The Episode to Treat Insomnia

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:41

Hello, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line from Paradise Valley, Montana.

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I didn't even know there was a Paradise Valley until I got here. That's what my shirt,

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I already picked up a nice soft long -sleeved shirt at the little country store place here at the campground.

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And all these campgrounds are different. Every one of them is different. The one in Colorado Springs was the biggest.

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It was like a big huge parking lot for campers with 16 billion kids buzzing around on bikes.

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Not this one. This is in the trees next to a river next to some mountains and the road in was interesting.

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The road going back out is going to be interesting tomorrow. Oh, so many things

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I'm learning as every single day. Today was wind day. Yes, today was wind, the w -i -n -d day.

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I had about a 40 mile per hour wind right in my face. Of course, sometimes that was side going along the side just blowing you around.

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But I discovered today why Derek Melton told me to go with the fifth wheel and not a pull behind.

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Because yeah, it's just a lot better in the wind. It's not that I didn't get knocked around a good bit, but it was never uber scary.

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There was a level of stability that I liked and I saw some other RVs just in trucks too.

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It was blowing and it was blowing so hard that when it was a direct headwind, I could barely hold 60 and frequently fell below that pushing it pretty hard.

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At least it wasn't hailing at the same time. I've got to admit that.

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I guess this spot that I'm at is only about 40 miles from the entrance to Yellowstone.

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I've never been to Yellowstone. This is closest I've been. It does look like a nice area. This is a little campground and we're all packed in pretty tightly.

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It is interesting to see these big huge things slowly rolling past. Oh yeah,

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I'm gonna have fun getting out of here. Anyway, so here we are and we are on our way to Idaho this weekend.

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I've got so much stuff I need to work on between now and then. I don't know when I'm gonna be doing it, but I'm gonna be in Frenchtown tomorrow night and then it's literally the afternoon that I get up to Moscow.

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We start on stuff. So yeah, it's gonna be a challenge. No two ways about it.

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Lots of work to do while we're up there and then a pretty long trip back home too.

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Doesn't look like it's quite as... I'm going downhill more than I'm going uphill.

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Let's just put it that way. Coming back the direction that I'll be coming back. So once again, appreciate everyone's making this possible.

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So I mentioned when I noted the program today that you might want to get your notebook and your pen or your paper.

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Do people still do that or just record everything now? I don't know. Because we have a lot to talk about.

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Just briefly before we get into the A &O mobile seminary stuff type materials.

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Obviously not sitting around reading social media today. In fact, when

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I came in instead of catching up with social media and finding out the latest mandates coming down the road.

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I understand that the Biden administration is going to be mandating vaccines for all of US military.

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Which of course is part of the plan. Get rid of the people that won't just automatically do it.

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Whatever you tell them to do. It's just all part of the turning the United States into a province of the

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Chinese Communist Party. And they're doing a good job of it. These people hate the constitution, hate this nation.

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And they are in charge. There you go. That's what we're dealing with. And it's an amazing example of judgment to be perfectly honest with you.

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But instead of doing that, I wandered down to the river that we're near here.

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And I almost tweeted using voice texting.

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I almost tweeted today because I've noticed something as I've been driving. You know how you come up to a bridge.

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Frequently it's at the bottom of a hill or something like that. You come up to a bridge and it'll tell you what the river is.

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And since I left Arizona, I've noticed a consistency.

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Rivers outside of Arizona tend to have water in them.

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Flowing water. Not just sitting there. But moving water. It's fascinating.

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And because if you live in the Valley of the Sun, you drive over the

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Salt River. And it's a long depression of dirt and sand.

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Now, if you have a big, big, big, big, big, big storm, some water will run through and move the sand and stuff and turn it into mud for a little while.

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But outside of Arizona, these river things seem to be pretty steady.

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And I just went down and took some pictures of this tremendous amount of water.

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I don't know where it's going. We would need every drop of that in a lake someplace in Arizona just simply to survive.

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But it makes a pleasant sound. Really very nice, pleasant sound as it flows by.

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The life of the desert dweller when you get out of the desert. It's green and everything else.

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It's beautiful out here. Anyway, we do have some important stuff to get to today.

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I'm not sure which one to start with, to be honest with you. I think I'm going to go back because it's been a little while and I'm afraid that, and I've done this many times in the past, partly because I do not have, you know,

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Rich does not keep track of what topics we are talking about doing.

