Can We Trust What the New Testament Says about Jesus and the Gospel?

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Defending the Muslim View tonight is Nadir Ahmed. Nadir is the director of Examine the
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Truth, a Muslim apologetics ministry, which focuses on engaging critics of Islam in debate and dialogue.
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Nadir has been in several debates, not only with Christian debaters, such as Sam Shamoon of Answering Islam, but also with atheist debaters, such as Richard Carrier, former president of the
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Secular Web. Nadir is backed by the Islamic Center of Peoria, as well as by several sheikhs, and you can learn more about his work at his website, examinethetruth .com.
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Defending the Christian Position is James White. James is the director of Alpha and Omega Ministries, a
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Christian apologetics organization based in Phoenix, Arizona. James has authored or contributed to more than 20 books, including
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The King James Only Controversy, The Forgotten Trinity, The Potter's Freedom, and The God Who Justifies.
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He has participated in more than 60 moderated public debates, and has taught college -level
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Greek and systematic theology. You can learn more about James' ministry at aomin .org.
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All right, let's go over the format very quickly, and we can get started. Nadir and James will each begin with a 20 -minute opening statement.
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They'll each follow these opening statements with an eight -minute rebuttal. After the rebuttals, we'll have two 15 -minute periods of cross -examination, 15 minutes of Nadir questioning
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James, and 15 minutes of James questioning Nadir. We'll then have a five -minute conclusion from each debater, and we'll follow this with some questions from the audience.
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With that said, please give Nadir your undivided attention, as he argues that we can't trust what the
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New Testament tells us about Jesus and the Gospel. Nadir, you have 20 minutes. All right, well,
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I'd like to thank everybody for coming tonight. Now, I just want the Christians to relax. I am not an executioner here tonight, okay?
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I'm not going to viciously attack the Bible. There you go. I'm just going to ask some very basic, fundamental questions.
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So, usually inside these types of discussions, the issues which are most frequently talked about is how the text of the
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Bible, how the scribes deliberately changed it from generation to generation, and thus it can't be relied upon.
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Now, I believe James, you're going to be having this debate with Dr. Bart Ehrman, and so since he's already got that department, and by the way, he's a
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New Testament scholar, and since he's already got that department taken care of, so I'm going to go ahead and take a different approach to things.
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And just to show you how reasonable I'm going to be, okay, and how sympathetic I'm going to be to the Christian point of view, okay,
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I am going to debate from the premise that the Bible which we have in our hands today has never been changed.
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It is an accurate duplicate of the original documents. Now, you are not going to get a better deal than this, okay?
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So, I don't think a lot of Christians, you know, have debated from that premise. So, anyways, let me start off by saying that the
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New Testament which we have today in our hands, this book was assembled by the early
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Pauline church over a couple of centuries. And the present
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New Testament, it makes three radical claims which it bases its reliability on.
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Number one, it claims to have been written by the disciples of Jesus. Number two, the prophethood of Paul.
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The New Testament actually claims that there was this man who claimed to be a prophet named
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Paul. He saw some revelations of God and thus he was appointed to now deliver the true message of God.
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And number three, the New Testament also makes a claim that the apostles worked with Jesus, or I'm sorry, the apostles worked with Paul and they, you know,
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I guess what I'm saying is the disciples of Jesus verified Paul. That's what the New Testament claims.
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Therefore, when you ask a Christian, why is Paul true, they'll just go to the Bible and tell you because the disciples worked with them.
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Now, these are the three radical claims which the New Testament bases its reliability on. And for each and every one of these claims, there is absolutely no evidence for it.
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These are baseless claims and the only reason why Christians believe it is because the
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Bible teaches it. Now, I also want to make it clear tonight that, you know, what it means by blind faith.
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Blind faith means three things. Number one, there's absolutely no evidence for it.
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Number two, there's absolutely no facts which could at least hint or suggest that maybe the disciples of Jesus actually wrote these things or that Paul was a true apostle.
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And number three, there's not a single good reason why anyone should even entertain the thought that these things are written by the disciples or that Paul was a true prophet or apostle, whichever word you want to use.
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Now, does that mean that James White is just going to come up over here and stare at the wall for 20 minutes? No, he's going to present to you lots of fascinating facts and figures as to why he believes, you know, that the
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New Testament is true. And also, he's going to present to you lots of reasons why he thinks that the
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New Testament is reliable and based on these three truth claims. But for each and every one of these truth claims, what we're going to find out, his reasons aren't going to make a whole lot of sense.
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Okay, so I also want people to understand that the New Testament, which we have in our hands today, you know, it's really not different from most religions in the world today.
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Most religions actually do base their religion on blind faith. For example, if you were to ask a
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Hindu, you're asking, why do you believe that your religion is true? He would say it's based upon blind faith.
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In fact, if you were to even bring up issues of proofs and evidences, that's considered something very offensive.
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Now, some Christians, and also, and I think a lot of Christians will agree with me, I think a lot of Christians will agree that we don't really have any evidence for the
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New Testament. This is something which is mostly based on blind faith, and they see this as a kind of a source of pride.
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So anyways, now some Christians may retort, but we have the writing of the early church fathers.
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And the early church fathers, they were the students of the disciples. But now, here's the problem with that.
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Here's the problem with that. The early church that we're talking about is the
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Pauline church. And the Pauline church is the one where basically all the church fathers accepted him as a true prophet of God.
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Now, the problem is there were other churches. There was the Ebionite church.
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The Ebionite church believed that, basically believed that Jesus, to be
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God, Jesus was not God, and they also believed that Paul was a false apostle.
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And most likely, they also had their own version of the New Testament, and they called it the Gospel of the Ebionites.
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And also, now let's look at another church. There was also the church which is the
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Gnostic church, and they had the Gospel of Thomas. In fact, let me bring a book here real quick.
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In fact, all of this information I've got, all of this information is documented inside Bart Ehrman's book,
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Lost Christianities. So, basically, so all
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I'm going to ask, you don't have to actually prove which church is the true church. All I'm going to ask you to prove tonight or give us a little bit of evidence of why you believe
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Paul to be a true prophet of God or why you believe that the apostles really authored the
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Gospels. So, really, that's all I have tonight, and if you could just provide a little bit of evidence, and then we can go from there.
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So, I'm not going to take the whole 20 minutes. I'm just going to ask you for a little bit of proof to substantiate these claims.
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Go ahead, James. All right,
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James, we'll now have 20 minutes to respond. We don't need to applaud after each time because that'll burn up a little, a few seconds here and there.
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So, we'll have one big round of applause at the end for both of our participants, all right? James? It is an honor to be with you this evening.
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I thank all of you for coming out, especially those of you who have traveled a good distance. I hope that the encounter that you watch this evening and listen to will be a beginning for you.
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Debates are far too short for them to be a finish line, but it is my desire in debates to cause people to hear the issues, especially two issues side by side, where there's interaction.
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And as a result, begin a study on your own. Check out what is being said.
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Don't let what you hear this evening be the last that you examine the presentations that are made this evening.
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Now, I must confess that when the debate topic first began to be discussed and accusations of the corruption of the
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New Testament and things like that were the original background, that I did not expect the presentation that we just had, at least in total.
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As you can see from what is on the screen, I did anticipate some of it because another study would be making reference to Bart Ehrman.
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If those of you don't know who Bart Ehrman is, Bart Ehrman is a former Christian, graduated from Moody Bible Institute in Wheaton College, went to Princeton, and over the issue of suffering lost his faith shortly after graduating from Princeton.
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And he and I will be debating the issue of the textual transmission of the New Testament in January next year in Fort Lauderdale.
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But what was just presented, I have been asked to give some evidence to substantiate something that quite honestly just isn't true.
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There is no such thing as a Pauline church. There never was such thing as a
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Pauline church. The apostles worked as a group. They frequently, as the
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New Testament documents demonstrate, ministered in the same areas, and therefore you had instances where Paul would preach in a place, but Peter likewise would preach in a place.
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And it wasn't just a Pauline church versus some other church. So I'm not going to give you any evidence to back up the idea that was presented, and that is the
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New Testament is the production of what's simply called the Pauline church because it's just not true. What I'd rather present to you is, very, very briefly toward the end of that opening statement,
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Mr. Ahmed made reference, for example, to other churches. I think what he means by that, and I have the book
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Lost Christianities here, is the fact that in much of academia today, as long as anyone mentions
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Jesus, they're called a Christian. So, for example, we had the Gnostic Gospels, and I thought maybe
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Nada was going to read from the Gospel of Thomas or something like that. And so we have the
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Gnostic Gospels being presented to us. And so I'd like to just give you an idea of why
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I find even trying to parallel Gnosticism with the New Testament so problematic.
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We're told there are all sorts of Gospels, that there's the Ebionite Gospel, the Gospel of Thomas, and things like that.
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And there are many Gospels, but when were they written? Who produced them? Did they come from the 1st century context of Jesus?
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The Gospel of Thomas, for example, is one that has Valentinian Gnosticism within its pages.
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Valentinianism did not flourish until the middle of the 2nd century in Rome. It does not represent what's going on in 1st century
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Jerusalem. The Ebionite Gospel in the same way. Does this come from the milieu of the
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New Testament, the same time period as the New Testament? How many of these alleged Gospels have a worldview that's consistent with that which
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Jesus would have had as a 1st century Palestinian Jew? Almost none of them. Nag Hammadi, any of those places, actually would be relevant to the 1st century context that we have for the
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Lord Jesus Christ. We are told, for example, that early Christianity was splintered just because one stream,
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I guess it's going to be called the Pauline Stream 1, means nothing, the implication being that one dominant group is better,
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God would never allow the splintered ascension. But this wasn't even the case during the days of Jesus. Not only were there different groups of Jews, we know the
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Pharisees, Sadducees, the Essenes, etc. But even during the days of Jesus and the
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Apostles themselves, there were many divisions that took place, just as there are many divisions amongst many religions to this very day.
