The Muslim Claim That The Gospel of John Predicted Muhammad

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Dr. White examines the claim that John 14:16 is a corrupted text that originally referenced a prophecy about Muhammad, although no manuscripts support the claim. In the article, both the facts presented and the argumentation are found wanting on just about every point - this theory can not hold up against the context of the passages or manuscript evidence.

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Good afternoon and welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White. Those of you who are computer savvy, those of you who are listening right now via real audio,
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I hope this doesn't necessarily blow you off of the real audio feed, but you might want to go to the particular article that we'll be looking at today.
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Those of you who are listening by archive might want to do the same thing.
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We're going to be looking at a particular article today. It is at www .answering
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-christianity .com slash predict,
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P -R -E -D -I -C -T dot H -T -M. That's www .answering
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-christianity .com slash predict dot H -T -M.
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The title of this particular article is, Muhammad was predicted to come in the
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Gospel of John. Muhammad was predicted to come in the
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Gospel of John. This is an argument that I had heard years and years ago, obviously before there was quite as much interest in the subject of Islam as there is today, and had found it to be a rather amazing claim, and in fact had, in looking into it, had honestly felt that if this is the kind of material that Islamic apologists present, then it does not bode well for the level of Islamic apologetics.
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It has been my experience that I was correct in that analysis many years ago, because in encountering this fuller article, and it's about 20, 22, 21 pages in length, 20, 21 pages in length, at least as I printed out, unfortunately
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I used large print, so I imagine you could shrink it down a good bit less than that if you wanted to, as I printed out, it came out to about 20 pages long, and as I looked at this,
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I discovered that this is actually an argument that has been used by Muslim apologists for quite some time, and while it is truly an absurd argument, because it utilizes information that is not generally a part of the standard, shall we say, evangelical material that is out there,
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I can understand why it is that there is not a constant refutation of it by every person, but we will attempt to reverse that today here on the
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Dividing Line by letting Christians know about what the claims are, how the argument is presented, and where all the errors, and there are a number of them, are in this kind of material.
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Obviously our interest is due to the fact that Islam is now on the front page, it is on television, it is on radio, it is all around us, and while many would say, well, yeah, in a negative sense because of the events of September 11th and the attacks of the
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Islamic terrorists on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, yet obviously it is causing individuals to examine the story of Islam and to examine the
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Koran. I, even this last Wednesday evening at our church, spoke from the
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Koran, not as my base text, of course, but read a number of passages from the Koran in presenting somewhat of a
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Islam 101 type of presentation for the folks there. Many Christians have found themselves just completely and totally out of the loop as far as how to respond to the subject of Islam, and I do not claim to be an expert,
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I am, I will say, building my library, I am taking those steps that are necessary to provide the kind of response that we want to give to anyone, and that includes doing solid research, recognizing that there's a lot of garbage out there, and that there's a lot of stuff that is simply not overly useful.
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We want to be able to provide a decent response to any subject that we address, and that's why we have not addressed this one.
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However, I would point out that, interestingly enough, I have a little,
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I think I may have mentioned last week, that I have a little program that I installed on my system, a sticky note type little thing, and when you look at what
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I had put in those little notes before September 11th, prior to the attack, one of the particular notes that I wrote to myself said, pray and consider about engaging the
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Islamic topic, and so it was not something that I had ignored all along, but it was something that I was giving some consideration to, and now, of course, with all of the questions that are being asked,
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I have been taking much more time to be looking through the Quran and examining materials, and I find myself thinking about it a lot, so it is a very large area.
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It is not something I think someone can just simply plop down and start dealing with, but this is an area, the specific assertion of the article we're going to be looking at today, that is very much within my purview, which is within the area of work that I do, and that is the fundamental argument of this particular article, and this is, as you can tell by reading through it, something that is used, has been used for quite some time, and not just here in the
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United States, so it's been used for centuries now, and has been used around the world, so it's not just one particular person that we're dealing with here, but this particular assertion is that the text of the
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New Testament has been altered so as to change a particular word that the argument goes would refer to Muhammad, and that there is corruption of the text of Scripture.
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Those of you who have listened to the debate, or watched the debate between myself and Hamza Abdul -Malik that took place in 1999 on the deity of Christ in the
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New Testament, know that the fundamental apologetic argument of that kind of Islamic apologist is simply to attack the veracity of the
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Christian Scriptures, and to attack the veracity of the text of the Christian Scriptures, to allege that there has been wholesale editing and changing of the text of the
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Scriptures. And you know that in that particular debate, which again I undertook because the fact that it was on the subject of the
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New Testament only, I wasn't being asked to debate the Quran, I wasn't being asked to debate specific
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Muslim beliefs, in essence, but was being asked to defend the deity of Christ from the
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New Testament. Those of you who've heard that know that, in essence, my opponent could only do this.
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He could only say, well, any passage that teaches that Jesus is God was added later.
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It is an interpolation. And when I asked, well, Mr. Malik, could you show us a single manuscript of the
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Gospel of John that does not contain John 1 -1? Well, they're out there. Well, could you name one?
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Well, no, no, I can't, but there are scholars who have. Could you name a scholar? Well, they're out there too. Mr. Malik lost the debate in toto, because in any debate, if you make the assertion that a fact exists, then you need to be able to back that up.
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He was not able to do so. Nobody can, because the fact that the textual tradition does not substantiate the assertions being made by Islamic scholars.
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So I want to look at this, because it is out there. It is an oft -repeated argument that is there.
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I didn't do it soon enough, and I recognize that, but I have at least contacted the website that hosts this particular article and have let them know that we're going to be doing this program.
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It was way too late, I imagine. I doubt they're gonna be able to call in today, but who knows? Anything's possible,
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I suppose. But hopefully they'll get the chance to listen to the archive, at least, and I would be most interested in hearing how a responsible individual will deal with the information that I'll be presenting today in regards to this subject.
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And there are many, many other subjects that appear on that particular website that likewise absolutely demand a response.
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There's just some incredible statements that are made on the
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Answering Christianity website, and we may have some time to get to them. Especially, I was going to look at the material in regards to John 20, 28.
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In essence, this is bad Jehovah's Witness argumentation, and the
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Jehovah's Witnesses are considerably more polished in their presentation than what we find from Muslim apologists in material such as this.
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So with that, I look at the presentation. I would just simply note that on another one of the pages on this website, the discussion of the alleged passages about the
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Doctrine of the Trinity begins the very first sentence with the assertion that we need to know that the
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Christian scriptures have been corrupted from the beginning. And so that kind of mindset is where we start.
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I think if we just hear what's being said, we will be able to see that the
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Muslim has to argue in a circle. He has to argue irrationally. And as Islam grows in our own nation, it has already grown tremendously in Britain, for example.
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It has become a very large portion of the religious population in the United Kingdom.
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We need to be able to give an answer. And obviously, I'm moving toward being able to hopefully utilize the resources that we have and the background that we have to be able to provide a very in -depth and biblically consistent response to this particular issue.
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Now, the article says Muhammad was predicted to come in the Gospel of John. How is this said?
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Well, basically, the article says that the
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Arabic word Muhammad is an expression which means the honorable one, the glorified one, or the admirable.
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One of the things we need to recognize is that especially in the
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United States, where there is a general ignorance of the ancient languages such as Arabic, we are hearing all sorts of claims being made.
