Ministry Report

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is the Dividing Line.

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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. That's funny.

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Just before we started, someone gave me the live stream link to the streaming that was done from Twin Home Baptist on Monday night.

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And did it look all this fuzzy? It did look fuzzy to you too. Okay. All right. And I don't have the, okay, so I started somewhere in between.

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It didn't start right at the beginning. Okay. Okay. All right. And so I guess you can actually, you can,

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I should, I'm not sure if I should post this or what, but I guess you can go back.

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I would like to go back and listen to this because what did you say I did? Oh, you said

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I pulled a Billy Sunday. Okay. All right. All right. So that, how do you know what a

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Billy Sunday is, is the question. I was just waiting for you to get on top of the pulpit. I've seen pictures of Billy Sunday standing on top of pulpits and shaking his finger.

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Okay. All right. Okay. Well folks, welcome to the dividing line. I am back in, uh, in Phoenix, Arizona.

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Some of you didn't think I was going to get out of Twin Home Baptist Church, uh, come, uh, come

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Monday night. But, uh, I, I did and, uh, spent all day yesterday in a, uh, a lightly pressurized tin can basically flying back from Heathrow airport.

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Uh, this time we did United, which took me through Houston. And that means a really long flight.

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It's I, I prefer the New York, Philadelphia or Charlotte, uh, stop because it sort of breaks it into a little bit more even chunks.

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Uh, this was, uh, almost 10 hours on the way back before you get back on land. And, um, so anyway,

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I'm only semi -functional today. You know how it is. Well, maybe you don't, but if you do trans oceanic flights, uh, the day after you don't remember much, it's just, you know, it's just, it's, it's not, it's not the best, uh, best days.

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But anyway, I wanted to give you a report on what took place. And, uh, if you saw it, isn't it ironic, the two debates that we got to live stream and the, the

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Sammy Zatari one was not video, you weren't around for that one.

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Oh, okay. Cause we did live stream it. And I, I don't remember if it was video live streamed or just audio live streamed.

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Oh, nobody told you. Uh, well, there were people in channel that knew. Uh, and I just expect you to sort of keep up with stuff.

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That's just all there is. That's your job. Okay. So anyway, um, but the, the two debates that were, uh, the two debates that were live streamed were the two at the churches and the one at the mosque was the only one that wasn't, wasn't live streamed, but it was live tweeted.

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Uh, Milwaukee truth. Um, uh, live tweeted. What's that? They wore their batteries down.

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I bet they did. Yeah, well, like crazy. Well, I know, I know, I know, uh, David's brother, Peter was, uh, was tweeting and, uh,

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Milwaukee truth was, uh, treating, tweeting was actually London truth, but we have a sort of running gag going,

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I'm the poor guy, but, um, anyways, so that was sort of live covered, but not really alive covered.

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And if you've got a chance to attend the debates, or if you got a chance to watch the debates, if you'd like to comment on what you saw of the four debates,

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I suppose, you know, technically we did two debates Monday night. It was this sort of parts one and part two, but anyway.

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Uh, you can give us a call at 877 -753 -3341. I'm going to go through and, and I don't have anything other than this.

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So if you want to call in, um, you know, I suppose now would be the stump chump type, uh, thing, uh, cause

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I'm, you know, I'm physically doing okay, but you know, it's just, you're, you're, you're mentally just not all there.

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I was trying to type some emails this morning and I'd go back and I'd read, I'd read a sentence that is type and go, what,

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I don't even remember typing now. What, what, where did that come from? And, uh, so it's just not, this would not be a good day to be editing a book or anything like that.

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I need to catch up on some sleep and, and I think I went to bed around 6am

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London time, having gotten up at 5am London time. That just, that just doesn't really do much for you anyway.

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So I hope I can remember all this stuff. Uh, I flew over to England on the 15th, uh, arrived on the 15th left on the 14th,

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I guess, yeah, you lose most of that day and you get it back. I got it back yesterday.

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And, um, the first big thing that I had to do was the debate at the

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East London mosque. Let me tell you something, I'm getting better at getting around London.

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I love London. I really love London. It is a beautiful city.

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It is so rich in history. And you know what? It's not that difficult to get around.

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You got to use public transportation, but between the tube and the trains, they, they run on time most of the time.

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And it's just, it's just a lovely place to visit. And I'm, I, I think the next time

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I go there, I, I don't really think I'll even have to worry about having somebody pick me up.

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I think I can get to where pretty much anywhere I need to go, uh, yesterday, for example, or the day before yesterday, depending on which, where you are listening to this right now on Tuesday, I got myself by myself from my hotel, uh, to Gatwick airport and to Inverness and then back from Inverness and back to my hotel without too much of a difficulty.

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So I, um, uh, and in fact, I am a Londoner now. I hope they're not gonna be sending me a tax bills.

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Uh, but I am a Londoner now because I have the two absolutely necessary things.

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If you see people walking through London, what are the two things that mark off Londoners?

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Um, and Milwaukee truth will be able to, uh, verify this, uh, as well. Um, what you need to have to be a

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Londoner is need to have an oyster card. And you need to have a cell phone because everyone is looking down.

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I don't know how they avoid running into each other. Cause everyone is looking down, staring at a cell phone. You can be in the train.

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You can be on the platform. Everyone is staring at a cell phone. Well, I now have a

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UK cell phone that actually works over there and works properly over there.

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Uh, and, uh, and I have my, my own, my very own oyster card. And if you've got your own oyster card, you are, you're set.

