which basically says that if you hold a certain eschatology, you have to believe everything that comes out of the

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Israeli government as being gospel truth, or they'll be disappointed in you. I'm just like, are you really, you really telling me that you think it's absolutely beyond almost any regime today to stage something, sacrifice their people to maintain power and to create a paradigm change?

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You really honestly are telling me that can never happen. Nobody would ever do that. I'm just like, and it seems to come from this eschatological commitment on the part of people.

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So I, I was blown away. So some guy named Aaron, I just, just give you an idea of, and this is a long one.

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This, this long one, uh, please read and share if you are so inclined. Well, I'm going to read it to everybody.

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So this is actually heartbreaking. Um, because, uh, some guy named

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John, this was the same guy that, that Steve camp then jumped onto and said, yeah, he does never say anything about his

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Muslim friends and all the rest of that foolishness that Steve camp put out there. And I had,

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I had announced that what we were going to talk about was the Ohio stuff. Uh, let's have

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Jeff on. We're going to talk about the, uh, what ended up passing by a large portion, large majority.

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Um, and what that means for the moral and ethical state of the United States of America and the future of our work in seeking to abolish abortion and what that's going to require.

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And this one guy is like, uh, so, uh, let me see here.

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I think, yeah. Hey, James, did you hear about that thing in Israel? Why aren't you talking about that?

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So from these guys' perspective, what you, you, you, this is the most important thing because it's biblical prophecy being fulfilled right before our eyes.

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And I'm just like, and you're sure of this? You, you, is this

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Gog and Magog and all the rest of that kind of stuff? Or, you know, which chapter of late great planet earth are we supposed to be together?

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Um, and my response was, Hey, John, did you hear about that thing in Ohio? Going to talk about that.

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I don't live in Israel. Don't know what's going on since no one actually does and hence have nothing meaningful to say about it.

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And that was the issue. That was the big, that was the big problem. Um, was, um, heh,

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Rich says Harold camping's on line one. Uh, that's a long distance call. Uh, anyway, um, that, that's, that's what got everybody upset when

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I said, uh, I don't live in Israel, don't know what's going on. It says no one actually does and hence have nothing meaningful to say about it.

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Evidently, if you hold to the right eschatology, you do know what's going on. You can tell what's staged and not staged by having the right eschatology.

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You know that when you see video coming up, you're going to be able to recognize

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AI and non AI. If you're reading how Lindsay, yeah. If you've got, if you got left behind on right behind you, um, you're going to be able to tell what's staged and what's not staged.

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What, what, but, but, uh, what are you talking about? So here's, here's where this things just start getting weird.

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This is actually heartbreaking. I sincerely hope that all of you will take a step back and deeply consider the crippling blindness that a false eschatology really can inflict upon in, upon, and in, it's just, okay.

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Can inflict upon in many ways, in a, in a many ways, sound brother, whatever.

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After sarcastically dismissing the atrocity committed against the Jews in Israel by comparing it to some other mundane event in Ohio host

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L you throw it. That's me by the way. Host L you throw it means as free men from Peter then proceeds to say, so just stop a second.

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Listen to that. After sarcastically dismissing the atrocity committed against Jews in Israel, I didn't dismiss anything.

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And the idea that it's against the Jews in Israel, look, Hamas wants the destruction of Israel.

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No question about it. That's not even, that's not even, that's not even disputable.

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There's no dealing with Hamas. These, these, these, these people hate, they hate the

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Jews so much. They're willing to use the Palestinians as human shields, kill them, starve them, do everything else.

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They are massively evil people. Great. Nothing I can do about it from over here other than to try to equip people as I've been doing for years to present the gospel to Muslims in such a way that it's actually understandable to them and can challenge them and can direct them to the answers to their, uh, hatred for Jews or anybody else.

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But I didn't dismiss the atrocity. I said, I don't know what happened. And there's lots and lots of people who are questioning who's doing what to whom and for what reasons.

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And for you to sit there and think that because you're reading your proper eschatology, you know, that's dangerous.

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That's just really dangerous for you to think that way. And then compare it to some mundane event in Ohio.

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And he puts Ohio in scare quotes. I, I, um,

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I think Ohio exists. I've been to, let's see, I have been to Ohio and recently I drove through it a matter of weeks ago, actually.

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So Ohio really does exist. And, um, stop there.