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For example, we are hearing people say that Islam means peace. And you can make an argument like that.
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You can make an argument that the bare word means peace. But obviously, to anyone who's thinking through assertions, what would be the real determining factor in knowing what
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Islam means? What would be, how did Muhammad use it in the
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Quran? And for centuries, there has really been no argumentation at all from anyone that Islam means submission.
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It means submission to Allah. But now that we have this entire media circus, in essence, going on regarding the whole
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Muslim debate, shall we say, now all of a sudden we're hearing Muslim apologists emphasizing that Islam means peace.
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Well, we need to be careful every time we see a claim that, well, such -and -such a word means such -and -such in the
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Arabic language. The language allows for various meanings dependent upon context.
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And so keep those things in mind. So the assertion is that Muhammad means the honorable one, the glorified one, the admirable.
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And the assertion is that today's Gospel of John spoke of a human prophet which he predicted his coming would be of the honorable one.
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And the assertion is Jesus in the Greek Bible used the Greek word perikletos. And unfortunately, we don't have the exact Greek words provided.
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These are only transliterated in the article, which means the admirable or glorified one.
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He called the predicted human prophet perikletos. This word corresponds exactly to the Arabic word
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Muhammad, which also means the admired or glorified ones. In other words, the one that Jesus was talking about in John 14 -16 was
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Muhammad rather than anyone else. Now when we turn to John chapters 14 -16, however, we discover that this article fails greatly to provide any meaningful interaction with the text.
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We are given a few citations. We're given John 14 -16 and 15 -26, then 14 -26, then 16 -7 -14.
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We are not given any fuller citation of these passages.
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We're not given any exegesis of John chapter 14, nor really does the article attempt to engage in a type of exegesis of the passage.
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We should be aware of the fact that this is that lengthy discussion of the coming time when
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Jesus leaves his disciples. It is placed in the future tense. Jesus has told his disciples he's returning back into the presence of the
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Father. And in fact, this whole section will end with his prayer in John 17.
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We will talk about sharing the glory of the Father, how he had had glory with the Father in the presence of the
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Father before time itself was. My assumption would be that the writer of this article would dismiss
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John chapter 17 as later interpolation, even though, of course, in reality it fits perfectly with the context of John 14, 15, 16, and 17.
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That is one of the problems, however, that we have when you start hacking up the text of Scripture is you cannot be consistent in your so doing.
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But beginning in, for example, verse 14, Jesus asked, if you ask me anything in my name,
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I will do it. This is John 14, 14. If you love me and you will keep my commandments,
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I will ask the Father and he will give you another helper that he may be with you forever.
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That is the spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it does not see him or know him, but you know him because he abides with you and will be in you.
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I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. After a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me because I live, you will live also.
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In that day you will know that I am in my Father and you in me and I in you. He who has my commandments and keeps them as the one who loves me and he who loves me will be loved by my
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Father and I will love him and disclose myself to him. Judas, not Ascariot, said to him, Lord, what then has happened that you are going to disclose yourself to us and not to the world?
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Jesus answered and said to him, if anyone loves me he will keep my word and my Father will love him and we will come to him and make our abode with him.
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Now just stopping at that particular point, we note a number of things that if they had been noted by the article would immediately cause problems for its basic thesis and that is certainly we are talking about someone here who could not be fulfilled by a human prophet that would live, well his dates are about 570 to 632 around in that area and so we're talking about 540 years later, half a millennium and so why do
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I say that? Well notice even though there is a quotation of verse 16, there is no quotation of verse 17 at the beginning of the article.
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I will ask the Father and he will give you another helper, that's the term we're looking at, another helper, it's translated in various ways by the
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Greek New Testament depending upon the context in which it is found, but it is the specific term that they are going to be going after shall we say in this article and they want to attempt to make a parallel between this particular word and the word that they want to find regarding Muhammad.
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Now the term that is found here is parakletos, the helper, the intercessor, the paraclete as we normally render it in transliteration in the
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English language and they want to say that well what has happened is that there has been a textual change, a purposeful textual change at this particular point that has changed what originally was a word that would have communicated to someone in Arabic the idea of Muhammad that has now been changed and turned into this
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Holy Spirit, this paraclete, this helper, this intercessor. The problem is they didn't quote the very next verse which goes on to say after verse 16,
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I will ask the Father and he will give you another helper that he may be with you forever. I'm not sure how
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I guess the argument would be, well Muhammad is with us forever through the Quran but that's obviously not what is being discussed here.
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Verse 17 says that is the Numa of truth, the spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it does not see him or know him.
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Now the wonderful thing seemingly about Islamic apologetics is that you don't have to worry about a consistency in the text if there's something that you don't like you just simply ignore it which is what this article does at this point because it does not see him or know him but you know him because he abides with you and will be in you.
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Now obviously it's pretty hard to make John 14, 17 fit
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Muhammad half a millennium later. Muhammad is not the spirit of truth, they will make the assertion that the word spirit refers to human beings, it does not as we will see as we work through the text but the spirit of truth is the
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Holy Spirit of God. The world cannot receive this spirit of truth but the world could receive for example
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Muhammad, could they not? Well why doesn't the world receive the spirit of truth? Because it does not see him or know him.
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Well the world saw Muhammad, the world knew Muhammad but you know him because why?
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He abides with you and will be in you. Well he's talking to the Apostles here, not a generation 500 years down the road and how could
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Muhammad be in them? They would have to come up with some wild idea that what's actually being spoken of here is the words of Muhammad through the
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Quran being in us or something along those lines but that's obviously not the case, that's not what it would have meant in its original context or anything of the kind.
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And so when they attempt to make this connection they normally focus down just a little bit down to John 14, 25 and 6, these things
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I have spoken to you while abiding with you but the helper that is the parakletas, the
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Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.
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Well again, who is the audience? The audience is the Apostles, the audience is the people that Jesus is talking to.
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He's saying that something's going to happen to them. Now this could not be fulfilled obviously if the parakletas is actually someone else it's
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Muhammad, this could not be fulfilled in reference to the individuals that he's speaking to at all.
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But the helper, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name, now did Muhammad come in the name of Jesus?
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No, he came in the name of Allah, not Jesus. He will teach you all things and bring to remembrance all that I said to you.
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Well there's very little of the Gospel account in the Quran so there's no bringing to remembrance all that Jesus said to the
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Apostles, to the disciples. So again this doesn't fit but the assertion that is made is that one of the major textual changes is found here in verse 26 and the assertion is going to be that it did not initially say the
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Holy Spirit. But immediately just looking at the text, letting the text speak for itself, we have been able to see numerous problems with inserting into this idea a human being that would not be born for another half a millennium after the words
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Lord Jesus Christ. It automatically makes the word context mean absolutely nothing whatsoever.
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Now looking at the article again back on the website, there's a brief discussion of what parakletos means, about an advocate, and we're told that this advocate will come, the parakletos will come, and that the
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Christians have identified this as the Holy Ghost. Then we read these words. It must be pointed out that the original
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Greek manuscripts speak of a holy pneuma. The word pneuma is the
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Greek root word for spirit. There is no separate word for ghost in the Greek manuscripts of which there are claimed to be over 24 ,000 today.
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I immediately stop at that point and point out that our author does not understand basic biblical backgrounds at this point and hopefully everyone in the audience can see why that is.
