Abdullah Kunde

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Started off discussing the continued moral schizophrenia of Western Culture and the continuing progression of NewSpeak, the evisceration of the language (diversity and inclusive becoming their own antonyms), and then got a few more minutes of Harry Knox’s comments covered as well. Then we shifted gears after a break and I responded to Abdullah Kunde’s article here.

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Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is the Dividing Line.
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The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.
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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602, or toll free across the
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United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
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James White. And good morning, good afternoon, whatever time it is where you are, welcome to the Dividing Line.
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Today, I shouldn't do this right before doing the program, but I followed a link, actually it was a tweet, and I just got to admit, you know,
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I've debated Douglas Wilson and, you know, there are places we do not see eye to eye, but the man is a wordsmith.
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He really, really is, and I, you know, we played some sections from his recent foray into the
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American educational system which demonstrated, of course, the utter bankruptcy of the thought processes of those involved in the
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American educational system, but certainly made me rather worried about the future in this country, to be certain.
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But evidently, that has started quite a backlash, and I was just reading the post he just put up, and just the first two paragraphs says, having participated in two uproars back to back, and in anticipation of a hat trick,
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I wanted to set out a few things that describe what is actually going on and what I believe to be at stake. I've already outlined the basic two -step that usually runs, pick an offense, demand an apology.
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If you get an apology, pick a new offense, demand an apology. If you don't get an apology, make that the new offense, and demand an apology.
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You can work your way completely around the ballroom this way, but only if the designated target accepts your invitation to dance, which some of them still do, mysteriously.
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I mean, that's just, that's exactly right. That's how it works. That's, you know, the most public discourse is so vacuous, so empty, that if you actually, if we could develop a drug that we could spray into the atmosphere that required you, it made you only speak when you had something meaningful to say, the world would be such a quiet place.
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I mean, can you imagine, CNN would go off the air, MSNBC would implode,
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ABC, yes, just amazing stuff. But I just happened to see that right before, and I just had to comment that I got to admit,
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Douglas Wilson is really, really good. What we're going to do on the program today is, I'm going to start off responding to Abdullah Kunde, who has written a response to some of my comments, but actually not quite.
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What he's doing is responding to the chapter in my book on the Trinity, on Jesus as God, which
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I guess contains the section on egoimi as well. And he's posted that at thedebateinitiative .com,
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which is the MDI website, the MDI website formally, including the individual by the name of Paul Blau -Williams, who is no longer with,
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MDI. And I published an article sometime, it would have appeared yesterday morning, I guess, or Sunday evening, in regards to Paul Williams doing a
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Carl Keating. Well, people shouldn't debate that man, they just give him credibility he doesn't deserve.
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And it's, you know, everybody who has actually engaged me knows that that's just absurd, but that's what people do when they don't want to have their statements challenged.
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Abdullah, on the other hand, is trying to interact with some of the things I'm saying. So I'm going to respond to that for the first part of the program.
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Going to try to go for a jumbo today, we'll see how that works.
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Lots and lots of things going on that need to get to. So I mean, I would love to do a mega today or something like that, but there's just things got to be done, only so many hours in a day.
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And so we press on. And then, as I promised in the second half of the program, and y 'all can remind me when
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I've gone 45 minutes, in the second half of the program, get back to Harry Knox, because certainly
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I finished my second run through Michael Brown's book, A Queer Thing Happened to America.
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And may I say once again to everyone in the audience, and that means you, if you have not read this book, you need to read this book.
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You will have so much more of a basis upon which to interact with what's going on in our culture if you will but take the time to read.
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It's on Kindle so you can listen to like I did. Michael Brown's wonderful book,
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A Queer Thing Happened to America. And however you need to get hold of it, whatever mechanism, you need to read it because you will be so equipped to point out the massive double standards.
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I mean, what happened to Penn State? I just sit back and I laugh.
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And a lot of my Christians are like, oh, this is wonderful. Well, first of all, the whole thing about changing history, they didn't actually win that game.
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I find just completely mind -boggling. I do not like the idea of changing history at all.
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History is history, okay? Go read 1984 again.
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Go read Animal Farm. Don't change history, okay? History is an important part of the present and the future.
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Don't change it. Don't pretend that you can. That bugs me. But the whole reason that I just sit back is
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I look at this culture and I see it going nuts and I go, do these people not realize they do not have a single shred of ethical or moral foundation to stand upon to be making these pronouncements?
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This is the administration, the current administration that invites people who are well -known pedophiles into the
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White House. Yeah, I know they're homosexuals at the same time, but they're well -known to be pedophiles as well.
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People who've been a part of NAMBLA, and they're in the White House, and yet you're going nuts about this.
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Now, I agree. It's absolutely evil. But I have a basis for saying what
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Jerry Sandusky did was evil. My basis is being mocked by the society.
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So what basis do they have to be mocking this man and to be, oh, it's just terrible.
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It's just disgusting. Why? That particular movement is at the same level right now that the homosexuals were at back in the 1970s.
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Your children will be looking back at you going, why were you people so upset about Penn State and Jerry Sandusky? Because they won't understand if we keep going down this road.
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They won't understand. They will be so morally bankrupt that they will have no earthly idea.
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You people sure were puritanical back then if you thought there was something wrong about intergenerational love.
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That's what's coming. That's what's coming. There's no way to hit the brakes without completely changing the moral fabric of this society.
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Anyway, that's why you got to read. I got to go back because Michael Brown started off with President Obama's words and the people he was addressing.
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And then he provides a documentation that these people have been part of NAMBLA in the past or they've been involved with this, that, or the other thing.
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And nobody cares because as long as they're promoting homosexuality, we don't have to worry about the rest of that stuff.
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Not to worry about that. Just, you know, you need to read the book, especially even the last chapters were really good because they were talking about people who, for example,
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I may have to reverse the order of doing things here because I'm spending so much time here. But people, for example, there are people who do not feel that they should have legs.
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Do you know that? There are people who are tortured by the existence of their legs, their view of their body, their legs are an extension of their body that they should not have.
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They cannot be happy as long as they have their legs. Jerry Springer had a man on the program a number of years ago.
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This is in the book. I was listening to it this morning. Had a man on the program. He's sitting there in a wheelchair in a dress and a wig.
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And his dress shows two stumps of legs. He removed his legs from the knees down with a saw by himself.
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And now he wears women's clothing. And when
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Jerry Springer and the audience are interacting with him at first, they don't have any problem with his being a drag queen, a transvestite.
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No problem with that at all. But they think cutting your legs off is stupid. They're willing to mock him for that.
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And then they brought his family on. And you know what they're angry with him about?
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He was married. He had kids. And while they thought the cutting of legs off was stupid, what they were angry about was driving his wife away, alienating his kids, and acting like a woman.
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Isn't that interesting? The society in the audience. Hey, we're open.
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You know, we don't have a problem with that. But cut your legs off. That's silly. Yeah. And then the grandmother in England who has a baby with her grandson by artificial insemination of another woman.
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Yeah, incest, intergenerational incest. We don't care. We're in love.
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We're made this way. Who are you people to say that's wrong? And my question to the
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American population is, who are you to say that's wrong? You've abandoned the foundation upon which to say that's wrong.
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If you say that's wrong, you're a hypocrite. If you promote homosexuality and homosexual marriage and all this, you are a hypocrite, a glowing hypocrite.
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If you say, oh, I'm for marriage freedom. No, you're not. No, you're not. What's wrong?
