Enns, Mouw, and the Foundation of Scripture

Sometimes things pop up right before we start the program and I forget which, whether it's on my phone or on here, but it was like five minutes ago, short-term memory, it's gone. It's the open up browser, go, what was I about to do type thing.

I think modern life is doing that to us, too many gadgets and things like that, but anyway, I was directed to a text of scripture and when I looked at it, something struck me, so I thought I'd share that first and we'll move on with other things in the program today.

Psalm 4 and the Problem of the Hard Heart

Greetings and felicitations, by the way. Am I going to talk about Stephen Furtick? Nope, don't know anything about Stephen Furtick. Psalm 4 -2, O sons of men, this is New American Standard, O sons of men, how long will my honor become a reproach?

How long will you love what is worthless and aim at deception? And I looked at that, oh, I know what it was. It was, there was a program, that's right. You know how sometimes you look at your iPhone and you go, what's that?

It's been so long, what was that? So I tapped on it and morning of April 7th, there's where it is. You men, how long will you try to turn my honor into shame? How long will you love what is worthless and search for what is deceptive?

Selah, Psalm 4 -2 in the NET. And so I looked it up, it's got a pretty picture in the background, it's so nice. And I just happened to glance over at the Septuagint. And by the way, many congratulations to my longtime Greek professor and then colleague, Dr. Mike Baird, named, only the 17th Professor Emeritus of Grand Canyon University.

And I'm sure the seven longest years he had were when he had me as a student. But congratulations to Mike Baird. But because of Mike Baird, I can read the Septuagint. Sons of men, how long will you be barucardioi?

Barucardioi. And that's a compound term to refer to heaviness of heart, heavy hearted. Now that's, I haven't had time to look and see if there's any variation in the tradition between the Hebrew, which seems to have somewhat of a different understanding and reading to it, and the Septuagint, it wouldn't be the first time.

But, and then it says, in order that a certain one would love emptiness or futility and seek after lies, or the Hebrew aim at deception. And it's a lament, it's a, it's recognizing that pretty much in every generation, you have those who are heavy hearted, hard hearted, the description very often in scripture is, I've made their hearts fat.

So in other words, if the heart is where true sensitivity to God and truth is to be found, then if you make it fat, if you make it heavy, if you make it hard, then it's not sensitive to the truth of God in the world around, in the world around you.

And so the result is, it's a Hinnok clause, interestingly, in the Septuagint. If you're heavy hearted, then you're going to love futility and seek after lies. And it just, you know, some people would go, oh, see, you had not even tapped on that icon and it fits with everything you're talking about.

Yeah, it does. But God's word's that way. Because when I got into work today, I had even paid an extra couple bucks to get this. And it won't be available on Kindle until after I get back from Texas. It's going to be in Lyndale starting Saturday.

So if you want to come out Saturday evening, we're going to be discussing, we're discussing homosexuality, we're discussing a Christian response to it, dealing with it from a Christian perspective in our society today, and including the recognition that we need to understand what is being said by the collapsing, empty evangelical majority.

How's that for a description? The collapsing, empty evangelical majority. You know, in the 1980s, you couldn't have said the things that are being said today and get elected to office, right? But how many of those people back in the moral majority days, the days of Falwell and three-piece suits, had a truly biblical worldview?

Or were just very pragmatic? That's a that's a question to be considering. And we'll be talking about that Saturday night. I'll be preaching Sunday morning on the gospel in an ecumenical world. And then Sunday night, we're going to have an open Q &A, which could always get interesting.

But Tom Buck's a big guy. He's much taller than I am. So I'm sure he'll keep it under control. Anyway, so I won't get this in Kindle until I get back. So I won't take long to get through. I noted that it's a it's a puff piece.

When I say puff, when you're an author, you can look at how a book is typeset and figure out fairly quickly when someone is trying to get more pages than they have material. And this is this is lots of line space and lots of empty page, you know, a lot of room, a lot of room could have been made much, much smaller than it is.

