Current Topics

Itself, that people like Worf are really cool. But anyways, for the rest of you, welcome to the program today. This is the last dividing line for over two weeks. I would say we're looking at, I suppose it would help if I had a calendar up so I could actually see this, but next time we will be getting together, Lord willing, would be on the 15th of October.

Now if we have to do something on the 14th, just because there's so much talk about it or something like that, we can, but the next scheduled dividing line will be Tuesday, October 15th. So that's a ways down the road.

Obviously, I will hope to have sufficient and regular net access in South Africa to at least be posting pictures and reports. And I am going to be bringing a camera down with me and asking that someone be busily snapping away, almost annoyingly snapping away, shall we say.

So we'll be able to have a good record along those lines, but it'll be October 15th before we can get back together again. And who knows what will have happened between now and then on so many different fronts.

How many more times will Josh Williamson have been arrested in the United Kingdom by October 15th is the question. For those of you who don't know what that means, I mentioned briefly the arrest in the United Kingdom of Josh Williamson.

He was arrested again over the weekend. The video is available up online. It is the perfect illustration of secularists trying to silence the preaching of the gospel. You're speaking too loud. Yeah, that's why.

Josh doesn't know how to speak quietly. Josh is a big man. And the sound that you hear is Knox spinning in his grave as to what has become of Scotland. Because I'll tell you something, when the light goes out in a country, it gets really dark.

And there has been such light in Scotland and the United Kingdom as a whole that when secularism takes over and the transcendent value of human life is no longer seen, well, you see what happens. It was this morning listening to Dr. Moeller speaking about the dramatic increase in the number of euthanasia cases in the Netherlands doubled in 10 years.

Just put all together, folks. Pretty soon, a matter of days, your health care will be under the control of the IRS. Yes, indeed. Four times the expense at one quarter of the choices. There you go. Brilliant, brilliant move toward socialism, which will have everybody really upset, but not upset enough to do anything about it because it takes leadership to do that.

And so soon you're going to have a secular state with IRS agents in charge of your health care. And as you're getting older, euthanasia is coming our direction in this land as well, just as it already exists in Europe.

Put it all together, man, and those death panels at that term will be—let's just say we'll be getting rid of people a whole lot faster through the health care system than through the justice system when they kill people and things like that.

It'll be far safer, in fact, if you're an old person, to be on death row than to be a regular citizen. Think about that one for a while and just go, wow, what did happen to the United States of America?

Well, the U .S. I grew up in doesn't exist anymore, to be perfectly honest with you. It just doesn't exist anymore. We also have what's being called now the gay stopo out there. Here's the story. Guido Baria, chairman of the world's leading pasta manufacturer, prompted calls for a consumer boycott Thursday after telling Italian radio his company would never use a gay family in its advertising.

I would never do a commercial to homosexual family, not for lack of respect, but because we don't agree with them. Ours is a classic family where the woman plays a fundamental role, Baria, 55, said in an interview with Radio 24 on Wednesday.

Baria, one of the best known pasta brands around the world, is one of Italy's biggest advertisers and for many years has used the image of a happy family living in an idealized version of the Italian countryside with the slogan, where there's Baria, there's home.

Is it Barilla? I assume it's Baria. I don't know. I don't claim to speak Italian. In the interview, Baria said he opposed adoption by gay parents, but was in favor of allowing gay marriage, which is not illegal, which is not legal in Italy.

His comment about advertising was in response to a direct question about whether he would ever feature a gay family in his company's commercial. So once again, here's a guy who's actually in favor of gay marriage, but that is not enough.

And you've just got to understand it. For the homosexual lobby, it's not acceptance of a part of the agenda. It's not even acceptance of the agenda. That's not enough. You're a homophobe if you only accept.

You're a homophobe if you're only tolerant. You have to rejoice. You have to affirm. You have to revel in the glory of homosexuality. That's what you got to do. And if you dare say, well, I actually think that a woman has a role in the home.