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I think we've almost never had a conversation about, well,

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I think you should do this, you should do that, something like that. That's always been pretty much left up to me because I need to do all the research and all that kind of stuff going on.

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But there have been a number of times I've been in the middle of something and something's happened.

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We've had to cover that and then something else happened and something else happened. By the time you get six months down the road, we never finish stuff up.

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I feel badly about that. And I suppose if I had people that were scheduling all this stuff, if I had people who were scheduling all this stuff,

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I probably wouldn't do it. I just, no. But it would be helpful probably in some ways to do that way.

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And so I feel badly when I've been doing something and then dropped it and never got back to it.

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And that's a bad habit of mine. And one of the things that we started looking at was this amazing confession of faith from, the title here uses

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Gregory of Neocessaria. Now, I will confess,

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I have always heard this Gregory identified as Thaumaturgus, Wonderworker.

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I get why Neocessaria is a better term, but it's not as popular in history.

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So I just, if you're trying to find it or look it up or something like that, you'll probably in your older books anyways, find

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Gregory Thaumaturgus. But in this, it's specifically

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Gregory of Neocessarias is the identification.

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But the point being it is a amazing statement of faith from around the year 265.

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Now, 265 is 60 years, six decades before the

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Council of Nicaea. It is in the

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Eastern churches, it's a relative period of peace as far as persecution is concerned and as far as the

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Eastern churches are really focused upon what they consider to be a major theological problem.

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And that is a lot of people are not aware of the fact that the issue of monarchianism, modalism, what we in America today would normally identify as some type of form of oneness,

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Pentecostalism. It's an interesting form of Unitarianism.

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This is what they were dealing with. And Christians should know that the church dealt with that before it dealt with Arianism.

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So in other words, there were errors concerning the person of God that accepted the idea that in some way

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Jesus was truly God. Before you had the subordination, mystic tendencies of origin developing into the

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Arian controversy, which prompted the Council of Nicaea. But in the East, especially, not so much less, but in the

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East, especially, there was this focus upon the importance of recognizing the existence of divine persons and the communion that they have with one another.

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And to this day, to be perfectly honest with you, your average Eastern Christian will be far better able to explain the doctrine of the

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Trinity than almost anybody in the West. I've said this before. You've got to give the

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Eastern church credit. It has been self -consciously Trinitarian from the beginning.

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And so Gregory is writing at a time where this battle is still going on and has been going on.

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And when you read his confession, you recognize that when people say that, well, remember on the last program, we played wild, crazy, liberal, leftist, heretic,

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Lutheran lady from Canada. And she presented

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Nicaea like it was this new, never heard of before thing that just popped into existence in 325.

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Well, here's six decades earlier. And so let me read it again to you. It's been a number of weeks since we talked about it.

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So here's what you've got. He confesses, one

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God, father of a living Logos, who is subsistent wisdom and power and his eternal impression, perfect begetter of a perfect one, father of an only begotten son.

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One Lord, only from only, God from God, impression, image of the divinity, effective

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Logos, wisdom embracing the structure of the universe, power that makes the whole creation, true son of a true father, invisible from an invisible one, incorruptible from an incorruptible one, immortal from an immortal one, eternal from an eternal one.

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You can't see the direct, straight line connection from the last phrases right into the counsel of Nicaea.

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You're not listening. One Holy Spirit. And normally what you hear, even from some

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Orthodox people, but what you very often will hear in Bible colleges, seminaries, things like that, the

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Holy Spirit's just tacked on in passing. But notice this, one Holy Spirit having substantial existence from God manifested through the

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Son, perfect image of the perfect Son, living cause of living things, sanctity and provider of sanctification by whom

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God the Father is manifested, who is over all and in all, and God the Son, who is through all, perfect Trinity in glory and eternity in kingdom, not divided and not alienated.

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Now, what you hear in this then is 200 and, well, 200 years, 205 years after possibly, if you take the position that all

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New Testament books were completed before AD 70, now a lot of people do not, but if you do, this would be just barely two centuries later.

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Two centuries may sound like a lot to us, but in the historical scheme of things, it most certainly is not.

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Many of us were taught and people are taught constantly today in most schools, that there was a lengthy process of evolution.

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In fact, back in the late 1800s and the early 1900s, the

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German schools taught as fact the idea that what you have, for example, in the

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Gospel of John developed over time and that hence they literally dated the

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Gospel of John to around 170 AD. So, those Germans would have had

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John writing only 90 years before Gregory writes this.

