Ergun Caner

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is the Dividing Line.

The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

Our host is Dr. James White, Director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an Elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602, or toll free across the

United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

James White. And good afternoon, welcome to the Dividing Line, as long as we will be here anyway.

You probably can't hear it, but I can hear the melodious sound of a very, very intense thunderstorm right on top of our location here right now.

And I'm watching the cameras, and I don't think either of our cars are in danger of washing away quite yet, but they are certainly getting a washing, let's put it that way.

It is coming down big time here in Phoenix. We watched these huge thunderstorms coming in at us.

There are only two colors left in the color band on the radar for intensity. It is a big one.

So let me just say this right now. Roman Catholicism is wrong, King James Only -ism is wrong,

Buddhism is wrong, Islam is wrong, atheism is wrong, Mormons are wrong,

Jehovah's Witnesses are wrong. Therefore, if we get knocked off the air, everyone can claim that their group did it.

But that's how you do it. So that way there's no confusion whatsoever.

On the program today, before we get back to the slicks and gennis discussion, obviously

I needed to make some comments about some new material that has come out in regards to the great evangelical cover -up.

This is very interesting. It's new information because it is relevant, very relevant to the

Ergen -Kanner situation because it comes after the exposure of Ergen -Kanner that began in February of this year.

You remember that he posted his non -apology apology and then pulled it. It's amazing how many of his supporters,

Geisler, Guthrie, they all say, well why isn't that apology enough? And no one can find it.

He pulled it off his site after about two weeks. And of course it wasn't an apology for anything in specific other than, well,

I've made some misstatements and there was some Muslim guy that I said I debated that I didn't.

I don't know who I debated. As if that has anything really substantive to do with the actual issues of the mythological creation of this

Islamic background and studying and training in madrasas in Istanbul, Cairo, and Beirut.

Those are the three we have so far. Who knows what else will come up? But those are the three we have so far.

And so he spoke May 1st and 2nd in Southern California, San Diego.

And I was sent the CDs of the talks that he gave and they are very interesting.

He sounded a bit flustered. He sounded off his game because he doesn't have his shtick to do now.

He doesn't have, he had to be careful about what he was saying. And it was amazing some of the things that came out.

For example, one of the things that's very interesting is he's always claimed to be 100 % Turkish. And we've all gone, how can you be 100 %

Turkish if your mom's Swedish? Well, he claims in this that his mom is actually Turkish born, but adopted by a

Swedish family. And that would be a great story. I don't know if it's true or not, but that would be a great story. His entire story would have been great if he just hadn't embellished and lied about all of it.

It would have been great if he had had the proper theological foundation. What a story it would have been.

But the problem now is obviously by his own actions, he's made it very, very clear.

He doesn't think that it's all that special because, of course, he had to change it.

And that is the problem. So I've got some things to play here that were very, very interesting.

I'm going to skip past some portions. For example, in the first CD, he was talking about how biblical debates are always informal.

I think that's his way of defending his claims to have done all these debates when, of course, he hasn't. But disc two was most interesting to me.

And then I want to get to what's really important in some of the things that he said. Well, just listen.

If we're ready to go here, listen to what he has to say at this point.

These are the people that you will have to deal with in the church when it comes to presenting the gospel, when it comes to evangelism, when it comes to apologetics.

First group, haters. Now, we're talking about 2010. So the interconnectedness of our world and the anonymity of the

World Wide Web. Some people are only courageous in front of a screen and with an anonymous tag name.

I have a feeling I know who he's referring to there, none other than our dearly beloved Turretin fan, who pointed out when we heard this that Kanner was involved in the production of a book.

I think his voice is behind the veil, something like that, where a number of the people were in fact anonymous.

But that's OK. That would be looking for consistency, which really wouldn't be otherwise. These are the people.

Ah. OK. I didn't want to do that. Some of them, however.

Let's see here. Look at the last group next. Haters. We'll start here. There are those who legitimately like the haters.

Do not believe that you should be in the marketplace at 17, 16, 17, 18, 19.

Liberty has got its mix. I have a good number of students that probably can't stand me.

I teach Theology 201, 202. I teach Philosophy 104. I teach all the apologetics classes. I got kids who evaluate me, who just eviscerate me, just exsanguinate me.

They just can't stand. Just, he's evil. Just whatever. Some of them, however, theologically. Do you guys know who

Brian Broderson is? Calvary Chapel. Brian Broderson and I have a common hater.

That I wonder who the common hater between Arrogant Cantor and Brian Broderson would be.

Hmm. I have to smile a little bit, because I just would never expect that someone who has been a seminary president would use this type of terminology.

Don't be a hater. I hear that, but it's hard to take that seriously.

It really is. I mean, who takes that kind of thing seriously, but evidently

Arrogant Cantor does for some reason. And I will come back to that, because that's the Flamer group in a second.

And Flamer. Flamer and, we're just catching them all here, Flamer and Hater. Well, the kids who come come from different backgrounds, different denominations, 80 different countries.

50 states, 80 different countries. And they come from three different educational systems when they walk into Liberty University.

Some come from the public school. So when I do campus church, usually the first - Okay. And then let's go to the next one here, because this one gets, this is where he finally gets around to me.