Oh, oh, don't buy that pasta. That's why we refer to the Gestapo. I just looked over at Twitter and one of our brethren near Kiev just asked, who is Worf? Well, he is about the age of my son. Now my son would know who Worf was because he grew up with that.

But Worf is the Klingon, well, he was security officer and he had a couple other different roles in Star Trek Next Generation. But then he moved on to other, I think he had a role for a while at Deep Space Nine and maybe even made a cameo at some point.

Everybody made a cameo at some point in Voyager because you could. And he was in the Star Trek movies and stuff like that. So that's who Worf is. Sorry about that. I have to try to expand to my transnational audience.

Homosexuality, Media Fawning, and the Kansas Conference

Okay, and then along the same line, now here's the story. Christian group meets in Kansas to discuss whether or not the Bible condemns homosexuality. A, wrong. Matthew Vines gets together and that's not what they're getting together to discuss.

They're getting together to train 50 hand-picked people to go into conservative churches to try to overthrow the biblical testimony to the sinfulness of homosexuality. That's what they're doing. That's obviously what they're doing.

It's not, well, we're open to a discussion. No, you're not. No, you're not. But Matthew Vines of Wichita grew up attending a conservative evangelical Presbyterian church in the city and relies heavily on intensive study of the Bible for his presentations.

He said liberal and moderate Christian churches have adopted more gay-friendly stances, but conservative churches remain steadfast in our opposition to homosexuality. The 23-year-old Vines, younger than my youngest, wants to bring change.

There's a message the Bible doesn't actually say same-sex orientation is a sin or condemn loving gay relationships. Out of only 100 applicants. This is amazing. I mean, he's been asking for people to apply.

So out of 100 applicants, Vines selected 50 people with ties to conservative churches to participate in his three-day conference, which started Wednesday in Prairie Village and ends on Saturday. So it's running right now.

Now, everybody knows my five-hour interaction, I guess mine was four hours, his was an hour long. So everybody knows that I responded to Matthew Vines. I got a really neat tweet. Someone said that they were actually working for the company that put out his book and somebody else was able to direct that person to my response so they could hear the other side.

Because you never get to hear the other side these days. There is no other side from their perspective. And so everybody knows I responded to Matthew Vines. We're not gonna do that all over again. But here's what caught my attention about this article.

So there's 51 people getting together in Kansas to talk about homosexuality and it's all over the news. Why? I have spoken on the subject of homosexuality dozens of times, rarely with any audience smaller than that, and often with a much, much larger audience, and nobody in the media ever cared.

We couldn't get media coverage of debates with Barry Lynn or John Shelby Spong. Media didn't care. But you get one 23-year-old with a YouTube video and the media is just like, oh, he's just the greatest biblical scholar that's ever lived.

And you're just like, what? It's absolutely amazing. The utter fawning of the media over homosexuality. It's just like, oh, anything we can do, just tell us. It's just shocking. Shocking. Absolutely shocking.

I'm just really seriously, truly, truly amazing. So the Associated Press, they're all out there. They're doing their thing. And I'm just like, why? There was a very interesting article yesterday on Fox News.

Jailed American Pastor pens heartbreaking birthday letter to daughter. As his wife is in New York to fight for his freedom, a letter American Pastor Saeed Abedini recently managed to get out of his Iranian jail cell and to his seven-year-old daughter for her birthday has come to light.

He calls Rebecca his little hero and expresses heartbreak about not seeing her grow. Rebecca's mom, Nagmeh, is unable to travel with their two young kids to Iran for fear she might also be arrested. But with the Iranian delegation in New York for the U .N., she is pressing his case.

This week, she traveled to New York, was able to hand deliver a letter Monday to the delegation of Iran's new president asking for her husband's quick release. Abedini, 33, an American citizen who left his wife and children behind in their Boise home to travel to Iran last year, has been held in notoriously brutal Evin prison for his Christian faith.