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That's just, that's just all there is to it. So anyway, we, uh, we took, we took the, uh, the underground to East London.

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Now, let me tell you something. We came out of this train station and you walk out onto the street and you have left the

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United Kingdom and you are now in Beirut. You're in Saudi Arabia.

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You are in a different land. You walk down the streets and yeah, they're pretty much

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English buildings, but most of the shops, the signs are in Arabic.

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Um, there's no KFC around. You know what they have there? HFC. Halal fried chicken.

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I am, I, we saw at least four HFCs as we watched, we walked from the train station to the

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East London mosque. And as you listen to people walking by, I had first experienced this a couple of years ago in Edmonton.

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Um, and you walk down a street in London and hearing

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English might be 5 % of the time. 95 % of the conversations going on as you're walking down the street are in a language you don't know.

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Now in Edmonton, it was more Eastern European languages. Uh, but in East London where I was, there was an awful lot of Arabic going on.

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And it was, it, it was really a culture shift coming out of a train station just to see how one particular area had just been transformed.

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Very, very, very interesting. And so we got there fairly early. And, uh, but we were told we, we were standing there looking at it and I was supposed to be meeting

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Abdullah al -Andalusi, but we got there early and we hadn't eaten anything yet. And so this guy sort of sees us and he said, we're here for the debate.

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He says, yeah, I'm here for the debate too. And so he takes us in and he's a Muslim. And the guys at the front desk, this is a very large place.

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The guys at the front desk say it's going to be on the fourth floor and it's going to be in this conference room, et cetera, et cetera. Okay. All right.

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And so he takes us over to this, I don't know what you call it.

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I, it was, was it Casablanca? What? It was sort of a, it's not a diner.

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What, what did they call it? Anyway, it was, I had my first, oh, what was that called? Oh, Doug's going to kill me because I don't remember what it was.

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It's a, it's sort of a, it's a Middle Eastern pastry type thing filled with, this was filled with chicken and peas.

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I forget. It wasn't a falafel. Was it a falafel? I don't remember. Anyways, it was something

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I'd never eaten before, but I ate it anyways. And which may not have been really smart right before debate.

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Now, now, now to think back upon it, but anyway. So he's sitting there talking with us and he's informing us that this is the largest physical mosque in Europe.

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And it does take up like a city block. I mean, it's just, it's huge. And a samosa.

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Was it a samosa? I think it was a samosa. I think London Truth got that. I think, I think it was a samosa. Yeah, I think it's what it was.

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And so Indian. Okay. Samosas are Indian. I'd never, whatever it was, I'd never had it before. It's from someplace that I've not been.

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Let's just put, and I actually had one, a vegetarian one at Trinity Road Chapel right before the debate with Sammy a couple of days later, which was a whole lot better.

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It really tasted like a, it tasted like a chicken burrito. It was, that one was really good.

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But the one I had there was really bland. So anyway, so we were sitting there eating and we're waiting for some other folks to show up.

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I would say, you know, we, well, let me stay chronological here. So we got done.

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We go walking in and they inform us it's on the fourth floor and we apologized.

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The lift's not working. We call them elevators over there. They're lifts. So there's, you got to walk up the stairs to the fourth floor.

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It's a, it's a ways up there. And so we go up there and we walk in and this room's not really even set up yet.

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And there's almost nobody there. So we're trying to set it up and, and I'm breaking out my, my digital projector.

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Cause it's not a digital projector there yet. But I didn't bring my adapter and all I have is an American cord. And that means you can't plug in there and blah, blah, blah, blah.

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So we eventually get everything set up. And eventually Zakir Hussain comes in. Now Zakir Hussain's a younger fellow.

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And I had not had an opportunity to hear any debates that he had done.

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And he was under a lot of pressure. You could tell that he was a bit nervous.

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He's not really good with technology. And he was sitting down. He had his notes.

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But you could also tell he had done a lot of work in preparation for this debate.

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He had set things up knowing, you know, I've debated this subject before. And he even said during the debate, you're predictable.

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Well, at the same time, he was accusing me of being inconsistent, but predictable. Okay. They sort of go together.

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But, you know, we had a nice little chitter chatter beforehand, but nothing overly deep.

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And so we get going. And I'm really not sure exactly what to expect. But, you know, I make my presentation and we're debating the subject.

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Is Muhammad prophesied in the Bible? Now, for most Christians, it's almost a matter of humor when you first mention that.

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Excuse me? Muhammad prophesied? And then when you mention some of the primary places like, oh, yeah,

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Muhammad's the Holy Spirit in John 14 and 16. Right. Most Christians don't take it seriously.

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And the Muslim has an uphill climb, especially in light of the nature of the text that they utilize.

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And when I debated Shabir on this at Twin Home a couple of years ago, about four years ago,

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I was at the time I mentioned Song of Solomon 516.

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And Shabir had actually somewhat, shall we say, complained that I had raised that because he hadn't.

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I said, hey, many Muslims do. Well, the irony is Zakir camped on Song of Solomon 516.

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And I'll just be honest with you. They're just. It is such a massive stretch to turn the love poem of a woman who is marrying a king of Israel into a prophecy about the

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Arabian prophet from six centuries. It is such a massive stretch that I was really surprised at how he stuck with it.

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I mean, he just he just would not give it up. He stuck with it the entire evening. And that really that really surprised me.

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But anyway, I would say that the audience was about 50 -50, which surprised me.