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That hardly is relevant to the idea of establishment of the truth. But notice, Gnostic Gospels, Gnostic texts,
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Nag Hammadi, Gospel of Thomas, I wrote this before the presentation. What are some of the general
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Gnostic beliefs that would make these either relevant or irrelevant to us?
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And especially to my Muslim friends today, if you're going to look at these things as if they are relevant to the subject of the
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New Testament, may I simply ask you, we're all monotheists. We believe God is the creator of heaven and earth.
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The Gnostics did not believe that. In fact, they believed that any creator of the heaven and earth would have to be evil.
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They would have to identify Allah, or Yahweh, as an evil God, as most of the
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Gnostic groups did. And this is where they're coming from. This somehow has something to do with the reliability of the
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New Testament. I can't possibly see how. They violated monotheism. They were dualists, meaning they felt that the physical universe was evil, and that which was spiritual was good.
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These are the same places where you get the stories about Jesus not dying on a cross, because if Jesus was truly good, how could he die upon a cross?
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Because he didn't have a physical body. You see, Muslims and Christians together agreed Jesus had a physical body.
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The Gnostics said no, because they're philosophical dualists. A completely different worldview than that which
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Muslims and Christians would have in regards to creation. They called God a demiurge, a lesser divine being if he created this world, and of course they had a denigration of the physical world, marriage, creation.
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Completely different perspective than what we have in the Old and New Testaments. Now, I think we could all agree.
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Could we not? And I am this evening debating in the context of Christians and Muslims. If you're a secularist,
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I would have a different presentation for you, because we have a different presuppositional issue that we need to deal with.
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But if you're here this evening as a Christian, or you're here this evening as a Muslim, then we have certain things we share together in our worldview.
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And you have a holy book that talks about the books that were sent down before.
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And you are called to believe in the books that were sent down before. They're called the Torah and the Injil. Now, if in A .D.
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620 -ish or so, you could have a command from Muhammad to believe in the books that had been sent down before, what books are we talking about?
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Can we identify them? Can you as a Muslim continue to obey the command that you find in Surah 2 of Al -Baqarah?
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You find it in Surah 4. Can you continue to believe that? And is there a consistent basis upon which a
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Muslim would deny the inspiration of the text of the New Testament? For example,
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Mr. Achmed has said, well, where's the evidence that Paul was a prophet? Well, he didn't really use that specific terminology.
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The normal term we use is not so much razul as it is an apostle of Jesus Christ. Well, isn't it interesting that those who were apostles of Jesus Christ, and since they are mentioned in the
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Quran, they had to have existed, yes? Where's the evidence that they ever opposed Paul?
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Where is the evidence that they fought against this Pauline Christianity? Where are their books?
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Are we going to actually try to call the Ebionites the original followers of Jesus? Are we going to try to make that kind of historical connection somehow?
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Where is the evidence that these apostles, and obviously, from an
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Islamic perspective, you have to believe that the next generation can be faithful to the original generation, because you believe that the
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Qura and those who were the first generation of Muslims were faithful to the message of Muhammad. Upon what basis would you ever believe that the first generation of Christians were unfaithful to the message of Jesus?
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I mean, let's just be fair. If we're going to evaluate things fairly, then that's what we need to do. The New Testament is very honest in revealing for us the apostle
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Paul was a persecutor of the Christians. The New Testament is very honest in reporting for us, not in Paul's writings, but in Luke's writings, that the early believers were afraid of Paul when he had his conversion experience.
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They didn't even want to meet with him. They hid from him. Years later, he speaks about his sorrow at having caused the death of his fellow believers.
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Now, those are things that I think most people would have tried to gloss over if they were trying to create their own religion, don't you think?
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The apostle Paul was open about these things because he was a trophy of grace. He had been changed. He had been converted. So you have him then meeting with Peter, with James.
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You have constant communication between the churches. You don't have
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Paul churches and Peter churches. Now, do you have conflicts between those in Jerusalem and those outside of Jerusalem?
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You do. But that's because that's an issue of Judaism and some people thinking everyone has to become a
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Jew before they can become a Christian. That wasn't just a difference. That had nothing to do about who Jesus was.
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It had nothing to do with the cross. It had nothing to do with resurrection in any way, shape, or form. And so, when you say, what's the evidence that Paul was an apostle?
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It's the entire early church. There is no evidence to counterman his claims.
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Instead, you have the epistles of Peter recognizing his words of scripture. And the only way you can get around that is to buy into the liberal perspective and say, well,
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Peter didn't write that. And, well, and then we've got this, or, well, Paul didn't write that, or Luke didn't write that, or, you know, whatever evidence you want to present, you'll find somebody to say, well, he didn't write that.
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And then when you start digging into it, well, why do you feel he did not write that? The real issue,
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I think, this evening for us is are we going to be consistent as Christians and Muslims?
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If you believe in the books, plural, the books that were netzal, set down, then that means, even from the
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Islamic perspective, that in the first century, there was an act of revelation. A book was set down that was light and guidance, and people are called to believe in what's in those books.
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And if this evening, Mr. Achmed said, well, you know what? What we have today is what was originally written down.
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Well, then why don't you believe it? You have to come up with the assertion it's been changed.
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You have to come up with the argumentation it's been changed, even though that was not the original argumentation of the first generation of Islamic apologists and interpreters.
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That accusation of the corruption of the New Testament, the actual text of the New Testament, comes long after the original establishment of the
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Islamic faith. And so, since Muslims and Christians together believe that God has made revelation, the
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Quran talks about the taraf, talks about the Injil, then the question that we have to ask is, upon what consistent basis would a person reject that the followers of Jesus wrote books?
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Peter did, Mark did, John did. And that in those early years, there were converts who likewise were used of God to bring guidance to the
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Church in the form of Scripture, such as the Apostle Paul. We would expect that if that were not the case, that we would have lots of books from those brave first followers of Jesus.
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Unless we're going to assume that Jesus picked really bad people, people who were just going to be unfaithful to his message, then we would expect that those first followers would react strongly against any corruption coming from the
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Apostle Paul. But that's not what we have. And in point of fact, what we see is that what
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Paul preaches, what Paul teaches, is perfectly consistent with the Gospel. The writer is perfectly consistent with that message from the most primitive periods of time in the
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New Testament. Indeed, when the Apostle Paul records for us the tradition that was handed on to him in 1
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Corinthians 15, he received what had been handed on to him how that Jesus Christ died for our sins according to the
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Scriptures. And he was buried, and he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. He was seen and mourned 500 brethren. This was an ancient tradition that preceded him.
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He himself had received this, and this is what joined all of these churches together with their common confession of faith in Jesus Christ as the
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Son of God, the crucified and risen Messiah. The Apostle Paul did not invent this.
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He did not create this. And the only way to make that kind of assertion is to in essence have to try to argue the total corruption of the text or to assert the
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Apostle Paul just made these things up out of old cloth during the lifetime of the eyewitnesses.
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And they never said a word. You would in essence have to accuse the entire first generations of Christians of real
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Christians, real followers of Jesus the ones mentioned in the Quran you would have to accuse them of abject cowards.
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Upon what evidence? Upon what basis? If we believe that the
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Old Testament was sent down then does it not make sense that when the Messiah himself comes that there's going to be explication of his mission and his purpose?
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I know that it is very, very common for Muslims to believe that Jesus was only sent to the
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Jews. They quote one little text out of Matthew and Mark where Jesus talks about being sent to the lost house the sheep of the lost house of Israel.
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They don't recognize that the rest of that gospel expands that out after the crucifixion to the entirety of the world.
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And so if that is the case if that's the understanding then would not these churches especially the churches that come into existence outside of Palestine need direct teaching and guidance and who better to provide it than one who knows the
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Old Testament scripture so well and who is then able to teach in a language that people can understand what the message of Jesus truly is.
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And so we have been asked three things. The disciples of Jesus, the prophethood of Paul whatever that means
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I would assume that means his conversion and his calling as apostleship and that the disciples verified
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Paul as an apostle. If we believe anything that Luke has to say if we believe anything that Peter has to say if we believe anything that John has to say the fact of the matter is that Paul has interaction with discussion with these leaders.
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He is given the right hand of fellowship to go to the Gentiles. Peter says he goes to the Jews and that's exactly what they do.
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And that's the origination of the Pauline corpus but not the entirety of the
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New Testament. And it's not the creation of a Pauline church or anything else.
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The quote unquote Pauline church is just nothing more than the New Testament church that is consistent with the
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Old Testament teaching that there is one true God who created all things. All these other alleged gospels, sources, groups and everything else violate the
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Old Testament norms. They violate the Old Testament teaching. They could not have come out of first -century
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Palestine. They could not have come out of that Jewish context in any way, shape or form. And therefore they are not relevant to our discussion this evening.
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Now, Mr. Achmed referred to blind faith. Well, if what you mean by blind faith is believing without evidence that simply isn't the case.
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The New Testament gives us plenty of evidence. Gives us plenty to work on. If by blind faith you mean there are certain theological presuppositions underlying theism that are absolute in their meaning and cannot refer to something else to prove them then, well, every theist and every atheist has those presuppositional foundations in their thought.
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But it is not blind faith to believe the consistency of the New Testament. That's what the evidence points you to.
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It is only when we start taking sources that existed, that came into existence hundreds of years after the time of Christ and begin to use that as the lens through which we look back that's when we have problems.
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Back in May of 2006 I debated a man by the name of Shabir Ali at Biola University.
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And I asked Mr. Ali, can you tell us how we can identify what in the
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New Testament is still inspired and what isn't? And he gave a consistent answer for a
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Muslim. He said, well, that which agrees that the Quran is inspired and that which doesn't isn't.
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Well, that's very convenient to look back upon the New Testament through that lens, to look back upon something over the course of 600 years and use as your ultimate basis a text that was written by someone who did not have access to the
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New Testament's original language, did not have access to the Old Testament in its original language, did not have access to either of them in his own language allegedly, if he was illiterate.