My beautiful Rebecca, you don't realize how much I rejoice and weep when I see your pictures behind the glass window when my parents visit me every week in prison, he wrote. Rebecca turned seven September 12th, making her second birthday, making this her second birthday without her father.

Your hair has grown so long and is such a beautiful black color, he wrote. It is so hard and so heartbreaking for me to see these pictures and to know I am not there beside you as you grow. Last month, an Iranian court rejected an appeal from Abedini and refused to reduce the eight-year prison term his supporters believe is tantamount to a death sentence, according to his family and lawyers.

His supporters say he has been beaten and tortured in the prison and that he was only in Iran to try to start a secular orphanage. In language meant for a young child to understand, Abedini tells his daughter that while he is being held and has to be away from her, she is also facing hardships.

I came here to help the kids that did not have mommies and daddies but my own kids lost their daddy. Abedini had been making one of his frequent visits to see his parents and the rest of his family in Iran, his native country, where he spent many years as a Christian leader and community organizer developing Iran's underground home church communities for Christian converts.

On this last trip, the Iranian government pulled him off a bus and said he must face a penalty for his previous work as a Christian leader in Iran. Thursday is the one-year anniversary of his imprisonment and that is today.

Once again, the government of Iran denying human freedoms, persecuting Christians, it is an evil regime and I just wish I could hear many more Muslims crying out against this kind of activity and this kind of persecution of Christians.

But at the same time, there are a number of articles on the web concerning the tremendous persecution of Christians in Egypt right now by Sunni Muslims. Obviously in Iran, these are Shiites. In Egypt, the followers of Morsi are taking out their anger at Morsi's removal by destroying Christian churches.

Churches that have been in use for 1 ,600 years uninterrupted are now closed and shuttered, burned by the radical followers of Morsi and the Islamic Brotherhood there in Egypt. A tremendous amount of persecution of Christian believers taking place in the Islamic world today and it is something that we must keep in mind and certainly pray for those who have lost their lives in this terrible situation and in this persecution.

Network Problems, Upcoming Travel, and Response to Bashir Varnia

Well, speaking of Islam now, I actually didn't have Rich skip over the phone number if this is the last time that we're going to be together before we head for South Africa. So the problem is, for some reason, we are having major network problems at our office today and my computers do not know that the phone network works any longer or is in existence.

I've tried to do the regular connection. It's always worked up until today, but today the internal network has decided that it is just simply not going to cooperate in any way, shape, or form and just is not working.

So I can't see if there are phone calls or anything of the like. So I guess we'll still leave that as an option. I will just have to be manually informed of the existence of phone calls because nothing else is working right.

We're having some network issues. I did want to continue in my responses as well. If we have phone calls, we'll interrupt toward the end, but I did want to get at least through my response to Bashir Vania.

I didn't get through all of Yusuf Ismail on New Testament stuff, but I've certainly made a good faith effort anyways, and if I finish with Bashir, I'll move back to Yusuf here. But I've only got a few minutes left in Bashir's comments, so let's continue on with that.

The actual atonement also has problems. Again, it is a work in progress. Still debate amongst Christians in Christendom. Did Jesus die as God? Then God died? Doesn't make sense. Did he die as a man? Still problematical.

Well, if I had an extra copy of The Death of Death, I'd probably take it with me now, having heard that, just to give it to Bashir. Again, since the author of the Qur 'an did not understand what Christians believed, even in his day—I mean, I'm not even going to—don't even have to say did not have direct knowledge of the New Testament teachings, that's clear and obvious.

But since the author of the Qur 'an did not even know what Christians believed in his day, that, unfortunately, has continued on to his followers as well, so that there are very, very few Muslims. That's why I so much enjoyed the debate with Abdullah Kunda is, at least, Abdullah has sought to understand what we believe and hence can interact meaningfully with our statement that Jesus is the God-man, that to try to split him up into parts and say, did he die here or die there, doesn't make any sense.