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Now, of course, for the vast majority of folks, that has now been completely abandoned for the obvious reason that we now have papyri that predate 170 that contain portions of the

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Gospel of John, so that sort of messed everything up. But for a long time, and certainly it's still taught in most theological seminaries and colleges, you have this idea of slow, painful development.

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And you see, there's elements of truth there and elements of falsehood. What you do have a development in is the specificity of language that is used to answer specific questions.

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And one of the common errors that people make is that they think that everyone's saying, let's apply

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Gregory here to the discussion we've had with Jake, our

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Muslim interlocutor, and issues relating to aseity, the relationship with the divine persons, stuff that Gregory of Nyssa is talking about that we looked at a couple weeks ago now, different Gregory, obviously, and approximately 100 years difference as well.

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The specific categories and questions that are being addressed 100 years after Gregory's confession that I just read are just that.

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They are different questions, and they assume different categories. And one of the common errors of people is to try to get someone like Gregory of Neo -Caesarea to be answering questions that had not yet become the questions of the day in his day.

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In the same way, the great Cappadocian fathers, Basil and the

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Gregory's, are answering questions that were not in the minds of the 318, 308, however you want to count them, we don't know, it's tradition afterwards, but the 300

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Semod bishops, by tradition, that were at the Council of Nicaea. The focus at Nicaea was homoousios, homoousios, heteroousios, the fundamental issues of the ontology of the sun.

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You can't even start talking about processions, spiration, affiliation, any of the things that are going to become questions later on.

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You can't even get there if you don't have the sun being fully deity. And so what very frequently happens is that people who are not accustomed to thinking historically, or who are not even trying to honestly deal with the history of Nicaea and things like that, will import issues and import questions that just simply weren't a part of the experience of the people at that time.

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Now, some people there may 30 or 40 or 50 years later, if not too many people would have lived really quite that long, but some people may end up addressing those questions at a later point in time, those questions may come up, but it's important not to be anachronistic.

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In ignoring what was the focus at the time.

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And so when you keep that in mind, you can look at what

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Gregory says, when you look at what the disputes were before his time, then you're putting it in the right context.

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If you try to then drag him a hundred years later, that's just not fair.

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That's not honestly dealing with where he was. And so as we've been looking at the description of the sun, we had gotten to the description of him as power that makes or creates the whole creation.

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Dunamis teis halleis tisaos hoiae tecae.

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So this would be very reminiscent of Colossians 1, especially tisaos creation going directly to that.

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But the power that makes the whole creation very similar to the categories used in Colossians 1, where Paul, of course, is dealing with those people who are trying to come up with a

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Jesus who is an add -on, an add -on to their system, one of the eons in the proto -Gnostic system.

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And Paul is saying, no, and here you have the assertion that Jesus is the very power that makes the whole creation.

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I think that's really reflective of Paul's terminology, in him all things sunestecan, they hold together.

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And you and I as believers, we use this kind of language without really thinking a whole lot about it.

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But again, if you step back and think about just how utterly amazing it is that we make this kind of a claim.

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We are literally saying that a man who lived on earth, who was born to poor parents, whose father was a carpenter.

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Carpenters were actually sort of middle -class, not poor class, but was in a difficult area,

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Nazareth. We are literally saying that that individual was this one who holds all things together.

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It is, when you look at the worldwide spread of the gospel and the church, there's evidence of the supernatural nature of how the gospel is communicated.

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There's absolutely no question about it. Because as Paul said, that message is foolishness, absolute foolishness to the one who has not been changed by the spirit of God.

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No question about that whatsoever. So power that makes whole creation.

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True son of a true father.

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So what does that mean? Well, when you look at the other descriptions, invisible from an invisible one, incorruptible from an incorruptible one, immortal from an immortal one, eternal from an eternal one, all of these last descriptions are meant to emphasize the intimate and divine relationship between the father and the son.

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Not only found in Paul, but very, very much flowing from the gospel of John.

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And so true son of a true father, I think simply represents that language to see in the gospel of John, where Jesus uses, you know,

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John chapter five, verse 18. Jesus claims the prerogative as the one sent by the father to do the works of the father and the works of the father.

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In that specific instance, I know I'm bouncing the thing around here. See how little doggies they're walking by. There are a lot of pets in these places.

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I'm not sure kind of life is it to live in one of these things as a pet.

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I don't know. I've not quite figured that out. Anyways, distraction. I was actually looking down,

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I could see the video feed and I was watching the camera bouncing around because I keep pushing on the table.