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So he's writing in a different language at a different time without knowledge of the originals. How can that then become the standard by which the
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New Testament is to be analyzed? How can that become the standard without in fact engaging in true blind faith in the inspiration of that later standard?
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Logically, folks, logically. If the claim of the Quran is to be a continuation that you have one
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God who has spoken and Muhammad speaks in line with him shouldn't it be the other direction?
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Shouldn't we be able to see a consistency in the message of the Quran with that which we see in the
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Old Testament and the New Testament? If we don't see that, is that the problem of the
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New Testament? Or is that the problem of the Quran? Logically, I would suggest to you he who comes 600 years later needs to be able to build his case very, very strongly.
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Thank you very much for your time. Don't go overboard.
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Now each of our participants will have an 8 minute rebuttal. So 8 minutes, 8 minutes, and then we'll have a 5 minute break.
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So I guess to put it in a nutshell, Paul is a true prophet because the Bible said so.
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The New Testament said it, there you go. See, therefore he's a true prophet. So what makes the
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New Testament true? Because the Church said so. So all he's doing is he's playing hot potato with the proof.
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You ask, why is Paul a true prophet? Well, he takes the burden of proof and he shoves it over to the
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New Testament. What makes the New Testament true? Well then he takes the burden of proof and then he tosses it over to the
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Church Fathers. Well what makes them true? He brings it right back to the New Testament. So this is circular reasoning.
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He has not presented a single good reason of why anybody should even believe in the
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New Testament. Now let's talk about the Church Fathers. Yes, they are all Pauline Church Fathers.
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Why do I say you just pray? Because all the people who selected the
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New Testament they all were followers of the Apostle Paul. Is this a true or false statement?
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That is a true statement. So that's why we call it the Pauline Church. So he hasn't shown any reason as to why anybody should even believe in this
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Church. So anyways, he said that it was consistent with what Paul taught it was consistent with the
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Apostles. Now I don't even have to respond to this. What is he doing? What Apostle is he talking about?
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He's talking about the New Testament again. So this is what I told you. The vast majority of Christians when you really ask them why is the
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Bible true? The Bible is true because the Bible said so. And because the Bible said so it's true. And all he's doing is giving us an intellectual version of the same argument.
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But you did not show a single shred of evidence as to why the disciples authored those
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New Testament books. He gave you no evidence at all. All he did was attack the Gnostic Church and we'll get to that in just a second.
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And also he gave us no evidence of why this man claimed to be evidence why
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Paul is a true prophet. I mean come on, give me a break here. Some guy just gets up and says oh
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I've seen visions of Jesus and in these visions he appointed me to become a true prophet and here's a true message of God.
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Now does this story sound familiar to you? All you have to do is go to the
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Religious Studies department here in Old Dominion and you get the Religious Studies textbook. You ever wonder why that textbook is so thick?
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Because of people like Paul. Because of people claiming to be prophets of God. And so I hope at least by tonight's debate at least this will kind of be a domino effect where all people can challenge their false prophets.
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The Mormons can challenge their false prophet, Joseph Smith. The Baha 'is can challenge their false prophets.
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So you have produced absolutely no evidence for this man who claims to be a prophet
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Paul. But what about Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him? Well, I believe I was here two years ago, right?
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And I openly challenge the Christians to debate me on the archaeological prophetic and scientific evidence proving that Muhammad is a true prophet.
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But no Christian today has accepted that challenge. So anyways, he said basically, let's see what else reasoning he gave.
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He said that we have to look at the lifetime of the eyewitnesses and what they have to say.
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You don't have that. Where is that? Did he give you any evidence that they have actually the eyewitness accounts?
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He just affirmed it and said it so confidently. But now here's the problem. The Gospels claim that they had apostolic authority going all the way back to Peter and James.
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The Gnostic Church also claimed that they had apostolic authority. And we have several
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Gospels like the Gospel of Peter and the Gospel of Judas. And the Gospel of Peter claims to have been written by Peter himself.
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But he attacks the Gnostic Church. Well, we can attack your church too. You see, the type of scrutiny that you give these other churches when you do that, all of a sudden that scrutiny comes back on your church.
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You see, the thing is this. If you are telling us that the early Christians were so stupid that they believed in all of these books which came just 200 years after Jesus and they were so credulous and foolish, then what makes your church fathers so brilliant?
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So by your own argument, by attacking the other churches, you should not have done that tonight because you exposed the stupidity and foolishness of the early church fathers.
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And so from this era, we have so many churches, the Gnostic Church, we have the
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Marcionic Church, we have the Abionite Church, which testified that this man is a false prophet named
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Paul. He did not show any evidence as to why this man is a true prophet. Rather, he tried to scare us tonight.
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He tried to scare us that if you challenge this man Paul as being a false prophet, then, you know, you'll have to accuse everybody of the first century of being cowards.
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No, you are doing that. You are calling every single church in the first century liars, deceivers, charlatans, and I didn't do that, you did, because you automatically do that when you attack these other churches.
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So again, I'm going to have to ask you for the evidence that this man Paul was a true prophet. And you have to show evidence that these books that you have in the
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Gospels, these were really written by the people who it claims to have been written. And please don't play hot potato with the proof.
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Don't come up here and say, the New Testament is true because the early church fathers authenticated it. So when he does that, he's taking the burden of proof, and he's just passing it to his team player, the church fathers.
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So when I turn my attention to the church fathers, what makes them true? He takes the burden of proof and he passes it to the disciples.
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Because the disciples of Jesus said that they were his students. Okay, where's your proof for that? Then he goes right back to the
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New Testament. So a lot of Christians will play these type of games because they're hoping that you get tired of asking these type of questions.
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So really, my argument stands, I didn't even need 20 minutes.
35:33
What am I going to really say up here? There is absolutely not a single shred of evidence for the
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New Testament. There's not even a good reason why you could even entertain the thought that maybe, maybe these books could have been true.
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So you've got to come up here and you've got to show us some evidence. Because remember, I'm not an executioner tonight.
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I'm not attacking your Bible. If someone comes and asks you, please give us just a little bit of evidence. That is not a bad thing to ask.
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You don't have to prove that your church, the Pauline church, is a true church. You don't have to prove that.
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You don't have to prove that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, these were really the authors of those books.
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And the epistle of Peter, those were really who really wrote that. You don't have to prove anything.
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God, I made this so pathetically easy for you. All you've got to do is come up here and show us just a little bit of evidence for this.
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Just a little bit. So, he talked about the Quran. He said, the Quran, you see, why should you use the
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Quran as a standard? Because of the scientific, prophetic, and archaeological evidence which we have substantiating that Prophet Muhammad is a true prophet.
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So, we have a situation where you have absolutely no evidence. Did he show any prophecies being fulfilled from the
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New Testament? Did he show any archaeology being fulfilled from the New Testament? He showed you absolutely nothing.
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So, anyway, when we get to our cross -examination period, I think this point is going to be very clear.
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Now, he talked about that you see, nobody in the first generation believed in the corruption of the
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New Testament. That's not true. You just go to the Quran chapter 5, starting with verse 110.
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I think my time is up. And from 110 to 115, it clearly talks about the corruption of the
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New Testament and how the Christians, they are hiding scriptures from us. Okay, that's the allegation what the
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Quran makes. Anyways, my time is up. Well, I am disappointed that my presentation was not listened to very closely because I did really respond to every question that was asked.
37:51
It's just that Mr. Achmed does not accept what it is I have to say. I did not say that Paul is a prophet because the
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Bible says so. I am not sure what standard of evidence Mr. Achmed would like. Evidently, he believes that Muhammad is a prophet based on some type of scientific interpretation.
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So, the people who interpret science differently than him don't need to believe that Muhammad is a prophet, right? And prophecies.
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Well, there's all sorts of prophecies fulfilled in the New Testament. That wasn't the issue this evening. The issue was not, can
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God give prophetic information about the future? Now, I would be happy to respond to any alleged prophecies about Muhammad, but that's not the subject this evening either.
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I believe that those can be very easily refuted. I was asked, were all the early church fathers, did anyone hear me talking about the early church fathers?
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I actually hadn't gone there. I mean, I think that's an excellent point to bring out, is that there were many, many, many people who were willing to die for their faith, and who continued across a wide spectrum of time to believe the things that were taught by the original apostles.
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I think that's an important thing, but I didn't go to them and say, ah, there's your proof. It's one of many things a person would go to to be able to demonstrate the consistency of the
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New Testament text itself. But I was asked, were they all followers of the apostle Paul? They were all followers of Jesus Christ, and since they all accepted
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Paul as an apostle, along with Peter and Luke and everybody else, well, of course they were. Upon what basis, then, do you then reject the apostleship of Paul just because Christians believed that?
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I mean, the promise of the Koran, is it not that the followers of Jesus would be victorious until the day of resurrection? What happened to them?
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Why didn't they refute Paul? If Paul was this terrible creator of shirt, that created a whole new religion, where were these people?
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If you're going to claim they were Ebionites, then grab the Ebionites. Let's start looking at the Ebionites. If you claim they were the Gnostics, did we not look at the
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Gnostics? Do you really believe that people who think Allah is an evil demi -urge are the people we should be looking to as the true followers of Jesus?
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That's amazing to me. What sources would he accept? I did mention the fact that the
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New Testament books are written during the time of the lifetime of the eyewitnesses.
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Now, if those eyewitnesses are traveling, they were as I would recommend to you, a book that came out last year by a
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New Testament scholar by the name of Richard Baucom, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. It's dry reading. It really is.
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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.
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Where were these people? Why didn't they say anything unless they did say something?
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And it's called the New Testament. Because remember, it's only the New Testament that comes in the 1st century. All these other books he's talking about are 2nd century works.
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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.