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They do not understand this because there are not 24 ,000 Greek manuscripts.
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There are approximately 24 ,000 manuscripts of the New Testament completely, but there are only about 5 ,300 manuscripts in Greek and about 24 ,000 including the
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Greek manuscripts, including Latin manuscripts, etc, etc, etc, etc.
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And so there is a obvious error right there in the article.
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The individual is unaware of some basic facts at that point. The translators of the
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King James Version of the Bible translate this word as ghost to convey their own personal understanding of the text.
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I'm reading again from the article. However, a more accurate translation is Holy Spirit. Well, there's no question about that.
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Then the next paragraph says, all Bibles in existence today are compiled from ancient manuscripts, the most ancient of which being those of the fourth century
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CE. Any scholar of the Bible will tell us that no two ancient manuscripts are exactly identical. All Bibles in our possession today are the result of extensive cutting and pasting from these various manuscripts with no single one being the definitive reference.
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Well, hopefully everyone can see yet again that that is simply absurd.
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That is not the case in any way, shape, or form. Most of that state, most of that entire paragraph is simply in error.
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Why is it in error? Well, you will notice. First of all, the most ancient of those of which being those the fourth century.
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That's not true. This seems to be drawing on something, on material that's at least a couple hundred years old maybe, at least maybe from last century.
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Because up until last century, you might have argued that Codex Vaticanus or something like that was only from the beginning of the fourth century.
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But around the turn of the century, we had the discovery of the Greek papyri, and we have papyri manuscripts that go long before the fourth century now.
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So whoever is putting this together is not making much of an effort in keeping up with the actual biblical scholarship.
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Then we have the assertion any scholar of the Bible will tell us that no two ancient manuscripts are exactly identical.
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Well, of course. How could they be? They're all handwritten. But to it seemingly, the assertion that is being made is, well, since no two are exactly alike, then that means there's no way of determining what the original text was.
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And that does not follow at all. This is an issue addressed rather fully in my book,
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The King James Only Controversy, which functions very well, by the way, as a general introduction to textual critical principles and why it is we can trust the text of the
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New Testament. In fact, what the very basis and foundation is for understanding that the
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New Testament has not undergone the very changes that Islam alleges that it has. But any scholar of the
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Bible will admit that that's a partial truth. It is true that no two read identical to one another, but it is also true that given the rich variety of manuscripts that we have, we can determine the original text.
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So the final sentence that says all Bibles in our possession today are the result of extensive cutting and pasting from these various manuscripts, with no single one being the definitive reference, is simply absurd.
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No, we do not set up one manuscript as the definitive reference. Only Islam is stuck doing that after the
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Uthmanian revision of the Quran. We actually have a much clearer picture of the original state of the
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New Testament than Muslims have of the Quran, even though they will be surprised to hear that, because we don't have the situation they have, and that is because of what
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Uthman did in the gathering up copies of the Quran and making the emendations and changes, it eventually becomes a wall by which we cannot go farther back into history to see what the earlier versions looked like and what they read.
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Unlike those who study the Quran, we who study the New Testament and the Old Testament welcome all the new discoveries that we can find, because the more information we get, the more certain the text that we have.
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That's the opposite situation with the Islamic scholar and with the Quran. The Bible is not the result of quote -unquote extensive cutting and pasting.
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That is simply ridiculous. It demonstrates the person writing this has no concept of what biblical translation involves, the resources that are used, nor does this person seem to recognize that if you take the two most widely diverging
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Greek manuscripts, if you take the most Alexandrian manuscript in one hand and the most
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Byzantine manuscript in the other, the changes are comparatively very, very small between those two manuscripts.
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The differences are very, very small, and you do not have a different message between those two manuscripts in any way, shape, or form.
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Some of you may be going, hmm, sounds a little bit like some of this would be relevant to the King James Only folks, too.
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The King James Only folks, I have to admit, I'm not sure how in the world those individuals would deal with these assertions, because in essence, by re -inspiring the
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Bible many, many, many, many years after the actual writing of the
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New Testament, they're basically putting themselves in the same position as the Koran with the Uthmanian revision.
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So I'm not sure exactly how King James Only folks would respond, but we certainly know that we don't have to follow their particular perspective.
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Well, I've been covering a lot of background stuff. I want to get to a little bit more of the actual assertions here, because we haven't gotten to point one yet, but we'll get there.
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We'll get there in time, and I hope this information is helpful and useful to you. We'll be right back. And welcome back to The Dividing Line.
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I said that about four times before we actually got around to it. Welcome back to The Dividing Line. My name is James White.
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We are looking at an article promoting the idea that Jesus predicted the coming of Muhammad, that Jesus was not talking about the
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Holy Spirit, that it was not the Holy Spirit who would come and dwell within the disciples, that somehow the
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Father and the Son would make their presence with his apostles through a human prophet half a millennium later.
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Yes, I know it's absurd, but that is the assertion being made, and we need to know how to respond to it.
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The first thing is to be able to teach our own people what John 14 -16 is actually talking about.
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We need to know why it is that only the Holy Spirit fits all of the things that are being said here.
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But then we need to know how to respond to the assertions being made. We are reading some of the words of this article, demonstrating that the author is simply deceived on many factual issues.
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We just heard the author saying that the Bibles, all Bibles today are in our possession, are the result of extensive cutting and pasting from these various manuscripts.
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That is not the case in any way, shape, or form. Anyone who does Bible translation knows that is not the case.
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Then we have these assertions. What the translators of the Bible have done when presented with such discrepancies, I'm not sure what discrepancies there is, is to do their best to choose the correct version.
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In other words, since they cannot know which ancient manuscript is the correct one, again that's an error, they must do a little detective work in the text in order to decide which version of a given verse to accept.
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John 14 -26 is just such an example of such selection techniques.
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Is that the case? Well, let's find out. John 14 -26 is the only verse of the Bible which associates the parakletos with the
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Holy Spirit. Now that's not the case at all. We see the spirit of truth.
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Now they're saying, well, the specific word Holy Spirit used with parakletos, this is the only place where it is.
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However, as we've already seen, you can't read the text in any other way. It doesn't have to let the text mean anything.
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It doesn't have to follow any type of consistency there. They can just pick and choose whatever they want to deal with.
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Now it goes on to say, but if we were to go back to the ancient manuscripts themselves, we would find that they are not all in agreement that the parakletos is the
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Holy Spirit. For instance, in the famous Codex Syriacus, written around the 5th century
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CE and discovered in 1812 on Mount Sinai by Mrs. Agnes S. Lewis, the text of 14 -26 reads, paraklete the spirit, not paraklete the
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Holy Spirit. Well, if you take your Nessie Olland 27th edition of the
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Greek New Testament and look at John 14 -26 and look at the textual variants that are listed, and I also cross -referenced this with the
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Trigellus text as well, there is only, there are only two textual variants listed in John 14 -26 in the
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Nessie Olland 27th edition. The first textual variant is between the terms, the words ha -pempsai and ha -pater.
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Some manuscripts insert the specific word homine, which does not in any way change the meaning of the text at all.
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That has nothing to do with the phrase Holy Spirit at all. That comes after where the phrase the
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Holy Spirit occurs. And then at the very end of the verse, there is the inclusion of the word ego at the end of the verse that I said to you, and there are some manuscripts, such as Oliph and Codex Alexandrinus, and actually the majority text does not have that term ego at the end of the verse, which again in no way shape or form changes its translation.