This is a God-man voluntarily giving his life as a ransom for many, the substitutionary atonement, and then he makes the statement, and there's still argumentation. Well, if you mean every generation has to defend the truth, are you just going to assume that everyone's going to always believe the truth and stay with a truthful presentation?

Every generation has to—I mean, there was argumentation about the uncreated nature of the Qur 'an in the early years of Islam, and if there wasn't such a strong control mechanism in place in Islamic countries, basically fear, there would be discussion about it even more so, even to this day.

This is just a fact, so the idea that, well, there's still disagreement. Well, yeah, there are people who will always fall short of a fully biblical expression of the Christian faith, and those of us who seek that fully biblical expression of the Christian faith will always have to be engaged in a defense of the faith and a defense of our faith in light of that.

That's just the way it is, and that I consider to be a good thing, not a bad thing.

Paul is constrained to admit in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 28, he says that Jesus will be subject to God. Jesus is a servant of God. He is a slave to God.

Jesus is a servant or slave to the Father, specifically. He has voluntarily taken that position. That's the whole point of the Incarnation. And the text of 1 Corinthians 15 is talking about at the end times, there is no longer the need for, for example, the mediatorial work in the sense of bringing about, you know, all the elect have been gathered together, the judgment has taken place.

All of that is now a completed thing. And so we have a united focus of worship upon the triune God, rather than the recognition of the continuing functionality of the economic trinity in the Gospel. I mean, once the work of the Gospel is accomplished, glorification has taken place, etc., etc., now you have the focusing of our attention upon the one true God.

But again, the fundamental assertion being made here is, well, if you assume Unitarianism, then these things couldn't possibly make sense. We don't assume Unitarianism. We're not assuming that everything that has come before this is inappropriate either.

I, in fact, checked the word out in the Greek.

Well, yeah, sure, doulos. You bet. That's what servant-slave means. But again, anyone who, what else could the Incarnate One be? That's the whole point of John chapter 5, is that Jesus is not some separate deity out there in competition with the Father.

There is perfect harmony and unity. If you're going to be the perfect man, what are you going to be? You're going to be a servant, you're going to be a slave of God, right? Is that not what every godly man desires to be?

Is the perfect servant of his God? So if Jesus was perfect, then what would he be? Again, the real objection here is, well, incarnation can't take place. You can't have three persons sharing one being of God.

Doesn't explain why, just says you can't. And if one of those persons was to become man, then he would have to, what, be an atheist? Again, just these are objections that come from not having really thought through or understanding the Christian position, and that's because the canonic sources do not understand the Christian.

At this point. So Jesus, if Jesus is a servant to God, he cannot be part of a trinity. Why?

Because there can't be any incarnation. See, the assumptions become rather vicious at this point.

Because the trinity says, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, co-equal, co-eternal. The one cannot.

Be subject to the other. Why? I'll just ask the question, Bashir. I'll ask you this if we talk about it. Why? Why cannot one voluntarily take this role? What's the specific reason? Again, it's all going to come back to an assumption of Unitarianism, not to anything.

Else other than that. So we have another problem. And these are the core principles of Christianity. We're not talking about some, you know, obscure point of the lawyer. More remarkable, Jesus taught no parable without ambiguity directly relating to his divinity, death, and resurrection, his atonement.

Why is this important? Well, Matthew chapter 13, verse 34 tells us, indeed, Jesus taught nothing to the crowd without a parable.

Now this is an argument that I've, I think I've heard somebody else using it, but it's, most often I've heard of Bashir using it, and it's just a really bad reading of the New Testament. He takes a particular portion of Jesus's ministry where it says that Jesus was using parables to teach people.

Now that's really obvious if you just read the section, he would then explain things to disciples. So obviously he wasn't just always using a parable. And in Matthew and in Mark, there's all sorts of places where Jesus didn't teach in parables.

