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

Debate Format and Introductions

Defending the Muslim View tonight is Nadir Ahmed. Nadir is the director of Examine the Truth, a Muslim apologetics ministry, which focuses on engaging critics of Islam in debate and dialogue. 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 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. Defending the Christian position is James White.

James is the director of Alpha and Omega Ministries, a Christian apologetics organization based in Phoenix, Arizona. James has authored or contributed to more than 20 books, including The King James Only Controversy, The Forgotten Trinity, The Potter's Freedom, and The God Who Justifies.

He has participated in more than 60 moderated public debates and has taught college-level Greek and systematic theology. You can learn more about James' ministry at aomin .org. 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. 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 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. With that said, please give Nadir your undivided attention as he argues that we can't trust what the New Testament tells us about Jesus and the gospel.

Nadir, you have 20 minutes.

Nadir's Opening: Why the New Testament Cannot Be Trusted

All right, I'd like to thank everybody for coming tonight. Now, I just want the Christians to relax. I am not an executioner here tonight, OK? I'm not going to viciously attack the Bible. There you go.

I'm just going to ask some very basic, fundamental questions. So usually inside these types of discussions, the issues which are most frequently talked about is how the text of the Bible, how the scribes deliberately changed it from generation to generation, and thus it can't be relied upon.

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 New Testament scholar. And since he's already got that department taken care of, so I'm going to go and take a different approach to things.

And just to show you how reasonable I'm going to be, and how sympathetic I'm going to be to the Christian point of view, I am going to debate from the premise that the Bible which we have in our hands today has never been changed.

It is an accurate duplicate of the original documents. Now, you are not going to get a better deal than this, OK? So I don't think a lot of Christians debate it from that premise. So anyways, let me start off by saying that the New Testament which we have today in our hands, this book was assembled by the early Pauline church over a couple of centuries.

And the present New Testament, it makes three radical claims which it bases its reliability on. Number one, it claims to have been written by the disciples of Jesus. Number two, the prophethood of Paul.

The New Testament actually claims that there was this man who claimed to be a prophet named Paul. He saw some revelations of God, and thus he was appointed to now deliver the true message of God. 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 I guess what I'm saying is the disciples of Jesus verified Paul.

That's what the New Testament claims. 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. 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. These are baseless claims, and the only reason why Christians believe it is because the Bible teaches it. Now, I also want to make it clear tonight that what it means by blind faith.

Blind faith means three things. Number one, there is absolutely no evidence for it. 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.

And number three, there is 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.

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 that the New Testament is true.

And also, he's going to present to you lots of reasons why he thinks that the 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.

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. Most religions actually do base their religion on blind faith.

For example, if you were to ask a Hindu, you're asking, why do you believe that your religion is true? He will say it's based upon blind faith. In fact, if you were to even bring up issues of proofs and evidences, that's considered something very offensive, okay?

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 New Testament. This is something which is mostly based on blind faith, and they see this as a kind of a source of pride.

So anyways, now some Christians may retort, but we have the writings of the early church fathers, and the early church fathers, they were the students of the disciples. But now, here's the problem with that.

Here's the problem with that. The early church that we're talking about is the Pauline Church, okay? And the Pauline Church is the one with basically all the church fathers accepted him as a true prophet of God, okay?

Now, the problem is there were other churches. There was the Ebionite Church, okay? The Ebionite Church basically believed that Jesus to be God, Jesus was not God, and they also believed that Paul was a false apostle, okay?

And most likely, they also had their own version of the New Testament, and they called it the Gospel of the Ebionites, okay? And also, now let's look at another church. There was also the church which is the Gnostic Church, and they had the Gospel of Thomas, okay?

In fact, let me bring a book here real quick. In fact, all of this information, I think I forgot my little book over here. All of this information is documented inside Bart Ehrman's book, Lost Christianities.