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And I saw the dogs walking by the thing. That's what completely distracted me. But in the gospel of John, in that section, it is that emphasis on Jesus's part that he is the son of the father in the way, monogamous, in a unique way that is so offensive to the

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Jews that they pick up stones to stone because they know if he's claiming the prerogatives of the father who is working on the

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Sabbath day in maintaining creation, then he is making a claim to divinity.

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And that seems to be that he is truly the son of a true father.

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And so that intimacy seen, I think, so clearly in John 118, when

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Jesus is described not only as monogamous, but as the one who is in the bosom of the father.

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That's old English at the father's side is sort of doesn't really capture it either.

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It's a little bit like when people would recline at the table in that day.

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As you know, they did not have elevated tables like we have. They laid on their side and ate the food from a much lower table that they were rest on a cushion.

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And so you'd have to be on one side. And so people would be fairly close to people.

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This never would have worked well in Scotland because you'd have to be way too close to people.

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No social distancing in this context whatsoever. And so that's sort of what is in John 118, who's in the bosom of the side of that intimate closeness is what is being described there.

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I think that's what true son of a true father would be. And then in similar language, to remember, we read from Ignatius Vantioch, who is 150 plus years before Gregory.

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You have these couplets, invisible from an invisible one.

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And yet he became visible. So there is not an emphasis here upon the incarnation as you have in Ignatius Vantioch in his many statements, in his letters that he wrote on 107 -108

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AD. Invisible from an invisible one. Incorruptible from an incorruptible one.

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Immortal from the mortal one. Eternal from eternal one. So each one of these couplets is intended to communicate the completeness and the fullness of the son's ability to represent the father.

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So in light of the last program, again, Apostate Lutheran lady, they don't believe anything like this.

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They look at this and this is foolishness, this is silliness, this is, what would she call it now?

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Colonizing? I don't know. Because there's authority questions, stuff like that.

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Whatever, who knows. But the emphasis for Gregory is upon the fullness of the representation, the son may represent those things that are absolutely definitional of deity.

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So these are all affirmations. Even in maintaining the distinction of the son from the father, they're all affirmations of the full deity of the son.

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You don't say those who are heteroousius of a different substance, or even homoiousius of a like substance.

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If you have and I'm getting a your internet connection is unstable thing here,

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I hope it's okay. You have in these terms descriptions that proceed and really indicate where Gregory would have stood.

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Because you can't, again, it's unfair, like I said, to anachronistically ask questions of people before issues become central to them in their own experience.

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But it really seems that what's being emphasized here is the true deity of the son, so that his representation of the father is an accurate and full representation.

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And I realize this has been a seminary level discussion so far, aside from the dogs walking by.

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And you have interruptions like that in seminary classes too. I realize it has been, but if that has caused you to start to wonder,

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I just again emphasize to you the fact and reality that central to the

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Christian message is the reality that the son, because of the grandeur of his person, is able to fully represent and to reveal to us the character of the father.

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This is how we know what the father is really like. And if you have a mere creature, then you have a very faint echo of the grandeur of the eternal

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God. But in Christ, you have the exact representation of his person.

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That's one of the major differences. And when you have a Christianity without a divine

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Jesus, without a divine son, it will die. It's not

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Christianity. Unitarianism always leads to a dead, cold, philosophical nothingness.

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So there you have Gregory's description. So what

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I'll do next time, if I remember, is we'll look at the

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Holy Spirit. I hope I remember to do that. Ah, what did

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I just do? I just, I, how very strange.

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Edit, can I undo that? What is that? I just won't save that or something.

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Oh, there, good. I fixed it. But I just messed up my PDF there. I didn't want to do that.

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Sometimes you just do things and it's like, why did it do that? I will try to remember to, there we go.

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Press the right button. There we go.

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Mark where we are, because there was something else I wanted to do. And I'm looking at the time here and I'm never going to get it done.

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This is an episode that is most definitely un -geeky and non -entertaining.

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I'll be honest with you. At the same time, this is what you would get in a good, solid seminary level context.

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And we ain't charging you a dime for it. If you want to faint, go check out what it costs to get a

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Master's of Divinity degree from any of the big seminaries today. And then divide that up by the number of classes you have to take and you'll get an idea.

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It is very, very, very expensive. So I shouldn't have minimized that because I need to be able to share screen.

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There you go. I'm not going to get it done today.