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Why shouldn't they get to marry? You're not for marriage freedom. You're a hypocrite.
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You see, you've abandoned the foundation. Quit stealing my foundation. If you are going to say to me as a
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Christian that I'm going to mock you, I am going to say you're a bigot. I'm going to say you're a homophobe.
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I'm going to say that you are not what is best for our society. I'm going to start saying that your perspective— well, not start saying,
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I'm going to continue saying that your perspective cannot be a part of what is being taught in our schools.
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You have no place in our universities. We're going to fire you if you even tell people that you believe things that we don't believe.
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OK, you don't want my morality? Then you can't have it. Quit borrowing my worldview to prop yours up.
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Stop it. Be consistent. You want marriage freedom? Then everybody gets to marry.
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How about the woman that I read about yesterday who is in love, is sexually aroused, and can only find sexual fulfillment by the
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Statue of Liberty? Yeah, she lives in England. She's taken five trips to New York to visit the
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Statue of Liberty. Because Libby, well, she has a six foot tall replica of Libby in her bedroom.
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Her house is filled with small replicas of Libby. But it's only the real one there in New York that she actually can receive satisfaction from by touching and caressing it.
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What's wrong with that? That's the way she's made, isn't it? I mean, if sexuality is, if it has nothing, if we are just animals, and it's all just genetic, you're just made that way, then you do not have any basis for being against polyamory.
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And that's coming, man. Let me tell you something. If things do not change, if things do not change within one decade, there will not be anything even closely related to the institution of marriage left in this society.
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Because polyamory is coming down the line like you would not believe. Who says it's one man and one woman?
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Or who says it's one woman, one woman, and one man and one man? Why, what's relevant to that?
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I mean, in California, they're already getting rid of the idea that you can only have two parents. So let's have two women and two men.
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Three women, two men. Why not? Who cares? We're just animals.
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Have fun. Enjoy life. When you die, it's all over with. What's this
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Puritan morality anyways? You've got no basis.
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The grandmother and her grandson. Who are you to judge?
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Judge not, lest ye be judged. Right? So anyway, I guess what
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I'll need to do is I'll just need to switch the topics. And we'll go on with Harry Knox right now because that's where I got going.
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And then we'll go back to Abdullah. Sorry, Abdullah, if you happen to be listening. We'll do that the second half of the program.
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Because that's where we are. I mean, I am just so sick and tired. Does Chick -fil -A deliver?
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We need to find out if Chick -fil -A delivers. Unfortunately, you said they used to be at Metro Center, didn't they?
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Yeah, they're not there anymore, unfortunately. I wish they were. Huh? Yeah, up Arrowhead.
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Yeah, I'm going to have to. Arrowhead's a long ways from me, though. Yeah, he's got a car.
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Yeah, I think driving 30 miles for lunch is a little bit out of the way.
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I would love to go to Chick -fil -A because of what's going on there and the fact that you've got
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Christians who actually say, yeah, we actually promote—I am so sick and tired of traditional marriage.
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How about just saying the only definition of marriage that makes one stinking bit of sense?
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How's that? How about the only meaningful use of the term marriage? How's that? See, this is why people, they look at me and they go, oh, he's such a hothead.
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We can't have him speak because he's scary. He's such a hothead. Let me tell you something. There are a bunch of people—I could name names—of conservative leaders that would like to say what
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I say, but they can't. They've just got too much in the balance.
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Not in the sense they're compromising, but in the sense that they're trying to hold way too much stuff together and they would like to say what
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I say. They just don't have the freedom to say what I say. And as long as I have the freedom,
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I guess I need to say it. I don't know how long I'm going to have the freedom. Was there something you wished to put in order? You've got the studio audience over on the internet hunting for the closest
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Chick -fil -A. It's Arrowhead. Deer Valley. What's—I -17 and what?
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Yeah, I guess that's a little bit closer. There's a straight line. Yeah, it's a little bit closer.
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But are you guys really seriously talking about getting some Chick -fil -A for lunch? Hey, I'm up for it. I'm definitely up for it.
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I would go for it in a second. And if you go, tell them when you're standing there,
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I'm here getting this big order because your president said we believe in marriage.
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Is that trip too far? I mean, come on. If you're going to support him? No, no, no. Travel it. Do it.
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I guess not. A Turreton fan is saying we're on a tangent now, but he's a bot, so he doesn't eat food, so he doesn't understand the relevance.
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They want to know what you want. Well, I don't know. Chicken strips and waffle fries,
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I guess. Isn't that what they have? We'll do it. Anyway, everybody knows we're having for lunch today.
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All right. You cannot listen to this stuff.
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You cannot. I feel sorry for Squirrel, though. Poor Squirrel. He loves Chick -fil -A, and the closest Chick -fil -A to him is like 585 miles.
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He knows exactly how far it is. He's Googling. Because he loves Chick -fil -A, but he lives on the moon.
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So, I feel sorry for poor Squirrel. You cannot even begin to listen to what's going on in our culture today.
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If you love consistency, if you love truth, if you're a person who attempts to use language to accurately express truthfulness, our societal discussion right now is painful to listen to.
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It is painful to listen to. Obviously, again, thinking about Michael's book, he documents so many people.
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A woman named Crystal, what was her last name? Crystal something. Someone in the channel might remember if you've read the book.
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She was fired from the University of Toledo for having said in a newspaper opinion piece, basically, that homosexuals should not be trying to hijack the civil rights issue, because it's not an issue of civil rights.
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She was fired. Fired. And listening to the homosexuals and the homosexual advocates who were defending her firing.
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Amazing. 550 .4 miles. Thank you, Squirrel. Just corrected me.
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I was close. You've got to admit. You've got to admit. I mean, just off the top of my head, what was
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I within? 7 miles? 7 .6 miles? What did I say? 558 or something? That was pretty good, just off the top of my head, personally,
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I think. Um, but I will think of you while we have lunch today. I will.
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I will think of you. Um, anyhow, what was I saying? Oh, yes. Listening to homosexuals.
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You just wonder, folks, do you? Do you listen to yourselves? You cannot possibly live consistently with the way you're speaking, because you don't use words to mean what the words have always meant.
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Now, I'm not telling you anything you don't know here. But whatever happened to the actual meaning of the words diversity and inclusiveness?
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Is this not Newspeak? Now, what's Newspeak? Now, again, and I'm talking to a few people
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I can see through the window right now. If you haven't read 1984, you need to read 1984.
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And don't just go, well, I did in high school. Because the people in the window are old enough that high school was a long time ago.
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It was a very long time ago. For one of them in the window, up where he lived, it only went through eighth grade.
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So, I mean, you know, after that, you had to go work on the farm. You know, they didn't have enough horses to get you to the one school, one room schoolhouse type thing.
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But anyway, you need to read 1984. Because it's a work of fiction, right?
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No, it's a work of prophecy. I mean, it really is. You can see in 1984,
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English socialism has taken over. And it's there in London. And one of the really, really scary things is that the ruling government, the party,
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Big Brother, that's where the phrase came from, Big Brother. And that's what I liked about Michael's book.
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As he said, one of his chapters is Big Brother is watching you and he's definitely gay. Uh, Big Brother, one of the ways that they control the party and the society is through the language.
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They are, in fact, one of the people working on this talks about the beauty of the destruction of words.
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And by controlling the language, you control the way people express themselves and hence how they think.
