November 3, 2005

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From the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is
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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.
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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602, or toll free across the
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United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
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James White. And good afternoon, welcome to The Dividing Line, a four o 'clock mountain standard time.
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Yes, we did have some folks who came in right at the wrong time last time around.
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And so anyways, right now we are torturing a new op in channel who is hearing voices in her head.
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That's not really something you could really understand unless you've been in channel, but it is always fun to watch and I'm getting
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PMed with responses. It's really funny. Anyway, open phones, 877 -753 -3341.
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We have invited anyone who would like to, boy,
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I'm getting a sore throat. I just know what's coming. My daughter brought it home from school. Well, you're that or the one of the 300 some odd people that I spent time with in a contained recirculated air cylinder at 30 ,000 feet over the past weekend.
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That's another option. But anyway, yes, it feels great.
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Anyhow, we've invited anyone who would like to respond to the past number of weeks.
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What has been two, two and a half weeks depends on how you count things where we have been going over the Shabir Ali debate.
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And we have been making various comments in regards to the argumentation that is presented against the
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Christian faith against especially the validity of the Bible and its transmission over time.
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And we have open phones. We have a toll free phone number, 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number.
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If you would like to participate in the program, if you would like to say no, that's you are wrong about this, that or the other thing, this would be the time for you to participate in the program.
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I have to, yes, yes. Thank you very, very much. That's really loud, isn't it?
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Anyways, why do people always call right when I'm in the middle of the program? I'm not really sure what it is. But and other people are saying, why don't you turn it off?
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Well, you know, I will do that as soon as this person stops calling. Anyways, if you would like to participate,
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I have two more debates lined up here. I'm going to be making some comments about these things.
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And they are two different debates that the Sam Shamoon has been involved in, and they are on a different level, shall we say, than the
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Sam Shamoon debate. I honestly don't believe that they are nearly as prepared as Sam Shamoon.
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I'm sorry, as Shabir Ali was in debating Sam Shamoon. But be that as it may, they actually,
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I think, would represent a little bit more accurately what you would encounter, certainly in PalTalk.
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I mean, you encounter anything in PalTalk, but what you would encounter in the Internet, what you'd encounter in our discussions with people within the society.
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And so I have those queued up, ready to go, depending on phone calls and things like that.
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I'm going to start with what I promised last week and what I promised on the blog.
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I think I mentioned this. Yes, I believe I did. Specifically in commenting on some of the things said by a man by the name of Nadir Ahmed, or Ahmed, I didn't hear him.
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Again, these are PalTalk debates, and so you didn't get any biographical information. All you got was nicks that are used in PalTalk and no introductions.
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And that's one of the problems with PalTalk, of course, is sometimes you're not even certain who in the world it is that you're talking to within that context.
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And then we had another debate, and I actually got the name from Sam, and I left it on my email.
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I thought, well, I'll just go over via the network to my email and look at it during the program. Then I realized I can't do that because our network doesn't work right during the program.
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So I don't have the name, but we'll get it for you next time around when I remember that doesn't work that way.
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So anyways, I've got those queued up and we will be able to play them. This first one from Nadir Ahmed, again, what you'll hear over and over and over again in these debates is attacks upon the
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Christian scriptures. And part of the debates is what did the early
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Muslims believe about the scriptures? And if you listen to Sam's debates, you'll hear him bringing up various scriptures, bringing up various passages in the
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Koran, various statements in the Hadith that simply don't make any sense if we do not recognize that at the time of the saying, time of the writing, that the
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Gospels, that the Gospel or the Torah were actually available to people.
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You can't utilize a source as a standard of testing if the standard, if that source is corrupted and unusable.
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And that, in essence, is what we are looking at in this particular situation.
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So you have those issues coming up and then you have the constant argumentation.
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You heard it from Shabir Ali. He uses the Jesus Seminar. Well, Mark, you know, and you're changing all this stuff and blah, blah, blah.
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The Gospels doesn't do much in regards to Paul, but that's what he does. But you have the constant accusation that the
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Christian scriptures have been corrupted. Now, that term corruption is used in a number of different ways in scholarly writings.
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And it doesn't strike me that many of the Muslim apologists I've been listening to are actually fully familiar with the range of those meanings.
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Certainly, this gentleman is not. And what do I mean by that? Well, the term corruption can be used and is used normally by Muslim apologists to claim that the
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Bible is corrupted over against the Koran, which is not.
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So whatever its meaning in that context, the Bible is corrupted.
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The Koran is not corrupted. All right. Keep that definition in mind, because we will hear this over and over again.
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The contrast being made between the Bible and the Koran. The Koran is perfect. It's the word of God. It's been perfectly preserved, etc.,
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etc. But the Bible's been corrupted, and therefore it can't be called the word of God, at least in its entirety.
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And of course, when you run across a passage that contradicts the Koran, then that's where the corruption has taken place. But that's not the technical use of the term.
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The term corruption refers to any variance in the handwritten transmission of a text in the copies.