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Um, I have, but it wasn't a mundane event. In fact, more children will die as the result of that mundane event than were killed in that invasion of Israel.

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But because of eschatology, you prioritize what happens over there over against anything, any place else.

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In fact, you don't seem to recognize what happened in Ohio is now going to result in,

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I am very sure, over the next year, year and a half, numerous similar measures in many other states, which will only multiply the number of innocents who will be killed as a result.

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And you call that a mundane event? You think you've got a sound eschatology when you can call that a mundane event because of your eschatology?

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Wow, man, talk about having completely lost balance.

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Um, so, quotes what I said, no one actually does.

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Really? It truly is a mass deception when a false triumphalist eschatology position, post -millennialism, has seemingly prevented a well -respected and renowned

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Bible teacher from looking at the very clear significance of the state of Israel currently, as well as the regathering of Israel with all this prophetic significance in general, which would have zippity -dippity -doo -dah to do with what

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I said. Even if you bought that stuff, even if you buy all of that stuff, even if you ignore that we're the true

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Israelites and all the rest of that kind of stuff, the fulfillment language of the New Testament, even if you ignore everything that happened in 87 and everything else, it still would not lead to this conclusion.

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What I was saying had nothing to do with my eschatology. It has to do with the fact that I recognize that we live in a day where we are being deceived all the time through the use of our eyes and our ears and being given false information.

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And you can't tell anymore. You can't, you cannot tell.

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When you're looking at a video, you can't tell whether it's real or not anymore. You can't.

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There are entire movies today that are produced with with massively advanced

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CGI that, honestly, if you brought someone back from 100 years ago and showed it to them, they would not believe for a second that what they were watching wasn't real.

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But it's not. It's fake. And yes, fakes are being used.

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AI, you know, I've heard my own voice being used to make me say things

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I've never said. It's not going to be long at all until the technology is generally available to do the same thing with video.

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That's why I said we need to hold to a biblical standard of evidence. And stuff on computer and stuff like that, you're just not gonna be able to trust it.

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Because someone hacks into your computer, they can put anything they want there and make anything look like whatever they want to make it look like.

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It already can be done. So all

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I was talking about is, man, you know what? It just seems like there are so many forces in the world today that just want continuous war.

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They want continuous government spending, deficit spending on every kind of weapon system on the planet.

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It sort of looks like there are people that are using Ukraine and now Gaza as testing grounds for all sorts of different kinds of weapon systems.

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Huh. You don't think there are people like that out there? You must be really naive. But the dangerous thing to me is when people take their eschatology and as a result, they think that if you recognize that, that's because of your false eschatology.

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That's your eschatology speaking. No, this is your eschatology speaking. And what it's saying is, says,

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Dr. White, you have an absolutely massive amount of believers who are pre -millennial that listen to you. Pre -millennial or dispensational pre -millennial?

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And even once you get into the dispensational pre -millennial, I know all sorts of dispensational pre -millennialists who listen to this program who are sitting here going, he wasn't talking about eschatology.

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He was talking about the fact that we're living in a day where there's a lot of fake stuff going on.

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They didn't see it as eschatology. So why did you? That's a pretty good question.

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I'm not sure which one came first here. Okay, I think this is the last one here. It was long.

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Additionally, most, if not all of them, recognize God's promises to Israel as a nation in both their regathering and also her increasing troubles as being very significant biblical events.

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Well, I'm sorry, but I have never seen anyone, including my dear brother, Michael Brown, present any kind of meaningful biblical argument that the modern nation of Israel, 1948 onward

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Israel, is anywhere in scripture. I mean, you've just got to stand on your head to come up with that kind of stuff.

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Sorry. I know it's extremely popular, but it just, you can't defend it biblically.

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I love you, Dr. White. You've taught me so much valuable information over the years. I truly do thank God for much of your work. But brother, I got to tell you, you're dead wrong.

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I'm just going to come out and say this because I love you. So dead wrong about what?

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That AI is being used to create fake video? That the staging of events is taking place in Ukraine, Israel, all over the world, and we don't possess as individuals the technological capacity?

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I guess there's a website someplace that you can submit video to, and it'll give you a rating, you know, 90 % probable this was real, 10 % it's

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AI or whatever, something like that. Who put that together? You have to completely trust that whoever's putting that together doesn't have some kind of ulterior motive too.