It's it comes in at a hundred and let's see here. Oh, 220 pages could could have been 140 pretty, pretty easily, I would say. Anyway, it's Peter Enns' newest book. And when you have people like Walter Brueggemann and Brian McLaren endorsing on the back.

Gives you an idea, Peter Enns is the man who was very rightly dismissed from Westminster Theological Seminary, how he ever got there is a good question, but hey, there's a sad history. Well, there's a sad history of seminaries as a whole going wonky.

I believe that's because almost all seminaries have embraced a non-Christian methodology of education rather than a Christian methodology of education and hence put right within the methodology itself, the seeds of apostasy and almost the necessity of turning away from orthodoxy towards something other.

And proof of that is in the pudding. You can name on one hand the number of seminaries that have gone toward biblical truth. And the list is almost limitless for the number of schools and seminaries that were once orthodox and today are the very heart of the anti-Christian movement in our nation and certainly overseas as well.

The Sin of Certainty and the Loss of Biblical Boundaries

So anyway, Enns was dismissed from Westminster, whatever terminology you want to use. And since then has been very actively involved in, well, promoting unbelief. And here we have the sin of certainty, why God desires our trust more than our correct beliefs and correct as in air quotes, I guess, is what we call them today.

Now, like I said, it just arrived today. I had time to sort of go through it and I don't know, you know, he's trying to be very, very humorous. I'm not quite as badly humorous as Scott Hahn was in his book on Mary, which was just.

Oh, my, that was but tries to be sort of humorous. But. Someone might say, well, aren't you the one that just recently said that there are people who will trade truth for certainty, weren't you saying there's something wrong with certainty there?

No, I wasn't. I was saying that if you trade truth for certainty, you no longer have certainty because certainty requires what? Truth. And so. I was not in any way speaking against the propriety of having assurance, I believe firmly that regeneration places within the heart of man a fundamental trust of the word of God, a fundamental trust that God has spoken.

I believe we live in a day where that very spiritual reality is under tremendous attack. And so I fully accept that there is to be a desire on the part of the Christian to not be tossed about by every wind of doctrine.

And to trust what the word of God says. Where we're running into things today is there's many people like Peter Enns and many, many, many others who are seeking to tremendously diminish what it is anyone can have any certainty that God has spoken about at all.

So that faith turns into this nebulous trust concept that has no object, has no objective object any longer other than a very minimized range of of things. So that the idea of having meaningful doctrinal boundaries that they'll never.

Well, eventually they do. But when they're still trying to. I'll call it speak behind them. So in other words, they're moving away from orthodoxy, but they're trying to speak to those behind them. When they're trying to do that, they will continue to use language of, you know, use orthodox language if they no longer believe orthodox things by the use that orthodox language.

Queerness, Post-Christian Morality, and the Abuse of Scripture

What struck me about that were some other articles that came out. One is on the extreme edge, and these are all related. I honestly believe this and the text, Psalm 4, 2, 4, 3 in the Septuagint, by the way, if you're looking for it, and then the next two articles we look at are all related to one another.

They all have a common foundation. I was sent a email, this one came from email, didn't come from Twitter or anything like that. But there was a an article posted on Pathios, you know, that's sort of an automatic thing for me anymore if it's on Pathios.

But it is titled Queerness, the Idolatry of Norms and the New Morality. That sort of gives you a warning pretty much right up. And it comes from an author who is involved, a fellow by the name of Morgan Guyton, who is involved in campus ministry for the United Methodist Church.

Well, there you go. The United Methodist Church abandoned meaningful orthodoxy a long, long time ago. When I was told over a decade ago that if you wanted to actually teach at their graduate school, you could never admit in the interview process that you actually believe in the deity of Christ.

So that just sort of gives you an idea just how far out in the woods United Methodist Church has gone. But this article is a study in post-Christianity. There's nothing of scripture whatsoever. It's just and as far as I can tell, there is.