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So if there is any difference in handwritten copies, those are called corruptions.
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Now, that usage is not addressing whether the original even exists or is discernible or is discoverable.
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It's not addressing the relative level of textual corruption in a handwritten text.
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And of course, the reality is that in a handwritten text, you will always have copyist errors and hence that kind of corruption.
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That's just simply a fact. And there is no question about the fact that when you look at those early, early, early, early manuscripts of the
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Koran, even Muslims have to admit that there was corruption. Why? Because they know that Uthman burned copies of the
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Koran. Why? Because they were corrupted. They had improper readings.
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And so if any change in the textual transmission of a text in the handwritten period over time, if that equals corruption, then what must we conclude from that?
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That all ancient texts are corrupted, A, and B, that the
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Koran is corrupted as well. So is that the kind of standard?
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Are they going to be consistent in utilizing that standard? Well, let's listen to what
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Nadir Ahmed said as he talks about corruption in his opening statement.
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Let me start off by saying that corruption comes in two forms. The first form is by corrupting the actual text itself.
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For example, we have two books, book A and book B. Book A is the literal word of God.
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And let's say that in book A it says that Jack went up the hill.
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And book B is actually a copy of book A. So what I write down in book B, I write,
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Jack went down the hill. So what I have done is that I have corrupted the word. Instead of up,
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I wrote down. Now, let me stop right there. That would be a form of textual corruption.
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That would not be the only form, because in reality, what you normally have are multiple copies of that, what's called an exemplar, the first document or what's being copied later on down the road.
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And so you might have one copy that says down instead of up for whatever reason there might be.
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But then you might have six copies that say up properly. And so now you have what's called a textual variant.
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And then you examine the variants. Here you'd have six manuscripts saying up. You'd have one manuscript saying down.
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If the original was destroyed, you didn't have access to it. And then you would have to ask yourself questions concerning what's the relationship of these six?
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When were they copied? Is there a textual reason, a transcriptional reason why someone would make this kind of an error, etc.,
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etc.? That is the process of the scholarly practice of textual criticism in examining variant readings.
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So it wouldn't just be a single manuscript. That's rather simplistic. You have others.
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Another way you can corrupt the text is by corrupting it by your interpretation. Going back to the same example, in Book A, if it says
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Jack went up the hill, but my interpretation of that is Jack went to a higher understanding of truth.
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That's what the verse means. So then what I write down inside Book B is my corrupt interpretation, which is
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Jack went to a higher understanding of knowledge, of truth. Now, that is not corruption at all.
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In fact, that has nothing to do with textual transmission. If what you write down is Jack went to a higher plane of knowledge, you're not even copying the text.
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That's not even a copy of the text. That's a commentary. And it is improper to use the term corruption of commentaries unless this person's actually, you know, pawning this off as an actual copy of the original text.
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Then that would be purposeful, complete emendation. It doesn't even fall into the realm of your standard concept of the transmission of a text.
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So that would not be textual corruption in the sense of, I'm just giving my interpretation of something.
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Unless this person was actually pretending that this is a copy of the original text, then we've now left the area of textual corruption and of the transmission of the text, textual criticism, and any meaningful discussion of that, and moved beyond that to paraphrase and things along those lines.
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Excuse me. I don't write that Jack went up the hill, which is what Book A states.
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And then Book A disappears and all we are left with is Book B. So these are the two ways of how the
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Bible or how any scripture can get corrupted. It can be corrupted by interpretation as well as corrupting the very word itself.
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Now let me show you some... So there was the discussion, and again, I'm sorry,
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I just don't get the feeling that this gentleman has really done much in the way of meaningful scholarly study.
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And yet his followers, as I've mentioned, are very much the
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Rachmanites of the Islamic world, it seems. They're abusive, they write, you're scared, you're afraid, blah, blah, blah.
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This type of schoolyard bullying type stuff. And at first I thought, well, you know, there can be people who like what someone says, but they behave much worse than he does.
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But the problem is, in this debate, Sam Shamoon had tremendous problems with his microphone.
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Remember, it was PalTalk, and I did wander into PalTalk a couple of times, and not only was it a mess, but you had dial -up problems, and your microphone, and trying to make the thing work, you'd get lagged, and it would cut in and out, and there was the wacky guy with the bird in the background, and all sorts of just pure lunacy like that.
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And so that's why I avoid it like the plague. Well, Sam was having all sorts of problems, he had to reset his system, all the rest of this kind of stuff.
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Well, while he's gone, so Nadir has done his opening statement. Sam tries to start his, and he's cutting in, cutting out, lagging, it's not even listenable.
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So finally someone says, look, you need to restart your system, start with a fresh connection, blah, blah, blah. Well, there's all these quiet times, you know, silence.
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In fact, my MP3 player stopped playing it while I was writing, because it kept running into all the silence, and it didn't know what to do with that, so I said, oh, must be nothing left, so it was gone.
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And so, finally, the discussion starts coming, well, what are we going to do if he doesn't come back, if we can't make it work?