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And I am very concerned because as I look at the next generation, yeah, there are still a few.
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There are still a few who love literature and love the breadth of language.
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But would you not all agree with me that technology in general has greatly diminished the vocabulary of the average
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Westerner? I mean, we know how to use
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LOL and ROFL and stuff like that, which generations before us didn't use.
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But if you read what generations before us actually read, how many times do you have to go to dictionary .com
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to figure out what they were saying? Very few of us try to expand our vocabularies.
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Now, I've got some freaks in my chat channel. I mean, absolutely. We have one bot, Turretinfan, who is hosted on some server someplace.
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It's in Russia. Yeah, it's a Russian server. And then we've got
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Mutato, the alter ego of Milo Hotzenbuehler. And then we've got a book, which books are obviously big into vocabulary.
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And they sit around, they play games that do require you to have a wider vocabulary. But like I said, they're freaks.
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They're not the norm anymore. We go back and read stuff that people were writing over 100, 150 years ago.
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And we're always like, oh, wow, their syntax is more complex. And they use a lot of vocabulary that just wouldn't naturally flow from us anymore.
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In Newspeak, you want an economy of words. You don't want to have a rich vocabulary to express, well, viewpoints that would be somewhat contrary to the governmental view of things.
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So the government gets to control your thought by your speech, you see.
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And that's what's going on. Words no longer have meanings.
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I'm sorry, but almost no one who goes into diversity training in a corporation in the
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United States today, or in Europe, or the United Kingdom, or Australia, will actually be introduced to diversity.
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They're going to be introduced to the exact opposite of diversity. They're going to be introduced to a singular view, a mono -vision that does not allow for any type of expression opposite to the orthodoxy of the society.
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Just how many people who have gone through these things right now, those of you listening right now, you have gone through diversity training in your corporation.
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My dear wife had to go through diversity training recently. How many of you were given the freedom to express
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Christian perspectives on morality and ethics? Or was it not very clear that it was your very perspectives that could not be expressed in the workplace because of fear of offense?
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Now, whether you were offended or not, irrelevant. Irrelevant. Which means that doesn't mean diversity.
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That's not diversity. That's one perspective parading under a word that once had one meaning, and now it has the opposite meaning.
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In 1984, how did that work? Well, the media was completely controlled by the government.
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You had the telescreen, and so you would hear this language being used, and that was the clues you had as to how you were to speak.
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And if you would express yourself differently, then that would put you in danger of being denounced for thought crime. And that's where we're going.
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That is where we're going. Right now, if you don't recognize that hate crimes laws mean we now have thought police, go to the
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UK. Ask the shop owner that they're to have Bible verses displaying on a television screen, and who gets interviewed by the cops, or the street preachers who get interviewed.
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But they want to know what your intentions were, what's in your heart, what's in your mind.
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The thought police are already there, and they control the universities, and they control the media.
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There's just no question about it. The language is already in place, and now words that once had one meaning don't mean that anymore.
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Diversity does not mean diversity. Diversity means believing what a particular political perspective says specifically about ethics and morals, marriage and homosexuality, and abortion.
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It's amazing how they somehow link the murder of unborn children into the midst of all that, isn't it? How about inclusiveness?
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It now means the exact opposite. It means the exact opposite.
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To be inclusive means you exclude what the society once believed. Christian values are excluded because it's necessary to exclude them to be inclusive.
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And there are people with piles of letters after their names who will speak like this, and think like this, and it never crosses their mind that they are absolutely destroying the language.
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And you wonder why the government wants your children so they can absolutely cram this into their minds?
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Yeah. There you go. My son just reaffirmed what you all discovered, that there is a
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Chick -fil -A on I -17, the 101. So that's a reaffirmation that it's still there, and it's still open.
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All right, if I don't get to this, we're not going to get very far at all. We're probably not going to get very far at all, because, look,
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I'm sorry, I re -listened to all of Michael's book, and it's just, some of it, it almost felt like I had not even heard it before.
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And the amazing thing is, it's only a year old, and he could expand it by two chapters.
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He could expand it by two chapters right now. I mean, Obama coming out, not coming out in that sense, but coming out in support of the profanation of marriage.
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I'm going to encourage him to make it a living book, in the sense of, keep it electronically available, and keep expanding it.
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Keep adding to it. It needs to be there. It really does.
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And so, if you haven't read it, if you haven't read A Queer Thing Happened in America in 1984, then go get them.
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I wouldn't mind if you also read The Same -Sex Controversy. It's going to give you a lot of good biblical information. But get them.
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Read them. Recognize what's going on. And you will be, yeah, amazon .aomin
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.org. I don't think we have 1984 there, but we could get it.
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We should get it. We should put 1984 in there as quickly as possible. Anyways, let's get back. This is a debate that took place in 2008.
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We started listening to it last month. I got sidetracked. I apologize. Harry Knox was at the time with the human rights campaign, which has nothing whatsoever to do with human rights.
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It is a pro -homosexual organization that seeks to suppress the rights of Christians, actually.
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He claims to be a Christian, of course. But we're listening to his,
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I believe it's his opening presentation here. It's sort of that rhythmic type thing. And then we're going to listen to the response and so on and so forth.
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Let's get back into it. For my partner, and the generative creativity of our shared life, or the ecstatic community we feel on the rare and sacred occasions when our bodies speak of love and trust and sacrifice and mutual care in language unutterable.
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But I do understand how unspeakably bad it is to value anything of this world more than we value the
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God who created it. The message of Leviticus 18 and 19 is that we must be willing to stand out in order to call the world away from idolatry.
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So that's the message of Leviticus 18 and 19. I would agree that the message is against idolatry.
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The problem is you have a man here who is so wedded to his idolatry that he is willing to twist the creator -creation distinction, twist the created order, and call it good.
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That is called the twistedness good. Here's one who stands outside of God and demands,
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God, you must be like this for me to worship you. We should worship the one true
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God. But I get to determine the nature of that worship and the nature of the created order in light of my own disordered sexuality.
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That's what you're listening to. Here's what makes my hands and my heart quake.
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You and I have been called to ministry, whether lay or ordained, at a time of great ferment in the church we love.
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Most of the denominations that purport to represent Christ are in great thrall of a great idol called the unity of the church.
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They are heaping before its unblinking visage the bodies and souls of your lesbian and gay sisters and brothers in an attempt to satisfy what cannot be sated.
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Now, that is an amazing perspective. We've already seen some pretty amazing statements from Harry Knox, and to be in his position really does require you to so turn the
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Bible and the Christian faith upside down and reality inside out that we shouldn't be overly surprised.
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But here, most of us didn't realize, and had never thought of because it's ridiculous, but most of you had never thought of the fact that the reason that the
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Christian church has, until recent decades, well, the real
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Christian church continues. There's a lot out there that calls itself Christian that isn't anything even closely related to Christian, but has said what
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Jesus said in Matthew chapter 19, that marriage is one man and one woman and that this is the God -ordained relationship between the sexes and all the rest of that stuff, was because of the unblinking visage of the idol of church unity.
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Yeah, that's why my church does what it does because we've got a big old unblinking idol down front called church unity.
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We just want to get along with everybody, and so because of that, then that's why we say what we say.
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No, that really doesn't have anything to do with it at all. And in fact, the most ecumenically -minded people who call themselves
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Christians all tend to be supporters of homosexuality, and the denominations that have collapsed on this issue all tend to be the most ecumenical of all the denominations in toto.