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Neither textual variant in the verse affects the translation at all. Nothing is listed in the
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Nessie Olland 27th edition regarding the phrase ta -numa ta -hagion, the Holy Spirit.
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Now what in the world is Codex Syriacus? I don't know. This is non -standard terminology that's being used here.
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I would assume that what is being referred to is one of the earlier Syriac versions of the
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New Testament, but that is a translation. That's not one of the Greek manuscripts. To my knowledge,
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I have been unable to, in looking at the various texts that are available to me, to find a single manuscript that does not have ta -numa ta -hagion, the
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Holy Spirit, at John 14 26. Now this includes, folks, and this is something very important to understand, this includes manuscripts of the
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Gospel of John that were written as much as 350 to 400 years prior to the rise of Islam.
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Now think about that. We have, for example, in p66 and p75, manuscripts p66 and p75, both have ta -numa ta -hagion at John 14 26.
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These are papyri manuscripts written around the year 200. Now Islam arises 430 years later.
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So what would be the motivation for anyone four centuries before Muhammad to be playing around with this text?
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I don't know. There is no evidence of any tampering with this text whatsoever.
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And just because a Syriac translation or a Syriac manuscript someplace only has the paraclete, the
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Spirit, that hardly impacts anything meaningful in the study of the text when all the original language texts have ta -numa ta -hagion.
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That would be like saying, oh, Mr. Muslim person, I found a foreign language translation of the
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Qur 'an that doesn't have a word in the Qur 'an and that means the Qur 'an's been corrupted. Do you think, can you imagine a single
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Muslim on the planet accepting that kind of argumentation? Of course not. Of course not.
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And yet that's the kind of argumentation they're using in reverse. Well, here's a single manuscript over here in a foreign language and it says, it says paraclete the
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Spirit instead of the Holy Spirit. And that means there's been some sort of a textual corruption.
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That's ridiculous. I can't think of a single scholar that would seriously suggest such a thing except for Muslim scholars because there are some who do that.
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Now then an assertion is made here and we're gonna, I realize I'm going along here but doesn't look like we're doing much with phone calls today anyway so it doesn't really matter.
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Then an assertion is made that, under the title, very important point, a
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Spirit in the New Testament is a human Prophet with a capital P. Therefore Jesus had predicted the coming of a human
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Prophet, a Spirit, after him and not the Holy Spirit. Jesus would not have used the word he for the
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Holy Spirit. He would have used it instead in John 14, 26. Now again, every element of this is simply wrong.
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It is not the case that a Spirit is a human Prophet. Let's look at some of the passages that are allegedly prove this.
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First John 4, 1 through 3, Beloved, believe not every Spirit but try the Spirits where they are of God because many false
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Prophets are gone out in the world. Here, the writer of this article confuses
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Spirit with a Prophet. We are to test the Spirits where they are from God.
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That does not make the Spirit equal to the Prophet. The Prophet speaks by the Spirit, whatever
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Spirit is involved with him, but a Spirit is not used of human beings.
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This is not identifying the Spirit as the false Prophet who has gone out into the world in any way, shape, or form.
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Well, what other verses are given to us? Well, we're told that 1 John 4, 6 likewise substantiates this.
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Let's look at that. We are from God. He who knows God listens to us. He who is not from God does not listen to us.
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By this we know the Spirit of truth and the Spirit of error. These are people of truth and people of error?
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A Prophet of truth and a Prophet of error? No, of course not. These aren't human
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Prophets that are being talked about here. The Spirit of truth and the Spirit of error is not an individual.
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Well, we're given a couple of other references. We're told 1 Corinthians 2, 10.
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Well, let's look at 1 Corinthians 2, 10. For to us God revealed them through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God.
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That's the Holy Spirit of God that is in reference in 1 Corinthians 2, 10, as reading it in context shows.
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For who among men knows the thoughts of the man except the Spirit of the man which is in him? The very next verse clearly distinguishes between Spirit and the man.
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Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Well, who's that? The man of God? The Prophet of God or something?
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Now, we have received not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but those taught by the
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Spirit. Notice the contrast again, combining spiritual thoughts of spiritual words. But a natural man does not accept the things the
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Spirit of God, for they are foolish to him, and he cannot understand them because they're spiritually appraised. The whole passage screams out against this gross misuse of it.
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It's amazing that the author would even cite 1 Corinthians chapter 2 because it is directly contradictory to the thesis he's trying to lay out.
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You almost wonder if the person even looked at it. The only other reference that's given is 2 Thessalonians 2.
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And if we back up just one verse, 2 Thessalonians 2. Now we request you, brethren, with regard to the coming of our
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Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to him, I wonder what they would say about that because they wouldn't believe that's actually gonna happen, that you not be quickly shaken from your composure or be disturbed either by a spirit or a message or a letter as if from us to the effect of the day of the
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Lord has come. Well, that doesn't say that the Spirit is a human prophet amongst them.
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This is instead, quite obviously, I think, within the context of the passage, we're talking here about some alleged revelation, someone saying, well, thus sayeth the
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Lord or whatever else, but nowhere is the term spirit used in the way that this entire article has to have it used.
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So every passage we've looked at does not identify the Spirit as a person. A spirit may speak through a person, a spirit may motivate a person, but a spirit is not a human prophet.
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So the assertion, the bald assertion that is made, is that a spirit in the New Testament is a human prophet.
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Untrue. Therefore, Jesus had predicted the coming of a human prophet after him and not the
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Holy Spirit. Untrue. Now that would probably be enough right there. I mean, we've blown so many holes through this, it's already looking ridiculous, but we haven't even gotten actually to the first point in this particular presentation, and I think what we're seeing here, and certainly what
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I have been learning and looking at this type of stuff, is that this is common in all of the
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Islamic apologetics that I've examined. This kind of building upon error after error after error, and an unwillingness to be corrected.
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That's certainly what I saw with Hamza Abdul Malik. Even when I corrected the errors, there's no willingness to...deliberate
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large -scale projects to correct the Bible and the writings of the early fathers, such as deliberate insertion of the verse of 1st
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John 5 -7, which is now universally discarded. It is therefore possibly that either 1.
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the word holy could have been dropped by a careless copyist, or 2. someone could have inserted the word holy to convey his personal understanding of the text.
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Again, this is as false as the day is long. There is no evidence that Christian clergy themselves were involved in corrupting the text, the biblical text, that there are some large -scale projects.
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That is untrue. Now, this author evidently doesn't even know about the papyri manuscripts, but if, let's say, there were
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Christian clerics down the road who wanted to make changes, any change they would make would stand out like a sore thumb when compared with the earlier manuscripts as they're discovered, but that has not been our experience.
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1st John 5 -7 is not found in the Greek text. 1st John 5 -7, and again,
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I don't know what the King James Version Only person says here, but the rest of us have a meaningful apologetic against Islam.
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The text in 1st John 5 -7 is universally discarded, except by King James Onlyists anyways.