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It's just amazing to me that the basic statement that, you know what, we're living in a day where there's a whole lot of reason to be skeptical about what you're seeing, and that the wise person will be skeptical.

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And unless there's multiple sources confirming what you're seeing, you might want to be skeptical.

30:09

You've got a false eschatology! It has nothing to do with eschatology at all. You could be a pan -millennialist and go, yeah, we got to approach everything right now.

30:24

Has nothing to do with it at all. The whole edgy.

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Edgy? I wear coochies. If I want to be edgy,

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I'm not wearing coochies. What are you talking about edgy? Apology of church.

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Yeah, what about it? You want to get specific here? You want to take on what apology of church is doing in end abortion now?

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You want to maybe look at the sermons that are preached in apology? How about the fact that Jeff has been going through Proverbs now forever?

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That's not how you do edgy. You don't do edgy by trying to work through the book of Proverbs, because that's hard work.

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What's edgy about that? I mean, okay.

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Post Mill? Yeah, so? Theonomy? Yeah, been that way for a long time, actually.

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All you gotta do is go back, listen to the Holiness Code series. When was that?

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2016? Yeah, yeah. Only come into existence last five years or so is being deceived.

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You haven't given me any reason to put any meaningful weight upon what you're saying at all.

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None. Many of us see it, but most don't say anything. But I love you too much for that.

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The preterist post -millennialism you've fallen into, due to the influence of Jeff Durbin, well,

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I'm sure Jeff will be very happy to hear that, has blinded you to what's happening and made you act rather callously toward brothers who can clearly see what's coming down the pipeline with regard to geopolitical events.

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Oh, you can, huh? Let me help you out here with something, youngin, because you're a youngin,

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I can tell. I've seen this happen many times before.

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My memory's pretty good back to, oh, very late 60s, early 70s.

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And oh, have I seen it. Man, I'll never forget walking out in North Phoenix Baptist Church and on my old 1972

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Buick LeSabre, the Brown Bomb, we called it, there was a booklet nicely under the windshield wiper.

32:58

88 reasons why the rapture will take place in 1988. Is that what it was?

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That was it called? I forgot what the number was, but you all remember what it was. Edgar Wisenet? Was that what it is?

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Anyways, I've seen this come and go. I've seen people saying, you just need to look to what the

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Bible says to be able to discern what's happening in the Middle East, and the 10 nations of the

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European Union is a 10 -headed beast, and that means this is going to happen. Yeah, yeah, been there, done that, got the t -shirt, and have come to realize that's a really foolish way of doing exegesis.

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And so, act rather callously. You mean the people who were mocking me for not prioritizing their prophetic speculations about dealing with what happened in Ohio, you mean that's acting callously?

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I'm going to keep doing it, because you've lost your mind as to what callous means.

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Those men, this John fellow, Noah's flood, there's callous. Attacking apologia without being specific, because you can't.

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That's callous. You want callous? I'll give you callous. And you really think you can clearly see what's coming down the pipeline, huh?

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Did you see Ukraine coming? How about COVID? You see COVID coming? You see WEF? Are these some of the beasts maybe we missed in Revelation?

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Maybe they're in Daniel somewhere. Is that what we've got going on here? You cannot, in good

34:46

Christian conscience, write these brothers off as no one knows what's happening in Israel. That statement was saying that we are not there.

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We are dependent upon media. We are dependent upon different sources, and we don't have the ability to necessarily verify the conflicting information.

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And that's a fact. And if your eschatology allows you to turn things into facts that could be pure fiction, there's your problem.

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There's your problem. I'm imploring you to do some deep reflection on this, brother.

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Apology at Church has blinded many people to a proper eschatological perspective. We'll have to answer to God for this, despite all the other wonderful things it does and stands for.

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I am so sorry for people whose eschatology is so shallow it cannot exist in the light of other people's positions.

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See, ours doesn't have to do that. I can work with people from other perspectives, as long as they don't adopt this attitude.

35:50

This attitude is dangerous. It's dangerous. It's allowing you to take the attitude.

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And I saw other people saying the same thing. When I dare to say, you mean, anything

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Israel says is absolutely true. Well, of course! It's like, you realize this is not a

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Christian nation. These are not Christian people. They're religious infallibility because of your really, really, really modern eschatology?

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Thank you, Noah's Flood, this was the guy who was callously mocking me, for even attempting to get this monumentally important time in Israel's modern history spoken of by a respected

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Bible teacher. Well, if I'm to be a respected

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Bible teacher, what that requires me to do is newspaper exegesis like this? Don't want it.