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So yes, my church does have a Bible down front. That is what it is. It's a
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Bible. There's another big King James Bible on the pulpit. Big thing. I'm always afraid when
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Fry moves that thing over there that he's going to knock his water down. I know it's happened at least once.
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It's going to happen eventually. It's going to happen. Anyway, we do not have a big unblinking visit.
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In other words, this is the exact opposite of the reality. And it tells you something that so often those who promote homosexuality see the
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Bible in the exact opposite of its actual meaning. That might say something.
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The idol always wants more and never really gives anything in return.
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While over and around us weeps the God who requires only justice and mercy as acceptable sacrifices.
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I turned to Paul's letter to the Roman Christians. Ancient Rome was full of temples to fertility gods and goddesses.
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Now, what are we, if you have not, if you don't remember what we were listening to before?
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This is a smooth and for the vast majority of Americans very convincing romp through the
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Bible. In essence, insisting that the
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Bible says nothing to a loving monogamous homosexual couple.
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The fact that monogamous homosexuals are almost unknown. Almost unknown in the experience of the homosexual community.
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We're not getting to that. But I say for the vast majority of people, because vast majority people have never read
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Leviticus, they've never read Romans. And so when you hear someone speaking with confidence and with a nice cadence and you hear them talking about justice and love and things like that.
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It's so easy if people do not value truth. It's so easy if people are willing to go with their emotions rather than to go with the truth and hence analyze arguments and be critical.
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We don't want to be critical. We want to be accepting. We want to be inclusive because everyone wants to be inclusive, right?
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Very convincing, but actually it's extremely surface level, very simplistic and easily refuted if you dare actually show enough concern about the truth to do so.
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In those temples, priests copulated with adolescents. You know, they were homeless kids with nowhere else to go.
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Did that happen in Rome? I'm sure it did. Is that all that happened in Rome? No. Is that what has to do with Romans chapter one?
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No. Romans chapter one actually addresses men with men, not men with boys, lusting after one another.
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So it's real easy, again, you talk about homeless children, you know, get the emotions going.
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Oh, this is about homeless children. Oh, okay. Uh, that's not what
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Romans one's about, but that's what the connection is going to be in hopes of ensuring good harvests and growth in populations threatened by disease and war.
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The lives, the feelings and well -being of individual children were sacrificed for what was perceived to be the common good.
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And in the process, it became a commonplace of the priestly life to take part in orgies that, if they were not good for the children, were pleasurable for the adults.
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To leave that part of the story out of your study of Romans one is intellectually lazy for you and spiritually life -threatening to your lesbian and gay neighbors.
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Now, so you have him making an assertion. Has he proven anything?
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Has he gone to the text? Has he followed the argument of Romans? No, you're creating a limited, very limited, unbalanced, skewed perspective.
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And you're setting that up as the context, but you're not going to actually tell your audience.
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Now, if I really was being honest with you, I would have to substantiate the assertions that I'm making, but that would actually expose me for what
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I'm doing. And so I'm not going to do that. But explanation of Paul's writings in that context, though scary and provocative, offers you the chance to speak words of real hope and reconciliation to a nation obsessed with sex and talking about sex in every venue except church.
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Now, here's a guy who runs an organization and their entire focus is forcing corporate
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America to be obsessed with the sexual views of 3 % of the population.
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I mean, the irony, the hypocrisy is stunning, absolutely, positively stunning.
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But that's what you're listening to. And please don't forget to go on to study
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Romans 2, where Paul begins to admonish us not to judge our neighbors.
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That's not what Romans 2 is about. We haven't even touched Romans 1, haven't even begun to deal with Romans 1.
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And what Romans 2 is about is about Jews who would take the admonitions of Romans 1 and say, yeah, it's all about them
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Gentiles, but we Jews, because we have the covenant, we don't have to worry about that. And Paul says, oh, yes, you do.
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Because you who have the law, you don't keep the law. None of that in any way, shape, or form changes the fact that Paul's statements are clear.
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They are crystal clear. They are condemnation of both male homosexuality and female lesbianism.
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That is the meaning of the text. You have to ignore something. You have to twist something to get away from the reality of what
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Paul says. In the context in which he said it, how badly
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America needs to hear the message of hope through Christ expressed in 1 Corinthians 6 and 1
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Timothy 1. Now, those are the last two texts. He just went by Romans 9.
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He never even read it. Never even read it. But he's given what he hopes, evidently, is a plausible explanation.
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It's plausible to say, well, you know, this was about pedophilia or this, that, or the other thing.
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I'm going to give you a plausible explanation, but I'm not even going to read the text. Clearly, this is a presentation intended to give an excuse to someone to not believe what the
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Bible says while continuing to say, I believe what the Bible says. That's exactly what this is.
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As Mel White has written, Paul shouts across the distance, you are breaking God's heart by the way you're treating one another.
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In those texts, Greek words that lazy or prejudiced translators have shortened to homosexuals actually mean boy prostitutes.
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Now, listen carefully. Does he give any foundation? Does he give any evidence?
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Does he go back into the Greek Septuagint? Does he deal with Arsinos and Koite as they're found in Leviticus?
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Listen to see if he does. And the older men who patronize them. Now, Congressman Mark Foley needs to hear a sermon preached on this text.
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Unless you think it's only the gay congressman's problem, remember Congressman David Vitter from Louisiana was recently found to be abusing the bodies of women.
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I pray you won't fail to preach those sermons and share those insights in Sunday school and in your home
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Bible study. So unwarranted, easily refutable assertions.
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I'm sorry. Yes, I know, I know. Just laid out there.
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No substantiation provided, but you're to go back to your churches and insert this meaningless, easily refuted, unfounded material into your
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Bible studies and into your sermons. That's what you're supposed to do. Well, I know we didn't spend much time there.
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I apologize for that. We got a late start. But I do want to remember to take a break and then come back, and we're going to be shifting gears big time.
45:52
Responding to Abdullah Kundo, we'll be right back. Breaking news from the
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White House and the issue, gay marriage. For a lot of people, the word marriage was something that evokes very powerful traditions, religious beliefs.
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I think same -sex couples should be able to get married. The NAACP has passed a resolution endorsing gay marriage as a civil right.
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This comes two weeks after the president announced his support for same -sex marriage. Under the guise of tolerance, our culture today grants alternative lifestyle status to homosexuality.
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Anyone opposing or questioning this today is quickly shouted down, called a bigot, a homophobe, a hate monger, threatened and accused of discrimination.
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It's become commonplace to see people who take a biblical stand against homosexuality ostracized to the point of losing their job.
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How soon will it be before we will also see people losing their freedom? Now more than ever, Christians need to be equipped to be an approved workman of God, correctly dividing the word of truth as we are told in 2
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Timothy 2 .15. Dr. James White and Pastor Jeffrey Neal have partnered to bring you their book, The Same -Sex
47:13
Controversy. If you are Christian, this book is just one of the tools you'll need to be prepared to give a proper defense of the faith in the face of the unrighteous onslaught we face today.
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The authors write for all who want to better understand the Bible's teaching on this subject, explaining and defending the foundational biblical passages that deal with homosexuality, including
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Genesis, Leviticus and Romans. In a straightforward and loving manner, they appeal to those caught up in a homosexual lifestyle to repent and return to God's plan for his people.
47:40
The Same -Sex Controversy, defending and clarifying the Bible's message about homosexuality. Get your copy today from the bookstore at aomen .org.