So basically, let's see. So all I'm gonna ask, you don't have to actually prove which church is the true church. All I'm gonna ask you to prove tonight or give us a little bit of evidence of why you believe Paul to be a true prophet of God or why you believe that the apostles really authored the 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. So I'm not gonna take the whole 20 minutes. I'm just gonna ask you for a little bit of proof to substantiate these claims.

Go ahead, James.

James White's First Response: Apostolic Witness and the Problem of Gnostic Alternatives

James, we'll now have 20 minutes to respond. We don't need to applaud after each time so that'll burn up a little few seconds here and there. 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. 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.

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, but it's interaction. And as a result, begin a study on your own.

Check out what is being said. Don't let what you hear this evening be the last that you examine the presentations that are made this evening. Now, I must confess that when the debate topic first began to be discussed, and accusations of the corruption of the 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.

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. If those of you don't know who Bart Ehrman is, Bart Ehrman is a former Christian, graduated Moody Bible Institute in Wheaton College, went to Princeton, and over the issue of suffering, lost his faith shortly after graduating from Princeton, and he and I will be debating the issue of the textual transmission of the New Testament in January of next year in Fort Lauderdale.

But what was just presented, I have been asked to give some evidence to substantiate something that quite honestly just isn't true. There is no such thing as a Pauline church. There never was such thing as a Pauline church.

The apostles worked as a group. They frequently, as the 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, 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 New Testament is the production of what's simply called the Pauline church because it's not true. What I'd rather present to you is very, very briefly toward the end of that opening statement, Mr. Ahmed made reference, for example, to other churches.

I think what he means by that, and I have the book Lost Christianities here, is the fact that in much of academia today, as long as anyone mentions Jesus, they're called a Christian. So for example, we had the Gnostic Gospels, and I thought maybe Nader was going to read from the Gospel of Thomas or something like that, and so we have the Gnostic Gospels being presented to us, and so I'd like to just give you an idea of why I find even trying to parallel Gnosticism with the New Testament so problematic.

We're told there are all sorts of Gospels, that there's the Ebionite Gospel, and the Gospel of Thomas, and things like that, and there are many Gospels, but when were they written? Who produced them? Did they come from the first century context of Jesus?

The Gospel of Thomas, for example, is one that has Valentinian Gnosticism within its pages. Valentinian has not flourished until the middle of the second century in Rome. It does not represent what's going on in first century Jerusalem.

The Ebionite Gospel in the same way. Does this come from the milieu of the 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 Jesus would have had as a first century Palestinian Jew?

Almost none of them, found in Nag Hammadi, any of those places, actually would be relevant to the first century context that we have for the Lord Jesus Christ. We are told, for example, that early Christianity was splintered just because one stream, I guess it's gonna be called the Pauline stream one, means nothing, the implication being that one dominant group is better, 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 Pharisees, Sadducees, the Essenes, et cetera, et cetera, but even during the days of Jesus and the apostles themselves, there were many divisions took place, just as there are many divisions amongst many religions to this very day.

That hardly is relevant to the idea of establishment of the truth. But notice, Gnostic Gospels, Gnostic texts, Nag Hammadi, Gospel of Thomas, I wrote this before the presentation. What are some of the general Gnostic beliefs that would make these either relevant or irrelevant to us?

And especially to my Muslim friends today. If you're going to look at these things, it's that they are relevant to the subject of the New Testament. May I simply ask you, we're all monotheists. We believe God is the creator of heaven and earth.

The Gnostics did not believe that. In fact, they believed that any creator of the heaven and earth would have to be evil. They would have to identify Allah or Yahweh as an evil God, as most of the Gnostic groups did.

And this is where they're coming from. This somehow has something to do with the reliability of the 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 was just spiritual as good.

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 because he didn't have a physical body? You see, Muslims and Christians together agreed Jesus had a physical body.

The Gnostics said no because they're philosophical dualists, a completely different worldview than that which 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, completely different perspective than what we have in the Old and New Testaments. Now, I think we could all agree. Could we not?