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Don't want it. But that's the whole reason I won't do it, is because this is not sound biblical reasoning at all.

37:09

It's dangerous. It's scary. Absolutely scary to me. Should be scary to everybody else.

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So Aaron, love you, but you said I couldn't be more wrong. You're the one who couldn't be more wrong.

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That's, wow. Bad stuff.

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Bad stuff. So yeah, lots of weird stuff going on out there along those lines. There was something else that I had down here.

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Too many open windows. Oh, here we go. You know,

37:47

I was gonna talk a little bit about Frank Turek's Molinism answer to a question.

37:54

It's pretty short, but because the material we're finishing up,

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Jason Bretta's stuff, shouldn't take too much longer. That would fit better in the last section of Radio Free Geneva that we'll do.

38:11

So I'm gonna actually sort of tie into where we were just now.

38:18

Because as I said, what is the most important thing that we can do?

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We're not in Israel. We can pray for peace. We can pray for protection of Christians.

38:37

Pray the truth be known that evil men and women who are seeking all sorts of horrible things in this world, that they would be exposed and stopped.

38:48

We can pray for all those things. But the only thing the church can really do is to be salt and light.

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And to be salt and light amongst the Muslims is to be able to communicate with the Muslims. And that means to be able to hear what they're saying.

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To understand what they're saying. To have enough respect for them. To listen and learn.

39:18

And you might say, I will not respect Hamas. I'm not talking about respecting Hamas. Hamas is taking

39:23

Islamic concepts, they're picking and choosing certain elements of those concepts, ignoring others, and emphasizing hatred in the name of religion to accomplish their purposes.

39:45

Okay, how do you stop that? Well, bombs do do that.

39:51

But they often just only produce more of that as a result. The only long -term solution is to address the false religious underpinnings of any of that.

40:05

And that includes the nice Muslim neighbor who wouldn't harm a flea, but who still does not believe that Jesus was crucified on the cross.

40:18

And so how do you reach that person? That's what we're called to do. It's scary to me that again this eschatology can be used and is being used by people to minimize the importance of listening to the best

40:40

Islam has to offer so as to be able to respond to the worst that it produces.

40:48

When I had the dialogues with Yasir Qadhi, people like Steve Camp, you know, their heads exploded because I said that I respected the man and learned much from the man as if, oh, you can't learn anything from a

41:02

Muslim. And I thought back at the time, and I mentioned at the time,

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I remember the first months after I met with Elders Reed and Reese in 1982.

41:23

And after hours of conversation with them on a Monday and a Thursday, had become so convicted that I simply wasn't able to communicate with them.

41:40

And even as I read Christian books, which were helpful in understanding

41:47

Mormonism, I recognized the only way I was ever really going to be able to understand this religion was to read their best sources.

41:58

And so I obtained them, and I studied them, and I knew that I was probably the only person, certainly the only person in my church, big church, but still,

42:06

I realized there weren't a lot of people that were doing this. But I was convicted from the beginning that you must honor truth this way.

42:18

You must honor God in this way. And if you're going to show honor for the people you're trying to reach, you're to do this with gentleness and respect.

42:29

You have to know what they themselves believe. And if it's an entire religious group, then you need to know the best expressions of it.

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If you only prepare for the worst case scenarios, the uneducated level, then when the higher levels come along, you're going to end up looking like a fool and dishonoring the truth because you won't have answers to give.

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And so that was a conviction that I have had now for over 40 years, and I am so thankful.

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I don't know really where it came from, to be honest with you. I didn't have a mentor to explain that to me, but that's just a conviction

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I came to early on, and none of you folks have given me any reason to question it whatsoever.

43:26

And so when you apply that to the subject of Islam, then really we are doing something vitally important when we, for example, continue to respond to Muhammad Hijab.

43:45

Because right now we have the ability for this program to go out around the world.

43:53

And I know that when on this program we seek to equip believers to deal with Islam, Unitarianism, Mormonism, Roman Catholicism, whatever, we're doing this around the world.

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We're doing this to edify the saints around the world.

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And so we're pushing back, not with hatred, not with anger, but with an honest desire to speak the truth in love to the glory of God, the edification of God's people, and for the salvation of God's life.

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And that means we need to focus upon accurate responses to the best the other side has to offer.