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And Nadir says, well, he should type out his statements and have somebody read them.
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I mean, that's just silly, that's dumb. You just, if the guy's system doesn't work, or it stops working,
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I mean, because on that system, it can be working for a while, then stop working. You schedule it for another time.
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I mean, that's the drawback with PalTalk, but that's what you do. And so, I'm listening to this going back and forth, and this is when
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I discovered that Nadir and his followers are on the same page, because listen to what he says,
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I'm going to try to sort of zoom in here, because there's a fair amount of breaks and stuff like that. Listen to what he says here,
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I'm going to make sure this is the right section. Yeah, just so the other admins in the room here let us reason, as well as my brother, if Sam can't get his sound up and going here,
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I'm sure he would want it this way. He's going to probably want to do this another day, maybe tomorrow or Saturday, whatever day this is, if he can't get it going, he's not going to want me to speak for him.
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So, just a little information for you, I already know that's going to happen. If he can't get his sound going, that is.
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So, hopefully he'll return soon. Okay, so there's obviously one of Sam's friends saying, look, if he can't get it working right, he's not going to want me to take over for him, or something like that, we'll schedule it for another time.
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Listen to the response. I'm sorry,
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I got the mic. What I'm saying is that, I'm sorry, I won't accept that, and I warned him, please make sure your microphone is working.
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Can you believe that? No, no, he'll have to type his position out, and somebody will read it. Sorry, but that's just like, okay, alrighty, that gives you an idea where these folks are coming from.
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Thankfully, he did get back, and he was able to do the rest of the debate. And I wanted to have queued up here, and I'm actually going to look for it.
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Hey, this is live. I'm looking down here. There's no one calling in. This is live webcasting, so I'm going to look for it here. There is a point in time where a, well, let's just look for it real quick.
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I normally would have this queued up, but I only had the first one queued up, so I apologize. This is live. This is not overly professional, but hey, you get what you pay for.
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He quoted Wahab bin Munafi that he collected statements. He takes the statements of his church fathers back to the, with their own hands, and says this is from Allah.
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I'm dying to know that. I'm not trying to be mean, but I'm, I just want to know what this guy is thinking.
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He said, but not all Jews and Christians are Islamists in plural. It doesn't matter. We agree that the Bible, chapter 3, verse 48, and he,
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Allah, corruption of the Bible, but his interpretation is that no, no, no. You see, it's not the corruption of the Bible. You know, this type of false argument by many of the
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Christians. And in actuality, we could say that's a form of corruption because it's contradicting Jeremiah 8.
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The position people take in the Bible, they don't have to give you an, OK, what I was looking for, and depending on which section that it's in here, maybe there's another section over here.
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Let me just listen to a couple of clips here. He doesn't understand anything. How can illiterate people corrupt a book, say that we are right, and the law of the
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Lord is, they try to, I mean, they do not want, they cannot be confirmed by a Sahaba. So he never had a problem with the actual
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Bible. He was, when he was sitting with the apostles, he converted to Islam. And he was a checkman for the prophets, he imposes it upon the text.
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This hadith talks not at all, which proves beyond a reasonable shadow of doubt that the, OK, I was looking for a section where a statement was quoted from the
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Shabir Ali debate. It was actually from the questions and answers. And it was the same argument, argumentation.
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He said, you know, Sam Shamoon was talking about, you know, he was on PalTalk, and he was talking about how the
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Bible can't be corrupted, and so on and so forth. But then, then he lies and says this, and he quotes from the
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Shabir Ali debate, which we had listened to just a few weeks ago, probably about, I don't know, three sessions ago, where specifically the question of the handwritten manuscripts come up, and Sam talks about what
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I talked about before. That is, if you have handwritten manuscripts, you're going to have textual variation. And it's the same issue.
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Not understanding the different uses of the term corruption, and then accusing, and this is the part that gets somewhat childish, accusing people of lying because you don't understand the proper usage of words, and you're using them as if they are actually synonyms, and they're not actually synonyms, things like that.
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That's what, to me, really disqualifies someone from being taken overly seriously, is on the basis of their own ignorance, accusing other people of lying when they just don't understand the context in which various discussions are taking place.
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Happens a lot, unfortunately, but it doesn't make it any better. Now, just a couple days ago, and I'm watching here.
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Don't see any phones ringing. Huh. A couple days ago, I loaded another, this is the other debate that I was mentioning before.
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I apologize again for the fact that I am, well,
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I suppose I can try doing it. I sort of doubt that it would actually work, because I don't think
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I can find the other system here, but hey, you might as well. Hey, hey,
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I might be able to bring it up here. Yay, hoo, hoo, hoo. Let me see here. Hmm, hmm, hmm.
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Hmm, hmm, hmm. I don't have any papers to wrestle. Nope, I couldn't get in there.
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Oh, the caps lock is on. Oh, all right, let's try it again. Da -da -da -da da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da -da.