Well, OK, I just found a scripture reference. Let's read it together. This really isn't a new morality at all. It's been around for 2 ,000 years in the tucked away pockets of Christianity that, quote, have been hidden in Christ, Colossians 3, 3, and have never stopped being crucified by the empire builders who have co-opted Jesus' name for their power.

It's the morality that says things like, I desire mercy, not sacrifice. Humanity was not created with the Sabbath, but Sabbath for the humanity. There is no longer male or female for all one in Christ Jesus.

And God has chosen despised ones to bring to nothing the things that are. Now, what's amazing is that is being used to promote the idea that God celebrates the violation of Jesus' teaching that from the beginning, God made the male and female.

There's I mentioned. I think I mentioned in the sermon that I did on Sunday, the abuse of Galatians 3, 28. There it is. That's the abuse of Colossians 3, 3. That's not what Colossians 3, 3 is about. But again, for someone like this, context, exegesis, that kind of stuff isn't relevant anyways.

Scripture exists just to be cobbled together, not to actually be believed as a divine revelation. But the worldview of this article is just undiscernible from a Christian perspective. I mean, no one in Christian history would have been able to read this and go, oh, this is being written by a Christian.

It's just that far out from any sound biblical theology. And where did that come from? How is it? I mean, I imagine and I'm not sure if my dad gets to watch this very often anymore, but. I remember and I'm going to have to call and write or something, but I it's funny, the things you remember from your childhood.

But I remember very, very clearly. I think we were in the car. Remember, you know how there's these certain conversations you had that just stick with you and they were literally 40, 45 years ago, maybe longer for some of you.

And you wonder why those stuck. And ninety nine percent of the rest of your experience at that time didn't stick. But but I remember my dad specifically saying that. Back in his day, the liberal denominations of our day were still filled with gospel preaching churches, they maybe had been going liberal at the top, but he said there was a day when you would find, you know, gospel preaching Methodists and.

You know, specifically, as I recall mentioning the Methodist Church, you know, it's become about the only Methodist left of the United Methodist, but anyway. And so what what can explain? What has what happens now with just how completely removed from any kind of meaningful orthodox interpretation?

Well. I've said it before, I'll say it again, and sometimes some some of you have not heard me say it before, so I'm not just repeating myself, but. Fundamentally. Once a denomination loses a conviction that God has spoken authoritatively in his word.

It's just a matter of time and anymore, it can be a very short period of time now, but in the past, things didn't move quite as fast as they do now. And once but once that foundation is gone, I mean, if you really don't believe that God has spoken with clarity, there's no reason to be a Trinitarian.

There's no reason to actually believe that the doctrine of Trinity is true. So you got to understand for many liberals, they'll say the doctrine of Trinity is true. What they mean by that is our tradition affirms this, but it's just our tradition.

It doesn't have any corresponding reality. It's just that it's true that we affirm this tradition. That's different than saying, no, it's actually true that God exists in this way and has revealed that he exists in this way.

Huge difference. Massive difference. So anyway, you look at an article like this and a lot of people wonder, how did we get to something like this? How can we have people who are celebrating the fundamental rebellion of man against God as creator and calling themselves Christians in the process and actually saying that Jesus would have celebrated this?

I mean, it's such a perversion of what obviously the Bible is actually teaching. Well, the same culture that is celebrating the perversion of what the founding fathers intended the Constitution to mean, too.

So words, especially words uttered in history, are irrelevant now. Words are what you feel them to mean in our society. But if you want to see how all this fits together, I almost sent this to Rich, but I didn't because I would have distracted him this morning, but we have other things going on anyways.

Mormonism, Orthodoxy, and the Finality of the Quran

Firstthings .com posted an article today called Mormons Approaching Orthodoxy. And guess who it's by? Yes, of course, a man who obviously must have been, well, there's a lot of descriptions I could use here, but Richard Mao, the greatest force in de-evangelizing the Mormon people ever, the greatest compromiser.