47:48
And don't forget to search for other resources like debates and past dividing lines dealing with this very provocative issue.
47:54
And remember, theology matters. More than any time in the past,
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Roman Catholics and evangelicals are working together. They are standing shoulder to shoulder against social evils.
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They are joining across denominational boundaries in renewal movements. And many evangelicals are finding the history, tradition and grandeur of the
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Roman Catholic Church appealing. This newfound rapport has caused many evangelical leaders and laypeople to question the age -old disagreements that have been going on for centuries.
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Protestants and Catholics. Aren't we all saying the same thing in a different language? James White's book,
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The Roman Catholic Controversy, is an absorbing look at current views of tradition and scripture, the papacy, the mass, purgatorian indulgences and Marian doctrine.
48:46
James White points out the crucial differences that remain regarding the Christian life and the heart of the gospel itself that cannot be ignored.
48:54
Order your copy of The Roman Catholic Controversy by going to our website at aomin .org.
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And under the subtitle says the textual evidence for the incarnation.
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I think this will be useful for a lot of folks because you get to we get to get into the text.
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We get to look at the deity of Christ and we also get to gain in our understanding of what our
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Muslim friends are hearing us say. And I would say Abdullah Kundu would be one of the fairest of the
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Muslims out there. So what if he's not hearing us accurately, then how can we? How can
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I personally and all of us as a group improve in making ourselves understood and expressing our perspectives?
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That's a very useful thing. Under the subtitle, the textual evidence of the incarnation,
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Dr. White opens chapter 6 by referring to two verses in the gospel according to John that Orthodox Christians would typically associate with the inscription of divinity to Jesus, namely
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John 1 1 and John 20 28. Interestingly, John 1 18 is omitted from the list, but this may be unintentional.
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Well, actually, I do deal with that issue in John chapter
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I'm sorry, chapter 6 is called I Am He.
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And I deal in the book with the fact that there's a textual variant at 1 18.
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I deal with the textual variant and seek to substantiate the reading for that. But I wrote at the beginning of chapter 6 is
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John's literary artistry was not limited to the prologue of his gospel, nor is it confined to the direct assertion of the deity of Christ through calling him
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God, John 1 1, John 20 28. He found subtle ways of teaching this truth as well. I was using that as bookends,
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John 1 beginning, John 20 28 at the end. So it's not really a matter of I didn't deal with 1 18.
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I do rather forcefully. Then under the Anarthurist Theos, a clear evidence in chapter 4 of the
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Forgotten Trinity, Dr. White discusses John 1 1 in further detail. Actually, this would be before chapter 6, so I already dealt with it, going into some detail to refute the idea that there is any value in translating
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Theos in the verse as a god. And of course, dealing with that primarily due to the fact that most of us here in the
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United States and in other English speaking countries have to deal with Jehovah's Witnesses and their mistranslation of the
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New Testament called the New World Translation. Then he says, however, even a student of New Testament manuscript traditions would be able to illustrate that there are textual variants, albeit relatively late, that state
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Hotheos instead of simply Theos with regards to the word. Now, this is unusual.
52:46
One of the things I found interesting here is here you have the MDI blog, and as I said, right above this, so it would be right after this was posted, is a video without commentary, if I recall correctly, of Bart Ehrman.
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And Bart Ehrman would tell you that the reading of John 1 1 really isn't questionable from any meaningful manuscript tradition.
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And Bart Ehrman would tell you that the Gospel of John presents the deity of Christ, which is one of the reasons he rejects the
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Gospel of John as being historical. So as I look at, for example, the
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Nestle -Aland Greek text, there are no textual footnotes provided for John 1 1.
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As I look at Metzger's textual commentary, there is no commentary on 1 1. But I do have the
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CNTTS textual apparatus, and it lists a single manuscript that reads as Abdullah is making reference to, a single manuscript of John 1 1 that reads in that way.
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And actually, it reads, it has the Nomina Sacra, Theta Sigma, Ha Theta Sigma, with the line over the top.
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And this is L019, also known as Codex Regius, which is a re -inked
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Gospel manuscript with a double mark and ending located in the French National Library, classified as an
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Aland Category 2 text. So we have a single re -inked 8th century manuscript that has an article before Thaos.
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The reason that Metzger and Comfort and the NA27 committee and UBS committee and so on and so forth make no reference to this is because this is not a reading that has any reason to be taken as having weight in determining the original text of the
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New Testament. It is far too late. The testimony to the
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Greek reading of John 1 1 is so great, not only there, but in its translations.
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And even those who would point to translations and try to say, well, you know, if we look at it in this translation, it could be taken this way or it could be taken that way.
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The reality is that all the early translations testify to the same underlying Greek text.
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And I really don't know of almost anybody who doesn't have an axe to grind that would disagree with that statement.
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So when Abdullah goes on from here, I really think that he's missing the point when he says, instead of the rendering found in most manuscripts, which is
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Kai theos ein halagas, we find in some manuscripts Kai theos ein halagas.
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Well, again, one manuscript that I'm aware of. And if Abdullah is aware of others, I would be interested in knowing what their designation is and where that source of information is.
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He says, while I'm happy to accept the rationale presented by Dr. White for not automatically translating the Anarthurist that is without the definite article theos as a god,
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I don't think this is a significant concession to the Christian argument by any means. I expect the first question any thinking
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Muslim would ask is, why do these textual variants exist if the meaning of John 1 is so obvious?
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Now, this to me opens up a very fruitful area of discussion. Why are there textual variants in the
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Quran? Is it because do all textual variants arise because of a confusion of the meaning of the text?
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Now, some textual variants do, but the vast majority of textual variants found in either the
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Quran or the New Testament are copyist errors. They have nothing to do with the meaning of the text itself or the fact that the scribe could or could not read it.
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There's far more textual variants in the New Testament that relate to errors of hearing, hence they arise from a scriptorium, or errors of sight, especially homo teleuton, things like that, than have anything to do with the actual reading of the text and the understanding of the scribe of the text.
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And I think Bart Ehrman would agree with that, even though he's made his fame in focusing upon theologically relevant textual variants and claiming to have the ability to see into the minds of ancient scribes and what they were thinking, which
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I think is a very dangerous thing to do. But the reality is that the vast majority of textual variants have to do with the fact that, look, and this would, you know what, it's interesting in our day, this would even be worse today than it would have been 50 years ago.
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What do I mean by that? If I took a written document today and passed it out to the first row in a church and had them copy it, let's say it's just one page, but copy it by hand and pass their copy back to the next group, and then they pass their copy back to the next, and so on, all the way back to the back,
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I think we'd have more textual variants today than we would have had 50 years ago.
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Why? How many of us write almost anything anymore? How many of us write almost anything anymore?
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I remember back in the 1960s, yeah, I can actually remember part of the 1960s,
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I remember in school having to write a lot and the emphasis being upon penmanship and accuracy and all that kind of stuff.
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And I was very proud that as a printer, which is why I remain a printer and not a longhand person to this day,
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I was the best in my class in printing. I could not get longhand worth nothing.
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But we did stuff back then. How many young people today do that? Now we've got iPads and we've got computers, and most of us don't spend almost any time.
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I mean, most of us would start cramping up halfway through a page because honestly, that's what would happen to me.
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My fingers just aren't used to doing that anymore. And 50 years ago, I think people would have been a lot better at it. But the fact is that the vast majority of textual variation is due to the simple fact of human copying.