And haters will critique you, and they are brutal. But all of them are. The haters who say it's a waste of time, usually it's theological.

I told you Dr. Broderson and I have, it's a superlapsarian is the actual term for it.

He's a hyper -Calvinist. And a hyper -Calvinist who hates me and can't stand

Brian. Did you catch that? Who hates me and can't stand Brian.

Now, that's a lie, of course. And we're used to hearing Eric and Cantor uttering lies. But you know, you're trying to create this, you know, this, this persona, you know, and I'm being persecuted and these people are haters.

And so the best way to do that in a church that would have anything to do with Calvary Chapel would be, he's a hyper -Calvinist.

Now Cantor knows better. And we can document that too. I mean, it's always, one side has documentation, the other side just has lies.

And anybody can look at the documentation on our website where we had the interaction back in 2005, 2006 with Eric Cantor and went back and forth and attempted to patiently deal with this man.

We dealt with this false accusation and it's right there, but he doesn't care about the fact that he's been refuted on that.

I'm not standing there so he can say what he wants. And that's just sort of how the

Eric Cantor thing has gone for a long, long time now. And can't stand

Brian. And he went after Dr. Broderson and he does podcasting, vlogging, and video, and even

Dr. Broderson in his graciousness, because he's much nicer than I am, but in his graciousness he even uploaded a letter and said, look, I have nothing against you guys.

Here's what I believe and here's why I believe it. And the guy ends up just an hour -long podcast on that.

So what y 'all need to understand is that back when we responded to the

Calvary Chapel program, now remember, Eric Cantor was on the Calvary Chapel program attacking me back in January.

He doesn't mention that. He doesn't mention lying about saying, saying that my debates are like the

Jerry Springer show. We're not going to talk about that. Let's just let that pass. Once you just start living so dishonestly, it just starts oozing out of every pore,

I guess. And you just can't speak the truth anymore. But you need to understand that the discussions that we had about 1

John 5, 1, and the depth we went into the text and all the rest of that stuff, that just, that's hater.

You're being a hater. If you respond to theological issues, exegetical issues, the way we did on the program, you're being a hater.

That's the world that Eric Cantor lives in. And I think that explains some of his behavior.

I think it really does. You're going to have to settle with this issue. In Galatians 6,

Paul says in verse 10, treat each other well, especially to those who are in the household of faith.

All right. So let's go to the next one because we've got a phone call and things like that.

I want to get to the next one here. Yeah, this one right here.

I anticipated it with the Muslims. I've been dealing with it forever. I didn't expect the Christians or people that call themselves

Christians to act that way. But it shouldn't surprise anybody.

Be prepared. When they started attacking our testimony, I'm going to even take it deeper.

Pastor, if it's okay, I'll take just a little bit longer on this. I started taking it deeper. I went to my chance.

Let me just stop for just a moment. I thought I had, let me see if I can find it here. I guess

I did not cue this up. I apologize. Let me see if I can find it real quick. And we come to America.

I've been sharing my testimony. There's a whole YouTube channel. I had gotten. Pastor, when we first spoke, we were supposed to come in February and it was a snow in.

Part of it may have been just that God was giving me a break because it's been six months. There's a whole

YouTube channel dedicated to saying that I was not a Muslim, and that Amir was not a Muslim, and Erdem was not a

Muslim, and our father was not a devout Muslim. We were raised as the sons of a man who was so devout, he did the call to prayer,

Wazim. Let me just mention, it does not require a particularly high level of devoutness to give the call to prayer.

I'm sorry, but that's just bogus. Now maybe that's what he was taught, maybe that's what he thinks,

I don't know, but it's bogus. It doesn't make you an alim, it doesn't make you a scholar of Islam, that you give the call to prayer.

That's just a fact, and anybody who's familiar with Islam knows it. I anticipated it with the Muslims. Where were we?

We were around 1122. Part of it may have been just that God was giving me a break, because it's been six months.

There's a whole YouTube channel dedicated to saying that I was not a Muslim, and that Amir was not a

Muslim, and Erdem was not a Muslim, and our father was not a devout Muslim. We were raised as the sons of a man who was so devout, he did the call to prayer,

Wazim. My father. And we come to America. I've been sharing my testimony since I got saved 27 years ago.

And yet, when YouTube became real popular in 2006, this Muslim guy out of London started getting video clips of me and dissecting it.

He mispronounces this. I'm not Arabic. I'm Turkish. That's good.

We know that you're not Arabic, that you're Turkish, but you claimed to speak Arabic numerous times, and your website used to say that you would debate imams in Arabic in mosques.

Notice how things change over time. If you know the Middle East, a couple of you obviously do, because you've all been there.

There's Persian, there's Anatolian, and there's Arabic. And the Arabs are only 20 % of the Muslims worldwide. And everybody else speaks

Arabic phonetically. It's like Catholics who memorize the Latin. You do it, you may not know what you're saying, and you can do it reflexively.

If you came from a Catholic background and I just pop out a piece to you, you just go, and peace be unto you. Is this supposed to be a defense for, for example, staying in front of an audience and claiming to have explained the entire story of Abraham and Isaac in Arabic at the

Dome of the Rock to Muslims, and then telling him to get out? Is that,

I'm sorry, go back, listen to the places where Canor has claimed to speak

Arabic, to know Arabic, to debate in Arabic, to be able to lecture in Arabic, all the rest of this stuff.