We have gone into he and Robert Millett's stuff many, many times in the past. Just look up Mao, M-O-U-W, Millett, M-I-L-L, I think it's E-T-T or something like that. I forget how many L's and T's, but look it up on the blog and you'll see the programs.

A couple of years ago, they did a some type of author thing. What was it? Erdman's? It was Erdman's. It wasn't Erdman's? Yeah. Wow, it was just shocking. It was just so bad. And it's a long article, it's a long, long article about the alleged diminishment of emphasis upon the concept of exaltation to Godhood, especially as seen in the famous couplet by Lorenzo Snow, as man now is, God once was, as God now is, man may become.

And, you know, there's no question that Mormonism is losing its way. There's no question that the Mormonism of today is not the Mormonism that I dealt with every April or March, depending on time of year, in Mesa or first weekend April in Salt Lake or the first weekend in October in Salt Lake for 18 years going up there and doing that kind of stuff.

There's no question that Mormonism, especially since the days of the most greatest, the greatest influence of Gordon Hinckley, has lost its focus, lost its impetus. We read regularly now on the Internet of high ranking people leaving the Mormon church, people leaving in droves.

They're just they're treading water. Oh, yeah, they're still getting converts. They've still got lots and lots of missionaries out. But the back door is just as big as the front door is. They're treading water.

And the superstructure is creaking and groaning under the evacuation of the stuff inside, basically. And I don't know what's going to happen. I don't claim to know what's going to happen. I think there will be a split eventually because you still got lots of believing Mormons in Utah, places like that.

But the leadership of the church has lost its way. They. Not sure what they believe anymore, but what they haven't done is repudiated the orthodoxy of what has been taught all along and what people need to understand is if you stop teaching.

The God, men and angels are of the same species, just different places along the spectrum of exaltation. But. If you if you try to change the radical polytheism of Mormonism for any form of monotheism at all, you no longer have Mormonism.

You must repudiate Joseph Smith as a prophet. It's just you cannot continue to believe that that man received revelation from God, saw God, the Father and Jesus Christ as separate, distinct, personal individuals with physical bodies in the spring of 1820.

And what's now known as the first vision, you can't continue to believe those things. And without that, you don't have Mormonism. And there are still tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of Mormons going through masonic religious rituals.

In special buildings called temples. This very day. Thinking that they are providing for their own salvation or the salvation of their loved ones, getting sealed for time and eternity in the temple, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

How can that be described as orthodoxy? Well, it can be once you adopt the Richard Mao broad spectrum type stuff, and that man claims to be a Calvinist. Sorry, but we are not of the same ilk by any stretch of the imagination.

And, you know, when I was a Fuller, I wasn't at the Pasadena campus. I did my work here in Phoenix. That's the only way the ministry could continue. But I don't think Mao was president. I forget when he became president, but I think he came after the time I was there.

And, you know, it's not that I didn't have some liberal professors, I did. But thankfully, here in the Arizona campus, we had primarily conservative professors drawn from Grand Canyon University, especially.

And that was that was very helpful. But Mao's understanding and the direction of Fuller during his time was definitely not to the right. And it has continued tacking left since Mao's departure. I mean, given the reality that Daniel Kirk still teaches for Fuller Seminary and a very strong argument can be made that Daniel Kirk does not in any meaningful sense believe in the deity of Christ.

Obviously, that gives you an idea of the direction that's going there. Well, what's what's behind all of this? Well, certainly, again, a fundamental distrust in the ability of the word of God to define meaningful parameters.

And this is behind so many of the things that we talk about. It's behind why the Muslims can quote so many people who are, quote, unquote, Christian against Christian orthodoxy. Of course, those people don't believe what the word of God actually says.

And so even quoting them as Christians is questionable, but, hey, we live in a day where they're atheist professors, atheist priests in the Anglican Church in England. So why not? It's it's behind so many of the things that we address, the collapse of Rachel Held Evans, we talked about last time, the collapse on the part of so many people.