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That they actually go back to the 1st century and have any provenance within that context as well. Um, he did mention the eyewitnesses, and he just laughed them off.
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Said, no, you don't have that. Well, it's Nader Ahmed versus Richard Baucom and all sorts of other folks.
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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?
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I say to you, it is not consistent for you to do that. And I see no evidence whatsoever that Muhammad had that view.
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So why would you hold that view? We had the Ebionites and Gnostics. We had the Martianites. They're Gnostics.
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I'm not sure if Mr. Ahmed has read much of this material. But Martian was one of the chief
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Gnostic heretics, again, around 145 -150. So again, would you as Muslims in the audience accept sources?
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Would you accept people who came along long after the time of Muhammad and just simply give credence to their claims to prophethood?
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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.
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He said that, that I've exposed the stupidity and foolishness of the
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Catholic Church by attacking Gnosticism. Well, if describing what people really believe and demonstrating that the
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Gnostics, Martian, for example, rejected the Old Testament because he identified
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Yahweh as an evil god, the creator of physical earth. Is that who you as a
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Muslim want to look to for information about Jesus? Now if 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 world view, their fundamental world view is absolutely contradictory to what you and I as monotheists believe.
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And therefore their writings do not deserve to be given the kind of weight and credibility that you find in the
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New Testament Gospels themselves. Take the time to read some of this stuff. Take the time to read the
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Gospel of Thomas. Too bad it didn't take some of his time to read you some of the Gospel of Thomas. Like the last section where the apostles complain because Mary's there and Jesus says, don't worry about Mary, I'll turn her into a male.
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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.
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I tried to encourage you, challenge you, take some time to look into these things.
43:44
And ask yourself a simple question. What about the consistency between the
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Old and the New Testaments? The New Testament writers know the Old Testament. Get yourself a Greek New Testament that puts
43:55
Old Testament citations in bold. You'll see almost every page has Old Testament citations in it, especially certain sections like Paul's Epistle to Romans.
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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
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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
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Quran. No citations. No direct references. No intimate knowledge with the preceding books whatsoever.
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Why did God break His pattern? Seems very, very clear. Does not the
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Quran say, for example, Surah 29, verse 46, Dispute not with the people of the book, save in the fairer manner, except for those of them that do wrong, and say,
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We believe in 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?
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Al -Kitab? Do we know what was sent down to them? Do we know what existed in Muhammad's day that he would have identified as the
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Injil? The answer is yes, we do. And so, what standards are we being asked to have this evening?
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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?
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That's one of the questions we address this evening. Thank you. We'll continue this debate in the final.
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It's going to get very interesting from here on out. What we're passing around, hopefully we'll get to you some point soon, are little questionnaires, not to be filled out just yet, towards the end of the debate, maybe during the question and answer session.
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Please take the time to fill that out. That will help us understand, not only what your perceptions of this debate are, but also what we can do in the future to make a more equal debate, or a more appropriate debate to your needs.
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So please fill that out. And also, let us know exactly what you think about this debate, how you would score it, etc.,
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if you can. In addition, this whole evening has been provided free of charge to the public.
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We wanted everyone to attend. We didn't want anyone to be hindered by a lack of funds.
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But all of our expenses have come out of pocket. So, we would appreciate it if you had the desire to help out with some of the expenditures.
46:38
Some people will be passing by boxes if you would like to contribute to this, and that will help make the next event a little bit better as well.
46:46
So, again, these expenditures are just going to pay for the cameras, the DVDs that will hopefully be made after this, so that we can sell them at a reduced price, or even free if we can.
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And we'll also be taking care of some of the expenditures we paid for the speakers to come out tonight, and for the next two days.
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So, with that in mind, I'm going to reintroduce David Wood, and we're going to start the crossfire.
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Just a word about the collections. There's a distinction between people who have jobs and money and those who don't.
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If you have jobs and money, put in like $10 and so on. These people are college students.
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Just don't say the N -W -O. Laughter. A pack of ramen noodles in there.
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A couple of subway coupons. Something like that. Alright, well, we're going to have two periods of 15 minutes.
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Questions from one another. The person asking the question, which for the first 15 minutes will be
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Nadir, will have one minute to ask the question, and James will then have two minutes to answer the question.
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And again, we'll have a total of 15 minutes. Can I get a mic check from both of you guys?
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Can I get a mic check? We're good. Nadir? Is it turned on?
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Verizon is fired. Verizon is fired. Is there a green light on?
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Do we have a handout? No, but I heard you. Remember when he was clipping on your shirt?
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Check, check, check. You got my sound?
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Let me ask you a quick question. Your sound is okay, right? Oh, okay, cool.
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Alright, so should we begin? I go one minute? Yeah, one minute. I asked you for some evidence for this man who claimed to be a prophet named
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Paul. He said, there's a consistency between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Okay, let's see.
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You have an Old Testament book over here. I can write a book in about 20 minutes that's consistent with the Old Testament.
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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.
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And you said, well, they died for their faith. Why would people die for their faith? You're quoting the Bible again.
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So, once again, the Bible is true because the Bible said so. And everyone died for their faith. The Bible teaches
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Jesus died for you. Apostles died for you. Everyone's dying in the New Testament. So, I'm going to ask you again.
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You don't have to prove Paul is a true prophet. Just give me a little bit of evidence.
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Well, again, as I just pointed out in my response, the standards that are being...
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I'm doing fine, thank you. The standards that are being applied here are irrational in a
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Christian -Islamic debate. I have given you the consistency of the fact that the Apostle Paul had interaction with the disciples of Jesus.
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If the Apostle Paul was not what he claimed to be, then we do have evidence that the
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Apostles resisted those who made false claims. There's a number of references in the historical works.
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Now, if I'm precluded from quoting the New Testament, if I'm precluded from making historical reference to the context of the
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New Testament, then why are we here this evening? You don't know anything about Paul. If you can't quote the
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New Testament, if you can't quote Matthew, you can't quote Luke, you can't quote Peter, if you can't quote any of these people, then we're not having a meaningful or rational discussion.
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But when you allow that material into the discussion, which is much closer to being contemporary than anything you have in the
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Hadith sources, for things that you accept on faith in regards to Muhammad, then it becomes very clear that the
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Apostle Paul is accepted by the original disciples as an Apostle. Not just as one who is a
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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.
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He is given that position of Apostleship in the churches, including the same churches where those original
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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.
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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.
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Alright, next question. Alright. First of all, you said because the disciples of Jesus said he was the true prophet.
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I already told you that this fraud and this deception of penning books and claiming them to be written by the disciples, this was pretty common, okay?
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We have so many books, the Eponite Church, and we have the Gospel of Peter, which claims to have been written by Peter themselves.
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But you reject these books as frauds. You say that these people are lying and deceiving when they claim to be, when these books claim to be written by the disciples.
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So, in the midst of all this fraud and deception, according to what you're saying, and this fraud is claiming, they're writing
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Gospels and claiming it's from Jesus. You can quote the Bible all you want. I don't have a problem with that.
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I dismiss nothing. The only thing I'm asking for is evidence. I'm not dismissing anything.
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Hadith, we'll get into that later. This is not the topic. You can use your Gospel as a historical reference, no problem.
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But if you're going to use a Bible, start showing some evidence for that. What you're doing, you're basically taking the burden of proof and you're passing it to the
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Bible. Where's your evidence for Paul? Yeah, Nadir. Oh, just for clarification, this is more of a
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Q &A than a crossfire. You did throw in a question at the end. Well, again, in trying to follow the rules of the debate, where you ask a question and I give as clear an answer as I can, we do not have any first century.
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None of these books that Nadir has mentioned have a first century provenance. That is, they do not come from the time of the apostles.
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They do not come from the first century Jewish context. They come from very different types of contexts, especially name one.
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Any of these show clear evidences of coming from the second century, not the first century.
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And they do not come from the time period where the Quran itself makes reference to the disciples and says that a book was sent down that Muslims are to believe.
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Where is that book? Evidently God let it be completely destroyed. Gone. No evidence of it left anywhere.
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I don't know why anybody would believe that. But again, if we use meaningful standards, then we look at the historical situation.
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We see that historically the apostle Paul is accepted by the other apostles, that he labors side by side with them, that they are preaching the same gospel.
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If you will compare, for example, the sermons of Peter recorded in Luke with those of Paul recorded in Luke, guess what?
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They're using the same Old Testament passages. They see the same fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. They are proclaiming the same death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
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Now was Peter then somehow corrupted? Was Peter not one of the apostles of Jesus that the
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Quran says would be victorious until the Day of Judgment? That becomes the question. And so once again,
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I just have to turn back to Mr. Achmed and say what standard do you want to use that you'll be consistent in using for yourself?
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If we read the New Testament, the standard becomes very clear that Paul was consistent in claiming apostleship.
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Okay. Sorry about that. Alright. I think, you know, I'm not going to I'm not going to force you to answer my questions, okay?
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Basically, he's playing hot potato with the proof. I ask him, where's your evidence for Paul? Because the disciples of Jesus said so.
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Okay, where's your evidence for that? Well, you know, Nadir, you're being a jerk about asking these kind of things. I'm just paraphrasing him.
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I think, on this point, the debate is over. There's not a single shred of evidence for this man who claims to be a prophet named
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Paul. Now, since you don't have any evidence for this man, I challenge you tonight, just give us one good reason why anyone should even believe in this person.
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The thing about the Quran, ask me about that when you get up, and I'll answer that. And you talked about first century versus second century.
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Again, that's nonsense, because people can be just as big of liars 60 years after Jesus, as well as 150 years after Jesus.
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This is called argumentum ad antiquitum. You have not shown a single shred of evidence for this man,
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Paul. I challenge you again for the last time, where's the evidence that he's a prophet? I'm not sure where the question was in all that.
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That's obviously a rebuttal, but I will try to follow the debate. It's okay if you want to respond, but maybe say 30 seconds on the response and then move into the question.
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And no more interruptions from the audience. In between. Say something.