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Doo -doo -doo -doo -doo -doo -doo -doo -doo -doo. La -la -la. Hey, it looks like it's trying to work.
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It is, it is working, sort of. Ha -ha -ha -ha.
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It looks very, very, very unhappy that I have multiple connections here. Saying, what are you doing to me, you crazy person?
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Those of you who are wondering, what on earth? Is someone recording this humming? We need this sound clip. Thanks a lot guys. Here I try to bring you all the information
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I can. You know? And what do y 'all do? You pick on me for trying to bring you all the information I can. That's just...
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That's just wrong. Okay? Let me see here. Go to the Islam section and...
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Sabeel Ahmed. Sabeel Ahmed. I got it. Alright.
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Man, 640 by 480 resolution really looks odd after a while. You know what
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I mean? Ever go into safe mode after you've run at really high resolution, you know? And 640 by 480 just looks really odd.
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It looks big and sort of chunky, I guess would be the word. Did Doc take his meds today?
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Yes. Yes. Actually, I'm doing just fine. Actually, I could use some meds for the throat.
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Anyhow. Alright. So, Sabeel Ahmed is the next person we're going to listen to. By the way, let me say something.
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Some of you may be asking the question, why all this Islamic stuff all of a sudden? Well, a number of different reasons.
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There are possibilities of debates next year and things like that, but beyond that, think about all the subjects that we're addressing.
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I mean, this is an apologetics program, primarily. Sure, we do some other stuff, but it's primarily an apologetics program.
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What have we been addressing? Just listening to Shabir Ali, well, we've been addressing pretty much all the same issues that you address with the
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Jesus Seminar. The transmission of the text of Scripture, textual critical issues, canonical issues, early church history.
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Theologically, we're addressing the Trinity, what true monotheism is, the relationship of the
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Father and the Son, the deity of Christ, the personality and deity of the Holy Spirit. Correct? We are dealing with Greek exegesis.
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We are dealing with apologetics to another world religion that comes after it.
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Sacred Scriptures come after the Bible, similar to, for example, Mormonism, though obviously time frame differences there.
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We're covering a bunch of stuff that we would also be covering if, in point of fact, we were looking at all sorts of other issues in more depth.
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We're covering all of that. So it really is a means of covering a large amount of information while providing a response to the
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Islamic apologists that are out there. And there's not a whole lot of people that are doing that, unfortunately.
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You've got Sam, you've got Answering Islam, and you've got Tony Costa. I believe he's up in Canada.
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And you've got folks like that, but it's not nearly as popular as it is to talk about other things.
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So, yeah, the only difference is that Crossan won't cut off your head if you get him upset.
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And yeah, that is one of the differences. There's no two ways about it. The final apologetic step for Muslims outside of the
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United States, and maybe even some inside, is certainly a little bit different in another context.
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So anyways, that's why we're covering these things, and especially this debate that I was listening to.
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Again, it's a PalTalk debate, but at least the technical quality was a little bit higher. It's a PalTalk debate, Sabeel Ahmed versus Sam Shamoon.
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I gotta admit, there's a little bit of posturing done here that we'll have to try to sort of ignore it.
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But the arguments here, you really need to hear them. If you want to hear, really,
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I think the arguments that would represent, as I think about the Hamza Abdul -Malik debate, all those Muslims staying in line asking questions afterwards, if you've ever seen that one, these are the kinds of objections that we would be encountering.
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So I'm going to go ahead and start this, but hey, if the phone line all of a sudden starts going nuts here in the next ten minutes, so please don't pull the
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I'm going to wait until there's only like five minutes left so I can just get my stuff in and not get refuted a whole lot trick, which people do that, don't bother, because after a certain point,
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I'm not going to bother taking phone calls. We'll just sort of finish things up. But if you want to respond, if you want to respond to these things, and I know you're out there.
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You've been sending me emails, so I know you're listening. Now it's time to do it. We're live right now.
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877 -753 -3341 is the phone number, and now is your opportunity.
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But let's start this next debate, and well, you'll just see. You'll see exactly how this approach works.
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Be prepared, those of you taking notes, over and over and over again, over and over and over again, in dealing with those who deny the deity of Christ and attack the doctrine of the
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Trinity. What is the constant assumption that the vast majority of evangelical, conservative,
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Bible -believing Christians simply are not prepared to deal with?
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They don't point it out. They don't attack it. They don't explain it. What's that underlying assumption?
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If you listen to the Stafford debate, you've heard this. What is the assumption?
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It is the assumption of Unitarianism under the guise of monotheism.
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Jehovah's Witnesses do it. Muslims do it. Oneness Pentecostals do it. They will equivocate on the issue of monotheism, as if asserting that God is one, that there's only one true
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God, means that there cannot be three divine persons sharing that one being. They fail to differentiate between being a person, and they simply assume that the opposite of monotheism would be
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Trinitarianism, and they make Trinitarianism into polytheistic religion. That is incorrect.
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The opposite of monotheism is polytheism. The difference between Trinitarianism is between that and Unitarianism.