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So I might as well go ahead and get it started. I've downloaded them.

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I haven't listened to them yet, but Jake Brancatella has been cranking out the videos.

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I guess he's done one on my errors concerning the Council of Nicaea. And I understand it says, and a debate challenge.

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Jake, that makes as much sense to me as me challenging Yasir Qadhi to debate

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Hadith methodology and the identification of Sahih and Hasan Hadith.

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I've listened to Dr. Qadhi's classes. I know a whole lot more about that subject than your bear does, but it would be simply silly of me to put myself in the position of challenging someone like Dr.

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Qadhi, who has taught Hadith methodology for, I was going to say decades, but he's only in his, he's not even 50 yet as far as I know.

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So if I recall correctly, I thought I was about 12 to 14 years older than that.

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So anyway, but he's taught this stuff for a long time, recognized expert in the field.

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And so for me to challenge him to debate that particular field would be silly.

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And so for you to challenge me to debate on the

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Council of Nicaea, when as far as I know, you've never ever taught any class on anything in church history, early church history, don't read the original languages, don't have access to stuff like TLG.

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I've read, I don't know how many books on Nicaea and post -Nicene theology and things like that.

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When someone just pops up and starts throwing out debate challenges,

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I don't know, that doesn't seem overly useful and wise to me.

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But I also saw a video in my feed about, does the

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Quran misrepresent the Trinity? I've downloaded both on ConvertMemT3. I've forgotten how

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I'm going to have to work through it on my computer and then upload it again. How to put those into one of my programs that I can listen while driving that speed them up, because Dropbox doesn't speed stuff up, unfortunately.

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And Jake's spends a lot of time talking about stuff that doesn't really have anything to do with the topic.

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And so I'd like to be able to get through it without spending a huge amount of time. But so the point is

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I haven't listened to him yet. I've got him on my phone, but I haven't got him in the right program yet. So what

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I want to do, and I spent too much time on Gregory, I was going to do it, but I think it'd be better to do this more fully.

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I want to especially address, because Jake has said more than once, it's just not relevant, blah, blah, blah, blah.

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And yet now he's doing a video about it. So he knows it is relevant.

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I just see a tremendous difference. And I'm talking about how

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I do this. I realize there are Christians who would have methodologies in dealing with the

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Quran that I would not agree with, that I would find inconsistent, whatever.

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And so what I would like to do is I would like to give an illustration as a

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Christian of seeking to apply a meaningful standard of hermeneutical study.

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When I wrote my book on whatever Christian needs to know about the Quran, and I would be, and if you've read,

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I think it's chapter five, I think, five or six. It's been years. Oh, wait a minute.

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I can tell you which chapter it is. Chapter four, say not three, the

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Quran and the Trinity. So there's everything that I want to say is chapter four of the book.

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If you look at that or at chapter five, Jesus in the

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Quran, the Quran and the cross, chapter six, salvation in the

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Quran, chapter seven, et cetera, et cetera. When I seek to deal with the text of the

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Quran, I'm doing so as a believing Christian who does not believe that it's the word of God, because it is contradictory to what

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I believe the word of God is. But you will notice that there is a consistent attempt on my part to be consistent in the application of appropriate rules of interpretation in looking at the

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Quran, that A, I don't see Muslims, almost any Muslims, there's small number of exceptions.

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I don't see almost any Muslims returning the favor in how they deal with biblical texts.

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But more importantly, I rarely hear

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Muslims engaging in any kind of consistent scholarly exegesis of their own text, of their own text.

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What you get most often is really, well,

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I don't know how to describe it. If you listen to the sermons, if you listen to the sermons, the talks on Fridays, it's very frequently fundamental elements of Islam moderated through the

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Hadith with sprinkled verses of the Quran thrown in. The idea of looking at the

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Quran in its original context, in its original language, asking questions about the construction of the text, because the

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Quran, unlike the New Testament, where when

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I look at 1 Corinthians chapter 8, let's think about 1 Corinthians chapter 8, because there's that section, verses 5 and 6, that is an early creedal statement where Paul expands the

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Shema and includes Jesus in the Shema, identifying Jesus as Yahweh in the

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Shema. Wow, and this is an early creedal statement.

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Okay, so we can look at who Paul was. We can look at who his audience was. We can look at the time frame. There are names associated.

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We know where Corinth is. We know what language he's writing in. There's all this material that we can bring to the table to provide light and to help.