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I guess I'm given two minutes to continue to explain all the further evidence. For example, when
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I just said that the books that he had mentioned, such as Heavy Night Gospel, the Gospel of Thomas, and things like that are not first century works.
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They're not. I can't even begin to comprehend the response that was just given to this. You can determine when books were written by looking at the language they used.
56:45
When the Gospel of Thomas uses Valentinian Gnosticism, and we know Valentinus does not flourish until about 145, that probably means it was written after him.
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And so we're able to look at these books and see that those that are suggested to us as having some relevance in the
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Testament come from a later time period. They do not come from the time period that would have been that of the
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Apostles themselves. And so once again, to the Muslim who is thinking this evening, and the
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Christian who is thinking this evening, upon what consistent basis do you simply reject and say, there's no evidence there, there's no evidence there, that's just Paul speaking, or that's just the
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New Testament. On what evidence do you do that? If you were to apply the same standards for those of you
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Muslims who know your own history, would you not have to reject the entire foundation of every one of your chains of narration that creates your hadith?
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How do you know for example that Uthman did what Uthman said he would have done in Sahih al -Bukhari?
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How do you know anything about Muhammad at all? If you have to apply different standards to your history, and then you're willing to apply completely secular standards,
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I would say outrageously ridiculous standards, to mine, doesn't that tell you something? I purposely, as I study
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Islam, attempt to be consistent in the standards that I apply to the Quran and those that I apply to the
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New Testament. I don't think that we're seeing that from both sides of the sea. I'm not applying to a double standard here,
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James. Come on, you've got to quit saying that. All I'm asking you is just for a little bit of evidence, just a little bit of evidence,
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I'm not holding any kind of double standard. We talked about Valentinus and how they came later.
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Look, attacking the other Christians and the other churches, that doesn't prove Paul. That this man is really a prophet.
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See, this is the problem. The problem which we find in world religions is exactly this.
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We get people coming up claiming to be prophets. Hey, you know, I saw God in a vision. And here's the book which
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He wants you all to follow. This is a fundamental problem which we see in so many religions, and that's why that religious studies textbook is so thick.
58:58
Okay, now, so basically, if there's no evidence of Paul, or else we would have heard it tonight, where's your evidence that the
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Church Fathers were the disciples, I'm sorry, were the students of the disciples? Where's the evidence for that?
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Well, when I make those kind of claims, I'll be happy to back them up. No one here this evening has heard me say that the early
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Church Fathers, because they were disciples of the disciples themselves, that somehow gives them a special authority.
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I think you can come up with some very interesting things in looking at Ignatius and looking at Clement. All those things are very important, and we could go into them, but to be honest with you,
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I think they would simply be rejected this evening, out of hand, without any explanation as to why they are being rejected out of hand completely.
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And of course, this entire, if it even is a question, is based upon the assertion that I have given no evidence for the
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Apostle Paul. Repeating a statement many times is not the same as actually demonstrating the statement.
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And if I might add just another, for those who are listening, Christians and Muslims, to the evidence that I have given,
01:00:02
I'd like to consider the scandal of the cross that the Apostle Paul is so well known for. To even mention the cross in the ancient world was scandalous.
01:00:10
There were some writers who wouldn't even mention it because it was such a horrible way to die. Think with me for just a moment the foolishness of the
01:00:17
Apostle Paul, from a worldly perspective, to try to start his own religion on the basis of a crucified
01:00:23
Messiah from Palestine. That doesn't sell real well in Rome. That doesn't go over real well in Corinth, where the wisdom of the world is what people want to hear.
01:00:33
And to preach the resurrection, he was mocked for preaching that on Mars Hill, and yet he continued to consistently do so.
01:00:40
Why? Because Jesus Christ had appeared to him on the roads to Damascus. And because he was willing to risk his life, as was
01:00:48
Peter and John and Mark and Luke, and they all preached the same message. That's the message that is contained consistently in the pages of the
01:00:56
New Testament, and that's the message that has come down to us, and that's the message that's found in the New Testament sitting outside the door room of this room.
01:01:03
And I invite you to make sure to take a look at what it says. Alright, you're saying that if you quote the
01:01:12
Church Fathers I'm just going to reject it. I'm not rejecting anything. I'm actually accepting all the testimony, but I'm looking at the full picture here.
01:01:20
You see, they sold this type of fraud and deception about penning books with your own hand and claiming that they are from the disciples of Jesus.
01:01:28
You know as well as I do, this was a common practice back then. So in the midst of all this fraud and deception, asking for a little bit of evidence isn't exactly a bad thing.
01:01:38
I told you I'm not an executioner here tonight. I'm just going to ask some very basic questions. Okay, pretty much what you did was you were just kind of preaching to us and hoping that, you know, if you can, maybe it will create a warm fuzzy feeling for this man who claimed to be a prophet named
01:01:52
Paul and maybe people will start believing in him. That's not going to work tonight. Okay, so okay, there's no evidence for Church Fathers being the students of the disciples of Jesus or else we would have heard it.
01:02:02
Now, I ask you right now, where is the evidence that the Gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, James, and etc.
01:02:08
Go ahead, where is the evidence for that? Actually, what you heard me say in the last response was that the entire premise of the preceding question was false and therefore to ask questions based upon false premises is not to engage in honest discussion.
01:02:24
One could very easily demonstrate from the early Church Fathers, from Clement, from Ignatius of Rome, the early existence of not only the
01:02:33
Pauline writings, Clement, for example, writing around A .D. 95, is soaked in Paul's language, whereas Ignatius is soaked in the language of the
01:02:42
Apostle John. And these are individuals, Ignatius is an individual who lives, again, contemporaneous with eyewitnesses, knows the disciples, and does give us that traditional evidence in regards to the
01:02:57
Gospels themselves. However, the Gospels, I know your Bible may say, the Gospel according to, but that's not a part of the original manuscripts.
01:03:06
The idea that, well, this name, you have to defend this name, or you're, you can't believe that this book was inspired, and like that.
01:03:14
There's all sorts of books in the Old Testament that there's no name attached to at all. The very idea that you have to have that kind of specificity is something that Christians have never believed, and reject as a foreign standard to be placed upon it.
01:03:27
What we can tell you is that those Gospels are known from the earliest writings that appear in Christian history, and I will point out to you that those early
01:03:37
Christian writings appear far earlier than any Islamic writings in regards to the history of Muhammad.
01:03:44
And so again, if you're going to be consistent, if you're going to use the same standards, and you're going to reject what we find in Ignatius, or Clement, or Polycarp, then do you apply the same standards in regards to the sources of your own
01:03:59
Islamic history? That becomes the question, and that's why I invite the thinking Muslim here this evening to really give some consideration.
01:04:08
All right, that wraps up the first 15 -minute session. Now we're going to switch roles. James is going to ask questions of Nadir.
01:04:14
So James, you'll have one minute to ask a question, and Nadir, you'll have two minutes to respond. Mr. Ahmed, we are told in Surah 4, verse 136,
01:04:28
O believers, believe in God and His Messenger and the book He has sent down on His Messenger, and the book which
01:04:34
He sent down before. Whoso disbelieves in God and His angels and His books, plural, and His Messengers in the last day are surely gone astray into far error.
01:04:46
Could you explain in light of what you have said concerning the New Testament this evening, how it is you can fulfill the command to believe in the books that were sent down before, that is, the books were sent down before the
01:05:02
Quran. How can you believe in them if you believe that what we possess today has been completely corrupted?
01:05:08
Well, first of all, I told you to read chapter 5 of the Quran, and thanks for asking the questions on Islam, because I totally forgot to respond to that.
01:05:17
But still, for this question and answer period, you also need to start presenting what you believe is evidence for your beliefs in cornering.
01:05:25
But let's go ahead and talk about that. You've got to read chapter 5, starting from verse 10 to 115.
01:05:32
This tells you what the New Testament is inside this passage over here. It first accuses the
01:05:38
Christians that they are hiding scripture from us, and that they have abandoned the message of Jesus.
01:05:44
And then it gives an example of what we're talking about inside chapter 5, verse 10.
01:05:51
It says, Jesus Christ made a bird out of clay. Yeah, made a bird out of clay. Now, where is that in your
01:05:57
Bible? Remember, the Quran is accusing the Christians of hiding this message. It's not in that present -day
01:06:03
New Testament. This is found inside the infancy gospel of Thomas. What you have in the
01:06:09
Quran is that you're having, really, an indictment against the Christians that they are hiding scripture from us, and that's exactly what's happening.
01:06:19
You are not presenting them to your church, because these books talk about Jesus, and they have his message in there, and you won't teach it to them.
01:06:27
The New Testament, or the revelation which was given before, it's not just the 27 books of the
01:06:35
New Testament. It's talking about all of those books which were from the different churches.
01:06:41
I mean, yeah, of course. The different churches and the different books, you might find errors in them, no problem. He tried to attack
01:06:47
Gnosticism. Well, we can also attack the Gospels and find problems with that as well. Let's be consistent over here.
01:06:54
Chapter 5 tells us that you are suppressing books from us, and it gave a beautiful example of this by showing the truth present inside the infancy gospel of Thomas.
01:07:07
Ask me a couple more questions on this one, but we've got to go back to what you're presenting as evidence. So, if I understand what you just said, you believe that the
01:07:16
Gnostic Gospels, the infancy gospel of Thomas, were not solved by Allah?
01:07:25
Okay, well, what we have is, we have basically fragments, according to chapter 5, if you read that, and of course, there's other passages.
01:07:33
When you look at that, you have fragments of Jesus' message, which is present in all of those
01:07:39
Gospels. So, that's what chapter 5 tells us. But, James, here's what I'm going to want to ask you to do.
01:07:46
Your reasoning, which you're claiming, why the New Testament were authored by the disciples, you had certain arguments.
01:07:53
If you feel like I did not answer something correctly, you need to present that right now and corner me with that.