And now compare this. What kind of a person, when caught lying like this, then makes up a new story?

Is it the person who's repented of his lying or the person who's trying to hide his lying? I think the answer to that is obvious.

You're doing your sleep, man. Came from your whole background. So the

YouTube channel was Muslims. Hey, I've been dealing with that forever. And you learn to live with it.

There's reasons you guys couldn't advertise, maybe the ways that you've advertised in the past. There's things that I have to do.

There's precautions I have to take. It's the way we live. And I have to live this way, my younger brother.

But about eight months ago, six, eight months ago, they got joined up. The Muslims got joined up with a

Christian group to hate on me. Let me replay that.

The Muslims got joined up by a Christian group to hate on me. That is what he says.

Listen to it again. The Muslims got joined up with a Christian group to hate on me.

So there you go, folks. If you have thought that this issue had to do with integrity in the pulpit, integrity in ministry, reaching out to Muslims and doing the right thing in regards to that, you've joined up with the haters.

And you are just hating on Ergon Cannon. Obviously, I find that so far beyond the level of absurd that it's hard to describe.

But there you go. They're hating on me. Amazing. Now, that is painful because you don't see it coming.

That's what happens in church fights. You don't see it coming. He should have. He should have seen it coming because when you lie regularly like he was lying, you should expect that you're going to get caught.

One more section from this second session in San Diego. I anticipated it with the

Muslims. I've been dealing with it forever. I didn't expect the Christians or people that call themselves Christians to act that way.

But it shouldn't surprise anybody. Be prepared. When they started attacking our testimony,

I'm going to even take it deeper. Pastor, if it's okay, I'll take just a little bit longer on this. I started taking it deeper. Now, this is an interesting insight into Cantor's take on the politics of Liberty Seminary.

Listen to how he handled it. I anticipated it with the Muslims. I've been dealing with it forever. I didn't expect the Christians or people that call themselves

Christians to act that way. But it shouldn't surprise anybody.

Be prepared. When they started attacking our testimony, I'm going to even take it deeper. Pastor, if it's okay,

I'll take just a little bit longer on this. I started taking it deeper. I went to my

Chancellor and I said, Chancellor, these guys have a website that's called fake ex -Muslims something. It says that my brothers and I were not

Muslim. And it's by a Muslim who says, you know, for instance, he speaks with a Turkish accent. Well, really?

Really? Another one says, I have absolute proof that his nickname is

Butch. I tell everybody that. The people who call me

Butch, you know, they're from my family, my wife's family. Now, of course, I'm not sure he's referring to there.

We have mentioned the fact that there has been. Notice, again, this is why

I think the stuff that Geisler posted came from Cantor. Because it partakes the same kind of atomization, where you take individual facts, you remove them from the context in which they were originally enunciated, and then say, oh, this is ridiculous.

For example, why would it be relevant that in the 1990s, when you do searches on, for example, when

Cantor was involved after the Columbine shooting, his church was nearby and there were some quotations of him.

It was either Ergen or E. Butch Cantor that was cited.

Why would that be relevant? Well, it would be relevant because the assertion is that there has been a purposeful creation of a persona on Ergen Cantor's part since 9 -11, and that this has involved the moving of his arrival in the

United States forward by a decade so that he can live in an Islamic country, so he can be trained in madrasas in Turkey and Lebanon and Egypt, so that when he comes here, he's this person who's been committed since the age of nine to this concept of jihad.

That's what's necessary. In fact, let me give you a quotation from the talk that he gave to the

U .S. Marines, which will be appearing soon enough. Quote, in Istanbul, Turkey, my madrasa in Cairo, Egypt, there is no question what the doctrine of jihad was.

It is only when we come to America we hear westernized Islam. We hear those who say, oh, Islam means peace, that we start pulling back the veil a little bit.

I was sworn to jihad at the age of nine until I was 18 years old, and I became a believer in Jesus Christ.

Now, there's a lot of reason to question that 18 years number, given other things that he said.

There's still inconsistencies in his timeline. But the point is, we know exactly where he was when he was nine.

We have legal documents. We have his parents fighting over his religious education. We have legal statements where he's not allowed to leave the

United States at this very time period. And so, standing in front of the

Marines, he's telling them, well, you know, I was in Cairo, Egypt, or Beirut, or Istanbul, or whatever flavor of story happens to be going on at that particular time.

But the reality is that we know where he was, and we know this whole persona that he's creating for himself.

So, just simply saying, well, somebody said my name's Butch. There ain't much to that.

That wasn't the point. The point was that prior to 9 -11, you had him, because I would imagine, of course, that the reporters talking to him after the

Columbine tragedy asked him for his name. And that means the name he gave them was

Butch. He didn't say, I'm Ergen Memet Kenner. He said

Butch. And this is part of the information that is relevant to an evaluation of the mythology that he has created for himself.

But notice, this is exactly what the Geisler stuff did. I think Norm just took whatever Kenner sent him and published it.

I think that's what he did. I don't see any deeper reflection.

And that's why I said I think we're seeing what Kenner produced back in April, that if you went by his office, you could pick up, as we talked at that particular time.