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You see, my brothers in Ukraine, okay,

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I've gone to Ukraine many times. I really miss those guys. I hope we can at least maybe do something on Zoom pretty soon.

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It's been so long. I've just so enjoyed being translated into Russian by my dear brother, who,

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Brother Nick, Nikola Leliosky, he never even bothered to try to tell me what his full name was when

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I first got to meet him, but Brother Nick, who's become a scholar in his own right, and so I know those guys will be taken care of and all the rest of that stuff, but when

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I teach them in a different culture, in a different language, we have to use meaningful methods of exegesis so that the text means the same there as it means in my context, or when

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I'm in South Africa, or when I'm in Russia, or when I'm in Australia, places I'll never get to go again, but when I have been, you, the reason that you do consistent exegesis, you use consistent methods of hermeneutics is to honor the truth and honor what it is you're studying, what it is that you believe is the

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Word of God. That's what was so crazy about Harold Camping is he threw all that stuff out and that shows tremendous disrespect.

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That's why you do this work. That's why it's not unspiritual. You know, there are Christians who think,

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I just, you know, let the spirit lead, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, that's why you end up with the spirit allegedly telling different people different things, because you don't have a consistent application of principles of hermeneutics and so on and so forth.

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I just don't see Muslims doing that with the Quran. And part of the reason is the Quran very often does not provide sufficient background information to be able to do so.

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Part of the reason is because the Quran assumes that its reader is familiar with the

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Jewish and Christian scripture and can fill in from there. And part of it, and I remember when

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I was first studying Islam, I met with some Arabic scholars and people who've written extensive books, and I had one of them tell me that in his opinion, one third of the

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Quran is utterly unintelligible. That if you really ask what did this mean at the time it was written, there's really no, there's no way to even answer that question.

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It is so lacking in clarity and so lacking in contextual clues, background issues, and context, and everything else.

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So you could apply it to a million different things, which is an interesting argument. And of course the Quran is considerably shorter, and hence lacks a lot of the contextual information that you have in the

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New Testament. It's only 53 percent, as I recall, the length of the New Testament, about what, 14 percent the length of the entire

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Bible. So it's interesting that Muslims believe it to be the, that which guards, was it

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Muhammad? Was that what the term was? I think in, it's not certified, it might be.

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Anyways, the one that guards, yeah it is, it's certified. The preceding revelation is pretty hard to do when you're only 14 percent as long.

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I get how you could try to get around that, but I don't, I just don't think the Quran's consistency can live up to what would be needed to function in that way.

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So what I want to do, and I'll only get a start here, is

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I want to, I want to give an example. Jake's already put his out, so great.

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What I would say to people is, look at what Jake says, and then if you want to do this without bothering the amount of time it's going to take to listen, compare what

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I wrote in whatever Christian needs to know about the Quran in chapter four, which is say not three, the

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Quran and the Trinity, and ask yourself a question. Who applies the same standards of exegesis and hermeneutics to ancient texts?

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In other words, I think I'm consistent in how

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I approach the text of the Quran with how I approach the text of the New Testament as ancient documents.

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You say, but you don't, you believe one's the Word of God, one isn't, that's going to impact things. Yes, but the reason, the reasons that I give for rejecting the

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Quranic testimony come from the Quran itself, and involve a fair reading of the

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Quran itself. And so, listen to what

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I have to say, or read what I wrote, compare it, and ask yourself a question. Who's being consistent?

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So, with that, for those of you, I'm sure I've lost 99 % of the audience by now, and I apologize, um, but if you're still with me, then you probably have an interest in ancient documents, an interest in exegesis, hermeneutics, an interest in being consistent.

49:48

Um, and so, I would, uh, point out that given the historical context of the

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Quran, and a lot of Christians, a lot of Christians don't even know this, but the

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Quran comes after the Old and New Testament. Muhammad's life is half a millennium, more than half a millennium after the time of Jesus, and after the completion of the

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New Testament. And even though from the

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Islamic perspective, on a theological level, they believe that the Quran precedes our scriptures, because they are eternal.

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The Quran is eternal, it's written on a heavenly tablet. Historically, it comes afterwards and makes reference to the

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Torah and the Injil, to the Al -Anjil, the Al -Kitab, the people of the book, the people of the gospel.

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And it specifically commands us to hold to our scriptures, and to believe our scriptures.

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And as I said, it assumes that its readers, or its listeners, already know these stories.