01:08:00
If you feel that there is evidence that I'm overlooking, that I'm holding a double standard of why Paul is a true prophet,
01:08:05
I need you to present that to me right now, because time is very precious. I don't want to waste time debating
01:08:11
Islam and stuff like that, because that's not the topic. But we can do that some other time. But anyways, my debate challenge is still out there.
01:08:18
The evidence for Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. I'm not sitting here and attacking Paul and not willing to debate our
01:08:24
Prophet Muhammad. I debated David Wood here, what, two years ago? And he presented clear evidence why he's a true prophet.
01:08:30
So, will you debate me on that? So, Mr. Ahmed, I did not get an answer to my question.
01:08:38
Evidently, you said there are fragments of Jesus' message in these books.
01:08:46
So, how are we to determine which fragments are inspired in a book that specifically says, for example, that God can never create the world because that would be something that's evil to do?
01:08:58
Where did you get, for example, from Surah 5, the phrase fragments of the truth? Could you show that to me?
01:09:05
In chapter 5, it clearly speaks that the Christians are hiding the message of Jesus. And they gave a clear example of that message which was being hidden.
01:09:14
And that was the story of Jesus turning a bird out of clay.
01:09:20
And that's not inside our Bible. So, common sense here tells us, wait a second, we have fragments of truth in these other
01:09:27
Gospels, but I'm not going to answer any more Islam -related questions. You need to start answering questions and direct the topic to the
01:09:34
Bible and these radical claims which the New Testament is making. So, no more discussion on Islam, please.
01:09:42
But anyway, just some of the things which you were mentioning about Hadith. Hadith is not like what you see over here.
01:09:49
Let me just finish here. Hadith has been verified, but this is not a debate on how we know the
01:09:57
Hadith is authentic. So, I just want to please focus the question on the Gospels.
01:10:02
It's radical truth claims. Number one, that it claims Paul to be a prophet. Number two, that these were actually written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
01:10:10
And somehow the church followers are really what they claim to be. All I'm showing tonight is that Biblical New Testament is a religion based on 100 % blind faith.
01:10:24
And this is just not, I'm picking on the New Testament, but all religions are based on 100 % blind faith.
01:10:29
He's going to give you all kinds of fascinating facts and figures, but they're all meaningless and all senseless when you really start thinking about it, but not just.
01:10:38
You walk into the office of a Baha 'i or a person who believes in Joseph Smith.
01:10:43
In the beginning, they're going to give you lots of fascinating facts and figures. Our disciples of Joseph Smith said he's a true prophet, but then you start taking it apart and you find out it all doesn't mean anything.
01:10:54
So no more talk about Islam, let's talk about the Bible. Let me jump in for just one second. Nadir, you seem to be answering the question in, say, 35 or 40 seconds and then moving on.
01:11:11
But I would just ask that you focus on addressing the question that's asked, because if you finish it in 35 or 40 seconds, that's fine, because then you'll just have time to ask more questions, because we are continuing for 15 minutes, so question and answer, back and forth.
01:11:26
Other issues, you can bring up in your conclusion and so on. There'll be more time to speak during the question and answer at the end.
01:11:35
Mr. Achmed, I don't believe I'm under any constraint for you to tell me what questions I can and cannot ask, and I think it's very obvious to the audience that I'm asking questions that go directly to the consistency of the standards that you are pretending to present here.
01:11:50
And so I don't believe that I have gotten any answer from you, and I think it's important that everybody hear.
01:11:56
If you are going to allege that the New Testament is missing, for example, the infancy gospel of Thomas, which comes from middle 2nd century, late 2nd century, something along those lines, is it your assertion then that this is one of the books that you must you're commanded in Sura 2 and Sura 4 to believe?
01:12:19
That's pretty much a yes or no question. Do you believe that that was Natsal sent down by Allah, and that you are to believe it?
01:12:28
Yes or no? Well, that's the kind of question where you ask someone, alright, when did your mom get out of jail?
01:12:35
Is that a yes or no question? So, again, our position is that what the Christian they had some truth, but there's also a lot of scriptures which they are hiding, and we are finding fragments of that truth in these other gospels.
01:12:51
So, anyways, you never really answered my question on, you know, are you going to debate me on is
01:12:59
Muhammad a true prophet based on the archaeological prophetic and scientific evidence? Now, you ask which books to believe inside, you know, according to the
01:13:08
Quran. Well, really, if you want to understand what Islam says, you basically should believe all these books.
01:13:14
There's nothing obligated for you to believe any of these books because there's nothing of reliability in there. And that's why the
01:13:20
Quran came to confirm the truth which the Christians have been hiding in those other scriptures.
01:13:26
Now, I can't force you to sit here and talk about what the subject of tonight's discussion is.
01:13:32
Is the New Testament reliable? Not is Quran or Islam reliable? You know,
01:13:38
I can't make you do that. So, anyways, I would like to know, you know, will you debate me on is
01:13:44
Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam a true prophet or not? Can we try to keep to at least pretend that we're answering questions?
01:13:51
I see a lot of people in the audience. I recognize people see what's going on, but we're not really able to get to a lot because we're getting a lot of obfuscation.
01:14:01
Alright, Nadir, I will personally reserve a minute or two at the end of the debate for any debate challenges.
01:14:08
And so, alright, James, next question. Nadir? Thank you. And if I could just ask a favor for the audience, sir, to actually answer the question that I'm placing to you and not go on and say, oh,
01:14:20
I didn't get to talk about that. Oh, let's talk about this over here. You have been talking, you made reference in your presentation to first century books outside of the
01:14:30
New Testament. Could you please name one and give some scholars to back up your dating that we should have in our
01:14:35
New Testament? When we talk about these books, first of all, and I'm glad, Ray, that you're presenting the
01:14:41
New Testament, that it was all written within the first century. This is not true. Every scripture, the manuscripts which the
01:14:48
New Testament is based on, this is all based on manuscripts which date back 250 to 300 years after Jesus.
01:14:56
Okay? All of the manuscripts, with the exception of a credit card -sized document. But I told you, the whole argument is so silly to begin with, because people can be just as big of frauds and liars 50 years after Jesus, as well as 150 years after Jesus.
01:15:11
So, if you want to say the Bible is written 50 years after Jesus, okay, no problem. Well, actually, when we look at the
01:15:17
Infancy Gospels, when we look at these other books, we don't know when they were authored.
01:15:22
We have no idea. Right around 150, 200 years after Jesus is when they first appeared on the radar screen.
01:15:30
But that doesn't mean that they originated at this time, but once again, you know, if you want, if people believed in these books, people believed in, like, the
01:15:39
Gospel of Peter, okay, which you today reject as a false scripture, the Christian community of Roses.
01:15:45
And so, when you start rejecting Gospels, and you say these books are frauds, I know the
01:15:50
Gospel of Peter claims to have been written by Peter, but the author is a liar, he's a charlatan.
01:15:56
And then I bring you another Gospel, the Gospel of Judas. And then I show you the Ebionite Church. The Ebionite Church claims to have apostolic authority based on Peter and James, but you say they're all liars, they're all frauds.
01:16:10
Alright, I'm not saying that you are. So, in the midst of all these lies, and these frauds, comes the
01:16:16
New Testament. So, all we are saying tonight, is that the New Testament is simply a product of its environment.
01:16:23
And the fact that he could not show any evidence to the contrary, I think that's clear. Yes, we have time for one more.
01:16:34
Mr. Rockman, you did not answer my last question. I'm going to try it one more time. You made direct reference in your positive speech to books that were written in the first century.
01:16:42
Please identify them and give a single scholarly reference, sir, that substantiates your placement of these in the first century.
01:16:54
No scholars for you today. Because, as soon as I name a scholar, oh he's a liberal scholar, and then
01:17:02
I don't want to get into this whole issue, okay, this scholar said this, this scholar said that. Bring forth the evidence.
01:17:08
Give us the proof for what you're saying. So, again, I answered your question, I'll answer it for a second time.
01:17:14
When these books were written, we don't know. Okay, we don't have enough evidence. We don't even have a clear picture of even the first century, right?
01:17:24
Don't you agree we don't have a clear picture of what happened in the first century? Well, let me jot your memory.
01:17:30
According to Matthew chapter 25, chapter 27, verse 52, when Jesus died or was crucified, zombies came out of their graves and these dead bodies were walking all around in Jerusalem and the pagans, the
01:17:44
Jews, the Gentiles, all saw these you know, dead bodies which came to life like zombies.
01:17:50
Where is the historical evidence for this? Today, if you look inside Christian history, you won't find a single reference for this.
01:17:58
And out of embarrassment, your own scholars reject this. Well, he came very close. He was like, you know, kind of embarrassed about that.
01:18:05
William Lane Craig wouldn't accept this passage. So you see, you're asking me about the first century, so I will say
01:18:11
I don't know when these books were written, but since you're worried about the first century, I challenge you to show me one single historical reference about the zombies which are walking after Jesus died that are walking around in Jerusalem and you'll never find any.
01:18:27
So, this is a refutation of his so -called attacks on the Gnostics, Valentinists, and those other
01:18:33
Gospels because he said there's ridiculous teachings in those books. Well, I'm almost done.
01:18:41
Matthew chapter 27, verse 52 isn't very bright either, so by your own criteria, you're dismissing those books.
01:18:48
And remember, I said all the New Testament is written 250 to 300 years after Jesus, with the exception of a credit card size.
01:18:56
Alright, well, that was kind of a question and answer, and kind of a crossfire.
01:19:05
But now we'll have some conclusions from James and Nadir before we go on to questions from the audience.
01:19:12
Nadir has requested the opportunity to go second in the conclusions, so we'll have our first conclusion from James White.
01:19:36
First of all, let me thank all of you for coming here this evening. I would like to invite you to do further study into this matter.
01:19:45
You will discover that you live in a generation that is blessed with more first -hand information on these topics than any generation has come before you.