And it's just going to keep going and going and going. And the names are going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. As to people just throwing their hands up on the marriage issue, all those things, I've told you it's coming.

We're seeing it. It's happening right before our eyes. It's so common now that it hardly even makes the news for another church, another church. This isn't a hill to die on, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Why? If you don't believe that God has spoken, what are you supposed to do? If it's just if if if in your theological education, you became. Oh, there it is, Emma, it's two L's and one T. Miller just happened to look over and there's one of the books sitting right there.

Spelled that right. If in your theological education, you were instructed to believe that the best you can do is come up with your particular understanding of Scripture, but that that's no one can really know if this is what what of this is really inspired and what isn't, what comes from God, what comes from man.

You know, it's all contradictory to itself. And so, you know, if that's what you've been taught, it's no wonder people like that come out of seminary going. Yeah, whatever. And not standing for the ones for all delivered to the saints faith and folks like this.

Don't believe there is a once for all delivered the saints faith, they've abandoned that they just don't think it's it's obtainable or understandable or knowable. Which in of itself is is a tremendous issue, so.

There's so much of this that just fills. Fills our news feeds today, and it all comes back to our bibliology. And I simply say to everyone listening. I've never heard anyone make an argument. Well, I know what the argument is, I'll mention a second, but.

I think we need to have the view of Scripture that Jesus did. I don't think anyone will ever go wrong. Who has the level of dedication to the truthfulness and the finality of the word of God that Jesus did.

Now, their response is you have no earthy idea what Jesus's view was. They have to go to the skeptical and say, well, all right, you're all you've got here is Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And they're they're fundamentally unreliable as well, so you can't say that.

But that level of skepticism leaves us with absolutely no idea about anything in history at all. And so given that. Even even accepting liberal views of the synoptic gospels, there is no question. I mean, almost going to the Jesus seminar level.

Of skepticism, there really isn't any question of what Jesus's view of Scripture was, I mean, you can you can sift through the layers of tradition, as they would like to put it. And still, you're going to you're going to get one thing very clearly communicated to you.

And that is Jesus would often say, as it is written, have you not read? Have you not heard? And you're not going to find any word anywhere where Jesus says, well, you know, we're really not sure. If that part of the Old Testament is true, it's just not there.

So no one has ever gone wrong exercising the same level of trust in the scriptures that Jesus did. And I would simply say that in our day, it's just the rare person who does that. It's a rare person who does that.

Now, I do need to mention there are people that make something like this look. Needed. And they are the people who trade truth for certainty. They are the cultic King James only lists. I saw a. I saw.

A tweet yesterday from Sam Gip. And someone right toward the beginning of the program tweeted, Ray, did you see the Ray Lewis video? Someone sent it to Seiko Woods yesterday, and so I decided I'd listen to it.

And it was once again, one of those situations, you know, Ray Lewis is right. He's also a preacher. Yeah. And look it up online. He he started preaching and he was extremely upset about what's going on in Chicago and stuff like that.

And once again, it was the same situations we've seen over and over again. Some people are allowed to say the things he said, and some people aren't. And unfortunately, for a lot of people, the color of the skin of the person speaking is more important than the content of their words.

That's a sad reality. And so someone on Twitter yesterday. Mentioned, you know, they repost this tweet from Sam Gip. And it was. In the full sense of racist, a racist tweet. And I just commented in response, I said, well, you need to realize in the cultic Rachmaninoff camp, racism is rampant.

Real racism, not, oh, you offend me because you're the wrong color racism. It's the old style, Southern white racism. Very, very deeply. And I didn't bring it in here. Oh, man, I know exactly where it is, too.

But if you. If, you know, you know, the you know, the the shelves where the light turns on when you walk in. If you walk straight through middle shelf is my King James only section. Ruckman's book, Black is Beautiful, because there's something written in it.