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They already know the stories of the Christian and Jewish scriptures. It just assumes that. And so, in light of that, the

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Muslim is forced to deal with the accuracy of the representation of the scriptures it makes reference to, and of the faiths that it makes reference to.

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And the Quran goes so far as to say that if you're going to believe certain things taught by the

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Jews and the Christians, your place will be hellfire. Well, that means that we have the right to ask the simple question, if you're telling me that to believe what

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I believe is going to send me to hell, then your understanding of what I believe had better be accurate.

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It had better be accurate. And if it's not, then I don't have any reason to continue to listen to what you're having to say.

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So, I'm going to focus on Surah 5 eventually. I'm not going to have time to do that today. I was going to get through that.

52:20

I've wandered all over the place. Maybe that comes from five and a half, six hours of driving in a day.

52:29

I'm not sure, but I've wandered all over the place. By the way, the reason we can't do a program tomorrow is I will be speaking after I get to my next destination.

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And then on Thursday, same situation, I'll be speaking as soon as I get up there.

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I'm not sure if that's when we're doing sweater vest dialogues or just what it is, but that's the reason why pretty much this is going to have to be it until I leave from up there because I'm going to be recording so many things and speaking on so many things and stuff like that.

53:07

So, just so you know. So, I want to focus on Surah 5, but before I get to Surah 5, historically, the

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Islamic sources say, and critical scholars are skeptical of these things, but the

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Islamic sources say that there was a meeting that took place between the

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Christian leaders of the Christian community of Najran and Muhammad. And Muslims make references all the time.

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I've had numerous people and I'm debating them. They say, pointed out that Muhammad allowed the

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Christians of Najran to meet in the mosque and to pray and allowed them to disagree with Muhammad and they debated and all the rest of this kind of stuff.

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And so, they're aware of this meeting. And the various Muslim sources speculate as to, and this is really interesting because if you believe the

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Quran was written in eternity past in a heavenly tablet, and there's no fingerprint of upon it, then it's interesting to try to think through if Muhammad met with Christians for a few days and they had lengthy conversations specifically about what they believe about Jesus, how could that have any impact on the

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Quran? Because Muhammad's understanding of who Jesus was is irrelevant to a historical

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Sunni understanding. Now, there are Muslim scholars. They are not in the mainstream, but there are

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Muslim scholars that go, no, of course, you have to take into consideration that Muhammad, once he had the position of a prophet, began to interact with people from other perspectives and obviously that would impact his understanding and his argumentation.

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And so, they would see the Quran in that context. And as far as I can tell, there really is no place,

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I'm not going to get to any of this today, am I? What is it with me and background information today?

55:37

Background information is so vitally important once you start making applications. There is no place, as far as I can see, in historic orthodox

55:47

Sunni theology practice interpretation for the idea that Christians have.

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We believe, for example, the Apostle Paul interacts with and recognizes certain false teachings coming into the

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Church of Colossae, which we would identify as proto -Gnosticism, early forms of Gnostic belief, and that this is very much in the background of his writing, his epistle to the

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Colossians. In the Muslim mind, that makes that less than the

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Quran. In my mind, it makes it greater than the Quran. Why?

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Because men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

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And so, divine revelation takes place in time, it takes place in history, it takes place in real time and real history, and it doesn't make it any less the intended word of God, exactly what

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God from eternity past decreed that it would be. I would think that there would at least be a mechanism in the

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Islamic doctrine of Qadr, power or predestination, to try to find a way to put together the

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Quranic journal on the tablet idea with Muhammad meets with the Christians from Najran and learns more about Christianity idea, but as far as I can tell, they've never tried to do that.

57:29

That kind of balanced perspective seems only to be amongst us.

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I've just not seen it amongst Muslims. So, with that, the point being that Islamic scholarship is speculated that especially in Surah 3, but possibly in Surah 4 and 5.

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The reason being, again, that we don't know what order these were necessarily written in. There are theories.

58:04

There's a new book out that has a whole completely different theory that I think I purchased, but I have to check on that.

58:12

I'm not sure that I ever got it. I did. I did. I haven't gotten to it yet on the trip, but I need to try to get to it.

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But there's all these different theories. I provided one of the theories, one of the standard theories in my book as to the order in which they're written, but we just don't know.

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I found that strange that Muslims demand that we know the author of any book, but they don't even know the order in which the

58:39

Surahs of the Quran were written. Don't have any problem with that. Whatever. Surah 3, speculation that the meeting with the

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Christians of Najran influenced that, but also sections of Surah 4 and Surah 5. So, the

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Surah 4 section, at least let me read it real quick so we know we're going to pick up. I'm reading from Shakir's translation at this point.