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Those are two different things. People just don't recognize that, and we're about to hear a
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Muslim apologist repeat that mistake over and over and over again.
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Sabeel Ahmeds and the debate with Sam Shimon. God, by definition, is one, both according to the
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Bible and according to the Quran. And God has different attributes, both according to the
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Bible, according to the dictionary, and according to the Quran. God is omnipresent,
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God is omniscient, God is all -powerful, God is the creator, and other attributes.
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And these attributes, I know Sam also agrees, Answering Islam also agrees. So all we have to do is, if any one of the attributes is lacking from the nature of Jesus Christ, peace be upon him, that means all the evidence that Answering Islam provided will just shatter.
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And I'm here to present, just using the Bible, those attributes. First of all,
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God is all -knowing, that means He knows the past, He knows the present, and He knows the future.
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If we look at the Bible, the Gospel of Mark, chapter number 13, verse number 32, and this is what
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Jesus Christ says. Let me paste that verse up here.
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Alright, why is my text disabled? Okay, I'm just going to read it. Now, if you're wondering what that was all about, why is my text disabled, again, this is done in PALtalk.
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If you've not been in PALtalk, don't go there! But if you have, then you know that you have the voice part, and then there's a chat area, which is the chat area is normally like the black hole of intellect.
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Just reading it makes you dumber. But the only advantage there is that they can quote these passages as you're reading them.
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That's about the only advantage you could possibly put in there, but that's what he's referring to. Jesus Christ is saying that of the last day, no one knows of that day or that hour.
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Yeah, that would be great, Sarah, if you could post, that would be very fair of you. Now, what that's all about is
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Sarah, and I'm wondering if it's Sarah that I know, had been trying to post Sam Shamoon's text, and so they were offering to post the text for Sabeel as well.
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Yes, answering, helping posting, but not helping refuting or presenting my view.
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Yes, Jesus Christ, this is the mouth of Jesus Christ, he's saying, no one knows of that day or of that hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the
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Son, but only the Father. Here Jesus Christ, if he were
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God, he's saying that he does not know what is going to happen in the future. That means he is disqualifying himself, and, important point, he's also disqualifying the
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Holy Spirit. Now, just, just breaking in for a moment here, you will recall if you've listened to the
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Hamzah Abdul Malik debate, that this is sounding fairly familiar, not so much the voice, but the presentation.
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That was ironic that Sam had done an excellent job in posting, in presenting numerous passages where Jesus, where the
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Gospels say the opposite, and when that happens, of course, what's going to be the response?
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Well, see, it's all contradictory, etc., etc., which was the whole idea behind Hamzah Abdul Malik taking our debate as well in 1999, was not so much to defend the thesis as it was to try to prove that the
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Bible contradicts itself on this issue and all sorts of other issues, etc., etc. So, that's, you can just see where this is going right from the start.
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From being all -knowing, he's giving the credit only to the Father, and to this person, this entity, we
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Muslims worship. And now, answering me, come back and tell me that, yeah, because he was a human being, because of his limited knowledge, you know,
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Jesus Christ is not saying about what is going to happen in the future, he's speaking from his human side.
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But remember, this knowledge, the question the person is asking to Jesus Christ is about the knowledge of the future.
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So, he's asking about the knowledge of the future, and Jesus Christ, if He were
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God, He would have answered him explicitly, but Jesus Christ says, no one knows neither
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Him, but only the Father. So, two points. Jesus Christ is not all -knowing, and Holy Spirit is not all -knowing, or else,
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Jesus Christ would have included Holy Spirit in this passage along with the Father.
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Point number two, Gospel of John, chapter number 17, verse number 3, if someone could post that, that would be great.
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In this passage, Jesus Christ, peace be upon Him, He mentions that there is only one true
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God. Once again, if you're familiar with the Malik debate, you, at that time, know that both of those passages
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I preemptorily dealt with in my opening statement, ironically, since most of the
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Muslims got up and went to prayers, they never heard it, but hey, I tried anyways. John 17, 3,
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John 17, 5, again, tremendous parallels to the average approach made by the average
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Jehovah's Witness today as well, just not with quite the same flair as various Jehovah's Witnesses did.
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And Jesus Christ is referring to His Father. John 17, verse number 3, so again,
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Jesus Christ is disqualifying Himself from being God, and He's disqualifying the
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Holy Spirit from being God, and He's calling Father as the only true
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God. Now, let's take a look at John chapter number, yes,
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John 17, verse number 3, and this is life eternal, that they may know
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Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.
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So, according to Answering Islam's argument that Jesus Christ was fully God and fully human, this disqualifies, because the words, only true
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God, are very explicit, unlike the vague statements which
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Answering Islam was presenting. And, yes, alright, if we move to John chapter number 14.
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Now, I wasn't thinking about playing the whole thing, but certainly
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Sam's response was very, very compelling, especially, I will play his response to John chapter 5, which is just brilliant that I've told him that.