And I am this evening debating in the context of Christians and Muslims. If you're a secularist, I would have a different presentation for you because we have a different presuppositional issue that we need to deal with.

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. And you have a holy book that talks about the books that were sent down before.

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 AD 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?

Can we identify them? Can you as a Muslim continue to obey the command that you find in Surah 2 of Al-Baqarah, you find in Surah 4? Can you continue to believe that? And is there a consistent basis upon which a Muslim would deny the inspiration of the text of the New Testament?

For example, Mr. Achmed has said, well, where's the evidence that Paul was a prophet? Well, he didn't really use that specific terminology. The normal term we use is not so much Rasul 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 Quran, they had to have existed, yes? Where's the evidence that they ever opposed Paul? Where is the evidence that they fought against this Pauline Christianity?

Where are their books? Are we gonna actually try to call the Ebionites the original followers of Jesus? Are we gonna try to make that kind of a historical connection somehow? Where is the evidence that these apostles, and obviously, from an Islamic perspective, you have to believe that the next generation can be faithful to the original generation because you believe that the 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? I mean, let's just be fair. If we're gonna evaluate things fairly, then that's what we need to do.

The New Testament is very honest in revealing for us the apostle 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.

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. Now, those are the 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?

But 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 and with James. You have constant communication between the churches.

You don't have Paul churches and Peter churches. Now, do you have conflicts between those in Jerusalem and those outside of Jerusalem? You do. But that's because that's an issue of Judaism and some people thinking everyone has to become a Jew before they can become a Christian.

That wasn't just a difference. That had nothing to do about who Jesus was. Had nothing to do with the cross. 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?

It's the entire early church. There is no evidence to countermand his claims. 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, Peter didn't write that.

And well, and then we've got this, well, Paul didn't write that. Or Luke didn't write that. Or whatever evidence you want to present, you'll find somebody to say, well, he didn't write that. And then when you start digging into it, well, why do you feel he did not write that?

The real issue, I think, this evening for us is are we going to be consistent as Christians and Muslims? If you believe in the books, plural, the books that were netzal, set down, then that means, even from the 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. And if this evening, Mr. Achmed said, well, you know what? What we have today is what was originally written down.

Well, then why don't you believe it? You have to come up with the assertion it's been changed. 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.

That accusation of the corruption of the New Testament, the actual text of the New Testament, comes long after the original establishment of the Islamic faith. And so, since Muslims and Christians together believe that God has made revelation, the 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?

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 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, unless we're gonna assume that Jesus picked really bad people, people who were just gonna be unfaithful to his message, then we would expect that those first followers would react strongly against any corruption coming from the Apostle Paul.

But that's not what we have. And point of fact, what we see is that what Paul preaches is perfectly consistent with the Gospels. Writers, perfectly consistent with that message from the most primitive periods of time in the New Testament.

Indeed, when the Apostle Paul records for us the tradition that was handed on to him from 1 Corinthians, in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, he received what had been handed on to him, how that Jesus Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and he was buried, and he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.

He was seen, born 500 brethren. This was an ancient tradition that preceded him. 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 Son of God, the crucified and risen Messiah.

The Apostle Paul did not invent this. 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 Apostle Paul just made these things up out of full cloth during the lifetime of the eyewitnesses.

And they never said, in essence, have to accuse the entire first generations of Christians, of real Christians, real followers of Jesus, the ones mentioned in the Quran, you would have to accuse them of abject, upon what evidence?

Upon what basis? If we believe that the Old Testament was sent down, does it not make sense that when the Messiah himself comes, that there's going to be explication of his mission and his purpose? I know that it is very, very common for Muslims to believe that Jesus has only sent the 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. They don't recognize that the rest of that gospel expands that out after the crucifixion to the entirety of the world.

And so if that is the case, if that's the understanding, then would not these churches, especially the churches, they come into existence outside of Palestine, need direct teaching and guidance, and who better to provide it than one who knows the 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.

