James White vs. Nadir Ahmed, March 21, 2008 Part 5

What sources would he accept? I did mention the fact that the

New Testament books are written during the time of the lifetime of the eyewitnesses.

Now if those eyewitnesses are traveling, they were, as I would recommend to you, a book that came out last year by a

New Testament scholar by the name of Richard Balcombe, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. It's dry reading, really is.

There's a couple points where I don't know how he stayed awake while writing it, but if you can get through those parts and get to the in -depth stuff, you'll discover that the presence of those eyewitnesses, the evidence that we have of their being in the early church is extremely important.

Where were these people? Why didn't they say anything unless they did say something?

And it's called the New Testament. Because remember, it's only the New Testament that comes from the 1st century. All these other books he's talking about are 2nd century works.

He keeps talking about 1st century, but I would challenge him to actually step up and prove that the sources he's citing are actually 1st century sources, that they actually go back to the 1st century and have any provenance within that context as well.

He did mention the eyewitnesses and he just laughed them off, said, no, you don't have that. Well, it's

Nader Ahmed versus Richard Balcombe and all sorts of other folks. I present it to you. And I say to any

Muslim in the audience, would it be consistent for you to believe what you believe about the companions while at the same time turning around and accusing the original followers of Jesus, of keeping their mouths shut while Paul created a new religion?

I say to you, it is not consistent for you to do that. And I see no evidence whatsoever that Muhammad had that view.

So why would you hold that view? We had the Abynites, the Gnostics, we had the Martianites, they're

Gnostics. I'm not sure if Mr. Ahmed has read much of this material, but Martian was one of the chief

Gnostic heretics, again, around 145, 150. So again, would you as Muslims in the audience accept sources?

Would you accept people who came along long after the time of Muhammad and just simply give credence to their claims to prophethood?

There were people like it. You know, if you know your Islamic history, why do you reject them? And yet then turn around and use that standard in regards to Christianity.

He said that, that I've exposed the stupidity and foolishness of the

Catholic Church by attacking Gnosticism. Well, if describing what people really believe and demonstrating that the

Gnostics, Martian, for example, rejected the Old Testament because he identified

Yahweh as an evil God, the creator of physical earth. Is that who you as a

Muslim want to look to for information about Jesus? Now that's attacking them.

Okay, if you want to use that terminology, that's an accurate description of what they actually believe and the fact that their worldview, their fundamental worldview is absolutely contradictory to what you and I as monotheists believe.

And therefore their writings do not deserve to be given the kind of weight and credibility that you find in the

New Testament Gospels themselves. Take the time to read some of this stuff. Take the time to read the

Gospel of Thomas. Too bad he didn't take some of his time to read you some of the Gospel of Thomas, like the last section where the apostles complained because Mary's there.

And Jesus says, don't worry about Mary. I'll turn her into a male. Now why don't you read that? See if that fits with the, you know, it's real consistent with the

Old and New Testament. Instead, it was said that I tried to scare you.

I tried to encourage you, challenge you to take some time to look into these things and ask yourself a simple question.

What about the consistency between the Old and New Testaments? The New Testament writers know the

Old Testament. Get yourself a Greek New Testament that puts Old Testament citations in bold. You'll see almost every page has

Old Testament citations in it, especially certain sections like Paul's Epistles of Romans. Take a look at the consistency.

Here are people who knew the Old Testament. They drew from the Old Testament. They drew from the fulfilled prophecies of the

Old Testament. And this is all the New Testament writers. All of them. And then compare that with what is presented to us as the next revelation, the final revelation of the

Quran. No citations, no direct references, no intimate knowledge with the preceding books whatsoever.

Why did God break his pattern? It seems very, very clear. Does not the

Quran say, for example, Surah 29, 46, dispute not with the people of the book, save in the fairer manner, except for those of them that do wrong, and say,

We believe what has been sent down to us and what has been sent down to you. What was sent down to you, people of the book?

Al -Kitab? Do we know what was sent down today? Do we know what existed in Muhammad's day that he would have identified as the

Injil? The answer is yes, we do. And so what standards are we being asked to have this evening?

What standards would Mr. Ahmed accept for the apostleship of Paul? And are the same standards that allows him to accept the claim of Muhammad to have been a prophet?

That's one of the questions we address this evening. Thank you. I asked you for some evidence for this man who claimed to be a prophet named

Paul. You said there is a consistency between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Okay, let's see.

You have an Old Testament book over here. I can write a book in about 20 minutes that's consistent with the Old Testament.

Look, that's not evidence, James. My grandma can do that, okay? So I'm going to ask you again for evidence for this man who claims to be a prophet.

And you said, Well, they died for their faith. Why would people have died for their faith? You're quoting the Bible again.

So once again, the Bible is true because the Bible said so. And everyone died for their faith. And basically, the

Bible teaches Jesus died for you, apostles died for you. Everyone's dying in the New Testament. So I'm going to ask you again.

You don't have to prove Paul is a true prophet. Just give me a little bit of evidence. Well, again, as I just pointed out in my response, the standards that are being

I'm doing fine. Thank you. The standards that are being applied here are irrational in a

Christian Islamic debate. I have given you the consistency of the fact that the Apostle Paul had interaction with the disciples of Jesus.

If the Apostle Paul was not what he claimed to be, then we do have evidence that the apostles resisted those who made false claims.

There's a number of references in the historical works. Now, if I'm precluded from quoting the

New Testament, if I'm precluded from making historical reference to the context of the New Testament, then why are we here this evening?

You don't know anything about Paul. If you can't quote the New Testament, you can't quote Matthew, you can't quote

Luke, you can't quote Peter, you can't quote any of these people, then we're not having a meaningful or rational discussion.

But when you allow that material into the discussion, which is much closer to being contemporary than anything you have in the hadith sources, for things that you accept on faith in regards to Muhammad, then it becomes very clear that the

Apostle Paul is accepted by the original disciples as an apostle. Not just as one who is a

Christian or a believer, but he is accepted as an apostle who has authority to teach and preach regarding the death, burial, resurrection of Jesus Christ.

He is given that position of apostleship in the churches, including the same churches where those original apostles themselves minister.

And so I only ask for consistency in what standards you're going to utilize in regards to what is and what is not evidence.

And if you simply dismiss anything that's contemporaneous with Paul, then you're asking for evidence and then banding anything contemporary with him as an answer.