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I did not expect that the people in the front of the room tend to be the Christians, people in the back room tend to be the Muslims.

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There might have been a few more Muslims, I guess, if you if you took in the people that are coming and going in the back and stuff.

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And and we were interrupted twice by the call to prayers. And so there was that stuff going on, things like that.

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So I didn't have anybody count or anything like that. But I just sort of assumed it was about 50 -50.

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Did I ever feel in danger there? No. There was one time in my opening statement you could feel the tension just as you could a week later.

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When you address the Quran and when you address Muhammad, there's going to be tension. Not nearly as much, you know, it's not the same situation when they're denying the deity of Christ or attacking the

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Bible. You don't have that kind of tension, but you do in those situations. And when

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I got to my conclusions where I had to say the Quran is wrong, the

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Quran is in error in Surah 7 and 6, well, you could you could feel the tension.

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But I said it. And let me tell you something. It is honestly,

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I view it as an absolute privilege to have had the opportunity to stand in the

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East London Mosque and look at a mixed audience with a right outside the window.

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I noticed that Micah did some Photoshop magic and put two different pictures together and put on Facebook.

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But well, what was the picture of me looking at them? Yeah, yeah, that was pretty cool.

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But was it Doug? I think it was Doug McMasters took the picture of me looking out the window at the at the minaret right out the right out there.

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It's just right there. This is this is the largest mosque in Europe. And here I am.

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Staying for this audience saying the Quran is wrong, it does not prophesy Mohammed, which means, of course,

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Mohammed isn't we claim to be either. And. It was a privilege. And the conversations we had with people afterwards were very good.

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Now, let me just mention something about Zakir Hussain. Yeah, he came after me. No two ways about it.

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And he made all sorts of accusations about being inconsistent. And of course, he was confusing categories, confusing places where he disagreed with me with my being inconsistent.

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He didn't prove inconsistencies. He would just identify any place where he disagreed with me as an inconsistency. And a lot of people did not like the mannerisms that were his and the way that he went after me.

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But look, I did not. Both that debate and the debate with Adnan Rashid on Monday night, a lot of Christians look at that and they go,

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I was nasty and that guy was mean. No, I don't look at it that way. I like these guys.

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I would debate Zakir again, and I would hope that he would learn and I would hope that he would even listen to this.

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I'm going to write to him, let him know I address this. Look, these guys are under a lot of pressure. He was under a lot of pressure.

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This was his first major debate. It was around 120 for me. Okay, I have a lot more experience than he does.

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I have a lot more experience working the technology. I have a lot more experience speaking in front of audiences. And as a

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Christian, I am not under the pressure he's under. Folks, Islamic apologists are under a lot of pressure from their respective communities.

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They really are. Pressure that we don't have. And so, I think he fell into a trap.

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He fell into a trap of talking too fast. And the main trap he fell into, and again, I'm going to let him know I said these things, and I hope he learns from it.

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I hope he can go, well, this guy does have a lot of experience in this. I suppose I can at least learn from that, despite the fact that he's a

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Christian. I hope I can still learn from his experience. He did not attempt to bring the audience with him at all.

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And I fell into the same trap when I was young. When I first started doing this,

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I wasn't as young as him, but I wasn't even 30 when I first started doing this. And you want to try to get everything said, and you try to fire everything out there, and you lose the audience.

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The audience clearly gets the indication that you don't really care whether they're coming along or not.

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You don't really care whether you're communicating with them. You've pretty much forgotten the people on the other side, and you're just firing on all cylinders and shooting all this stuff out there.

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And there really wasn't much organization to what he was saying. And it makes for a less useful debate.

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It really does. And he fell into that trap. And I can talk fast too.

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I made a big mistake because I was taught. I made two mistakes in that debate. I demonstrated that I'm a human being.

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And by the way, Ijaz Ahmed has already put up a video claiming that I cannot read

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Greek because I stumbled in quoting John 1 -1. Now, I have quoted John 1 -1 off the top of my head a thousand times in my life.

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But I was talking too fast. And I stumbled, and it all came out wrong.

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And the funny thing is, he doesn't... I don't know if he was looking at it or not, but he says, I can't read it.

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I wasn't trying to read it. I was quoting it off the top of my head. And he's put out a whole video.

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He says, he doesn't know Greek. And he's just sure he's taught it from... But he doesn't know Greek. It's just... That guy is just so completely without integrity that it's...

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I don't think anyone should even listen to... He's right on the level of another

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Ahmed now, sadly. But anyway, so I messed up John 1 -1 because I was trying to get too much done too quickly.

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And then at another point, I did this quick search for the text on... What was it about?

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Oh man, I put it on the blog late that night or the next morning.

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It was the one in Hebrews 11 -1. Branch, branch. I was looking for Netzer. And I just wanted to throw the reference out there because he had thrown it out there.

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He was throwing everything, including the kitchen sink out there. All sorts of stuff, these things.

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And so I did this search. And of course, the screen comes up. And I put the screenshot up on the blog so you can see what it looked like.

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And I followed the line across wrong and got the wrong one. I just saw a little bit of the context.

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That looks right. Wrote it down real quick, threw it out there. And I ended up getting Isaiah 14. I think, what was it?

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Isaiah 14 -19 or something. Instead of Isaiah 11 -1. Duh. So I made two extremely minor errors at that point because I was talking too fast.

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But for Zocker, I would just simply say, you know, for almost all of my debate opponents, there are a couple of debate opponents that have done this.

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But you've got to try to manage your time in such a way that you can make a closing statement even during the rebuttals.