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And so that's what we're going to do for the rest of the program. We will press on with Muhammad Hijab's opening statement, assuming we did test this, and it sounded fine, but I've been a sound man for a long time, so I know you can test.

45:05

It doesn't necessarily mean it's going to work. So this was a debate.

45:12

It was supposed to be on Trinity and Tawhid. In my experience, when you debate

45:18

Trinity and Tawhid, it's going to be 98 % on Trinity and 2 % on Tawhid.

45:26

And David Wood does, in his opening statement, seek to balance that out and say, no, let me see here.

45:40

Uh -oh. Never mind. Okay. When your watch says

45:48

Rich Pierce is sending you something, and then it says, eh, never mind. You press on. But we are only at the very beginning of Muhammad Hijab's opening statement here, and so we only got a few minutes into it, and we're going to pick up at that point and hope that this works.

46:06

There's no God beside me. I'm your Lord, and there's no God beside me. You find in Isaiah chapter 43 verse 11, once again, the discussion of I am your

46:15

God, and besides me, there is no savior. Now, someone might argue about the word

46:21

Elohim, and this is the weakness of the argument. It's a weak linguistic argument.

46:27

The word Elohim is a majestic plural, they would argue. Look, there are 9 ,000 pronouns in the

46:36

Bible which relate to God's name. Let's take, for example, Genesis chapter 1 verse 1.

46:41

Okay. Now, real quickly, if you're not familiar with this argumentation, because if you listen to Dale Tuggy, if you listen to Sir Anthony Buzzard, the standard

46:53

Unitarian presentations out there, and it's very obvious to me that the current young Muslims involved in doing

47:04

Dawah, they're listening to Buzzard, they're listening to Tuggy. They can't borrow everything because of needing to remain somewhat consistent to Islamic presuppositions, but they'll use what they can use, and so they are.

47:23

But the idea is, well, in the Old Testament, the pronouns for God are singular and stuff like that.

47:32

Rather than dealing with, and no one would argue that they're not or that they should be plural, even though Elohim is a plural noun, when it's used with a singular verb, then it's translated simply as God.

47:51

Yahweh is used with a singular verb. But you have places like Genesis 18 and 19, where in Genesis 19 -24,

48:00

Yahweh, who has been walking with Abraham on the earth, rains fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah from Yahweh in heaven.

48:07

So there is a distinction that is made. You've got to deal with it. There's only one Yahweh, and Yahweh says, before me there is no

48:15

God for him, there should be none after me, Isaiah 43 -10. Jesus applies Isaiah 43 -10 to himself in John 13 -19 on the night of his betrayal.

48:23

You have to take all that into consideration as well. But the argument basically is, there's all this repetitious use of pronouns that's all singular, and that means

48:35

Unitarianism. No, it doesn't mean Unitarianism. It means monotheism. It's a big difference. 90 % of the argumentation that Muslims and Unitarians use will evaporate when you keep focused on what defines monotheism, which you'll find all sorts of evidence for, and what defines

49:00

Unitarianism. Because what they will do is they will borrow this and assume this.

49:06

They all do it. Buzzer does it. Tuggy does it. You'll see it next

49:11

March when I debate Tuggy. You'll see it in the programs we did this past summer where we responded to a bunch of Dale Tuggy stuff.

49:24

It's just how the methodology works. And the Muslims do the same thing, just not as neatly.

49:32

Because they've got other things to be dealing with. The Unitarians just have the one thing. In the beginning,

49:47

God created. Yes, the beginning of the

49:55

Revelation, you have to recognize NRK and Halagas, and John 1 is meant to parallel that and expand upon that in the prologue of John.

50:12

Most Muslims will question the accuracy of John, but they'd also, if they're consistent, have to question the accuracy of Genesis.

50:23

The problem is, if you do that, the Quran assumes those documents as its background.

50:30

Now, did the writer of the

50:37

Quran have written documents that he was drawing from? No.

50:42

He was drawing from oral conversations with people, and that's why he thought so much stuff was in the

50:51

Injil, which isn't in the Injil, which isn't in what we call the New Testament, and never was.

51:00

Same thing with stuff in the Old Testament. There are places where it's pretty obvious the author of the Quran thought a certain story that he had heard came from what we call the

51:10

Old Testament, the Tanakh, the Torah, and the Avim, Ketuvim. But it didn't.