But all this one little, it's sort of like when they take the one thing, well, I'm not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and then they don't just ignore the rest of the book, which says he sent the disciples out into all the world.

Here's, you have a situation where Jesus was speaking in parables to the crowds and then explaining to his disciples, and he extends that out to say, and everything Jesus ever did, he never said anything except in a parable, which is a gross misreading of both Matthew and Mark's utilization of that phrase.

And all you'd have to do is just read Matthew and Mark, and you'd see that. But, you know, I'm not sure if Bashir tried to develop this or he got it from somebody else, but it's a really, really, really bad reading of Matthew and Mark.

It's completely acontextual and really needs to be rejected and abandoned as soon as possible.

So, folks, please note the key to the teachings of Jesus are his parables. So I went through the parables. I want to know what Jesus taught, and I could not find, without ambiguity, any core principles that he taught about his atoning death.

So not a single parable talks about the core doctrine. Actually, that's not true. I mean,.

If you consider how many parables Jesus talked about the kingdom and talked about the parable in regards to the vineyards, God sent his son, they mistreat the prophets, and they kill the son, and I mean, there's actually a number of them that are there.

But again, it requires you to have an ear to hear everything that the New Testament's teaching, and there are very, very few Muslims who can overcome the anachronism enforced upon them by having a revelation after the New Testament that they accept as a revelation, but was written by someone who did not understand the revelation of the New Testament, had no direct access to it, did not know what it contained, and that veil of ignorance of the text of the New Testament then becomes the veil through which the Muslim has to attempt to read the New Testament.

Of Christianity. If I'm mistaken, I'm sure my brothers here will be happy to point it out. They will quote the parable and give us a brief explanation, and we can talk about it. I beg only one indulgence, and that is that we distinguish between the parables of Jesus and his other modes of communication.

Why is this important? Again, Matthew 13, verse 35, Matthew puts in the mouth of Jesus or tells us that one of the prophecies is that I will put, or I will open my mouth in parables to reveal what has been hidden.

So Jesus will, via his parables, tell us what has been hidden.

In one particular context, not in the entirety of Jesus's ministry, obviously.

Apparently he didn't tell people what has been hidden about his divinity, his death, his resurrection. Paul, who...

Yeah, just think, just think about, just one incident, just off the top of my head. The woman who anoints Jesus's feet and wipes with his hair, what does Jesus say? She has anointed me for my what? For my burial.

And that's in Mark, by the way. So in the most primitive sources, you have the prophecy of the coming of the crucifixion, the death of Christ, etc., etc. It's there if you just allow the texts to speak for themselves.

I know next week I will probably be mentioning the title of Shabir Ali's television program, Let the Quran Speak. Well, I say, let the New Testament speak. If we want to let the Quran speak, then we have to let the New Testament speak as well.

Whoever met Jesus, peace be upon him, had to come and say, well, look, he knows the truth. Jesus is speaking to him. Speaking of Paul there... Well, we will discuss those issues. Ironically, there are parables, many parables that support the Muslim position.

This idea, you know, Jesus said.

In other words, as long as you can cut the text apart, we can find stuff, we can fit into our paradigm. Well, anybody can do that. As long as you cut it apart, that's easy to do.

You know, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Well, that's not a parable, by the way. You know, I accept that.

No, no, no, you don't accept that. Jesus did not say, I am a way, a truth, a life. Jesus did not say, right now, I am the one who points to the truth, the one that points to... He said, I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life.

Those are exclusive terms. And you don't believe that about Jesus. Not if you believe that he is a mere result.

He is the way, the truth, and the life. He is not the destination. He is the way to God. He speaks the truth, and so forth. You see, you can say the same thing in many ways. The Quran tells us, chapter 3, verse 31, that, O Muhammad, tell them, if people claim to love God, they must follow you.

Because why? You are the way, the truth, and the life.