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You can wrap stuff up. You can demonstrate to the audience you're trying to bring them along. So many of my opponents do not do that.

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They just... And then, okay, I'm out of time. And you're done. And the audience just doesn't get the feeling that you are trying to communicate with them at all.

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And so I would say to Zocker, those are some things you need to work on. And of course, obviously,

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I would say on a scholarship level that you've already fallen into the trap of utilizing different standards, a trap that I'm not sure a faithful Muslim can actually escape.

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I'll be perfectly honest with you. I don't know that a

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Muslim can consistently argue against the New Testament and use the same standards he uses to substantiate the

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Qur 'an. I just don't know anybody can. But the inconsistency is very, very clear. So as we were leaving, and we've got

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London Truth on Skype, right? That Skype call? All right. I'll take it in just a second.

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Let me just finish my story. And then he can give us his story on the East London mosque debate. As we were leaving,

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I was talking with some Muslims from Birmingham who were strongly encouraging me to schedule some debates up that direction.

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And, hey, if they can put the work into it, I have zero contacts there. I suppose

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I could try to find some. I'm sure there are some Christians up in Birmingham that would like to arrange something like that, too. But I've got zero contacts up there.

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So they'd have to do a lot of the work there. But we're walking down all those stairs. And I'm talking with one of them.

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And one of them said, you know, in some ways, you're more Muslim than most Muslims. And what he was talking about was,

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I know more about the Hadith than most Muslims. I've read more of the Hadith than most Muslims have. Most Muslims have heard this, that, or the other thing.

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I haven't finished all of Bukhari yet, but very few Muslims have read all of Bukhari or all of Muslim.

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I've read major portions of both of those and Sunan Abu Dawood and stuff like that. And the conversations were respectful.

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Respectful. And I had won their respect by knowing their arguments and interacting with them.

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And again, not being intimidated by the situation we were in. And I would love to have the opportunity of debating there again.

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There are so many other subjects that we can engage in. And hopefully, maybe with Abdullah al -Andalusi, he wasn't able to debate this time around because he was supposed to be debating on October 4th, the head of the

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English Defense League. But I just saw... Where was I? Oh, while I was picking up my luggage at Sky Harbor last night,

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I saw a notification from MDI that the place that they had booked to hold the debate has canceled it out of fear of violence.

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So that's interesting that a... I think it's a secular, if I recall correctly, it's a secular location.

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The secular location canceled the debate between a Muslim and the head of the

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EDL. But the mosque did not cancel the debate between myself and Zakir Hussein.

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What does that mean? I don't know. But it's rather interesting that that took place.

26:21

So, hey, let's go ahead and talk with Douglas over in London and see what his comments are on the subject of the

26:29

East London mosque debate. Hello, Douglas. Hey, Dr. Wyatt. How are you doing?

26:34

I'm doing quite well. How was the flight back to Milwaukee? Long and uneventful.

26:41

That's exactly what I had too. Anyways, so you were there tweeting away.

26:47

They say you destroyed your battery that evening? Yeah, my battery literally ran out just as you...

26:53

Just as... I think it was you or Zakir were doing their closing statements. Oh, okay. It was before or after the call to prayer?

27:01

Um, just after. Okay, so that was while he was... Because he was just standing up or just getting ready to give his closing statement when, once again, the call to prayer hit and we all had to sit there waiting for that to finish.

27:14

And then he had his three -minute closing statement. So I thought that was rather interesting. So anyways, what was your thoughts about the debate?

27:25

Well, good debate. I think turnout was interesting. Expecting a lot more

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Muslims considering, like you said, that's Europe's biggest mosque. Yeah. Surprised by the number of Muslims who did sign up.

27:38

Not to say that there weren't any there, but like you said, I think you said it in your tweet, there were about 50 -50.

27:44

Yeah. I honestly thought it would be a lot more. Again, it's not every day you hear that there's a debate happening at East London mosque between a

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Christian and a Muslim. I don't know, maybe it was decided it was a Monday night. Folks obviously got up from work.

28:00

I don't know, maybe. But I honestly thought there'd be a lot more, which was something I noticed. I think you've already pointed out the same sort of thing happened that usually does,

28:11

I guess, where a consistent standard is not being used. And so you had

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Zakir, who would more than happily quote all these either liberal or just downright unbelieving scholars.

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And then he would quote Qur 'anic sources or the

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Old Testament to back up his point. And he's like, I don't see the equal weight that you're using in your debate here.

28:42

Well, not in that, but he was raising so many issues that really were not at all relevant to the actual subject of the debate.

28:51

It was a scattergun approach. Let's see how many things we can throw out here. And unfortunately, that strikes me as trying to energize your base rather than actually communicate with the people on the other side, which

29:03

I think is what we want to be trying to do. Yeah. And there was one thing, by the way, he kept making the point that in Song of Solomon 5, that the word there, the word for,

29:17

I think it was dark or something similar like that, could be translated Arabic. You know, I had never at that point, one of the problems that I was having is he was throwing so many things out that I never got written down.

29:33

In fact, I can prove this because I use my LifeScribe pen and so I can actually post my notes, my handwritten notes without having to scan them or anything like that, just electronically.

29:46

And I wasn't even certain what he was referring to once he got to the point of trying to talk about things like dark and wavy hair and stuff like that.

29:59

I was like, where did he get all of that? I looked it up later and it was 6 -2, well, 6 -2 is where he had the beds of spices to graze in the gardens, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

30:23

So I found some of it eventually, but I didn't even know what he was referring to there.