51:16

It came from other sources, and the author just didn't know that, wasn't aware of that. He created.

51:22

Whenever you find a pronoun in the Old Testament referring to Elohim, you will always find it in third -person male singular.

51:36

One more time. Third -person male singular. You don't find a plural version of that.

51:42

You don't find a pronoun which is pluralized. Which, honestly, isn't relevant at all.

51:50

I'm not sure why he would think that it is, but it's not an argument that carries any weight.

51:57

So now the question will be, is this, a Jew who is acquainted with the Torah, with the Old Testament, why would one ask him to realign his belief, his theological doctrines, into believing in a triune

52:10

God, when in fact, he's been instructed quite explicitly, in fact, in the

52:15

Old Testament not to break the commandments. Okay, so notice the fundamental error here.

52:21

It's a confusion of monotheism with Unitarianism. So he's been instructed to be a monotheist.

52:29

The Trinity is monotheistic. So there is no contradiction. What he's being instructed, remember the illustration

52:36

I used last time, I'll use my nice big, now that I have the giant print

52:42

LSB, this beautiful LSB isn't getting used as much, but it's still really pretty and very bright.

52:53

So here's last page of Malachi. It's the beginning of Matthew.

52:59

Here's where the Trinity is revealed. It's between the Testaments. It's in the incarnation, ministry, death, burial, resurrection, enthronement of Jesus Christ, the outpouring of the

53:10

Holy Spirit. That's where it's revealed. I know there are Christians who try to say the

53:15

Jews are Trinitarians. You can't go there. You clearly have passages that are precursors that, in light of the

53:27

New Testament, you can see. But this is where the revelation takes place, right there.

53:35

So since that's the case, you're not asking people to reject what they have been taught before.

53:41

You're not asking them to realign anything. You're asking them to accept the self -revelation of God in time, in the person of Christ, and the outpouring of the

53:56

Holy Spirit. The Muslim does not understand this. The author of the

54:02

Quran did not understand this. That is why you have no meaningful discussion of the

54:07

Holy Spirit in the Quran, and no understanding of what the three actually is.

54:15

You're told to not say three, but it seems, again, painfully obvious to me that the only place where three are mentioned in the

54:26

Quran is in Surah 5, verse 116. There, it's Allah, Mary, and Jesus.

54:35

So that's the problem. You see, it gets a little bit more interesting, even when you look at the

54:43

New Testament. Now, we know the New Testament has different authors. There's 27 books of the

54:48

New Testament. You've got Paul, who's written from 7 to 13 books. Now, you know, it's interesting.

54:55

Muslims really do believe, and you can go back in the archives more easily now, thanks to the transcripts function, than you ever could before.

55:05

And we spent a lot of time on this, but you need to understand, if you haven't gone through all that stuff before, that Muslims really believe that having one author is better than having multiple authors, and having one source of your manuscript tradition is better than having many sources of your manuscript tradition.

55:26

All that's not true. One of the greatest evidences of the inspiration of scripture is the fact that you have 40 authors over 1 ,500 years.

55:37

And what can explain the unity of that text? Well, of course, there are many people who call themselves

55:43

Christians who don't believe there's unity there at all. That's one of the key issues. But multiple authors writing at multiple places, multiple times, you can never have the kind of control, the recension, editing that you have in the history of the

55:58

Quran. In the textual tradition of the scripture, of the Christian scriptures. And on an evidence level, having that consistency that you,

56:14

I believe, can identify if you're willing to do the work from Genesis to Revelation, is much more of a miraculous reality than to look at the difficult case for consistency in the

56:37

Quran. I mean, you can really argue that there's, given the time periods in Muhammad's life, that there are some serious contradictions in his own history and things like that.

56:55

That's something to keep in mind. Dispute as to exactly how much is written. John written many books. Who is

57:00

John? We don't know John is, by the way. We don't know who John is. We don't know who

57:06

John is. Again, the idea is Muslims really believe that because of their

57:13

Isnaad chains, these are author's chains in the Hadith and things like that, that they have establishable credentials for who narrated this story, and that verifies this part of the

57:28

Quran, and things like that. When in point of fact, they really don't. These are these stories that were collected many, many hundreds of years later, and they really accept as a given that you have to have the telephone number, social security number, home address, birth date, death date of any author for that written material to have validity.