So I took it to the Chancellor. I said, Chancellor, just because I'm accountable to you, I want you to see proof.

He goes, I don't need proof. You've been doing this forever. You write books. We write books under our own name.

A lot of people in our world use pseudonym to cover. I don't know if Shabbat is a pseudonym.

But Abdul Salib wrote a great book called Answering Islam. Actually, he co -authored the book with Norman Geisler.

And it was the same Abdul Salib that Ergen Kenner claimed to have debated and put into his mouth a denunciation of the cross of Jesus Christ.

Same guy. Same Ergen Kenner. Here, knowing that Abdul Salib, and, of course, this is one of the things

I asked him in my e -mails. Before this went public, I asked him to explain this. He wouldn't.

But now he's talking about it in this way. Abdul Salib means slave of the cross. We chose to write under our real names.

So we knew it was coming. We didn't know that was coming. So the Chancellor said, look, two guys become presidents of two colleges, two institutions, college and a seminary.

I don't think that you could pull that off. They're looking for a Mike Warnke moment. Yeah, they were. Well, we have a

Mike Warnke moment. It just hasn't happened yet, at least in Kenner's mind.

It has in many, many other people's minds. The evidence is significantly greater here than anything in regards to Mike Warnke.

It's there. It's open. Only those who have vested interests in political alignments are doing anything other than recognizing that.

So much so that the Christians hired somebody to go to Columbus, Ohio, where we lived, and to the courthouse, and this has been about three weeks ago, and got my parents' divorce, separation and appeal papers.

Of course, that's untrue as well. Those were obtained via normal channels.

You didn't have to hire anybody. You didn't have to send anybody to Columbus, Ohio to do that. There are people, such as Jason Smathers, who know how to make the proper request through the proper channels.

It's called public information. It's all out there. And, again, it makes you wonder.

I mean, that's been something we've addressed many, many times, and yet it sounds so much more.

Because, again, he's doing the same thing here. He's always trying to create a myth, this time the myth of these terrible, nasty

Christians who've joined up with the Muslims to hate on him. And it sounds better that you would hire somebody to go sneaking around rather than going,

Well, actually, we just used the normal channels that anybody who knows how to do that stuff actually knows how to do.

And uploaded them to the web. My whole life is on the web. My gun permit is on the web, which

I'm sort of happy about. But you can imagine how my wife feels when our whole world is on the line.

We've had to move three times in Lynchburg, and now we may have to move again. Did you catch that?

If I had some violin music to play here, it would help. But this is an entire,

I am the victim. I'm being hated on. I've been attacked. I'm such a wonderful Christian because these people are attacking me thing.

And he just claimed that, well, we've had to move many times in Lynchburg.

Evidently because of these. What is it? How many fatwas has he claimed to have had?

Eleven fatwas, something like that. And now they have made. They may have to move again. Why? Because we've exposed the fact that he grew up in Ohio.

Why would that? I suppose maybe what he's saying is I may have to get another job.

But this was May, and that was before the investigation stuff. But it's all this creation of mythology.

We may be endangered again. What? What for?

For being exposed? It doesn't make a lick of sense. So I didn't see that because when it comes to flamers, when it comes to people, you can't shut up.

You have to shut them out. You can't shut them up. You have to shut them out. And I guess that's his explanation for why he doesn't respond.

He doesn't answer. He's gone silent since June 25th. You just shut them out because they're haters.

There's nothing you can do about it. Yeah, well, that's how you handle that.

Now, just a couple other things, and we'll try to sneak these in here and then take a phone call.

Well, actually, let's skip the break because I want to get to the phone call.

And I want to get to this next section because this is what's most important to me. Yeah, all that's interesting.

And honestly, I just find it pathetic that you would identify your opponents as your haters in this way and just completely ignore what their real issues are.

And it's sad. But what really concerns me beyond this is the fact that this man is continuing to be put in positions of teaching theology and apologetics in churches and schools.

It really concerns me. It concerns me because people are being taken in.

One of the most vocal defenders of Ergin Kanner from the beginning has been a man by the name of Tim Guthrie.

And I never knew what the connection was. I found out recently what it is. If you go to Watchmen .org,

the Watchmen Fellowship, and you look at the board membership list that is currently posted there, you will see

James Walker, Ergin Kanner, and Tim Guthrie in that order.

And so Ergin Kanner and Tim Guthrie both are board members of Watchmen Fellowship. I did not know what the connection between Guthrie and Kanner was.

Now, that only makes Guthrie's incredible lack of rationality in how he has handled the situation and the things he has said all the more amazing because he is on the board of one of the best -known apologetics organizations in the

United States. Yesterday, Tim Guthrie, that is, posted,

Kanner attackers in the military where he said that rumor has it that the men out to destroy a brother in Christ are about to use the military in their approach.

That's the grossly prejudiced and prejudicial and bigoted way of saying that earlier last week, back on Monday, I tweeted the fact that the recordings of Kanner's talk to the

Marines have been turned over and that material will be made available.

But then there are some things he says, a few points he says here. Number one, it is easy to notice lately that the story was about to play out.

Another attack is required to keep the front lines going. Why? There is nothing new in their new revelation. See, this is how they are purposefully attempting to promote the idea that, well, we just need to lay low.