30:29

It's interesting as well, because as he made that poem, my phone went off while I was tweeting, which

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I was not happy about because I was trying to tweet everything. Right. But my friend who

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I came with, who was sitting at the back, sent me a picture. He looked up something on Logos on his phone.

30:46

He looked up that word, which was supposedly translated, could be translated Arab, and it was nowhere near what he was speaking about.

30:54

And my friend was kind of excited about it. Well, I would still be interested in knowing what the reference was.

31:01

Did you have it there? Was it in the thing that you sent, or anything like that? It wasn't in the thing he sent me, but I could look it up and get back to you.

31:08

Yeah, well, I think that the videos online, maybe someone wrote it down or something like that.

31:13

But I didn't get to it because I was like, I don't even know which reference he's...

31:19

He was throwing things out so fast. And I was trying to write as quickly as I could.

31:25

But when you're trying to write and then put a note as to how you want to respond, something like that, I just couldn't keep up with it.

31:30

So that's why I didn't even respond to it. Because, again, it seemed like such a massive stretch.

31:37

But especially the stuff about balsa wood, too. I'm like, what? Balsa wood?

31:44

Really? And then when I looked that up, it's right next to the section on lilies.

31:50

OK, is that supposed to be from Mecca, too? I mean, it's just such a massive misuse of...

31:56

And in fact, as I'm looking at it here now, in, I think it was 6 -2, to graze in the gardens and to gather lilies.

32:04

I wonder if that's where the balsa wood came from. This is in the ESV, but I'm not sure what happened to...

32:13

Was it in the New American Standard that it had that one? I'm not really certain. Anyway, I'd have to look.

32:21

But it was definitely interesting. No two ways about it. Yeah, definitely. Well, good.

32:27

I appreciate your coming out and doing the live tweeting and all that type of stuff.

32:32

And you made the semis. Atari won, but I didn't see him

32:38

Monday night. You weren't able to get over to Fulham. Yeah, I wasn't able to make it out to Fulham. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you, that was honestly, especially the second part of that one, was the most interesting night of all four of them.

32:50

Oh, I watched it online. Oh, yeah, it was getting interesting. No two ways about it.

32:55

But that's because, as I will say here in a few moments, Adnan and his guys are our Speaker's Corner guys.

33:01

So they were just sort of turning into the Speaker's Corner, which I understand is pretty much like that. But anyways, well,

33:07

I appreciate you coming out, man. Yeah, it was great to be there. All right. Thank you very much for your support. God bless you.

33:12

All right, take care. All right, bye -bye. There's Douglas from London. We call him

33:17

Milwaukee Truth. But actually, he's rather obviously from someplace other than that.

33:23

But anyway, he was there with us at the debate as well. So we got that done.

33:28

And I'm going to have to pick up the pace here, because it's already 4 .33, and I'm only through the first night.

33:34

The next day, some of you have already heard, I did a program with Justin Brierley.

33:43

And we were supposed to be doing a program with two Muslims. A Muslim by the name of Hamza Tsirtsis, who is with IERA, that's the same group that Adnan Rashid is with, was supposed to be on.

34:01

He'd be much more conservative, more Salafi in his perspective. And then a more liberal Muslim on the issue of the film, free speech, et cetera, et cetera.

34:12

And I got there like 45 minutes before him. And we're talking with Justin.

34:19

And then Mohammed comes. And we're waiting and waiting.

34:24

We got started 45 minutes early, and Hamza never showed up. And at one point said he was a mile away, and then went dark.

34:34

Yeah, it was 45 minutes late. And we had to get started. We were going to try to bring him into the conversation once we got started.

34:41

But we only had the studio for a certain amount of time. It's booked for other things. And he never showed and never bothered to tell us.

34:49

Stopped answering Justin's phone calls. And it was really weird. And we were told later, well, he figured he hadn't made it.

34:56

And so he just turned around, went back. And it was like a two -hour trip. And it's like, well, why don't you let us know?

35:02

It was very, very weird. So the program was interesting, but not nearly as interesting as it would have been if we had had...

35:11

And in fact, here is a Muslim who is saying that Christians should be more involved in protesting anti -Christian things.

35:20

And it was very interesting. So anyways, that came out on Saturday on Unbelievable.

35:27

And I always appreciate getting to meet Justin Brierley again and stuff like that. So then on Wednesday, we had the debate at Trinity Road Chapel, where we've had so many before.

35:38

Four years ago, Sammy Zittati and I debated at Trinity Road Chapel in the Deity of Christ. This time we were debating on Surah 4, verse 157.

35:45

And a couple things. First of all, every Christian that had seen the previous debate made the same comment to me.

35:53

Sammy has grown up a lot. Sammy's a young guy. He was very young. And he was four years younger four years ago.

36:01

And his demeanor has improved. His presentation has improved.

36:08

And it was by far the calmest debate of the four. And I appreciated the fact that he was willing to take on...

36:16

Look, both Zakir and Sammy took on difficult topics. And some of you may notice,

36:23

I've gotten criticized, inappropriately so, for quite some time. You're always on the defensive with the

36:29

Muslims. You're always defending the Deity of Christ, defending this, defending that. When do you take on the

36:35

Muslims? Well, I'll take on topics when I feel confident in doing so. And having finished writing the book,

36:42

I felt confident to deal with chapters that I wrote in the book. And so,

36:50

I had tried. I did take on a shake on ABN on this particular issue.