58:01

They don't ever explain exactly why that is. They've just accepted it as a given, and yet they accept

58:09

Jesus as a prophet, and yet Jesus quotes from all sorts of material that doesn't have that kind of providence behind it.

58:20

So, the biblical writers do not function on the assumptions that the

58:26

Muslim writers do function on, that Muslim people today function on. Yes, Paul had a kind of exaltation

58:34

Christology, there's no doubt. He did believe that Jesus was divine, and a good example of that is the second

58:41

Philippians, the hymn. He means the Carmen Christi Philippians chapter 2, and I'm glad he admits

58:48

Philippians chapter 2 clearly teaches the deity of Christ, and in fact identifies the

58:56

Son as Yahweh, applies a passage specifically about Yahweh to Jesus.

59:02

But it does so the same way that Paul does in 1 Corinthians 8, in expanding in light of the historical reality of the

59:11

Revelation, the Trinity, expands these categories from the Old Testament to fit with what

59:17

God has done in time. And so, every knee will bow to Yahweh, every knee bows in Philippians chapter 2, and it's at the exalted name of Jesus, to the glory of God the

59:31

Father. So, it's not exalting one over another, or to the exclusion of another, or something like that.

59:38

Again, these are Trinitarians writing to Trinitarians. They already have the context in which to interpret and understand these things, and that's how they're functioning.

59:49

So, I'm in a good spot there to take a break.

59:55

We're going to continue to work through this over time, because it gives us an opportunity to address all sorts of different topics.

01:00:03

And if you take the time to listen, take some notes, you know, if you read what every

01:00:10

Christian needs to know about the Quran, this will reinforce a lot of this in your mind.

01:00:17

And especially if you literally pray, God give me the opportunity to speak to Muslim people.

01:00:24

Take fear out of my heart, replace it with love, a holy boldness, a confidence in your word.

01:00:31

That's what's needed. That's what's needed. And hopefully, the information that we've shared, the background information, definitions, terminologies, how

01:00:44

Muslims often think, will help you to overcome the language barrier, and to communicate the gospel in an accurate and full way to the

01:00:53

Muslim people. That's what we want you to be able to do. I think it's important to be able to do that kind of thing.

01:01:00

Okay. All right. There you go. We will press on.

01:01:05

I'm right at six minutes into the presentation there.

01:01:11

So, hopefully, I will be able to remember that and exit full screen.

01:01:17

Yes, please do that. There you go. And we'll be able to do that next time around. So, next week, like I said, on Thursday of next week,

01:01:30

John Cooper of Skillet will be our guest. We'll be talking about his new book, Wimpy, Woke, and...

01:01:36

Wimpy, Woke, and what? It's too much alliteration.

01:01:43

He actually posted a... Let me see here.

01:01:48

Where did I put my stuff? There it is. Oh, no. Go to me.

01:01:55

There you go. Yeah, here it is. He's holding...

01:02:00

He posted a video. It just arrived. He sent me a picture of the book.

01:02:07

I guess that would be easier to just simply look at my text messages. Don't you wish you had text messages from John Cooper?

01:02:18

Wimpy, Weak, and Woke. There you go. There's too many W's there. Wimpy, Weak, and Woke.

01:02:24

How Truth Can Save America From Utopian Destruction. That's a big one.

01:02:30

I think it may even be longer than The God Who Justifies. So, there you go. I've told him personally that given this is his second book, that he's going to have to start changing his wardrobe.

01:02:42

He needs to be wearing cardigan sweaters, maybe a driver's cap, something like that. He said, yeah, he agrees, but no coogies.

01:02:49

And I said, well, if we can get you into a Mr. Rogers style cardigan, that's a first step.

01:02:55

You can work your way up to the glory of the coogie from there. But we'll accept the...

01:03:02

It's a big leap from jeans with holes in them and sleeveless shirts.

01:03:08

Stuff like that. We'll see what he ends up wearing on Thursday.

01:03:15

Maybe he'll hear this and shock the world by wearing a cardigan sweater.

01:03:23

Nah. You never know. Maybe for us, he would do that. I don't know.

01:03:29

We'll see what happens. That's on Thursday. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe on Tuesday, we do the

01:03:38

RFG and finish all that stuff up because I'll forget it if I don't eventually get that all done.

01:03:44

We'll see. But anyways, thanks for watching the program today. Thank you, Rich, for doing it remotely. And we'll see you next time on The Dividing Line.