We just need to hope this is going to go away. Kanner never has to address the issues that need to be addressed.

We'll make it through this thing if we just stay quiet. If we just want to let this all blow away.

People will get tired of it. And they're right at one level. I mean, people have short attention spans and they'll take any excuse just to move on to something else.

Number two, the cry is for this continued pressure to force repentance out of Dr. Kanner. They are good at playing

God. This is clearly a case of piling on. While Dr. Kanner has publicly repented, both in a public statement as well as in a campus church venue, while Dr.

Kanner is no longer president of LBTS, these hateful men want a scarlet letter for him to wear.

It seems that unless Dr. Kanner repents in front of them, God will not grant forgiveness. Excuse me, but once again,

Mr. Guthrie just has no connection with reality, at least not a biblical reality that I can see.

You can see the irrationality, the emotions, so on and so forth. That's what we've come to expect from Mr. Guthrie.

But notice what he says here. He has publicly repented both in a public statement. What public statement?

That was a statement that, A, is no longer on his website. It's been removed.

And B, was not repentance about lying about living in Turkey, lying about madrasas in Istanbul, Beirut or Cairo.

None of that. He didn't address any of that. What did he specifically say? Well, I made some misstatements in my public statement, but we all do.

And the one thing he admitted was he hadn't debated Shabir Ali, but he didn't even have the guts to say Shabir Ali's name.

He said, I don't know why I said that. I can't remember. It's in Lincoln, Nebraska.

I can't remember who I debated, I guess. That was not repentance, Mr. Guthrie. And if you think that's repentance, then you are one of the most naive men

I've ever met in my life. I hope you don't let your kids get away with that kind of thing.

Or didn't, one or the other. And then what is this campus church venue? Has anyone seen this?

Anyone heard this? What did he repent for? Did he repent for the entire mythology he's made up about his life?

About speaking broken English at his conversion? Because he had just come here from Turkey when he'd been here since 1969?

Where is the repentance for that, Mr. Guthrie? Number three, who determined that these

James White minions, remember this is their own name. He's referring to the website

AOMinions. As if, and all these people think I'm behind all this stuff.

They have no idea. They don't realize. I have six debates coming up this fall.

On a wide variety of subjects. And they're real debates. You'll actually be able to listen to them. They're not fake debates.

They're not informal debates. I'm not going to Starbucks and look for someone who looks like they have Middle Eastern accent. And say, have you read the

Quran? I'm done. And call it a debate. That's not what I'm doing. I'm actually doing real debates. But I'm not behind all this stuff.

I don't have time for it. It says, have the role of knowing whether or not this repentance is needed.

Who set them up as the ones to motivate this activity? And just why was the February 25th statement not enough?

Well, because it wasn't a statement of repentance. For any of this stuff, Mr. Guthrie, that's why.

What about the actions of Liberty? Well, the actions of a very, very biased organization.

We don't even know who was on the committee. And a seven -sentence statement. If you think that's enough to deal with this issue, then again, you are as naive as the day is long.

Would you have accepted a seven -sentence statement from Jim Baker's ministry clearing him of all charges?

Evidently, you would have had to have. Or you're hating a brother in Christ. What amazing statements.

He is no longer dean. Could it be a discontinued attack simply proves they want destruction regardless of their cries?

No, sir. We actually want something to be dealt with. We want the truth.

And what we've gotten are the lies that Norman Geisler has posted on his website. Nothing more. Excuses.

All sorts of issues utterly ignored. And you know it. Any rational person knows it.

So there's Tim Guthrie. But who are the people coming to his defense? Tim Guthrie, fellow board member, watch me follow you. His brother.

Well, he's got a vested interest. Norman Geisler, Veritas. Always a connection.

Always a connection. Now, as I said, what really, really, really bothers me is the fact that Ergen Kanner is being allowed to continue to teach.

And in these San Diego recordings, he addressed the doctrine of the

Trinity. Now, let me remind you of something. We played a number of months ago

Ergen Kanner's Trinitarian faceplant. His Trinitarian meltdown.

In the context of a Oneness Pentecostal associate pastor asking him a simple question that any former

Muslim in any position of leadership whatsoever should have been able to knock out of the park.

How can the son be the same age as his father? A simple question relating to the relationship of the father and the son.

And any former Muslim who cannot answer that one probably isn't much of a theologian in any way, shape, or form.

Because that's something that you'd have to be explaining to your family and all your friends. It would be one of the first things that a former

Muslim would have some understanding of. Let me remind you what he said.

Let's listen in. Yes, please. And I'm thrilled because this is one of your assistant pastors.

Please. Yes. Yes, yes.

But if the son is co -eternal, how could there be a father and be a son when they're co -eternal?

There's never been beginning of days. There's never been end of days. So I ask you a question.

How would you know which one's the son? Because they've always been. All of them have forever always been.

All right. Please make sure I restate your question correctly. You asked the question, if, in fact, there's always been a father, always been a son, and always been a

Holy Spirit, and that they didn't have a beginning, they didn't have an end, that they are eternal, that how is it that a father can have a son who is his same age?

That both of them have had no beginning. The sonship of Christ, this is an issue of progressionism in Scripture, and it's also the issue of the incarnation.