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It was very, very, very, very, very well done. But, in regards to John 17, I just, again, remind you what we've talked about many times before.
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You simply can't expect that these folks are going to allow
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Christian theology to speak for itself. I've come to that conclusion. We saw last time, I think, that statement by Shabir Ali.
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I honestly think that unless Shabir Ali publicly retracts what he said to Sam Shammoum, and apologizes for it, and says,
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I recognize that what I said is absolutely detrimental to there being any truth value to my position at all, that it'll have to be something that's raised to him over and over and over again.
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That's the one, of course, where I was, where I'm referring to his statement that he doesn't have to worry about taking things in context.
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He doesn't have to worry about accurately representing the Christian scriptures. And, as I pointed out, if anyone did that to him in reverse, he would very rightly and justifiably complain, but he claims the ability to do it for himself.
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So, that just makes no sense at all. These folks are not going to allow Christian theology to stand, and they're not going to allow the text to be consistent with itself.
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And so, the fact that the interpretation he's putting on 17 .3 would make a mess two sentences later in 17 .5
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and makes no sense there, that doesn't matter. You just get to pick, you know, whatever parts you want, present your interpretation based not upon the context of the text, but based upon your understanding of a text that was written 600 years later, or almost, in this case, 670 years later.
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And that becomes the argument that is being presented. And, of course, that doesn't make any sense, but that's what you have to be dealing with.
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And you've got to know that going in, so that you're not constantly struggling with your frustration.
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So many Christians say, I just start losing my train of thought because I'm so frustrated. You've got to be able to control those emotions.
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If you know that that's coming when you go in, then it's not overly surprising. It doesn't change the fact that it can still be frustrating, but frustration combined with being surprised at being frustrated is worse than just plain old frustration.
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Verse number 28. If you could pause that, that would be great.
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In this passage, John chapter number 14, verse number 28, Jesus Christ...
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Never heard John 14 .28 talking to a Jehovah's Witness, have you? Of course, all of us have.
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Explicitly mentions that my father is greater than I.
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And we know that there is no one greater than God, and Jesus Christ is saying that the
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Father is greater than I. Again, disqualifies Jesus Christ as being
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God. Except if you actually, you know, take the time to consider the context of what is being said there.
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In John 14 .28, he doesn't say God. He says the Father. And the point, of course, being that, again, assuming
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Unitarianism, assuming the impossibility of a divine person taking on human flesh, which in Islamic theology is impossible.
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Allah does not have that capacity. Given those things, then you see the misunderstanding.
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You don't assume those extra -biblical things, and the text is not difficult to follow at all.
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Alright. If we move to verse number, John chapter number 10, verse number 29.
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It again says, if you could pause that there, that would be great, John 10, verse number 29.
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In this verse, in this verse, Jesus Christ is saying explicitly that my
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Father is greater than all. That the
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Father is greater than all. That means, again, Jesus Christ is disqualifying himself and disqualifying the
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Holy Spirit, because the word all is there. That means, again,
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Jesus Christ cannot be God, and the Holy Spirit cannot be God. Because of what?
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The assumption of Unitarianism. You can't have voluntary submission of the
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Son to the Father, of the Spirit to the Father and the Son, which you see in John chapter 14.
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You cannot have one of the divine persons entering into flesh without the other persons entering into flesh, etc.,
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etc. That becomes, again, the constant assumption in each one of these presentations.
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If you look at this verse. Yes, if you look at the verse after this, we could talk about that, hopefully, in the rebuttal.
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Next point. There is no explicit verse in all of the Bible where Jesus Christ himself mentions that I am
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God. Now, this is going to get repeated over and over again, and it almost becomes somewhat silly.
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When Jesus Christ is worshipped, when he's called the Creator, when he's identified as Jehovah, you don't need to have the words
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I am God when, in John chapter 5, you have him saying he's doing everything that the
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Father does, all authority is given to him in heaven and earth, etc., etc.
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You don't have to have those words, but he's going to keep saying, well, unless it says I am
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God, which sounds very much like what you hear from Jehovah's Witnesses, when Jehovah's Witnesses say things along the lines of, well, the word
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Trinity doesn't appear in the Bible anywhere, so it can't be true unless the specific words appear, etc.,
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etc. The same kind of argumentation being presented in this context. And this is a challenge to answering
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Islam, and to all Christians who are here and who are not here. Present us a verse which is clear and explicit, which
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Jesus Christ says that I am God. Challenge number two to Sam, answering
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Islam. Where does Jesus Christ say that I am fully human, and I am fully
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God? So Jesus, in his own words, in the
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Gospels, notice the limitation here. Jesus, in his own words, in the Gospels, has to say these specific words regarding I am fully
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God and fully man, and and all the rest of this stuff, as if somehow, without that, you don't have the reality.
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I mean, you can have the clear presentation, the text from the Apostles or whatever, but if Jesus doesn't express his unity of person and two natures in a specific creedal statement in the
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Gospels, then it must not be true. What a completely arbitrary and rather silly standard. Logically, even if you would have taken
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Logic 101, you know that an infinite and infinite cannot exist in one and the same person.