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And I would say that you can see that when an olive falls out or is added in manuscripts of the
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Qanon. I mean, it's hard to keep track of those things, especially back in the old
01:00:03
Kufic script and things like that. It's simple errors of sight.
01:00:08
Now, there are theologically relevant New Testament textual variants. But even then, that doesn't mean that there was confusion as to what the original was saying.
01:00:21
There might have been a scribe that was concerned that what the original said wasn't as clear as he would like it to have been. He understands what he was saying, but he's concerned about, well, someone might take it this way or someone might take it that way.
01:00:32
Or very frequently, it's due to the fact that a scribe was familiar with how Matthew said it. Luke says it slightly differently, and so you get that type of parallel corruption.
01:00:40
But it has nothing to do—I mean, the reading of John 1 is certain.
01:00:47
It really is. I don't know of any serious textual scholars that would say, oh, we have no idea.
01:00:55
But when it says, why do these textual variants exist, if the meaning of John 1 is so obvious, that's assuming that all textual variants arise from a confusion of the original text, and that is not the case at all.
01:01:07
That is not the case at all. He goes on to say, Read, in 2003, outlines briefly the range of interpretations that arose due to the lack of definite article in the majority of manuscripts.
01:01:19
Well, in all manuscripts but one, to my knowledge. And then he quotes, from the point of view of early church history, heresy develops when a misunderstanding arises concerning Greek articles, the predicate nominative, and grammatical word order.
01:01:32
I just stop and say, I really hope that whatever the source is, is not saying that's really the source of heresies.
01:01:40
That's not where heresies come from. From misunderstanding Greek articles?
01:01:47
Really? From misunderstanding the predicate nominative or syntactical word order?
01:01:53
To illustrate, the early church heresy of modalism understood John 1 to read, and the word was the god, while the early church heresy of Arianism understood
01:02:02
John 1 to read, the word was a god. Well, interpretationally, but not in the, and even
01:02:15
Arianism, not in the sense of modern Jehovah's Witnesses.
01:02:22
And then Abdullah continues from there, It is interesting to note here that modalism is known to have existed at least as early as the first part of the third century
01:02:30
CE when Sibelius was a priest, because this indicates the potential for the definite article of variance to have existed much earlier than the current manuscript evidence confirms.
01:02:39
Well, what would, what would, that's a very interesting argument.
01:02:47
Sibelianism, dynamic monarchianism, modalism, is actually a second century heresy.
01:02:54
And the eastern church had had to deal with that, and that was one of the problems of the Council of Nicaea, is that the eastern representatives heard homoousius as a word that could be used by the modalists to continue their warfare back at, back home.
01:03:16
All right? Go back to our lengthy discussion of the Council of Nicaea and early Christology from last year if you want to expand upon that.
01:03:25
But that was a second century heresy. And had been dealt with.
01:03:32
But, to substantiate this type of argument, what Abdullah would have to come up with is anywhere where Sibelius or any of the dynamic monarchianists actually quoted
01:03:47
John 1 .1 as containing the definite article. I am unaware of any reference to that, and I would challenge
01:03:54
Abdullah to produce it. I am unaware of anyone at that time period, in their defense of the various forms of modalism, the various forms of monarchianism, actually asserting, well, we know that John said,
01:04:16
I would be interested in any reference to that. And of course, we have lots of early church writers, patristic sources, arguing against the modalists.
01:04:32
And they would be quick to jump on something like that. So, I would say to Abdullah, I think that's what you need to, you need to come up with some evidence.
01:04:41
Because otherwise, saying, well, this means that the definite article variant is early.
01:04:48
But all I actually have is one manuscript from the 8th century, Codex Regius. But I'm going to argue that this is not just an error on the part of the scribe of Codex Regius.
01:05:02
I'm actually going to argue that it was a part of the original arguments, the dynamic monarchianists or the modalists or whatever.
01:05:08
Well, give us some evidence. Show us where they argued that. I would be very, very interested in seeing that.
01:05:19
He goes on, however, the key question is that I amplified if the meaning of John 1 .1 is so obvious, how do modalism and Arianism arise using the very same text as evidence of their respective
01:05:28
Christologies? Well, again, I would say that you guys really misuse some texts of Scripture.
01:05:36
The who -touched -me argument from Jesus when he's going to heal
01:05:41
Jairus' daughter, I think is just one of the worst arguments that's ever been presented. It's just that bad.
01:05:49
So sometimes people can use really bad arguments. Doesn't mean that the text is unclear. And I've heard a number of Muslims really just outrageously abuse the text of the
01:06:03
New Testament because they're not aware of the original languages, they're not aware of the context or whatever else it might be. That doesn't mean that the text is unclear.
01:06:12
If the meaning of John 1 .1 is so obvious, I'm not saying the meaning of John 1 .1 is obvious. I'm saying the meaning of John 1 .1
01:06:17
is clearly discernible and defensible, and that any counter -argumentation against it is not discernible and is not consistent.
01:06:27
It's not as discernible, and it is not consistent. So I'm not saying—none of us are arguing, well, it's just so obvious.
01:06:33
I realize that I have to take the time to explain what a pre -verbal predicate nominative is, but just because people can raise questions, does that mean that the original source is unclear?
01:06:51
This is the same argument our Roman Catholic friends use. Well, if the Bible was so clear, you wouldn't have 30 ,000 denominations.
01:06:57
Now they're making up the 30 ,000 denomination part. They don't realize that, but same type of argumentation.
01:07:05
But, of course, we could turn that around and say, well, if the succession of Muhammad was so clear, why did the
01:07:13
Shiites exist? Why does Shi 'ism exist? And if the
01:07:19
Quran is actually so clear on its eternal nature, why did the Ash 'ari exist? Why was one of the caliphs of the
01:07:29
Islamic Ummah—why did he believe the Quran was created? I mean, there's all sorts of questions we can ask here, and I think you need to be careful when you use that kind of argumentation.
01:07:42
So, it continues on. Why am I discussing this point? Because Dr. White suggests in one of his more recent webcasts that we
01:07:50
Muslims do not give the Christian scriptures a fair go. Well, yeah, I have suggested that, often.
01:07:58
This assertion was made very clear when placed against one of the arguments I made in the debate. I'm not sure which one that was.
01:08:03
I suggested to the Christian audience, and any that may have—oh, okay, here we go—and any that may have happened to watch the debate since, that the claiming divinity for Jesus, or anyone for that matter, is an extraordinary claim, and that such a claim would require exceptional evidence.
01:08:22
In response, Dr. White has asked, what more than revelation? I think what I said was, the evidence for the deity of Christ is revelatory.
01:08:34
I think there's clear evidence in the external—because he was asking for, well, who in the first century?
01:08:40
Well, there isn't anything in the first century, outside of what? The New Testament. I mean,
01:08:46
Clement might sneak into first century, but—and I was saying that the evidence of the deity of Christ has to be revelation.
01:08:54
What's the evidence for Tawhid? Fundamentally, what's the evidence for Tawhid for a Muslim? It's the
01:08:59
Quran, is it not? It's revelation. It's Wahi. It's Natsal. It's sent down, right?
01:09:05
Well, what's the evidence for the deity of Christ? It's revelation. It's the
01:09:11
Spirit of God found in the Christian scriptures. But what revelation is he speaking of?
01:09:18
The likes of John 1 -1, which are, A, understood drastically differently by those that believe it is revelation.