That Jesus is part of the creation, Colossians. Again, the citation of the plural.

You also have the Holy Spirit who has been eternal, the Spirit moving on the waters. But his sonship comes in incarnation.

That when Jesus is incarnate, God the Father sending the Son, it is that moment that the term carries with it more than just a metaphor.

Now he is the Son of the Father. That's why Jesus says, I have not come to do my will,

I've come to do the Father's will. He is the second person of the Trinity and always has been. But in terms of when

Jesus refers to himself as the Son, that's a messianic term. Both Son of God and Son of Man were messianic terms, the fulfillment of prophecy in the

Old Testament. And to be fulfilled, the incarnation had to take place. God had to put on flesh.

He didn't come to earth to be God. He was God before he left. We call it

Son, and he more than trying to understand the Trinity, explain the Trinity, to define the

Trinity, is impossible. However, we try to do the same with the text. We say, here you got

God the Father, who is defined clearly as God the Father. You have God the

Son, who is defined clearly as God the Son. And you have God the Holy Spirit, who is defined clearly as God the

Holy Spirit. Either God becomes schizophrenic, again to take the metaphor, or we have a superman, or what we call modalism.

That is, he's God the Father, goes back in, comes out as the Son, goes back in, comes back as the Spirit. The problem is, you either have what we call the vacant heaven view, or you have a

God who is the incarnation of God, who is lying about himself and calling himself equal, when in fact he's just referring to his spirit part, but not his flesh.

Okay, that almost made no sense whatsoever. That was one of the worst explanations I've ever heard.

It left one of this guy completely befuddled, too, as well it should. Lots and lots of problems there, and we addressed this before.

Now, before we go to our calls, and hold on there, Justin, we're going to get to you. I want to play to you a brief section.

This is only a couple minutes, where Kanner, just a few months ago, this is

May 1st and 2nd, so just a little while ago, talks about the doctrine of the

Trinity to this group. Now, put yourself in the audience and see what you would have thought.

Guys, every definition we've given of Trinity, trying to explain una substancia tres persona, everything we use doesn't work.

See, the Trinity is somehow God, who is three persons, has one substance, and they coexist simultaneously.

And they don't need each other, but they depend on each other. They fellowship with one another, and yet it's not a dependent relationship.

How does that work? The Bible says God the Father is Father, God the Son is God, and God the

Holy Spirit is God, and yet all three are God, and yet not the same. So sometimes we say, well, it's different capacities. God the

Father created, God the Son redeems, God the Spirit convicts. Fine, but Colossians 1 and Colossians 3 teach that Jesus was part of creation, too.

And Genesis says the Spirit troubled the waters. So you can't really use that. And it says the

Spirit sent Jesus down, and it says that the Father sent Jesus down, and that God so loved the world that he gave his Son. And so they all participated in redemption, and if you want proof, boy,

Ephesians 1, the whole chapter in Ephesians 1 shows how God the Father participates in salvation, how God the Son participates, and how

God the Spirit participates in salvation. Then we go to illustrations. It's like water,

H2O. H2O is in three forms. It's ice, and it's a solid. It's gas, and it's a liquid.

But all three are H2O. Yes, that's a fair illustration, but it's not perfect, because it's not all three at the same time.

Ice cannot be gas, gas cannot be water, and water can't be ice at the same time. So that one doesn't work. How about the egg?

The egg! This is famous because Pat Robertson used it as an illustration, and somebody just decimated him on it.

The egg, the shell, the yolk, and the white. It's all the egg, but again, the yolk isn't the shell, the shell isn't the white, and the white isn't the yolk.

How does that work? Guys, there's two illustrations, and you're looking at them right now. You're around them every day.

You've been in the middle of it. There's two great illustrations of the Trinity. The whole world is triune. Why would it confuse you who

God is? Well, what do you mean? At the end of this finger is a point in time and space.

It's just one little point. This is a massive room. There's just one little point at the end of this finger. That point at the end of this finger is triune.

It is both height measured from the floor, width, and depth. And it's all three at the same time.

And height is width, and width is depth, and depth is height. I'll stop there. As I listened again, and I think most people would at least grant that at least this is one doctrine

I know a little something about. I've written on it, defended it. I can try to find a way to understand most of the things he was saying if I try really hard.

But I've got a good background in the subject. And I cannot imagine what the people sitting there listening to that were thinking.

And yet that's what people are going to be exposed to. Why? I don't understand. I do not understand.

Now, we had a caller, and we lost the caller, Justin DeHorn, who said that Tim Guthrie has not been on the board of Watchman Fellowship for over a year.

Well, that may be so, but that means that Watchman Fellowship hasn't updated their website in over a year because if you go to watchman .org

and then go to the Contact Us and go down to Staff Contacts, you will see what

I'm looking at. And under Board Members, Dr. Robert Stewart, James Walker, Eric McCann, Tim Guthrie, Jerry Holbrook, Bob Anderson, Jeff McClain, Alice Pitchford, Laura Arnn, and David Henke.

Those are the names listed currently on Watchman Fellowship's website.

I can only go with that. What that does clearly indicate is exactly what I was saying. There is the connection. If he's not now, it doesn't matter.

That means he was. That means he served as a board member at the same time that Eric McCann did because he's listed together with him.