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Why? Because it's not a part of the Greek manuscript tradition. But the Greek manuscript tradition is absolutely 100 % unified in refuting the assertion that the
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Holy Spirit is an insertion of John 14 -26, or that parakletos is not what was originally found in the text of the
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Gospel of John. In fact, it is the Gospel of John, ironically, that has the earliest manuscript evidence available to us in P66 and in P75, and even little manuscript
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P52. It's just a little scrap, but it could be as early as 125 AD. So this type of assertion, even though it's out there on the net, is absolutely positively meaningless from a scholarly perspective.
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Absolutely meaningless. So keep that in mind. If you're taking notes, just because someone makes an assertion, just because someone makes it with confidence, doesn't mean it's true.
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And many people will simply go to an article like this and repeat what they've been told without ever checking out whether it's factually the case at all.
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The article continues, Which was it? In order to arrive at the answer, you must follow the same path of detective work the biblical scholars themselves do.
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Well, I'm sorry, this author has no idea what textual criticism is or how textual criticism is pursued.
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We must study the characteristics of the paraklete and compare them to the Holy Spirit and to a spirit. Muslims believe that Muhammad was the one intended and not the
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Holy Ghost. In the Christians' own Gospel of Barnabas, Muhammad is mentioned by name here.
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Well, again, if you go to the website, I was looking at this particular website and there was a section
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I ran across where Jesus used the word Muslim. And so I looked at what they were saying, and if you took a phrase from Jesus and you rendered it in Aramaic and then transliterated it into Hebrew and took the last half of a word, it was
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Mushalim. It's actually Ha -Mushalim, and hence he used the term Muslim.
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That's the kind of reasoning we have going on here. And you might say, well, that's absurd.
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Well, of course it's absurd. It is absurd. But simply saying something is absurd does not demonstrate that it is.
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You have to be able to say, well, at every point along this step, that was a false argument. It is irrelevant.
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What a translation later on down the road that did not even exist in the days of Jesus, how that's transliterated into another language is obviously completely and totally irrelevant.
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And what's sometimes difficult for us to do is sometimes we have to come up with illustrations of this. You might want to say, so, if I were to take the
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Quran and I were to translate it into another language, then transliterate that into another language so that it came up with something that says
46:18
Christians are correct, Muslims are wrong, would you accept that argumentation? Of course not, because once you start playing with translation, this language or whatever, you've lost any type of credibility, any type of meaningful material that might be there.
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Coming up with illustrations like that might not be easy, but it may help those who have been given this kind of very, very, very bad information, but accept it as being real.
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The Trinitarian Church, however, has done its utmost to obliterate all existing copies of the
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Gospel of Barnabas. It's funny, it's on the internet, you can find it anywhere. And to hide it from the masses or to label it a forgery.
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For this reason, it becomes necessary to show that even the Gospels adopted by Paul's church also originally spoke of Muhammad.
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Well, that is absolutely positively absurd, as we are seeing. Now we come to the first point.
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Christian scholars see evidence of tampering, especially with the word spirit. Well, that sounds like a pretty amazing statement.
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Let's examine what is put forward. Well, we're only given one quotation.
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It's from the Anchor Bible, not exactly the most conservative source you'd ever want to cite, but let's see what the Anchor Bible says.
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The word parakletos is peculiar in the New Testament to the Johannine literature. And I think there's a some sort of an error here, it's in John ii,
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Jesus is a parakletos. I would assume that's actually in 1st John ii, because that's where that term appears.
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Not a title, serving as a heavenly intercessor with the Father. Christian tradition has identified this figure, paraklete, as the
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Holy Spirit, but scholars like Spitta, Delaphos, Windisch, Sass, Bultmann, and Betz have doubted whether this identification is true to the original picture, and have suggested that the paraklete was once an independent salvific figure, later confused with the
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Holy Spirit. That is allegedly a quote from the Anchor Bible, Doubleday and Company, Garden City, New York, 1970, volume 29a, page 1135.
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Now, I don't know what this particular author thinks that means.
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It sounds like this particular author thinks that means that these particular writers, including
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Rudolf Bultmann, believe there's been some textual change. That's not what they were saying.
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I doubt too many Muslims have much of a background in Neo -Orthodox liberalism, especially of the last two centuries or so, but there is nothing in those words that says that there is some sort of evidence of tampering.
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In fact, we're given nothing at all to substantiate the assertion
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Christian scholars see evidence of tampering, especially with the word spirit. There's nothing there.
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These liberals are talking about a redaction theory, in essence, where over time this paraklete figure came to be associated with the
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Holy Spirit, but they're not talking about the text of John 14, 26, in saying that, well, there's been some change that has been made, or something along those lines.
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So, even if they were, okay, maybe you could find a liberal someplace that liberals believe the entirety of the text of the
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Bible is the result of various redaction and editing and all the rest of that stuff, they'd say the exact same thing about the
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Quran. Of course, they wouldn't accept that particular assertion on their part, but that's what they would say.
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A lot of inconsistencies in the sources being used here, but we're given nothing. We're not given a single
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Greek manuscript. We're given nothing at all to substantiate this assertion, but the point then is going to become basic to everything else, and that's not going to really make much sense.
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Number two, the second point that we are given, does the
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Holy Spirit speak or inspire? Important note, the Greek word translated as hear in the biblical verses, whatsoever he shall hear, that he shall he speak, is the
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Greek word akuō, meaning to perceive sounds. It has, for instance, given us the word acoustics, the science of sounds.
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Similarly, the verb to speak is the Greek verb laleō, which has the general meaning to omit sounds and the specific meaning to speak.
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The verb occurs very frequently in the Greek text of the Gospels. It designates a solemn declaration by Jesus during his preachings, for example,
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Matthew 9 18. Obviously, these verbs require hearing and speech organs in order to facilitate them.
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There is a distinct difference between someone inspiring something and him speaking something, so the paraclete will hear and speak, not inspire.
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Well, this is absolutely absurd. The very same words are used of God, and yet they would say
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God is spirit, not a human being? The inconsistency of this kind of thinking absolutely boggles my mind.
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Here we have the assertion that the Holy Spirit of God cannot speak, and the Holy Spirit of God cannot communicate with the
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Father. Well, why would anyone say that? Because the Muslim starts with the assumption that there is no such thing as the
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Trinity. It can't be true, therefore I'm just gonna hack up the biblical text and make it fit. You've got to remember, and this came out very clearly, it would come out in every debate, it comes out in every conversation there is, the
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Quran's the final authority. Everything else is molded to fit whatever understanding this particular
51:57
Muslim has of the Quran. Remember, not all Muslims have the same understanding of the Quran. There's all sorts of different interpretations of what the
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Quran means and how it's to be applied and so on and so forth, but the individual Muslim will take his understanding of what the
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Quran teaches and will do whatever he needs to do with the text of the Bible to make it fit with his particular assertions.
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So we're told that Muhammad, as seen above, did indeed fulfill this prophecy. Whatsoever he heard from Gabriel, that is the
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Quran, the same did he physically speak to his followers. So here, allegedly, is the fulfillment.
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Of course, as we pointed out when we looked at John chapter 14, that doesn't explain how that he then could be in the disciples or how he could remind them what
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Jesus said to the disciples, but that is the assertion that is being made.
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Point number three, the Holy Ghost was already with them, and here, it sometimes is hard to deal with this, and I don't think there's anything wrong with chuckling at the ignorance of these things, but my goodness, it is amazing the shallow level of knowledge of the biblical text that is demonstrated in these things.
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In the above verses, we read, if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you. But if I depart, I will send him unto you.