36:59

But ABN messed up and didn't get it recorded. So, and the people who heard it live, it was not the best.

37:09

This is a tough subject. There are Muslims who told me, I would never debate you on that.

37:15

Because it is a tough subject. We have the historical ground here, completely. And they have to argue.

37:21

Basically, Sammy's thesis was, attack the resurrection because it's connected to the crucifixion.

37:27

That way you can get around the fact that really what I'm supposed to be doing is defending the Quran's denial of the crucifixion.

37:33

It's sort of how that ended up working out. But it's a tough position to take.

37:39

And so, we did that debate on Wednesday night. And I think the video, it was live streamed.

37:47

And I think the video is already up. I think I saw a link to it. Obviously, we'll be putting our own versions up eventually for posterity's sake.

37:57

But the Muslims are able to get to it faster when I'm over in the

38:02

UK, for obvious reasons, because they're right there. And I think that one has already, at least the audio has already been put up, if not the video as well, of my debate with Sammy Zatari on that particular subject.

38:13

So, then, short night, very short night, because no matter what you do, those debates are going to go long.

38:22

And the next morning, I'm up on a plane with Doug McMasters, and we are flying, well, first we have to take a train to Gatwick, and we are flying to Berlin.

38:35

And what an experience. I went over, and Christian Anderson is my contact person there at the

38:42

Evangelical Bible Training Center. And he met us at the airport, and we did a little sightseeing.

38:52

We first got there. He took us by the Reichstag, and we went over and saw the

38:58

Brandenburg Gate. If you're not familiar with the Brandenburg Gate, go watch either

39:05

JFK's speech in Berlin, where he said, Ich bin ein

39:11

Berliner. All he needed to say was, Ich bin Berliner. He didn't need to say, Ich bin ein Berliner. And in fact, outside of Berlin, ein

39:18

Berliner means a donut. So, for people outside of Berlin, there is the president of the

39:24

United States going, I am a donut. So anyway, it's context, context, context.

39:33

But I felt a little more at home in Germany for two reasons.

39:39

First of all, they drive on the right side of the street, so you're not always dodging people.

39:45

So they're on the right side of the street. And secondly, my German isn't good, but it's a whole lot better than a lot of other people's, let's put it that way, okay?

39:53

I had a number of years of German. I don't get to speak it much, but let me tell you something. My German got a real jumpstart over that time period, and I'm going to keep trying to do that.

40:04

I could order my food, and it was lots of fun. And understand what people were saying most of the time, just not all the time.

40:11

Anyway, we saw the Brandenburg Gate. We saw the Jewish memorial. It's very odd.

40:18

And the thing that really struck me about the Jewish memorial that they built only a few years ago is, you know where it is?

40:24

It is built on top of where Hitler's bunker was. So here's the place where Hitler dies, though a lot of Germans don't think that's where he died.

40:34

A lot of Germans think he may still be living in Brazil someplace, interestingly enough. But it's built on top of where the bunker was, right next to the

40:45

American embassy, which I walked by, and it was very strange. So we got to do a little of that, and then we headed into what is formerly

40:55

East Germany. And behind the wall, you can still see in the pavestones where the wall was.

41:01

And so now you're on the other side of it, you know? And I grew up, that was the

41:07

Iron Curtain, man. That was where the big buff women came from in the

41:13

Olympics, you know? I mean, that was where if you crossed that line, you got shot, you know?

41:18

And all that stuff. And so it was just, it was a little bit surreal for my first, because it's the first time

41:25

I've been to Germany. And I've always wanted to go, and I really enjoyed the opportunity of going. So I stayed at a brand new hotel in formerly

41:35

East Germany, and had a great time there.

41:43

I was getting tired, I was coming down with something. It never got really bad, but I was coming down with something. So the next day, we get up on the

41:52

Friday, and we drive out to Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

42:02

If you've ever been to a concentration camp, now this was not by any stretch of the imagination, the biggest or the worst.

42:08

This was Hitler's, almost Hitler's private one. Oh, thousands and thousands of people died there.

42:15

I think they executed 14, was it 14 ,000 Russian prisoners there? And there's a place where they would march prisoners down and shoot them, and there were the ovens, and they did install a gas chamber, and there was places they experimented.

42:35

Don't get me wrong, it's not a nice place. And that disgusting phraseology is on the front gate.

42:43

Arbeit macht frei, that mockery that is over Auschwitz and Dachau and all the others.

42:51

And so it's absolutely sobering, absolutely sobering. But what's shocking about Sachsenhausen is that you walk along the wall where the guard towers are and things like that.

43:10

And you come to a break in the wall and you look out and there's all these other buildings.

43:17

And that's when you discover when the Russians took over, they just took it over and expanded it and killed 50 ,000 people there.

43:28

So you've got the evil of the Nazis ended by the defeat by the

43:35

Russians who then continue the evil. Just amazing, just amazing to see the Russian portion over there.

43:43

And yet no justice ever came for that upon those people that were involved in that kind of stuff.

43:51

And so it was sobering. And then we drove back. I did a

43:56

Q &A session for quite some time with the staff there at EBTC. And then that evening, a number of you did listen to the live streaming that we did, that they did of my presentation.

44:12

They point out that East Germany is one of the most secular places in the world. It was video, yeah.

44:18

And so I was asked to address the necessity of apologetics in a post -Christian secular society.