And so we have been asked three things, the disciples of Jesus, the prophethood of Paul, whatever that means, I would assume that means his conversion and his calling is apostleship, and that the disciples verified 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.

He is given the right hand of fellowship to go to Gentiles. Peter says he goes to the Jews, and that's exactly what they do. And that's the origination of the Pauline corpus, but not the entirety of the New Testament.

And it's not the creation of a Pauline church or anything else. The quote-unquote Pauline church is just nothing more than the New Testament church that is consistent with the Old Testament teaching that there's one true God who created all things.

All these other alleged gospels, sources, groups, and everything else violate the Old Testament norms. They violate the Old Testament teaching. They could not have come out of first-century Palestine.

They could not have come out of that Jewish context in any way, shape, or form. And therefore, they are not a discussion this evening. 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.

The New Testament gives us plenty of evidence. It 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, well, every theist and every atheist has those presuppositional foundations in their thought.

But it is not blind faith to believe the consistency of the New Testament. That's what the evidence points you to. 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.

Back in May of 2006, I debated a man by the name of Shabir Ali at Biola University. And I asked Mr. Ali, Ali, can you tell us how we can identify what in the New Testament is still inspired and what isn't?

And he gave a consistent answer for a Muslim. He said, well, that which agrees that the Quran is inspired and that which doesn't isn't. 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 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.

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 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?

Logically, folks, logically. If the claim of the Quran is to be a continuation that you have one God who has spoken and Muhammad speaks in line with him, shouldn't it be the other direction? Shouldn't we be able to see a consistency in the message of the Quran with that which we see in the Old Testament and the New Testament?

If we don't see that, is that the problem of the New Testament, or is that the problem, logically, I would suggest to you, he who comes 600 years later needs to be able to build.

Nadir's First Rebuttal: Circular Reasoning and Competing Churches

Now, each of our participants will have an eight-minute rebuttal. So eight minutes, eight minutes, and then we'll have a five-minute break. I guess to put it in a nutshell, Paul is a true prophet because the Bible said so.

The New Testament said it, there you go. See, therefore, he's a true prophet. And so what makes the New Testament true? Because the church said so. So all he's doing is he's playing hot potato with the proof.

You ask, why is Paul a true prophet? Well, he takes a burden of proof and he shoves it over to the New Testament. What makes the New Testament true? Well, then he takes the burden of proof and then he tosses it over to the church fathers.

Well, what makes them true? He brings it right back to the New Testament. So this is circular reasoning. He has now presented a single good reason of why anybody should even believe in the New Testament.

Okay, now let's talk about the church fathers. Yes, they are all Pauline church fathers. Why do I say you just pray? Because all the people who selected the New Testament, they all were followers of the apostle Paul.

Is this a true or false statement? That is a true statement. So that's why we call it the Pauline church. Okay, so he hasn't shown any reason as to why anybody should even believe in this church. Okay, so anyways, he said that it was consistent, what Paul taught, it was consistent with the apostles.

Now, I don't even have to respond to this. What is he doing? What apostles is he talking about? 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 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, but you did not show a single shred of evidence as to why the disciples authored those 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. Okay, and also he gave us no evidence of why this man claimed to be evidence why Paul is a true prophet.

I mean, come on, give me a break here. Some guy just gets up and says, oh, 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.

Now, does this story sound familiar to you? All you have to go to is go to the religious studies department here in Old Dominion, and you get the religious studies textbook. You ever wonder why that textbook is so thick?

Because of people like Paul, because of people claiming to be prophets of God. And so I hope, at least by tonight's debate, you know, at least this will kind of be kind of like a domino effect where all people can challenge their false prophets.

The Mormons can challenge their false prophet, Joseph Smith. The Baha 'is can challenge their false prophets. Okay, so you have produced absolutely no evidence for this man who claims to be a prophet, Paul.