01:19:55
Even just simply online anymore, you can find so many of these original resources. I would strongly encourage you to take the time to read
01:20:04
Clement of Rome, to read Ignatius, to read of Ockham's work on the eyewitnesses, and find out for yourself the facts of these matters.
01:20:14
It is my intention as I continue my studies of Islam to engage with Islamic apologists in respectful and meaningful dialogue.
01:20:24
It is always my desire to show respect for the audience, many of whom have frequently traveled long distances, and try to stay very focused upon the subject and to provide you with meaningful interaction on the subject.
01:20:37
If there has been in any way that I have failed to provide that this evening to you, I apologize. Let me just, in these last few moments, reiterate what
01:20:46
I have said before. While Mr. Ockham simply dismisses, without providing us with any meaningful consistent standard, the evidence that I have presented to you, and even when asked questions, give me a scholar, well no scholars for you tonight, well that's because there aren't.
01:21:03
That's because Mr. Ockham has presented to you a completely incoherent, from a scholarly perspective, presentation on how you identify documents, the dates of them.
01:21:14
I had a presentation that I, if we had gone a slightly different direction, I was going to show you some of the manuscripts like P66 and P46, P75 from the year 200.
01:21:26
I would invite you to get hold of the recordings and go back and see who has been consistent in their terminology, and who uses terminology that is consistent with modern scholarship.
01:21:37
And I do not mean modern unbelieving scholarship, I am a Christian. Just as many of you might be Muslims. And I recognize the presuppositions that we bring will greatly influence the conclusions that we come to.
01:21:48
However, it does not change the fact that the evidence as it stands today, as it exists for us today, very clearly indicates to us that the
01:21:58
Gospels, as we possess them, came from the first century. The books that Mr. Ockham referred to did not.
01:22:04
He is referring us to books that are soaked in what his own religion would refer to as paganism.
01:22:10
As the days of ignorance, as the pagan celebrations around the Chava before the prophet came.
01:22:17
Those somehow are supposed to be relevant to us while we are to reject those writings of the
01:22:24
New Testament that clearly come from that time period. They reflect the knowledge of the events that took place in Palestine at that time.
01:22:32
They reflect the language of that time, the religion of that time. And they tell us a consistent message, a consistent gospel, a consistent teaching about who
01:22:44
Jesus Christ is. Fundamentally, my friends, the reason we're here this evening is because Muhammad did not know the
01:22:52
Bible. He did not have access to it in his own language. There may have been a few little fragments of the
01:22:57
New Testament that have been translated personally, but as far as an entire New Testament in Arabic, it did not exist at that time.
01:23:03
And I truly do believe that in fact, if you will read carefully Sura 5 and the argument there, the argument he's making is that he is a prophet in line with all the prophets that have come before.
01:23:14
I believe he believed that. The simple fact of the matter is he was wrong. And his followers today are left with a book that is not consistent with what came before.
01:23:25
And so what they have to do is they have to apply inconsistent standards to defend the later book from the simple fact that it's not consistent with what it claimed to be consistent with that came before it.
01:23:39
That's why we're here this evening. That's why we have seen the questions obviously clear and good questions being ignored and the evidence also likewise being ignored as presented.
01:23:53
And no meaningful standards being provided to us as to how we would analyze these things at all. And so I encourage you as a
01:24:01
Christian minister and as an apologist, my faith has grown strong from responding to the challenges the best challenges that people present against the
01:24:11
New Testament. I encourage you take the time to read the other side. Take the time to look at what the
01:24:19
New Testament says. And I trust the Spirit of God will be your guide in that endeavor. Thank you very much for being here this evening.
01:24:27
And now we'll have a five minute conclusion from Nadir and if you'd like to make a debate challenge you can go to my website examinethetruth .com
01:24:48
and you'll see we've debated the prophetic scientific and archaeological evidence which clearly proves
01:24:54
Muhammad is a true prophet of God. We are seeing the fulfillment of prophecy as clearly stated in the
01:25:00
Quran and in the Hadith and we're seeing that today. Now I can't force him to debate me on is
01:25:06
Prophet Muhammad a true prophet. And this is a problem. The Christians are running away from this challenge.
01:25:11
They're going to the website. They cannot refute the evidence for Prophet Muhammad. Tonight really wasn't about Islam and stuff like that but this is really focusing on the
01:25:21
New Testament. I think there's no question about it that the
01:25:26
New Testament is a religion of 100 % blind faith. 100 % blind faith means that there is absolutely no evidence to support it.
01:25:37
There is absolutely no facts which could at least suggest that maybe this could have been written by the disciples of Jesus or that Paul was a true prophet.
01:25:46
There is absolutely nothing. And I can't force you to produce that evidence, the reason why you didn't because you don't have anything like that.
01:25:56
And there is not a single good reason why anyone should even entertain the possibility that maybe these books can be true.
01:26:03
There is no good reason at all. I'm not an executioner here tonight. I told you that. I only took 7 minutes out of my 20 minute presentation because I know this is going to be a hard night for James.
01:26:15
I don't want to make it look like that I'm attacking your religion. So I just kind of was very quick with my question and just got it.
01:26:23
But anyways, you don't want to debate me on the evidences for Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him?
01:26:29
I take it you're saying no. It's your presentation sir. Then I challenge any
01:26:34
Christian who will debate me on Prophet Muhammad. Because I'm not going to hold a double standard here where I ask for evidences from Joseph Smith, people like Apostle Paul, but not ask the same questions about our
01:26:45
Prophet. So we're ready to debate this. But anyways, he's heard the debates, he's actually commented on them.
01:26:51
He's not going to debate me. He knows better to do that. But anyways, now let's talk about what
01:26:58
I believe. Like I said, I was here a couple years ago and I presented this challenge. Now, unfortunately,
01:27:05
I have to comment on some statements made by some Christians against me. And it looks like some
01:27:10
Evangelical Christian leaders around the world have seemed to have issued a church mandate against me.
01:27:17
And I just want to bring this out here. Jay Smith, who holds a PhD in Islamic Studies, look what he says over here.
01:27:24
I believe you were CC'd on this email. It says over here, I believe both of us, both Christians and Muslims alike, who are involved in public debates and see value in it, and who want to see this sort of exercise continue, must have nothing to do with Nadir Ahmed of ExamineTheTruth .com
01:27:43
in the future. So you as Muslims, if you want to see these type of debates continue, you have to get rid of me.
01:27:48
Now this is, I don't know why he's saying this stuff about me, but it looks like people are taking this very seriously here.
01:27:56
And I had a one and a half hour phone conversation with Gary Habermas, Dr. Gary Habermas.
01:28:02
I believe he's one of your New Testament scholars. One of the biggest scholars out there in the world. And he was trying to arrange a debate with me, and over there, you know, he was telling me on the phone that the
01:28:15
Christians have begun what is known as the implementation phase of this church mandate. Okay, this is what he told me.
01:28:22
He said the Christians are spreading nasty rumors about me and they're saying, nobody debate with Nadir Ahmed of ExamineTheTruth .com.
01:28:30
And he also mentioned that most of these groups are working in secrecy and have asked for their identity not to be revealed.
01:28:37
Now in my last minute here, I've got to bring up another issue here. And you know, people want to talk about me, they can go and talk about me,
01:28:44
I don't care, but some of the comments I can't really ignore, you know, because I guess someone was saying that I do something called mutah, which is kind of, can be used as a form of prostitution.
01:28:55
Okay, and I believe Nabil Qureshi, Nabil are you there?
01:29:00
Yeah. You know, from what I heard from your parents and from a couple of witnesses here, that you made some comments about me doing these things and I believe
01:29:08
I called you up and I asked you if you said that and you said, no you didn't, but I didn't even know what mutah was. But your parents are saying yes.
01:29:14
Why did your parents say yes and you're saying no? I think these kinds of things got to stay in, in like your living room or something like that.
01:29:22
Okay, but I guess what I'm wondering is, why are your parents saying you said this about me and I've got to know about this?
01:29:29
But, well, I mean, if people are going to show, say these things, I'm just kind of wondering you know, what's going on here? Are they wrong?
01:29:36
Alright. Look, I'm just trying to get down to the bottom of this because a lot of nasty rumors are getting around and this comes back and it hurts me, right?
01:29:44
So, you know, I gotta I want to find out what's going on here. So, okay. Alright, well that was a conclusion to the debate.
01:29:56
Can we trust what the New Testament tells us about Jesus and the Gospel? And since you were tossing out the challenges
01:30:04
Nadir, well, I think it's interesting that you're saying that Christians are running from you when you're on stage with a
01:30:09
Christian debating. But apart from that, Sam Shimon has agreed to debate you on the prophethood of Muhammad and if you'd like to focus on archaeological and prophetic and scientific evidence
01:30:18
I would accept too. We can do it right here. Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity, but I would request you humbly, please do not interrupt me.
01:30:30
I'm not going to make a long speech. You were my professor once, a long time ago, so you are the only exception.
01:30:36
You're the one exception. Thank you very much. You're getting, I have to limit you to two minutes though.
01:30:42
Can you do two minutes? Certainly, I will take two minutes. First of all, my overall impression of the debate was that I listened to both speakers very carefully and I probably will leave you with the impression that your name is
01:30:58
Mr. Dr. Can everyone hear this microphone? Is it turned on? Is that turned on?
01:31:06
Yeah, it is. I think Dr. Wright was very articulate.
01:31:13
He was very polite. He was very respectful. On the other hand, my fellow Muslim brother,
01:31:20
Mr. Nazir Ahmed was very rhetorical, very impertinent at some times and not very respectful both to the audience as well as to the speaker.
01:31:31
My compliment to Dr. Wright. I think most of the time
01:31:36
Mr. Ahmed was asking give me a single evidence for the prophethood of God.
01:31:43
I think Dr. Wright would have turned back and asked him the same question. Give me an empirical scientifically verifiable evidence for the prophethood of Muhammad and both claims stand and fall on the same theological assumptions.