44:27

And only as I arrived was I informed, I had assumed because there was going to be two language translations,

44:34

German and Russian, you can't do that with a translator standing there. So I had assumed

44:40

I was just going to be speaking and somebody in another room was going to be doing live translation. Well, no.

44:47

The reality was there was a live Russian translation from another room, but I was going to have a live

44:55

Russian translator with me. Folks, if you have never spoken with translation, it is another world.

45:04

It's another world. If you're not a public speaker, you really couldn't understand this.

45:10

But I first spoke with translation in Brazil in 2003 at the

45:15

Field Conference. And I almost wanted to go home after the first session. You just feel like you are,

45:25

I don't know how to explain it. You just feel like you're stumbling and bumbling. You can't get a rhythm going.

45:31

You're just, it's very difficult. And if you have a really good translator, they can make you feel better.

45:38

And I did. I had an awesome translator at Fiel who would match my vocal intonations and my hand gestures.

45:50

And Eros was his name, Eros Pasqualini. And he was great. Oh, he was good.

45:56

Wonderful man. We had great conversations when we weren't doing translation. But yeah, my twin brother.

46:01

Yeah, we ended up actually looking a lot alike too. And then

46:07

I've spoken with translation in Italy and in Lima, Peru.

46:13

But not in German. In fact, the funny part was I started off in German and he translated into English.

46:19

Did you catch that? I don't know if you saw that right at the beginning, but I started off quoting John on one from German and he translated into English.

46:28

It was sort of funny. I said, you don't really need to do that. It's okay. But anyhow, I actually managed to start developing a rhythm eventually.

46:36

It took about 10 or 15 minutes, but I started developing a rhythm. And walking around the stage and moving around and it went pretty well.

46:43

And I enjoyed it. And in fact, one of their folks is in Flagstaff doing deputation.

46:49

Some of the church is supporting him. And he even wrote in and said, hey, I watched it. It was great. I saw it here. And so that was pretty neat.

46:57

So then the next... Algo, 10 -24 -2003.

47:05

It was a new experience for me. As I walked to the podium in the location Brazil at the 19th annual field conference accompanied by Errol Spasquini, my tremendously talented translator, the entire gathered group of over 1000 pastors began to laugh.

47:18

Wow. But Algo is just scary. Just scary. I did meet in Germany.

47:23

I met a young man and his wife. And the young man says, I may be the other

47:29

Algo. I may have listened to your stuff as much as Algo.

47:37

So I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. But that's what he said. So anyways. So then the next day on Saturday, we get up.

47:49

We get on the train and we go to Wittenberg. Wittenberg or Lutherstadt.

47:56

Wittenberg, Germany. And let me just tell you one thing. The visual part of my church history lectures is going to be greatly enhanced by the fact that I had my camera with me.

48:09

Well, my UK phone that I use as a camera. Because I took like 120 pictures.

48:15

And I have to show them to you and go through them. A lot of people aren't gonna be over excited about it because I was taking pictures of first editions of all of Luther's stuff.

48:26

I mean, I don't know what this place is worth. But first editions from 1518, 1520.

48:31

Sermons to the German people. There was a first edition 1516 Erasmus Novum Instrumentum there.

48:39

First edition. I mean, wow. It's sitting right there, you know. And yes, sir.

48:46

Yes, go ahead. I'll bet you were drooling. Oh, just about. I had to wipe it off the glass. Yeah, it was terrible. There was so much stuff there.

48:52

There was an indulgence box. There was one of Tetzel's indulgences. Luther's pulpit.

49:01

Just an incredible amount of stuff. But the first picture

49:07

I took was of the side of Luther's house.

49:13

And it's now inside another structure. But it was a picture of a blank space.

49:21

Because the little room that Luther was in when he came to understand justification was in a tower attached to the side of the building that was removed from the building during its renovation during Luther's lifetime.

49:37

In fact, there's a little plaque there that says, I'm afraid I'm going to lose my little room due to something that they were doing.

49:43

And so in essence, that open space, second story, it's above Doug McMaster's head in this picture, is where Luther would have been physically when the light shone again of the truth of justification.

49:59

And it was it was right there. And so took billions of pictures there and then walked down the main street to the city church where he preached twice a day, seven days a week.

50:13

And then walked down from there past the center of the city toward the castle church, where, of course,

50:25

I had my picture taken outside of Wittenberg's door, which is being renovated because it's only five years away from 2017, which will be the 500th anniversary of the

50:35

Reformation. And so they're doing a lot of work on something like that. Yes. Just to give people a visual perspective here.

50:43

Imagine if you took a five year old little boy into the headquarters, I mean, the original

50:49

Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory and told him he could look at anything he wants.

50:55

I've seen James in this environment, and that is what we're talking about here. The kid in the ultimate candy store.

51:02

Yes. It was it was pretty it was pretty amazing. I also took a picture of where Luther burned Exerge Domine.

51:08

I mean, I've got all this stuff. I'll show it to you. It's it's it's great stuff. It's great stuff. So anyways, then we we had to get back and we had to split up.

51:21

And Doug and I had to get our flights back. And let's just say the one bad part of the entire trip was that night because I got back to my hotel where I had reservations and they had to move me to another hotel because they had had a group that had missed their flights.

51:36

And so they let them keep their rooms. And so they put me up in another hotel and they had to sit me over there. And the guy dropped me off, put me at the wrong place.

51:43

It was it was a mess. It was really a mess. But that was the one bad thing I had in the whole trip.