01:09:25
Okay, I stopped right there. Let me answer number A. So, because there are people who twist the scriptures, we cannot know what the scriptures say.
01:09:35
Because there are Muslims that are part of all sorts of other sects, other than the
01:09:41
Sunni, who understand passages in the Quran differently than Abdullah Kunda, does that mean those passages are not clear?
01:09:50
B, present in entirely different textual forms. One manuscript.
01:09:56
I'm sorry, that's not enough. One manuscript isn't enough.
01:10:02
One 8th century manuscript. I mean, let's put this into perspective. That would mean that I could point to a single textual variant in an
01:10:12
Arabic manuscript of the Quran from the 1400s and say, well, since in this particular manuscript, there's an extra olive, we don't really know what it originally said.
01:10:29
That's not how textual criticism is done. That's not a proper form of argumentation.
01:10:36
Dr. White describes John 1 -1 as literary artistry, that the writer must have spent significant time planning.
01:10:42
No question about it, especially in light of the... Actually, I was describing the prologue of John 1 -1 through 18, but the entirety of the book is.
01:10:52
Yet there are literally dozens of different English translations of the text. There are dozens of different English translations of the
01:10:58
Quran. And there is no authoritative interpretation of the precise meaning of the text. Well, what do you mean?
01:11:06
Who are you looking to to provide an authoritative, precise meaning of the text? You're looking for a pope?
01:11:12
You're looking for a caliph? Why don't you go to a Shiite imam? You know, they're inspired.
01:11:20
The fundamental idea here is, well, you know, who knows what it really means?
01:11:26
And this is the kind of abject skepticism that, again, our
01:11:32
Muslim friends will not apply to the Quran. Because I can go to a
01:11:38
Shiite. I can go to Sunnis. I can go to Sufis. And there's all sorts of these other little groups out there that we could come dragging up out of Syria and places like that, that have all sorts of different understandings.
01:11:51
There are times when al -Qurtabi disagrees with Ibn Kathir. Well, there you go.
01:11:58
They were, I mean, if they can disagree about what a Quranic text is about, then obviously no one has any idea because there isn't any authoritative statement, right?
01:12:06
I'm not going to say that. Because I actually think, I actually think that as I'm right, as I'm reading, as I'm sitting here and I've got a glowing screen in front of me, and I'm reading
01:12:18
Abdullah Kunda's words, I believe that I can understand what Abdullah is saying.
01:12:23
Now, if I've got any confusion, I can ask Abdullah. He's still around. But you see, the problem is
01:12:29
Abdullah doesn't actually believe the methodology he's using here, or he would not have expressed his objection in written words.
01:12:38
But Abdullah expects, you know, he sent me a nice email, said, here's a link to what I said. I think he expects that he expressed himself with enough clarity that I can understand his objections.
01:12:49
And of course, what I'm trying to do, knowing Abdullah personally, is I'm trying to interpret his words in the context that my personal knowledge of him would give.
01:12:58
Now, since I don't know him like a brother or something, you know, we've met a few times, we've chatted a few times, so my knowledge of him is not perfect, then maybe
01:13:07
I might be misunderstanding something. But he's functioning on the basis of the idea that in reality, we can communicate in written form with sufficient clarity.
01:13:20
And as a Muslim, he has to believe that. He has to believe that. Because what is the description of the
01:13:26
Qur 'an in Arabic? Mubinun, clear, perspicuous, understandable.
01:13:36
Over and over again, the Qur 'an claims to be clear and understandable in written form and invites people to read it.
01:13:49
It doesn't invite people and then go ask your imam, then go ask the caliph, because there is no caliph today.
01:13:58
If that's what we need, well, we're in real trouble then. So this is hardly what I would consider to be rock solid evidence.
01:14:04
Well, again, if you can take a single 8th century manuscript, overthrow all the papyri, because remember,
01:14:12
John right now is the earliest attested manuscript that we have. And I'm glad to see that I saw,
01:14:21
I saw a notice on Twitter that Chick -fil -A is packed. Lunch might be late. Well, that's good.
01:14:27
I'm glad Chick -fil -A is packed. And I hope they're all saying, yeah, go. That would be, that would be good.
01:14:34
I wonder if there's anybody marching around outside with a sign protesting, if they are marching around outside of the protest.
01:14:40
Yeah, they're involved while eating Chick -fil -A. That'd be funny. I was going to say, I hope they're hungry as the smell comes wafting out to them from all the terrible, horrible, non -inclusive, non -diverse people who are walking out.
01:14:55
Anyway, I'm sorry. I am far too easily distracted. Then we move on to the I am, which is the issue
01:15:03
I assumed would be addressed. Interestingly, Dr. Weiss suggested in a recent webcast that I was being overly simplistic with my criticism of the
01:15:09
Christian use of the I am statements. In the Greek manuscript, in the New Testament, Greek New Testament manuscripts,
01:15:15
Ego I me. I did because he did not show any in his criticisms of Jason.
01:15:24
He said, I don't know why you Christians are doing this. There really isn't a connection here. It's, you know, he jumped to Exodus 3.
01:15:31
That's different from what you've got here. The emphasis in Ego I me ha -on is on ha -on, not an
01:15:36
Ego I me. So there's just no connection here, and didn't seem to understand what
01:15:42
I was emphasizing, and that is that Ego I me is used as a name for God in the
01:15:49
Greek Septuagint. And it is. There isn't any question about this. So I did feel that to say, well,
01:15:56
I don't know why Christians do this, without dealing with why Christians do this, was being overly simplistic.
01:16:04
Yes, I did say that. He seemed to agree with me in some way, in that the language link to the statements in Exodus and Deuteronomy is not quite there in and of themselves, but suggested that that is not exactly what
01:16:16
Christians are saying. Well, what I said was, the language link is there through the prophets, through Isaiah, through minor prophets, but especially in Isaiah.
01:16:26
You have this repetitive utilization of a formula.
01:16:34
And I'm not the first one to have seen this. I'm not claiming to have been the first one who's seen this. Many, many people have seen this, and anyone who is at all familiar.
01:16:42
And I remember the first thing I heard, the first time I heard about Abdullah Kunda was someone saying, well, there's this Muslim in Australia, and he used to be
01:16:50
Jewish, and he understands the Septuagint and reads Hebrew and all the rest of this stuff, and it's going to be really challenging, and that's what was communicated to me.
01:17:01
Well, okay, then I say to Abdullah, if you look at meaningful
01:17:14
Old Testament scholarship, if you look at scholars who actually say, okay, I want to interpret the
01:17:21
Old Testament in its context, I'm not going to drag a bunch of liberalism in, I'm not going to assume a worldview other than that that the authors themselves would have assumed, if you look at that, and then you look at especially intertextual studies, if you look, for example, at the rich area of study where you look at the
01:17:45
New Testament's use of the Old Testament, you look at allusions, you look at verbal parallels, there's a huge amount of work, a huge amount of work that has been done in this area and continues to be done in this area, especially in intertextuality.
01:18:02
When you look at that, then you will see that all of those works will see this connection and will comment upon that kind of connection.
01:18:11
It's right there. So I'm not making this up. I think that I can provide some very solid, well -known
01:18:23
New Testament scholars that are saying the exact same things that I have been saying on this subject.