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The Comforter cannot be the Holy Ghost, because the Holy Ghost, according to the Bible, was with them already and even quite active long before the coming of Jesus himself and then throughout his ministry.
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And then there's quotations from the Old Testament of the Spirit doing things in the Old Testament, and then we have the
53:32
Holy Spirit involved in the conception of Jesus, and there's just a bunch of citations that show that the
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Holy Spirit was active in the world. Well, again, this is simple ignorance of the role that the
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Holy Spirit adopts after Christ's resurrection. After Christ's resurrection, the
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Holy Spirit is the one who comes, makes his abode within the disciples in a way that he does not make prior to that point.
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What then does it mean, if I do not go away, he shall not come? They're saying, well, what that means is, unless Jesus goes away, then
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Muhammad cannot come. Well, what in the world would that have meant to the disciples? The disciples were dead and gone centuries before Muhammad came.
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But that is the assertion that is being made, and as I think we can all see, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but that's how this type of article goes.
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We're coming up on point number four, Selective Translation, Jesus too is a paraclete.
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We'll be taking a look at that. Again, the idea that, well, if he's a paraclete, then the paraclete who's coming has to be a physical person like he was.
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But before we look at that, we'll be taking a break and be right back here on The Dividing. The accusation is that the
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Bible translators have engaged in selective translation. Jesus is called a paraclete in 1
54:55
John 2, 1. My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not, and if any man sin, we have an advocate, that is a paracletos, with the
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Father Jesus Christ the righteous. And the article says, notice how the translators have managed to translate this exact same word one way in reference to Jesus, and another, that is comforter, with regard to the coming paracletos.
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Why would they want to do such a thing? The reason is that the translators did not want the Christians after reading, we have an advocate with the
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Father Jesus Christ the righteous, to then read, I will pray the Father and he shall give you another advocate.
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Can you see why this would make them nervous? No, can't see why it would make them nervous at all, because any
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Christian reading that would know that the Holy Spirit did come after Jesus's resurrection, ascension into heaven, and in point of fact, you translate the word based upon its context.
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The context in 1 John chapter 2 is Jesus's role as an advocate for us in regards to those who commit sin, whereas the work of the
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Holy Spirit in John 14 through 16 is in regards to his being a comforter, one who takes the place of Christ as the one, as Jesus said,
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I will not leave you as orphans. There's two different contexts, sir, therefore you do not translate the word in the exact same way when it's used in two different contexts.
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That is something that is well known to anyone who works with the original languages.
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Well, what was Jesus? He was a prophet, and then he points out in Matthew 21 -11,
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Luke 24 -19, the word prophets used of Jesus. Well, Muhammad was also a prophet of God.
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We have already demonstrated in another chapter how the verses the Bible themselves prove quite conclusively that Jesus was neither a
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God nor a part of God Almighty, but an elect messenger of God. Well, we know how that is done. That's done by simply ripping the text of Scripture apart.
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The concept of his divinity was concocted by Paul and his ministry during the first three centuries after the departure of Jesus, and is explicitly refuted by the
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Bible itself and Jesus' apostles. Now, let's think about that assertion for just a moment.
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It was concocted by Paul. Paul dies before John writes his gospel, and yet there's all sorts of stuff in John's gospel.
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Oh, that's just insertions too. Okay, well it's concocted by Paul, so that means it's concocted as early as AD 50 or AD 60.
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So why didn't John then refute that in his gospel? Well, okay, but it was done for those first three centuries.
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Well, you just start trying to put this stuff together, and it makes no sense.
57:42
It's just wild claims, wild -eyed claims that have no basis in history or reality, but it's being thrown out there anyways.
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And we know that it's sort of funny that it'd be said that this was concocted by Paul. Some of you may remember one of the most humorous events in a debate that I've ever done was when
58:01
Hamza Abdul -Malik, in dealing with Philippians 2, 5 through 11, tried to explain it by saying, well, you need to understand that that Paul knew that you're only to worship and bow the knee to God the
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Father, and he says that in the book of Ephesians, and so you just need to understand he was fooling around with them
58:24
Philippians. That's how he put it. He was fooling around with them Philippians. And I guess he wouldn't agree with this author then, because this author is saying that Paul did concoct it, and so seemingly,
58:38
I would assume that it would be in the original writings of Paul if he concocted the deity of Christ.
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Why that it's then found in all the other writings of the New Testament, I don't know, but I would assume that the assertion would be made, well, those have been changed to somehow fit with Paul, and again, there is no evidence whatsoever of that particular assertion.
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Then we're told real quickly, we do have one caller, we'll go there in a moment, that the phrase, another paraclete, since it uses the term alas, which means another of the same kind, that must mean that the
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Holy, that the Spirit that is spoken of here is a person like Jesus, a prophet, that of course ignores that it's the
59:20
Word who became flesh that we have there, and also ignores the Holy Spirit, because he's divine, can be like Jesus in his abilities, and that of course explains
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John 14, 26, and 27, where God the Father and Jesus Christ make their abode with disciples through the presence of the
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Holy Spirit. I guess that verse must be an interpolation too, because there's no way it can apply to Muhammad, but again, that's the glory of absolutely not worrying about consistency or anything like that.
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Then one last thing here, and if we don't get too much farther than this, by this point it's very obvious.
59:56
After this, there's like 20 more points, but each one builds upon the preceding, and since we haven't seen a single right thing so far, it starts getting more and more ridiculous the farther you go down the line.
01:00:07
For example, the writer doesn't understand there's between he and it, the Spirit would, you know, they deny the personality of the
01:00:15
Spirit. Ahmed Didat gets into this too. I've found that his writings are particularly ridiculous as far as the assertions that are contained therein.
01:00:25
But just one other point here, parakletos or perikletos, some scholars believe that what
01:00:32
Jesus said in his own Aramaic tongue in these verses represents more closely the
01:00:38
Greek word perikletos, which means the admirable or glorified one. This word corresponds exactly to the
01:00:44
Arabic word Muhammad, etc. etc. There are several similar cases of similar word substitution in the
01:00:50
Bible. It is also quite possible that both words were contained in the original text, were dropped by a copyist because of the ancient custom of writing words closely packed with no spaces in between them.
01:01:03
What? In such a case, the original reading would have been, and he will give you another comforter, the admirable one.
01:01:11
So, in other words, they are attempting to say that, well, it used to be there, but because there were similar words, they were dropped out.
01:01:19
Well, again, where's the evidence? We do not have a single manuscript that can substantiate this.
01:01:27
Anyone who's familiar with the tenacity of the text in the New Testament knows that any reading that was once there will continue in the manuscript tradition.
01:01:34
This does not appear anywhere in the manuscript tradition, therefore it was never there in the first place.
01:01:41
And so, we see over and over and over again, this entire argumentation is based upon wishes, wishful thinking, circular reasoning, and simple assertions that have no basis in reality or fact.
01:01:56
And yet, this is the very essence of the Muslim apologetic.
01:02:03
Let's go ahead and take one of our phone calls, and then I'd like to, if we have time, read a couple quotations, at least one citation from the
01:02:11
Quran that I find most interesting. But let's go ahead and talk with Randy in Denver. Hi, Randy.
01:02:16
Hi, James. How you doing? I, you know, became a regular caller and then dropped off the face of the earth.