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That means a person cannot be independent and dependent simultaneously.
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Why? You're saying, well, Logic says, and that's because, as Sam's going to point out, he refuses to recognize the difference between being in person.
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And if you're going to refute a system that specifically uses those differentiations, then you have to be honest about that.
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But I say, why? Why cannot the infinite enter into his own creation? If your
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God can't do that, then just admit it. Our God can. But don't say it's a matter of logic.
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That's illogical. So if you're saying that God transformed himself into a human being, that means he's no longer
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God. See the refusal to recognize the category error that's being made here.
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He is confusing the being of God and the creature, man, as if he ceases being
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God to become man, rather than being the God, man. There's a rather obvious error.
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And again, if we were making this kind of error, and it's possible to do this.
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I mean, learning all the intricacies of someone else's religion, you can make mistakes while you're doing that.
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And you learn from those mistakes, and you admit them when they're pointed out to you. But this man considers himself an apologist and has put himself in a position of making those kind of comments.
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That doesn't help his case much, does it? The same analogy. If you change a circle into a square, it is no longer a circle.
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You cannot have a circle and a square one and the same time. They are mutually exclusive.
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My next point, even if you... My next point, okay, let me backtrack.
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My next point, all the prophets, or all the people, all the messengers who came before Jesus Christ, peace be upon him, they all proclaimed the oneness of God without attaching any partners to him.
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The idea of shirk, and again, misrepresentation of the doctrine of the Trinity, as if this involves some sort of polytheism.
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If you look at Abraham and David and Jacob and Ishmael and Abraham, and all the prophets, even in your own book, no one explicitly proclaimed
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Trinity. Okay? That means if all the prophets proclaim the oneness of God without attaching the
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Holy Spirit or Son as part of that God, that means you are contradicting.
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If you are saying Trinity is true, and Jesus Christ is the Son of God, then you are contradicting your own
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Bible and your own prophets who are present in the Old Testament. Assuming, improperly of course, the concept of Unitarianism and the idea that monotheism demands
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Unitarianism, and without bothering to take the time to prove that, especially in the light of the appearance of the
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Spirit of God in the Old Testament, the use of plural pronouns by Jehovah, and then even in the fulfillment in the
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New Testament in the Injil, which is supposed to be divinely inspired, where, for example, that one divine name is used of the
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Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Alright, next point. Even if you could prove that Jesus Christ is
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God from the Bible, then you are left with the stigma of worshipping two gods.
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Worshipping two gods, and you can see why in the Malik debate,
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I began immediately with the assertion of absolute and utter monotheism, the belief in one true
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God, but again, as I've said many, many times, remember something. They cannot accept your own definition.
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Why? Because they believe, and certainly their leaders believe, that our belief has been defined in the
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Qur 'an itself. And therefore, since the representation of the
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Christian trinity found in the Qur 'an, the term trinity does not actually appear in the Qur 'an. Sam corrected me on that, because some translations say trinity, it's the word three, not the word trinity.
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And it seems it's referring to Allah, Jesus, and Mary, not to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but be that as it may.
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They have the idea that their ultimate authority has defined the doctrine of the trinity, and since it's defined it improperly, incorrectly, based upon ignorance, then they cannot accept your accurate definition of the trinity.
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We saw that in the Malik debate. Over and over again, I'd have to keep correcting people, because they would misrepresent it. And I'd correct the misrepresentation, and two people later, they'd misrepresent it again in the audience questions, because the final, ultimate authority on what
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Christians believe is not the Christian church or the history of the Christian church or anything else. It's not the
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Nicene Creed or anything like that. It's whatever Muhammad said Christians believe, that's what they believe. That's the final authority.
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That's it. Pure, 100 % unadulterated authoritarian argumentation. You could prove from the
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Bible, whatever proof that you bring, in your heart of hearts, if you believe that Jesus Christ is
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God, then you're left with the stigma that Jesus Christ is God, and Father is
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God. But you could never prove that these two entities could be one and the same.
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Why? Given the fact that there's only one true God, both are described in the categories of God, and both share the one divine name, why not?
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Because, of course, the sources of authority that would prove that to this gentleman have already been rejected in favor of sources of authority that say that this is an impossibility.
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Because Bible presents them as distinct entities, and in your opening statement...
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Distinct persons, not distinct gods. You have mentioned that these are two distinct persons.
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So whatever proof that you bring that Jesus Christ is God, then you are stuck with the dilemma that you are worshipping two gods.
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If you are doing that, then you are contradicting God and Jesus and Bible and all the prophets and logic.
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Then you are a polytheist. There's the polytheist charge. Alright, all the verses that you have mentioned that Jesus Christ has the attributes of God, know that Jesus Christ himself mentions in the
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Bible, John chapter number 5, verse number 30. Sarah, if you could pose that.