Back in 1995 or six, so about right at 20 years ago. Some of you have seen the correspondence that I had with Peter Ruckman, where I posted I posted the letters I sent him with his nasty comments.

Thank you, sir.

And at some point, I wonder if he dated it. No, didn't didn't date it, but this is a oh, my. OK, this is a racist book. I mean, I won't go into it, but it includes cartoons mocking black people. So on and so forth.

Ruckman's insane. All right. This is this is about space aliens. Area 51. I mean, it is truly. Insanity, it really is. But here right up front, notice the OK, there's you'll notice handwritten. Dear Jimbo.

Some more ammo you can use to prove Ruckman ism is a heresy. Glad to be of assistance. You need something to keep you busy. Peter Ruckman. Sound familiar? Who has sent me coloring books? Sam Gip. Sam Gip is just a chip off the old Ruckman I block, though he's not nearly Ruckman.

Ruckman is one of those people that inhabits that line between and he's over on one side, insanity and genius. Gip is just mean spirited and he's not overly bright. So he just tries to be like Ruckman.

Thankfully, not too many people try to imitate Peter Ruckman. But this kind of this kind of racism, blatant open. Type of racism. Not uncommon in the the cultic King James only movement. Now, I'm not saying there aren't black King James only us.

But they're not going to find any support from that wing, which is the loudest and nastiest wing. And it's the Ruckmanites. It's the. That kind of mindset that trades truth for certainty. And attacks anybody, you know, you know, my my the Internet troll, the king of the Internet trolls, the guy that goes after me all the time.

One of my Internet stalkers. Another example of the type of. Person that attacks anyone. Who differs from them at any point of theology at all. Any point of theology. So. Their range of certainty is inexhaustible.

They're absolutely certain about every aspect. Of. What they call the faith. So instead of having. The core teachings of scripture. And then recognizing gradations beyond that. And then finally, the adiaphora, the things where people can disagree with one another.

They make all of that. This is my area of certainty. And so that's why you see Stephen Anderson and Sam Gip.

Just.

Going at it full bore. Calling each other wild eyed heretics. And what are they arguing about? They're arguing about a specific view of when the rapture takes place.

Okay.

They're so absolutely certain about this stuff that if you differ from them just a little bit. And they can't they can't even begin to conceive. Of how someone. Could have fellowship. When you disagree about something obviously far bigger than that, of course, for them.

I suppose that's just one of the biggest things there is.

But.

They can't conceive of how. I could preach the gospel in a Presbyterian church. And then the next night debate. The pastor of that church on the subject of baptism. They just can't see that. And since it does take work.

To think issues through. Figure out where they are in the spectrum of. Definitional things versus adiaphora. Important things. Things that will divide us ecclesiastically. But maybe not in regards to the gospel.

What's definition of the gospel? Of course, we live in a day. Let's be honest ourselves. Many, you know, I've I've talked about it many, many times before the mere Christianity movement, the. Least common denominator stuff.

And put the gospel out here someplace. There's all sorts of of things that we we have to think through. And yesterday in channel. A couple of us. A couple of us were. I don't know what it was yesterday.

But there was just. It seemed like everything that was being discussed. Every link that was being dropped. Had something to do with. More insanity. Either it was heresy. You know, abject foolishness in the church.

Christian Christians being persecuted. Just a promotion of godlessness in our society. And a couple of us were just like. Stop the world. I want to get off. Just so much of it. That I think there's a strong temptation for a lot of us.

Just throw our hands up in the air and say. Enough, I can't. I can't deal with all this. And and you might say. You get to feel like that.

I sure do.

Yeah, you bet. Sometimes it's just like. There's too much. And for me of course. I always have people saying. You need to go study this. And you need to debate this person. And you need to start talking about this.

You need to go research that. And some of those things I'd like to research. I really would. There's one particular movement. I'm not going to mention it right now. Because then everyone's going to jump down my throat.