01:02:22
But that was partly because of, you had some episodes there with no callers. Having some website, or actually some server problems, and so I've missed the majority of the show.
01:02:32
Right. But I do appreciate you covering this topic and look forward to hearing the whole thing on the archive a little later.
01:02:39
I did have one question that's not directly related to this. I'm just curious, are you going to be attending the
01:02:45
ETS conference here in Colorado Springs in November? No, I don't have any plans to do so.
01:02:53
I presented a paper at ETS 1998, and to be honest with you, it was a very negative experience.
01:03:00
Not the presentation of the paper, but the attitudes of many of those that I encountered, especially in the field that I was in, was extremely disconcerting.
01:03:13
What was the field, or was the paper topic? I did a, I presented a paper on Gregory Stafford's book,
01:03:20
Watchtower Defended in response to scholars and critics, and I sat in on the apologetic area, and I just really, really found the attitude of the quote -unquote
01:03:37
Academy, in fact, the very use of the term Academy, to be extremely troubling. There was no concept of Christian scholarship as the servant of the
01:03:48
Church. Instead, the attitude of many was that we, as the academics, need to guide the poor benighted masses into the truth, and I found it just quite honestly very disgusting, and I've never gone back and don't have any plans to.
01:04:05
Well, that's fascinating. I do intend to go this time. There'll be an interesting, I don't know if you've heard about the topic this time, but open theism is a big...
01:04:12
Oh, well, that would be most interesting. Keynote, well, key addresses on Thursday are
01:04:18
John Sanders immediately followed by Bruce Ware. Well, I'm speaking with Bruce Ware at the
01:04:24
Founders Conference in Lynchburg, Virginia in about a month, so I hopefully have an opportunity to talk to him about what he plans on saying.
01:04:32
Should be most interesting, I just, just not something I really, really get into much anymore. Okay, well, like I said,
01:04:38
I can't really speak intelligently on the show today just due to the fact that it's been problems with the server.
01:04:45
Well, actually, if you said almost anything of that particular article, it'd probably be in the range someplace because, you know, most of the assertions that I've reviewed have been so far from the actual reality that you could make almost any assertion.
01:05:03
It would probably be about equally accurate, so... Well, in this relativistic world, I guess my assertion is as good as anyone else's.
01:05:09
That's exactly right. Well, I do intend to get back calling you on a more regular basis now but hopefully we'll get our servers fixed too.
01:05:19
Okay, one last question and that is, do you have any scheduled trips out this way for Golden Gate?
01:05:26
Out which way is that? In Denver? No, not at the moment. You're referring to the fact that I taught up there last, well, it would have been
01:05:36
January, February, March, and that was just because the professor they had that taught that particular class took a job at Dallas Seminary suddenly and they needed somebody and it was a class that I teach fairly regularly and so I got to know the
01:05:52
Denver International Airport like the back of my hand and that was really the only reason.
01:05:58
I've not heard anything at all from the campus up there about doing anything more with them at all, no.
01:06:03
Okay, well, thank you for getting the signed copies of God It Justifies Out.
01:06:09
I hope you enjoy them. Enjoyed Reddit, dropped everything else I was reading, including some
01:06:15
John Piper stuff, made that the priority, read the whole thing before I returned to some of the other giants, so appreciate the good work and look forward to continued writing.
01:06:25
I hope you're edified by it. Thank you very much for calling today. God bless. Alrighty, appreciate that.
01:06:31
Hope those of you who are reading The God Who Justifies are finding it to be a useful work and one that is edifying to you.
01:06:40
One of the passages I want to read to you is from the Quran. This is
01:06:46
Surah 5 called The Feast and there's a number of references here to the people of the book and this is primarily in reference to Christians.
01:07:04
Normally they are distinguished from the Jews because the specifically mentioned as well. For example, verse 65 of Surah 5 says,
01:07:17
If the people of the book had believed and feared, we would surely have absolved them of their sins and admitted them to gardens of delight.
01:07:25
And if they had followed the teachings of the Torah and the Gospel and what has been sent down to them by their Lord, they would surely have enjoyed blessings from the heavens above and from and the earth below their feet.
01:07:35
Some among them are moderate but evil is what most of them do. And notice what it says, If they had followed the teachings of the
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Torah and the Gospel. Well, there are Muslim scholars who recognize that the
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Quran does not specifically teach that the text of either the
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Torah or the Gospel has been altered. There is a passage that talks about how in the reading the interpretations are wrong, but the assertion that the
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Bible itself has been changed can be argued against from a
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Quranic standpoint. And yet the vast majority of Muslim apologetics just takes that as an assumption against both fact as well as Islamic scholars who would disagree with that.
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If they had followed the teachings, this is verse 66 actually, of the Torah and the Gospel and what has been sent down to them by their
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Lord, they would surely have enjoyed blessings from the heavens above. Nothing there about well, if they follow the
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Gospel, they'll be misled because it's been changed. At this point in time, the writing of the Quran, it would have to have been changed.
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It would have to have been changed because we have manuscripts that read in the way they allege that it's been changed that long predate this.
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So why isn't there a discussion of those alleged changes? Well, it's not there. I continue on.
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Say to them, this is verse 68, say to them, O people of the book, you have no ground for argument until you follow the
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Torah and the Gospel and what has been revealed to you by your Lord. Well, what was that at this time? At the writing of this surah by Muhammad allegedly taking dictation from Gabriel, at this point in time, what was written is what we have in our
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New Testaments, not what Muslim apologists are attempting to tell us we should find at John 14 26 or anywhere through John 14 15 and 16 in regards to the paraclete.
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What they had at that time is what we have now. So if it says believe the Torah and the Gospel, well, we do.
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And yet we're now being told by others that's not what we should do. But what has been revealed to you by your Lord will surely increase rebellion and belief in many, so do not grieve for those who do not believe.
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All those who believe and the Jews and the Sabians and the Christians, in fact, anyone who believes in God in the last day and performs good deeds will have nothing to fear or regret.
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Hmm, not sure what that means because then in verse 72, they are surely infidels who say
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God is the Christ Son of Mary. So think about for a moment. If you believe in God in the last day and perform good deeds and you're a
01:10:20
Christian, then you have nothing to fear or regret unless you believe what all Christians are supposed to believe in the deity of Christ.
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They are surely infidels who say, verse 72, Surah 5, verse 72, God is the Christ Son of Mary.
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But the Christ had only said, O children of Israel, worship God who is my Lord and your Lord. That's not, Jesus never said that.
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And it's not all Jesus said concerning who is to be worshiped. Jesus accepted worship himself.
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Well, those are just all interpolations. No, again, that doesn't make any sense even in the context of the Quran. Whoever, and here is, here is a very important phrase.
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You might want to write this down if you're studying this particular passage or Islam as a whole.
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Whoever associates a compere with God will have paradise denied to him by God and his abode shall be hell and the sinners will have none to help them.
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This is called shirk. Shirk, to associate someone with God.
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And this is the understanding that Muslims have of the Trinity. Now, where do they get this understanding of the
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Trinity? Well, it comes directly from the Quran. Listen to verse 73. Disbelievers are they surely who say
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God is the third of the Trinity. Now, Muhammad went to Jerusalem early in his life.
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He encountered Jews and Christians there. But it is quite evident, quite obvious, that his knowledge, both of the
01:12:04
Torah and the Gospels, and his knowledge of Christian theology, was woefully lacking.