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You know what? I don't... Give me half a second here.

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Let me use the translation that I used in my book on the

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Quran. Well, actually, let me read this first and we'll pick up on it.

59:32

Sorry. Here is commentary from Tafsir of Ibn Abbas.

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Tafsir of Ibn Abbas. Tafsir's commentary on the Quran, okay? So, here's what

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Ibn Abbas said about the encounter with the Najran Christians and the text of Surah 4.

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This is better. This has been all background anyways. Again, at least I did say on Twitter, Alvin and Megan Ministries mobile seminary edition, and I've...

01:00:08

It's definitely lived up to that. Here's a quote. A law then revealed about the Nestorian Christians and Najran who claimed that Jesus was the son of Allah and that Jesus and the

01:00:18

Lord are partners, saying, oh people of scripture, do not exaggerate, do not be extreme in your religion, for this is not the right course, nor utter ought concerning Allah say the truth.

01:00:29

The Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, was only a messenger of Allah and his word which he conveyed unto

01:00:34

Mary, and through his word he became a created being and a spirit from him, and through his command

01:00:40

Jesus became a son without a father. So, believe in Allah and his messengers, all the messengers including Jesus, and say not three, a son, father, and wife.

01:00:48

Please note that. This is Ibn Abbas saying son, father, and wife. What would that three be?

01:00:54

We'll find out later. Cease from making such a claim, repent, it is better for you than such a claim.

01:01:00

Allah is only one God without a son or partner. Far is it removed from his transcendent majesty that he should have a son.

01:01:07

His is all that is in the heavens and all that is in the earth are his servants, and Allah is sufficient as defender, as Lord of all created beings, and he is witness of what he says about you.

01:01:16

So, here is a Muslim source, a relatively early tafsir source, that provides you some of this background as to how it was that there is a response to the

01:01:32

Christians of Najran. Now, the Muslim way of understanding this is, yes, this was written on the eternal tablet, and Allah knew that Muhammad would need this at a certain point in his ministry when he met with the

01:01:44

Christians of Najran. That's probably how a

01:01:50

Sunni Muslim who's trying to be consistent with his understanding would put it.

01:01:57

But that's Tafsir Ibn Abbas. And so, that is the portion of Surah 4, which is

01:02:05

Surah 4, 166 through 172, that I want to start with, deal with the text in its context, fairly and historically, then we can go to Surah 5 and go from there.

01:02:23

So, there you go. What are the things you're thinking about when you're driving in the wind from Wyoming to Montana?

01:02:34

That's background stuff, yeah. And again, I realize, you know, my apologies to anyone who's just sitting there going, oh, yeah, that was rough.

01:02:44

Most of you gave up a long time ago already. But once again, our intention is to seek to provide to you that which most others will not seek to provide to you.

01:03:03

And if you want to be prepared to really present the Gospel to the

01:03:08

Muslim people out of love in your heart, this is some stuff that would be very helpful to you. So, there you go.

01:03:14

And listening to early Christians praising Jesus and accurately reflecting upon the grandeur of his person,

01:03:25

I'm not going to apologize for spending time doing that. That's just great stuff. And I sort of figure most people listen to this program, you already know it's great stuff.

01:03:35

And so, we get to listen to great stuff together. How's that? Anyways, I appreciate

01:03:41

Rich making it possible for us to do this yet once again. And like I said,

01:03:46

I do apologize that this will probably be the last one for this week. But that's only because I'm now getting to the busy, busy, busy, busy part of the trip, which will include the speaking tomorrow night in French town on Christian Worldviews.

01:04:01

And then Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, multiple things, the vast majority of which will be recorded, will be made available from Canon Press and stuff like that.

01:04:14

So, it will be available eventually. And so, right now, it probably looks like as long as the drive from Moscow to Boise isn't too bad.

01:04:30

Heard it's a two -lane road and it's a little mountainous. We'll see. As long as it's not too bad, then my plan, if the health holds up, prayers in that area appreciated, then we'll be looking at Monday, at some point on Monday.

01:04:48

Once again, assuming that you've got a good signal and all the rest of that stuff that goes along with that, that's what road tripping is all about.

01:04:55

But we'll try to shoot for something on Monday. So, with that, thanks to the wireless here in the mobile command center for holding up.