But what about Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him? Well, I believe I was here two years ago, right? And I openly challenged the Christians to debate me on the archeological, prophetic, and scientific evidence proving that Muhammad is a true prophet, but no Christian today has accepted that challenge.

So anyways, he said basically, let's see what else reasoning he gave. He said that we have to look at the lifetime of the eyewitnesses and what they have to say. You don't have that. Where is that? Did he give you any evidence that they have actually the eyewitness accounts?

He just affirmed it and said it so confidently. But now here's the problem. The Ebionite Church also maintained that they had apostolic authority going all the way back to Peter and James. The Gnostic Church also claimed that they had apostolic authority.

And we have several gospels like the Gospel of Peter and the Gospel of Judas. And the Gospel of Peter claims to have been written by Peter himself, but he attacks the Gnostic, 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. 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, Father, so brilliant?

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. And so from this era, we have so many churches, the Gnostic Church, we have the Marcionic Church, we have the Ebionite Church, which testified that this man is a false prophet named Paul.

He did not show any evidence as to why this man is a true prophet. Rather, he tried to scare us tonight. He tried to scare us, that if you challenge this man, Paul, as being a false prophet, then you'll have to accuse everybody of the first century of being cowards.

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.

So again, I'm gonna 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 Gospels, these were really written by the people who it claims to have been written, okay?

And please don't play hot potato with the proof, okay? 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.

So when I turn my attention to the church father, okay, what makes him true? He takes the burden of proof and he passes it to the disciples 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 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.

So really, you know, my argument stands, you know, I didn't even need 20 minutes. You know, what am I gonna really say up here? There is absolutely not a single shred of evidence for the 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. All right, so you gotta come up here and you gotta show us some evidence. Because remember, I'm not an executioner tonight.

I'm not attacking your Bible. And someone comes and asks you, please give us just a little bit of evidence. That is not a bad thing to ask. Okay, now you don't have to prove that your church, the Pauline church is a true church.

You don't have to prove that. You don't have to prove that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, these are really the authors of those books. And the epistle of Peter, those are really, who really wrote that.

You don't have to prove anything. God, I made this so pathetically easy for you. All you gotta do is come up here and show us just a little bit of evidence for this. Just a little bit, okay? So he talked about the Quran.

He said the Quran, you see, why should you use the Quran as a standard? Because of the scientific, prophetic, and archeological evidence, which we have substantiating that Prophet Muhammad is a true prophet.

Which you, so we have a situation where you have absolutely no evidence. Did he show any prophecies being fulfilled from the New Testament? Did he show any archeology being fulfilled from the New Testament?

He showed you absolutely nothing, okay? So anyways, when we get to our cross-examination period, I think this point is gonna be very clear. Now he talked about that, you see, nobody in the first generation believed in the corruption of the New Testament.

That's not true. You just go to the Quran, chapter five, starting with verse 110, and I think my time is up. And from 110 to 115, it clearly talks about the corruption of the New Testament and how the Christians, they are hiding scriptures from us.

Okay, that's the allegation what the Quran makes. So anyways, my time is up.

James White's First Rebuttal: Apostolic Continuity, Eyewitnesses, and the Quran

Well, I am disappointed that my presentation was not listened to very closely because I did really respond to every question that was asked. It's just that Mr. Rockman does not accept what it is I have to say.

I did not say that Paul is a prophet because the Bible says so. I'm not sure what standard of evidence that Mr. Rockman would like. Evidently, he believes that Muhammad was a prophet based on some type of scientific interpretation.

So the people who interpret science differently than him don't need to believe that Muhammad was a prophet, right? And prophecies. Well, there's all sorts of prophecies fulfilled in the New Testament.

That wasn't the issue this evening. The issue is not, can 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.

I believe that those can be very easily refuted. I was asked, were all the early church fathers, and did anyone hear me talking about the early church fathers? 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 were taught by the original apostles.