And that then becomes the connection that exists between the two. So my concerns continue on.

And there are reasons for that because I keep seeing lists of conferences and churches where Eric McCann could be speaking, and yet nothing dealt with in regards to the real issues that he has continued to be silent about.

Dr. McCann, when did you live in Turkey? Point to the madrasa you studied in in Istanbul.

Point to the madrasa you studied in in Cairo. Point to the madrasa you studied in in Beirut.

Give us addresses. Tell us what street it was on. What part of the city was it in?

And explain how you studied in those madrasas at the same time that the documentation tells us you were living in Ohio.

If you left Ohio, when did you leave Ohio? How long were you gone? Why did you say you were having to learn

English, that you spoke only broken English at your conversion when you went to primary school in Ohio?

Explain these things, Dr. Cantor, because you haven't so far. You keep hiding behind the, well,

I was really a Muslim. I've never said anything else. Answer the real questions.

It's necessary. 877 -753 -3341.

Let's go ahead and sneak these calls in before we run out of time and talk with Justin up there in Grand Rapids.

Hi, Justin. How are you doing, Dr. White? Really appreciate all that you do. I got to go to your debate on that Monday night in Dearborn.

Even though your opponent didn't show up, I still felt it was very fruitful. Well, so the

Monday night one where we had the fill -in opponent. Yes, if you want to call him that. Yeah, yeah.

Clearly outmatched. It was, well, anyways, let's go on from there. It was embarrassing for him. My question, my wife came home from church

Sunday morning, and in the sermon the pastor was reading from John 3, 16, and he read,

For God So Loved the World, that he gave his only begotten son. And then he paused there, and he went on about a two -minute little tirade about the fact that this is why you use the

King James, because the King James says, Begotten, where if you look at the majority of other translations, they say,

For God So Loved the World, he gave his only son. The begotten is not there, and therefore that is why the

King James is a translation you should use, not the ESV, the NIV, et cetera, et cetera.

Interesting. Well, the term that is translated there, of course, is monogamies.

The term itself, the reason that it has been translated as begotten in older translations and in some modern translations is due to the fact that the understanding was that when you see the term monogamies, you see mono only, and then the assumption was for a long time that the rest of the word went back to genao, which means to beget.

But that would require two news. It would have to be two what we would call n's. There's only one n in monogamy here.

And so as a result, we recognize that it's actually built on the term genos, which means type or kind.

Hence, and there's an extended discussion of this in,

I think it's in the Forgotten Trinity, and I may have actually touched on it briefly now that I think about it in the

King James only book, because that comes up, obviously, as you just saw in that realm as well.

But more than once, I have put together a discussion of the background of monogamies, especially

John 3 .16 and other places like that. But it comes from the term genos, which means kind or type. So monos only, genos, kind or type means unique or one of a kind or only son as it would be used in this particular context.

Only begotten actually is somewhat misleading because it is based upon the idea that this is genao, which means to beget, when it's actually genos, which means kind or type.

I wouldn't call it an erroneous translation, but a possibly misleading translation if you read into it the concept of origination, something along those lines.

That would have to come from context and not from the actual use of the term.

But here it's being really used as a title, tan huyan tan managane, the unique son.

The only begotten son is the King James translation. But I have to explain this all the time to Muslims who think that because it says begotten, that that means it happened at a point in time in history or something like that, which, interestingly enough, goes right back to what we were just talking about with Eric and Kanner.

And what is the relationship? What is the begetting relationship between father and son? Well, it is eternal.

It is a relationship. It is not a point in time that something took place. And Muslims are wrong to look at managanes and read into it the concept of birth, origination, creation, all those other things that come along with it.

So that's really what the background is there. Did he give any discussion of the original language?

Or is it just, I prefer this over something else? No, absolutely not. It was just kind of a little drive -by shot because the denomination only allows their pastors to use the

King James, but they would say they're not King James only. But you're only allowed to use the

King James. Yes, yes. Well, yeah, ESV, for God's love of the world, that he gave his only son.

NASB still has only begotten son there, though I think in a footnote they do provide a little more information on that.

NET, his one and only son, is very good at that point. So yeah, you have to understand where that term came from and what it really means.

But interesting that they wouldn't allow any use other than the King James at that point. That's interesting.

Yes, very interesting. Okay, well, I appreciate your patience and hanging on the whole hour. Thank you.

Okay, thank you very much. Bye -bye. All right, thank you, Justin.

And now we talk with Johnny, but a different Johnny. Johnny in Indiana.

Hi, Johnny. Hello, Mr. White. How are you? Pretty good.

Actually, this is Tom McQuiston. Everything you've been talking about so far goes along with my question, and you might have actually answered it in all of this.

So help me to get a little closer to it. I mean, two aspects of my question.

One is if this is heretical, what's its cause? And then why does it have to be like this? What I'm asking is why does

Jesus have, like, I believe he's co -eternal, co -existent. What's the other one?

We just said a few, you know, he's all those things. Why does that relationship of father and son, why does that have to be eternal?

Like, why does he always have to be the son? Couldn't he have just been a person of the

Trinity, like during the Old Testament, and then become the son in his incarnation? Well, there are people who have believed that and promoted that.