01:18:30
I'm not out on my own somewhere in this matter in any way, shape, or form. Dr. White, instead, refers to Exodus 314 as being linked to the
01:18:40
I Am statements in John via Isaiah. Let's first look at the standard, substantive version of Exodus 314, where he has
01:18:47
Ego Aimee Ha 'on, and then Ha 'on is the one who sent me, it's interesting, on my screen, the end of the
01:18:54
Greek is disappearing. I'm not sure why. Anyway, I have underlined the statements, Ego Aimee Ha 'on,
01:18:59
I am the one, and the repeat of Ha 'on, the one in the verse where it states the one has sent me to you. In Hebrew, the wording is a little different, and he has,
01:19:07
I share, I will be what I will be. Likewise, the closing of the verse says,
01:19:14
I will be has sent me to you, though he didn't give all the Hebrew for that. Today, most English, unless it's disappearing on my screen, today, most
01:19:22
English translations will translate these sections of the passage as, I am who I am, and tell them, I am sent you.
01:19:29
Note the capitalization of I am is not a mistake. Several versions I consulted capitalize I am in their texts.
01:19:36
Yeah, some of the Old Testament translations will do that. The mind doesn't really have to stretch far to be able to draw a fairly simple conclusion about the motive here.
01:19:44
Obviously, there's an attempt to link this passage to the I Am statements in John. Dr. White suggests this can be done via Isaiah.
01:19:50
I doubt that is why at all the Old Testament translations do that.
01:19:57
I think Abdullah needs to recognize most Bible translations are done by committees today.
01:20:03
And the Old Testament committee is frequently a very different group than the New Testament committee. While there will be a general editing committee later on that will try to smooth things out, that might make some changes, the vast majority of the work is done by separate groups of scholars.
01:20:19
Even at that point, you might have an overarching Old Testament committee, then you'll have the Pentateuch committee, you'll have the
01:20:24
Prophets committee, you'll have the Psalter committee. You'll have different people working on different sections, just as back in the days of the
01:20:30
King James, in fact, they did the same thing. But I really doubt that the I Am capitalization in most of the
01:20:37
Old Testaments is specifically meant to make some connection to John at all. Most Christians I know aren't even aware of that.
01:20:45
So the next question for Thinking Muslim is, are the links between John, Isaiah, and Exodus apparent?
01:20:51
I don't think there's any question they're apparent. Dr. White gives several examples for the reader to consider. And by the way, I multiply these examples greatly in the material that I posted back in December, which we linked to again last week.
01:21:04
We've linked to it a number of times now, which only multiplies these things.
01:21:10
But again, let's just back up just a moment. Let's just remind ourselves what we're looking at here.
01:21:20
And I would remind Abdullah as well. We are looking at a formulaic use of Ego Aimi, even to the point where it's
01:21:30
Ego Aimi, Ego Aimi in certain texts in the
01:21:38
Greek Septuagint. The Greek Septuagint is the background for especially the
01:21:44
Gospel of John. And we can provide numerous, numerous examples of where John makes allusion to, draws verbal parallels to, grammatical and syntactical parallels to the
01:22:00
Greek Septuagint. Just off the top of my head, I refer us once again to Isaiah 6.
01:22:07
And his statement, he saw his glory. And the fact that that's found primarily in the
01:22:13
Greek Septuagint textual variant of Isaiah 6 .1. Very, very important.
01:22:21
Vast majority of New Testament scholarship on the Gospel of John recognizes the
01:22:27
Greek Septuagint's deep impact upon the vocabulary and language of the
01:22:34
Gospel of John. No question about, same with Paul, obviously, but we're talking specifically about John here.
01:22:40
So you have a formulaic use in the Septuagint. And then in John, you have
01:22:47
John using this in such a fashion as to make clear connections to its
01:22:54
Old Testament usage. So in John 13, 19, you have in the prophecy of a future event, when this is fulfilled, then you will know that I am.
01:23:07
Same type of thing you have in Isaiah 43, 10. Then you have Jesus using Ego, I, Me in John 8.
01:23:15
And what's the reaction of the Jews in John 8, 58? But to pick up stones to stone him.
01:23:24
Abdullah has to explain to us, if there is no significance to this, then what were the Jews doing?
01:23:31
Why did they understand Jesus's statement, as an act of blasphemy worthy of immediate execution?
01:23:46
Did they see what I see? I think they did. But then you also have the continued formulaic use of the
01:23:58
Ego, I, Me in John chapter 18. And so Abdullah has to explain to us, if this is not a reference to deity, if this is not a reference to the very holy name of God, why do the soldiers fall back upon the ground?
01:24:16
And please, please, Abdullah, don't go where some people have gone and say, well, it was
01:24:27
Jesus's great moral superiority that caused the soldiers to fall back upon the ground.
01:24:33
Oh yeah, that happens every day. Every day, soldiers around the world, when they run into morally pure people, fall flat on their face.
01:24:41
It is one of the major problems the U .S. military has to face every day, is fall flat -itis.
01:24:48
They're having to design new helmets that have face plates and face guards, because this is happening all the time.
01:24:55
It just happens all the time. No, obviously not. So you have to recognize that this is a clear usage on John's part, and its explanation is found in the
01:25:15
Greek Septuagint itself. So with that in mind, then we go back to what
01:25:25
Abdullah says here in just the last few minutes of the program. We'll be wrapping up here in just about three minutes.
01:25:32
Dr. White gives several examples for the reader to consider. First, to illustrate the links between John and Isaiah that he considers to be intentionally present.
01:25:37
Looking at Isaiah 43 -25, Dr. White finds it remarkable that the Hebrew, Anokhi, Anokhi, who, literally,
01:25:45
I, I am he, is rendered as Ego, Ego, I am he, Ego, I am he in the Septuagint. Aside from the fact that this is a peculiar passage in Isaiah, using a proto -Semitic and highly archaic
01:25:56
Hebrew pronoun, which is not easily rendered into another language. Now let me stop right there.
01:26:01
Let's say all of that's true. It's irrelevant to the Septuagint, because the people to whom
01:26:07
John is writing would be looking at what text of the
01:26:14
Old Testament. They're looking at the Septuagint. Whether Anokhi versus Ane, as in Anehu, whether Anokhi is unusual or not would be irrelevant to the fact that the text that the readers of the
01:26:33
Gospel would be referring to as the Scriptures said Ego, I am he, Ego, I am he. So just to mention that.
01:26:42
I personally find no significance to this comparison and do not see any reason for a link to the use of Ego, I am he, and John.
01:26:50
Well, then you're not really a part of New Testament scholarship's understanding of the relationship of the
01:26:58
Septuagint. When you say, I personally find no significance, why?
01:27:06
Now remember, Abdullah, the same one says you find no significance in the fact that we can find tremendous evidence of the
01:27:16
Qur 'an's utilization of previous sources. You said in our debate it was just pure coincidence.
01:27:24
So this is just pure coincidence? That the very text John expects people to be reading from uses this terminology and then
01:27:33
John uses it in the same context is just pure coincidence? No significance?
01:27:40
I think that's, quite honestly, wishful thinking. And not really dealing with the text as it stands, in the context in which it was written.
01:27:52
Well, we'll continue on with the responding to Abdullah Kunda on Ego, I am he, and we've got
01:27:59
Paul Williams stuff to do, and we... I could go for hours, but I have a lot of things to try to get done.
01:28:08
So we will be back again on Thursday, Lord willing, here on The Dividing Line. See you then.
01:28:14
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01:29:20
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