Actually, the Quran does not say that of Muhammad. This is a bad extension by saying, well, if a prophet speaks about the way, the truth, and life, that makes the way. That's not what Jesus was saying.

That is not a fair or accurate reading of what Jesus was saying in the context of John, chapter 14. It's just, it's not. There's no reason to be making this type of argumentation.

Moses, Old Testament, same thing. God tells Moses, peace be upon him, See, I make you as God unto Pharaoh, and Aaron will be your prophet. You are like God, Elohim. You know, the issue of God and his attitude to Sunni Islam.

Absolute perfection is a quality of God. When man talks about perfection, we can only talk about relative perfection. Because it is unthinkable that God Almighty, who is perfect in knowledge and in power, would create a creature who is imperfect, and then demand absolute perfection from this creature.

Now, did you catch that? Because there is an interesting parallel to the argument that Abdullah Kunda made. Remember what that one was? And that was, man by nature is imperfect. That's why the incarnation could not take place.

So God cannot make a perfect creature. Any creature is imperfect. So deity becomes the definition of perfection. Anything that is not deity is imperfect. And you have to recognize that. I mean, that's part of the thinking.

And it is, of course, an inaccurate thinking, because it's basically saying that, while God can be perfect, he can't create anything that is perfect for what he intended it to be, which is obviously not true.

Is God a tyrant?

No. Then it is a strange idea for me as Muslims to say that God demands absolute perfection. And since man is capable of sin, and that every person, yes.

Again, all you got to do is go back to the Deuteronomic law. Blessings and cursings. I mean, this has been from the beginning. The whole reason that you have the sacrificial system is because of the recognition of man's falling short.

Well, you have to, if there's a falling short, you have to know what you're falling short of. And what are you falling short of? The revelation God has made of his law for man's behavior. So you have here now the Islamic idea, at least as being expressed by Bashar, a sort of grating on the curve.

We're not that bad. That's not the prophetic message of the Old Testament, and certainly not that of the New.

Wilson, therefore, God cannot forgive you. In chapter 42, verse 37, and I'll end up with this verse, humanity is assured that salvation will come to those who, as the Quran says, who avoid the greater crimes and sinful deeds, and when they are angry, even then they forgive.

You believe, you do good works. As the Quran says, when you are angry, Jesus, peace be upon him, said the same thing. He says, forgive us our debts, our sins, as we have forgiven the sins of others. The Lord's Prayer.

Jesus prayed in this manner.

So there's the end of his presentation. Well, Jesus taught us to pray, but he did not teach us that by doing our good works, we somehow would merit forgiveness from God. That is not his teaching. That is certainly how man's religions view these things, as certainly not the New Testament or the biblical presentation on that particular subject.

Looking forward to meeting Bashir and getting to talk to him about many of these issues, and that will be, I think, today's Thursday? Coming up right at a week from now or so, the Lord will, and that's exactly what we'll be doing.

By the way, the programs that we're going to be doing on Unbelievable, when I'm in London, one will be with Peter Williams, who's with Catholic Voices, and we're going to be discussing ultimate authority for Christians, in other words, sola scriptura, and of course, my assertion of sola ecclesia on the part of the Roman Catholic community.

And then a second program with Yusuf Ismail on the role of Jesus in Christianity and Islam. So those will be the programs on Monday. You throw those in with all the talks and debates in South Africa, and it's 20.

There will be 20 of them. And people do ask, are they going to be recorded? Well, I don't know. Obviously, the debates will be. And Unbelievable will be, so there's at least eight right there. And a lot of the others, I've spoken on similar topics here in the States.

You could probably find them if you look through sermon audio and things like that. Homosexuality and speaking on Jehovah's Witnesses and stuff like that as well. So my understanding is we do have a phone call, and let's talk to Sam.

Hi, Sam. Hello, Sam. What?