And expect me to have something done. And who knows when. And I'm so far behind on everything else. I don't know that I could ever do it. But there is one particular group. I'd like to be researching right now.

That I've never addressed. But you got to understand. We're a little different. Than any of the major ministries. That you're familiar with. There are major. Parachurch ministries and organizations. In this nation.

That have multi-million dollar a year budgets. Multi-million dollar a year budgets. They could buy and sell us. On the interest on their savings account. We're just. I don't have anybody to do research for me.

If I.

You know.

There are some folks that will help me with certain things.

But.

And I would imagine.

If I put out a call.

And say.

Hey.

I'd like to try to get three or four people together.

And.

You get me the best information. And I'll read it. And stuff like that. I could probably put that together. But to be honest with you. I'm not even good at organizing other people that way. And so it's a bit of a.

It's a bit of an issue there. But anyway. I just chased a rabbit. It got back out of the path there.

The point is.

Yeah.

Sometimes I just feel like.

And I know in my mind.

God's still on his throne. I'm only seeing a very small portion of it. We've seen all sorts of people brought out of out of error. And it's just. I know all that. But sometimes you just start getting tired.

And on the short term thing. What helps me in situations like that. Is to get on the bike. And go for a long ride. And listen to something other than heresy. Maybe something positive. Maybe some fiction or some history.

That's not. Maybe that's escapism. But I just don't think that anyone can just sit around. All the time. Constantly facing the weirdness. And the strangeness today. And for some of us older folks. Some of you younger folks need to realize.

Some of us older folks. It's the speed at which this is happening. That is downright disorienting to us. It really is. That's not how we were raised. Generally one year was pretty much like the next year.

And you can sort of count on that. Now you can't count on things being the same for six months. Let alone a year or two years or anything like that. The rate of change is extremely, extremely rapid. So back to the point.

What was the foundation for all of this? What causes the problem here is a fundamental distrust in the Word of God. A fundamental distrust in the Word of God. And just to make a transition here. You keep looking at me like there's something you want to say.

Oh, okay. It's not just apostates that have a fundamental distrust. It's not just former Christians that have a fundamental distrust. But our Muslim friends have a fundamental distrust. Not, and this is what's weird to me.

Not in the idea that God can speak. Because that's a given. They believe that he has in the Quran. But the problem is the Quran specifically says that that's not the only place where he's spoken. And yet, I would argue for the vast majority of Muslims today.

Functionally, that is the only place where God has spoken for them. I mean, if you're a Muslim today, let me shift gears here. If you're a Muslim, do you really believe God has spoken anywhere else? Now, some of you Sufis are going, well, yes.

But if you're a non-Sufi Sunni, where are these other revelations that have been Natsal? Or wouldn't you have to really admit that fundamentally, when you boil it down,.

The Quran is pretty much it.

Because if you look at anything else, if you look at the Torah, you look at the Injil, you have to look at it through what? The lens of the Quran. It's the, it's the corrector.

Right?

And I posted a little, what I did with this is I used, I've got this program. It's really a cool program. On my phone. Rich likes it because when I'm traveling and I have an expense, I just use this program where I can take a picture of the receipt and it automatically crops it, turns it into a PDF, and I can send off to Rich just instantly.

Instead of handing him a bunch of crumpled pieces of paper when I get back, he's, he's got it right there. Just boom, boom, boom. Well, I use that because I was reading. Well, I just realized I was reading this, which is the nine volume Hilali Khan translation of the Quran.

It has all sorts of commentary and citations from Bukhari and the Hadith, right along with the, with the text. It's rather, rather useful. And here was, this is in Surah 5. Ibn Abbas said, why do you ask the people of the scripture, Jews and Christians, about anything while your book, the Quran, which has been revealed to Allah's messenger, is newer and the latest.

You read it pure, undistorted, and unchanged. And Allah has told you that the people, the scripture, changed their scripture and distorted it and wrote the scripture with their own hands and said, it is from Allah to sell it for a little gain.