51:49

So the next day, Sunday, I preached both services at Trinity Road Chapel. And then

51:54

Monday is the double debate with Adnan. I wanted to get to that. And I don't have a lot of time here, but let me just very briefly say some people watch that as you did and accusing me of becoming

52:09

Billy Sunday and said, man, you went after those Muslims. Not in a mean way.

52:19

What happened was, especially as we got in the second half, the second debate, which is about the Kanaan, I know

52:25

Adnan Rashid. And look, I've written to Adnan since the debate.

52:32

We want to get together, have dinner. I like Adnan. I pray for Adnan.

52:39

I pray for Sammy. I pray for Zakir. I pray for Shabir. I pray for these men.

52:46

I like these men. You've got to understand. The Apostle Paul was breathing out threatenings against the brethren until God in his grace turned his heart.

52:59

So you just, we as Christians don't have the freedom to dislike these people because but for the grace of God, there go we.

53:11

So keep that in mind. And I knew that Adnan and his followers are going to be more conservative, a little more

53:21

Salafi, a little more Wahhabi. And therefore, they are speaker's corner

53:28

Muslims. And at speaker's corner, you go toe to toe. And I've listened to Adnan and Jay Smith debating at speaker's corner.

53:36

I've listened to recordings of it. So I know what they expect. And I know what they're going to try to do. And when they started getting rowdy and Adnan started ripping them up and they start whipping him up, it starts feeding on itself.

53:48

And especially when Adnan's going, do you know who Al -Kindi was? He was a Christian. And they all go crazy.

53:53

Well, I had told everybody exactly who Al -Kindi was and that he was in a conversation with a

54:00

Muslim. And that's what makes this so. It was very, very clear that the wheels were falling off from an intellectual standpoint.

54:12

And so now you're whipping the folks up. And so look, I would not be intimidated.

54:18

I could not allow that to happen. They are not going to respect dimitude on my part at this point.

54:25

We're debating whether the Quran has been accurately transmitted. And I have raised serious questions that serious

54:31

Muslims need to deal with. And I was not going to be intimidated by it. And so I just put it right back on top of them.

54:39

And a lot of people were taken aback by that for some strange, odd reason. But look, I didn't have to do that with Sami Zaatari.

54:47

I'm sorry, Zaatari, he actually told me that. But I've said Zaatari for so long, it's hard for me to switch.

54:52

I didn't have to do that because he didn't do that. He wasn't going that direction. I had to do it in this situation.

55:01

And I think by the end of the evening, they had calmed down a little bit and had heard what

55:07

I was, at least some had heard what I was saying. I can't make the zealots hear me.

55:13

I can't force that. And I did have one Muslim say to me afterwards, sort of quietly,

55:22

I wish you'd get a more scholarly Muslim to debate this subject. In other words, they saw that the responses that Adnan gave.

55:32

And here's what a lot of people on my side saw.

55:38

And I want to point out to folks, too. If you, once it's up and you listen to it, the parallels between the argumentation of Salafi Wahhabi Muslims in defense of the

55:50

Quran and King James only Raqmanists are amazing.

55:56

If you just step back and think about if Sam Gip was a Muslim, he'd be

56:01

Adnan Rashid. And if Adnan Rashid was a fundamentalist Baptist, he'd be Sam Gip. They argue in the exact same way.

56:09

They have a tradition. They have a reading and that's it. And anything else is going to be demonized.

56:15

And that's just how it works. It's amazing to listen to. As we were commenting throughout it in the chat channel, that is exactly the theme everybody just kept pointing out over and over.

56:27

This is like the King James only guys. It's just, we just take the Quran as the standard and everything else just gets demonized and it gets dismissed.

56:36

And the evidence of the other text types gets dismissed. It's exactly what the King James only guys do. Yeah, there's no two ways about it.

56:42

By the way, if you go to livestream .com slash twin home, T -W -Y -N -H -O -L -M, you can watch the debate.

56:47

It's still up. Not all of it. It got started somewhere and it missed it just a little bit at the beginning.

56:53

But you can watch the debate and you can see what I'm talking about. And it's livestream .com

57:02

slash twin home, T -W -Y -N -H -O -L -M. As of today's dividing line, that's where you can view it if you'd like to view it.

57:14

Adnan had a professional video crew there. I saw that camera. It's high end.

57:20

And they had the lights and they had the cameras. And I really hope that Iera...

57:26

Oh yeah, they're going to send us the raw video. I really hope that Iera will put this thing out everywhere.

57:38

Because I'm sure Adnan thinks, oh yeah, we did great. Put it out there. Because see, one of the differences is

57:45

I'm debating for a different group. He's debating for his base and I'm debating for a different group.

57:53

And I think the double standard that I said from the beginning is what you have to look for was illustrated more clearly in that debate and in the one with Sammy than anything else.

58:05

And that's so we accomplished exactly what we wanted to accomplish. And I am so thankful to...

58:10

There are so many people I wish... I don't have time to thank everybody. Doug McMasters and just so many people that...

58:17

Barry and Rich back here. The arrangements of the program were great. So many people to thank that made it possible.

58:23

And especially those of you listening will have more to say about that. Next time on The Dividing Line, next Tuesday. Lord willing, we'll see you then.

58:30

God bless. I stand up for the truth.

59:13

I want to live for the Lord. Because we're pounding on, pounding on, waiting by the door.

59:20

The Dividing Line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries. If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at P .O.

59:28

Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can also find us on the

59:34

World Wide Web at aomin .org. That's A -O -M -I -N .org. Where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.