Dwight? Yes, sir. How are you? I'm good. How are you doing? Doing all right. Okay. Sorry, I'm driving through Illinois, so it's going to be kind of, I guess, spotty a little bit. I had a question about the Uthmanic revision.

From my understanding, they gathered all and compiled them all together then burned everything else.

Am I understanding that correctly? Well, first of all, I just want you to realize, Sam, that of all the truck drivers in the United States right now, you're probably the only one discussing the Uthmanic revision while on the road.

I just thought that's a pretty unique thing to be doing. But, well, that's sort of the case. When you look carefully at what the Islamic sources indicate and also throw some light on it from other non-Islamic sources that narrate the same material around the same time, when you look at it, basically what happens is there's a two-part creation of the standardized Uthmanic text.

The first takes place shortly after Muhammad's death, where a single manuscript is produced and then kept for the next 20 years. And then about 20 years after Muhammad's death, you have people starting to pronounce the Qur 'an differently and to read the Qur 'an differently in different places.

And so there is a great concern that this will cause divisions within the Islamic ummah. And so Uthman puts together a group. They get that first manuscript. They don't just simply repeat it, though. They put together a group and they start looking for more stuff.

They find more material. A specific verse, ayah, is quoted as having been not included in that original. And then they create a standardized version. They make copies of it and send it to the chief cities of the Islamic empire at the time.

And there is a command that, first of all, that Uthman destroys the materials that he used to produce his final version. And then the decree goes out that anyone else that has any Qur 'anic materials, whether full manuscripts or parts of manuscripts, is to burn those things.

And this is what results in the division, according to many sources, between Abdullah ibn Masud and Uthman. Abdullah tells his people to hide their Qur 'ans, to protect them. He rejects the work of the committee that put it together.

And so you have these competing traditions for a while. And Ibn Masud is focused in the Kufa area. And so it doesn't go all that smoothly. But certainly when you have the power of the sword, you can standardize a text, as Uthman did.

And it takes some time to get rid of the variant readings from the other people, like Ibn Masud.

Okay, well, in that case, I noticed in a lot of debates that the Islamic colleges use the Gnostic Gospels and stuff like that. And yet the church was accused of burning these to suppress them and to guide Christianity to the modern-day position.

Right. Has there ever been an argument that could be used against Muslims and their texts as well? I mean, just basically be, y 'all accused us of doing it, but yet y 'all did do it.

Well, some of the arguments, sometimes Islamic apologists will say, well, the reason these materials are burned was out of respect, because you're to burn instead of just burying, but burning old codices and things like that.

But it's very obvious that the actual reason why Uthman did this was to produce the unified text that he was seeking to produce. Now, the reality is that while there might have been local incidences where a local bishop would say, this particular book is bad, it should be burned or something like that.

There was never a time where you had the, until the medieval period, really, where once you have the state church, which develops after, really after the days of Augustine and into the medieval period, you just never had the opportunity to be able to do what Uthman did have the opportunity of doing in producing the revision that he did.

Because the Quran did not have the kind of explosive copying and distribution, the multifocality, as I call it, that you have with the New Testament, because you've only got one author and you don't have multiple authors at multiple times writing to multiple audiences.

So the Quran has a very different, and this is going to be one of the things that Yusuf Ismail and I are discussing in South Africa. So there really couldn't be the kind of extensive effort that you would have on the part of the Islamic state against any particular Gnostic gospel.

And in fact, by the time the Christians and the state had become joined, the Gnostics were pretty much history anyways, and their books were buried in the sands of Egypt already anyhow.

It's just, I was just wondering if my logic was correct in thinking that way. Well, sure.

I have another question. Yeah, I mean, I think it's a good argument to say, well, if you're going to fault us, you need to consider whether you should be faulting yourself. And in reality, the burning of those early, early, I mean, burning codices 20 years into the history of a text is significantly more disruptive to the copying of that text than burning text 200 years or 300 years down the road.