We're getting a lot of feedback on your line. It sounds terrible. I'm going to have to answer your question off the line.

Are you listening to the program? Yes, that'd be fine. Okay. I'll jump off. Thank you very much.

Thank you. All right. Yeah, that sounded really odd. I'm not sure what was going on there, how we were getting feedback on that.

But I would not call it so much heretical as incomplete, because it limits the sonship of Christ.

Those who say that Jesus is merely the second person of the Trinity are not seeing that the relationship between the father and the son is an eternal relationship, and it is an intimate relationship.

What is being described by father and son is not merely incarnational, as Ergen Kanner actually put it in his response to Oneness Pentecostal Pastor, but it is relational.

And just as the father and son send the spirit and there is a relationship in the sending of the spirit, this is part of how

God has revealed himself to us. So it's part of the economic trinity, but to say that sonship is not a part of the essential description of the relationship of father and son is to limit sonship only to the economic aspect and not to the actual ontological trinity, the relationship that exists in eternity before creation itself takes place.

And so I just don't see any reason to do that in light of the fact that, for example, Paul can very easily speak of the son as the one through whom all things are created.

This is very active creation itself, and it's the son that it's attributed to, both in Colossians 1 and Hebrews 1.

Some might argue, well, yeah, that's only the son as we see him. I just don't see that in the text at all. So my concern for those that limit sonship to a merely incarnational concept is that that removes it from the ontological trinity, and I think that's one of the primary ways in which we recognize the distinction between the father and the son is in that utilization of that term.

I'm going to take this really quick. We might have to go a little bit long for a moment here, but Larry in Kentucky has called in.

Hi, Larry. How are you doing, Dr. White? Doing good. Hopefully this is a quick question, but I heard another caller calling about King James Only, John 316.

I have a question about the text in Isaiah where King James obviously uses

Lucifer. I've read your article concerning that, that comes from the

Vulcate. Right. That's a pretty common argument that King James Only people use.

Can you give maybe a little more background on why it's in the Vulcate and why the

King James Only translators use that? And then also, do you think that passage actually is talking about Satan anyway?

Well, it could be. There are a number of places where kings are addressed as the primary application, but there's a secondary application that goes beyond that, such as you have in Ezekiel, I believe, as I recall, 18 as well.

But the text is Isaiah 14, 12. How you are fallen from heaven, O day star, son of dawn, is the

ESV's rendering of that particular text. The numeric standard is how you have fallen from heaven,

O star of the morning, son of the dawn. Both are referring in the

Latin Vulgate. When Jerome translated this, he used Lucifer, which means bearer of light.

And that's where star of the morning or shining one comes from, from the

Hebrew. And so that then became associated through interpretation as a specific name for Lucifer and entered into the theological vocabulary from that point.

And the Latin Vulgate was extremely important to the King James translators. It was one of the primary sources they utilized.

It has been argued that many of them, not all, but many of the translators were better at translating

Latin than they were at the original languages themselves. And so it entered into theological vocabulary at that point.

As I pointed out in the King James only controversy, what you've got here is the same situation that took place when

Jerome translated the story of Jonah and utilized a term other than what they were accustomed to in the

Greek Septuagint at that point. He accurately translated the Hebrew as castor oil plant. Well, when that was first read to people in Carthage, they almost rioted because someone has changed the

Bible. No, actually, someone has just translated the Bible more accurately than the translation you were accustomed to.

And that's exactly what you have going on in the King James only. You've become accustomed to a particular translation, and someone comes along, and rather than getting all emotional about it, what you should do is ask, is this a better translation?

What's the reasons for this translation? But it's a lot easier to just come up with wild -eyed conspiracy theories and tell people that all the terrible, horrible, nasty

Bible translators are trying to hide something when all they're trying to do is be faithful to the original text they're translating, and you just don't have

Lucifer in the Hebrew. And so when that's what you're translating, that's what you need to translate, and that's why they translate it consistently the way that they do.

As to the interpretation of the text, it certainly looks like there is an application being made here.

The initial application is to a king, but what is being attributed to him can,

I think, in light of the description of Lucifer, especially in the New Testament, be seen as having that secondary application.

But there's no attempt on anybody's part to try to be hiding something about Lucifer or anything else.

And especially when they then go to the text in Peter and say, ah, see, you're trying to make

Lucifer and Jesus the same person, this is only an indication of people like Gale Ripplinger's utter incapacity to do meaningful exegesis in context.

It in no way, shape, or form is a support for any kind of King James -only argumentation.

Well, only the King James got this right. So it's just a matter of accurately handling the text and doing so in a consistent way.

That's really all you're dealing with there. All right, Larry, sorry that was a little bit quick, but we actually went over a little bit just to get to that.

So thanks for calling in. Thanks a lot. Bye -bye. All righty, well, thanks for listening to The Dividing Line today.

We went a little bit long there, but I like to get folks in if they've gotten their calls in right toward the end of the program.

And once again, I hope that the continuing efforts to seek for integrity and truthfulness, even in the evangelical community, which

I think is what we're supposed to be doing, that's what I've been doing for a long time, is something that you can support.

We will be here Tuesday, but not Thursday of next week. So we'll see you on the next

Dividing Line. See you then. God bless. The Dividing Line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.

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