01:32:02
My feeling is, recently I read a piece by Chris Hedges who had a debate with Sam Harris on so far the
01:32:11
God problem. And he wrote, Chris Hedges wrote after the debate that those who came to the debate liking
01:32:19
Sam Harris left the debate liking Sam Harris. I think this probably would happen tonight.
01:32:28
As a Muslim, I believe in the New Testament, in the Old Testament in the authenticity of these and I consider my
01:32:37
Christian brothers as fellow believers. I think that no one can ever present any scientific evidence ever for topics such as these.
01:32:49
If you were debating about the rationality of one healthcare plan against the other,
01:32:56
I would have said, he won he lost. But both of you have won the debate because you presented your case.
01:33:04
But I appreciate what people like you are doing. Thank you very much. We'll have a one minute response from if you have anything to say about that.
01:33:13
I do. Hopefully we're on here. I attempted to raise that issue by saying what is the standard?
01:33:21
A call to apostleship is a theological issue. It's not something you put under a microscope.
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And yet for both Muslims and Christians, we believe that God has spoken. That he speaks in the form of Scripture.
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And therefore to go to those Scriptures and to demonstrate that within those Scriptures we have historical evidence that Paul is accepted as an apostle by the other apostles,
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I think is quite relevant. I didn't have time this evening to go into the fact that there are early interpretations,
01:33:49
I believe Surah 36 if I recall correctly, where early Muslims saw in the
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Quran a reference to the apostle Paul. That could not have developed, that's found in Ibn Kathir, that could not have developed had there been this rapacious rejection of him as some sort of innovator and creator of Shirk.
01:34:07
And so I did try to raise that issue that you cannot provide a computer evidence for the apostleship of Paul because it's a different area.
01:34:18
Yeah, I'm not here to win a popularity contest. I already told you, for a lot of people, challenging people for the evidence for their religion, a lot of people will take that as offensive.
01:34:29
Very offensive. This isn't, you know, I'm not here to make friends over here, alright? But we have to get to the truth.
01:34:35
It's like what David Wood was saying. Let's get to the truth of the matter is. Okay, as far as Christians being fellow believers as a person who claims to be a
01:34:42
Muslim, even James White will agree with me. No, they're not. And not according to the Quran. According to the
01:34:49
Quran, there's no salvation for them. Okay, they're not fellow believers. But anyways,
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I've been, I think, very courteous with James over here. I gave him an additional 13 minutes, because I know this is going to be tough for him.
01:35:02
As well as for the Baha 'is and other people who claim to have followed Prophet. Now, he's saying that we can't prove
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Prophet Muhammad PBUH. The problem is you've never been to my website. We have several debates proving Prophet Muhammad and as for his challenge,
01:35:16
Sam Shalom ran away as well. Okay, so, and if, oh, my time's up. Alright, I hear that you've all been, everyone who wanted to ask a question has been given a number.
01:35:27
So, we'll start with number one. Absolutely no more speeches. Unless one of you is my professor.
01:35:36
Okay, good evening. My question is, since the topic is, how can we trust the New Testament?
01:35:41
My question is, how can we trust the New Testament if, for example, in many modern
01:35:47
Bibles, the Baha 'i Standard Version, etc. For example, they tell us that verses, for example, like in Mark chapter 16, there are verses that were added in later.
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Where did they come from? If the earliest manuscript they tell us did not contain those verses, is that not proof of tampering?
01:36:04
John chapter 7, verse 53 to John 8, 11, they say earliest manuscripts did not have that.
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Obviously, where did those, if the earliest manuscripts did not contain that, then where did those come from?
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Isn't that proof, therefore, that people have been tampering with the scriptures over time? And who knows what new evidence may come out later to show that other things have been tampered.
01:36:24
Therefore, how can we trust the New Testament? Alright, that's a great question. So, two minutes for James and one minute for me here.
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I had hoped that this would be what we were debating this evening, because I would love to give a 20 -minute presentation.
01:36:36
I'd love to give much more than a 20 -minute presentation. If I may recommend a book that I've written that has nothing to do with Islam to you, so it might be useful to you, at least, and you might be able to say, well, it's certainly not directed in my direction.
01:36:47
I wrote a book in 1994 called The King James Only Controversy, and it deals with where we got the
01:36:52
New Testament manuscripts and what the differences in them are. I'm holding a critical edition of the Bible here, Greek New Testament and Hebrew Old Testament.
01:36:59
Bottom of the page you have all the references to the various manuscripts and where they have varied readings.
01:37:04
You mentioned the two largest varied readings in the New Testament, Mark 16, 9 -20, and John 7, 53, 3 -11.
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When we examine that wealth of information that we have, we are able to detect scribal errors.
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I was going to show you, for example, a manuscript, actually Codex Sinaiticus, which you may have heard of before, around 325
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A .D., where in John 14, you can see parakletos in John chapter 14, verse 26.
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And there's a textual variant right underneath it. You can see the handwritten correction made in it.
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Now, if that was the only manuscript we had of that text, then that would be a problem. But it isn't.
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We have manuscripts from all over the world. The Christians distributed their manuscripts rapidly everywhere.
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And when we can compare them with one another, we can see where someone has made a scribal error here or in the situation with the longer ending of Mark, the earliest manuscripts do not contain that.
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And people, later scribes, felt, we need to add something here because the other Gospels have something there.
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Let me point just one thing out, because I'd love to say much more about this, but I've only got two minutes. I wish
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I could hold this up, and there are notes at the bottom of the page that would tell you the variant readings found in the
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Palimpsest manuscripts and the earliest manuscripts of the Quran, but I can't. Christians want to have this information.
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And I would challenge Muslims to consider why don't you have the manuscript evidence at the bottom of this page too?
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I think we all need to be open about that. And I, as a New Testament scholar, believe the evidence ends up substantiating the entire
01:38:35
New Testament manuscript spectrum. Alright. Nadir, one minute. Reply. We are ready to debate the authenticity of the
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Quran any time. You just let me know and we'll prove that the Quran has been 100 % authentic.
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Now, like I said, because I know, you know, like I said, this is a difficult job to do when you challenge people for evidence for their religion.
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If you notice in the beginning of my talk, I said I will accept all of the Bible as being unchanged and that they accurately reflect the original document.
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Now, let me ask you a question, James. This is rhetorical. Have you ever met a guy who is so nice who would give you that as a premise for the debate?
01:39:15
Not very many people. Because it doesn't really matter when the whole origin of New Testament Christianity is baseless to begin with.
01:39:23
You have a false prophet named Paul who starts saying, yeah, I saw Revelation. Then you have these other churches saying, wait a second, we also have the message of Jesus too.
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And they have their Gospels. And so basically, one church beats out the other church and then they present a
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Bible for Christians to follow. But there's no evidence for what they're saying. Alright. Number two.
01:39:45
We have one great question and let's keep that rolling. Number two. Alright. As -salamu alaykum to both speakers.
01:39:59
Because my question is according to the book of Mark in chapter 34 verse 33, 34, and 35.
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There's no verses. Chapter 30. 16 is the last one for Mark.
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In the book of Mark is this. One of those chapters is in verse 33, 34, and 35.
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It says where Jesus told Peter that he was going away to the garden of Gethsemane and he was going to pray.
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Now, according to that verse, Jesus, he said that he went and he fell on his face.
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And he's going to pray to God. Now, how do you explain if we can trust the
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New Testament that the Christians say that he is God? And he's God in the flesh. He's God incarnate.
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So, how would God pray to another God? That's more of a question on deity.
01:41:07
We are having a debate on that on Sunday. But, we'll go ahead and have that. Two minutes and one minute.
01:41:13
Go ahead. In fact, could I have an indulgence here just a moment? Hamza, are you here?
01:41:20
Hamza Abdul -Malik. I hope you don't mind my pointing you out. Hamza Abdul -Malik was the first Muslim with whom
01:41:27
I ever debated in public in 1999 in Syosset, Long Island. And I thank you for a respectful debate these many years later.
01:41:37
And what was the subject of our debate? Does the New Testament teach the divinity of Christ? Does the
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New Testament teach the divinity of Christ? So, we still have that available. And I think you would find that we address that specific subject.
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So, can I have two minutes just to address it? Okay. Just wanted to point out and thank Mr. Malik for the debate from years ago.
01:41:57
The problem that most of my Muslim friends have is because you approach the text with a
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Unitarian assumption. We are not telling you. I honestly do not believe that the
01:42:10
Doctrine of the Trinity involves Shirk. And I'll tell you why. There is one divine name in the
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Old Testament. That's the name Yahweh. Who is it used of in the New? It's used of the Father, it's used of the
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Son, and the Spirit is the Spirit of Yahweh. One name, three persons distinguished from one another.
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This is not a God preaching to, or speaking to a God. Jesus Christ became flesh.
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And as a human being, if, for just a moment, if Allah, for some reason, for His own purposes, in His own glory, chose to enter into flesh, would that man be an atheist?
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Or would he not be the greatest example of worship and prayer? He's not praying to himself.
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He's praying to the Father. It's not the Father who became flesh. It's the Son. We do not believe that Jesus is the
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Father. He is clearly distinguished from the Father. But all bear the one divine name of Yahweh.
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It is the Son who entered in. And so it is natural for the Son to pray to the Father, to continue that perfect communion that He's had with Him from eternity past.
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And it is only the assertion that the nature of God can only be shared by one person that limits your understanding here.
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The Christian doesn't believe that. The Christian believes that the being of God is infinite and eternal and therefore, while your being and my being, being finite, can only be shared by one person,
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God's being, being infinite, can be shared by three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
01:43:39
That's the consistent message of the New Testament. So no, that's not one God praying to another.
01:43:44
That's the incarnate Son praying to the non -incarnate Father. I'll just put in a plug for that debate between James White and Dr.