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John chapter number 5, verse number 30. In here, Jesus Christ is saying,
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I of myself cannot do anything. Now again,
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John chapter 5, one of the most popular texts to be used by those who deny the deity of Christ.
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As I mentioned, Sam's response to that, which we probably won't get to until Tuesday, just very, very, very well done.
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But, in reality, sometimes people ask, well what can
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I study? I want to prepare to deal with these folks.
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Knowing John 5 and knowing how to respond to it and seeing its clear testimony to the deity of Christ and being able to present that,
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I think would be one of the best suggestions I can make because there's so much there.
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It is so rich in its demonstration of the unity of the Father and the
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Son. And the impossibility of setting up the very dichotomy that he has set up between the
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Father and the Son as if they're competing deities or two different deities. No. John 5 shoots all that down, but it does so in such a way as to present to us, as Christians have believed down to the centuries, the doctrine of the
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Trinity. ...anything. Yes. John chapter 5, verse number 30 says, but myself,
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I cannot do anything. I judge as I hear, and my judgment is just.
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For I seek not to please myself, but him who sent me.
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God is not sent by anyone. Only messengers and prophets are sent by God.
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That means Jesus Christ is saying, all things which are given to him are coming from God.
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So any passage that you mention from the Bible that Jesus Christ has the capacity to forgive sins, or capacity to do miracles, and any passage that you bring to prove the divinity of Christ, this passage, you are left with the stigma that all power which is coming to Jesus Christ is given by God.
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Notice the equivocation. Very common, again, you have to listen, and I know this takes a lot of concentration, it quite simply takes practice, but you will hear the equivocation between God, with the
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Unitarian assumption, and the Father. To where the Father becomes an all -inclusive term, and it is used to exclude the relationship of the
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Father and the Son. Now you can't do that in John 5. We saw the mistake in John 14, 28 of changing the word there.
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But this is, again, not just Muslims, not just Muslim apologists, but Jehovah's Witnesses and others, we use the same type of tactic, and whether they are doing it purposefully, is another issue, but it is the very same kind of tactic in just switching that word to create the illusion of denying the deity of Christ.
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And to that God, we Muslims worship. Okay, I have three more minutes.
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Let me continue then. Let me continue. Answering Islam, you have presented a good case, which you think is good, that Jesus Christ is
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God. But you could never prove that the two distinct persons that you are proving both of them to be
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God, that they are one and the same. And let me quote you from your own
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Christian scholars. Here we go. Let's ransack liberalism.
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And again, here we go. The same type of situation where if you cite, quote -unquote, liberal or even moderate
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Muslim scholars, Western Muslim scholars, who live in lands where they can say these things without getting themselves killed.
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Well, those are corrupt sources. Those people aren't really Muslims. You're using the wrong information, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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But they will be more than happy to ransack all of the liberals out there,
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Jesus Seminar, Raymond Brown, or whoever, and pull out quotations, frequently out of context, but not always, pull out those quotations, and they can use them as a bat to beat you over the head.
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But you can't do the same in reverse to them. Now, you wouldn't want to anyways, in the sense of honoring truth, but it does show the lack of foundation of the position being presented.
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They say that the Trinity that you believe in was not formulated up until many centuries after Jesus Christ was gone.
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That's exactly what Dan Brown says in the Da Vinci Code, too, huh? What is my reference? My reference is the
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Catholic Encyclopedia. Oh, the Catholic Encyclopedia. How many years has the
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Watchtower been quoting that article? I remember the early 1980s, personally, with the citation of that, and I imagine it goes well prior to that.
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My reference is the Interpreted Bible. The Interpretated Bible.
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I think you mean the Interpreter's Bible. Again, out on the left wing here.
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It's various commentaries of the Bible. Various commentaries of the Bible. Yes, you can find pretty much anything in various commentaries of the
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Bible, somewhere. You can find anybody saying anything at that particular point in time.
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All of them say that the Trinity was developed or evolved centuries after Jesus Christ was gone.
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Which, of course, is why you find Trinitarian passages throughout the New Testament where the Father, the Son, and the
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Spirit are joined together in such a fashion as to teach their full deity and their cooperation in the one divine essence.
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And it's also why you'll find someone like Ignatius of Antioch utilizing Trinitarian language or describing Jesus Christ as God and Man, and that in only 107 and 108.
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Yes, indeed, folks, that's why that all happens. I guess we're out of time. Sorry about the
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Ronco voice there. But it slices, it dices. Anyways, we will continue with this, and I guess we'll leave the phones open for Tuesday, because I expected all these folks,
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I mean, obviously I must be wrong about everything that I said about the Shabir Ali and Nadir Ahmed and now with Sabir, and no one called.
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Don't know why. Well, Tuesday morning, 11 o 'clock Mountain Standard Time. We'll continue on, 877 -753 -3341.
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We'll see you then. God bless. Brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.
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If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at P .O.
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Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can also find us on the
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World Wide Web at aomin .org, that's a -o -m -i -n -dot -o -r -g, where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.