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And here in a book that is allegedly dictated by God, God himself does not understand the doctrine of the
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Trinity. Well, obviously that's not the case. Muhammad did not understand the doctrine of the
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Trinity. And he says God is the third of the Trinity. Well, that's not the doctrine of the
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Trinity. There is no way to substantiate that God is a third of the
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Trinity. This denies the fundamental assertion of the doctrine of the
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Trinity, and that is that there is only one being that is God. The doctrine of the
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Trinity is monotheistic. And again, this came out very clearly in the debate with Hamza Abdul -Malik.
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He kept assuming Unitarianism and kept assuming that Trinitarianism had to result in tritheism.
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And his best evidence for that was to quote from a Jewish source, which likewise rejected the
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Trinity on the basis of the Shema. But verse 73 of Surah 5 says, disbelievers, not believers, not those who are talked about earlier, who believes in God in the last day.
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So when it says Christians who believe in God, those can't be Trinitarian Christians. Disbelievers are they surely who say
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God is the third of the Trinity. And then it goes on to say, but there is no
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God other than God the one. Notice how even the Quran itself, even the
01:13:35
Quran itself, makes the same mistake, which you can certainly understand why then the followers of the
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Quran do, in contrasting the concept of monotheism to the doctrine of the
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Trinity. What would properly be contrasted to monotheism would be tritheism, but that's not what the doctrine of the
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Trinity is. And so there was ignorance on Muhammad's part, and as a result, there is ignorance upon the part of those who follow what
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Muhammad said. It goes on to say, and if they do not desist from saying what they say, and what's that?
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Well, they're the Quran's understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity. I suppose we could, we could probably dismiss ourselves and rest this verse, because that's not what we believe.
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You can be a Trinitarian and you're not condemned by the Quran, because the Quran's wrong in its view of the Trinity. I don't think that would be fair either, because it's obvious this is what
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Muhammad is attempting to address, this is what he's trying to talk about, but he's just wrong in what he says.
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And if they do not desist from saying what they say, then indeed those among them who persist in disbelief, belief in the
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Trinity is disbelief according to them, will suffer painful punishment. Why do they not turn to God and ask his forgiveness?
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God is forgiving and kind. The Christ, son of Mary, was but an apostle, and many apostles had come and gone before him, and his mother was a woman of truth.
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They both ate the same food as men. Behold how we show men clear signs, and behold how they wander astray.
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Tell them, leaving God aside, will you worship something that has no power over your loss or gain? But God is all -hearing and all -knowing.
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Tell them, O people of the book, do not overstep the bounds of truth in your beliefs, and follow not the wishes of a people who had erred before, and led many others astray, and wandered away from the right path."
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And so clearly Muhammad had encountered those who had evidently attempted to present to him the doctrine of the
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Trinity. He had heard some discussion of it, he had heard it, you know, exactly in what context, I don't know,
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I'm not sure that we do know, but he had heard something along these lines, and he identifies as disbelief, disbelief, the confession of the doctrine of the
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Trinity, even though he errs in his representation of it. And so that sort of lays a little bit of a foundation for your thinking about the common discussion around water coolers today, and that is, is
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Allah the same God that Jews and Christians worship? The Qur 'an says he is.
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The Qur 'an says that he is the same God that revealed himself in the
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Torah, the same God that revealed himself in the Injil, in the Gospel. And before we just very quickly say, no, he's not, it would be good to at least think about what's being said.
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If we just say an unequivocal no, then what we're saying is, well, even though Allah is eternal, created all things in six days, created
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Adam and Eve, and a Garden of Eden, and etc., etc., then we're still saying no, but we need to explain why.
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Why, in light of those similarities, and why in the light of the fact that these are the great three monotheistic religions in the world, why are we saying that Allah is not the
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God we worship, that we do not worship Allah? We cannot assume that people are going to understand why we say that without our explaining it, because especially in our society, and sadly, especially in evangelicalism today, the idea that worship is in accordance to truth, and that it must be in accordance with truth, or it's not actually worship, is not going to be understood either in our society or in much of the church.
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So, when we say, no, I do not worship Allah, and I will not bow in prayer to Allah, we have to be able to give a clear -headed, non - emotionally -derived response to the immediate question, why not?
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Are you just simply a mean, nasty, horrible person? Or is there actually something in your beliefs that substantiates what you're saying?
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And of course, there is something in our beliefs that substantiates what we're saying, and that is that God has revealed
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Himself in Jesus Christ, and that to say that Jesus Christ was not who
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Christians believe Him to be, and not what the New Testament says He is, is to make God a liar. That was the exact argument that Paul made, that if we say that God raised
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Jesus from the dead and He didn't, we're making God a liar. And so, we believe that we must worship
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God in spirit and in truth, and that to accept the Islamic faith as likewise worshiping our
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God, is to say that Jesus Christ was not who He claimed to be. It is to deny the
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Christian faith, it is to deny the particularity of the Christian faith, it is to force us to recant our beliefs so as to be politically correct and tolerant to a new, religiously protected minority within our own society.
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And that's what we're being asked to do. We are being asked to do that, maybe not openly, but remember, most the time when we're asked to compromise our faith and deny
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Christ, it's not to do it openly at first. It's to do it by what we'll accept.
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And so, let's just all bow our heads and let's just all pray together. And we're praying to the same
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God. No, that's when we have to put our foot down, if we love truth, and be prepared to give a meaningful answer as to why we will not engage in that kind of common prayer.
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Prayer is worship. To pray with a Muslim when he's praying to Allah, while we are praying to the
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Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is simply not possible for the
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Christian. Now, I know, I know, I saw him doing it too. You've already heard what
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I have to say about that. We're talking here about theological truth. We're talking here about what the scriptures actually teach.
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People say, well, we want to look at the similarities between Jehovah, between Yahweh and Allah.
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Well, that is, you know, I don't remember anywhere in the Old Testament where someone said, we need to look at the similarities between Baal and Yahweh.
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No, it was the differences that were the issue. And the issue is,
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God has revealed himself in Jesus Christ, and to pray to Allah is to worship
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Allah, which is to say that that revelation in Jesus Christ was not true.
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And so, you would think that in the tolerant society in which we live, that no one would force us to do something like that, right?
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Well, of course, our quote -unquote tolerant society is highly intolerant of the very truths that I was just mentioning to you in regards to the particularity of the revelation in Christ.
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We're supposed to be pluralistic. We're supposed to say, well, our religion is good for us, but your religion is good for you.
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And no, Jesus never said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the
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Father but by me. He didn't say that, or if he did, he didn't mean it. We are being asked by our society to make that kind of compromise, a denial of the particularity of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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And we cannot do it. But we need to take the request to do it as an opportunity on our part to be able to explain to others why it is we believe
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Jesus Christ is the only way, and why we must worship him in spirit and in truth. Well, I hope this discussion has been useful to you.
01:22:15
Who knows what's gonna happen next? Well, I know what's gonna happen next week. I don't know what's gonna happen next week because we're not gonna be here.
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Well, something's gonna be going on. I don't know what it's gonna be, but we're gonna be up at the General Conference of the LDS Church next week, so maybe after that there will be an opportunity of having some...
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no show at all next week, okay? Maybe having some dialogue with some folks on these issues.