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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, welcome to the Dividing Line on, wow, we're already into October of 2012.

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I was opening a audio file. We'll take your phone calls at 877 -753 -3341 or you're in the local

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Phoenix area, 602 -973 -4602. But I had just, it worries me when my system says,

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I can't use that program because it's in the trash. That's, I'm not sure that's,

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I've not seen that before, but now it seems to be working, but it does lower one's trust that it's actually going to do what it's supposed to do.

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But anyways, welcome to the Dividing Line. I have to admit, I was a little surprised in my report on Thursday, I sort of ran out of time toward the end.

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I did not get an opportunity to say what I wanted to say about the last debate that had taken, actually two debates.

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So I may go back to some of that. But I'll take your phone calls and of course talk about some of what's going on in the world today.

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Obviously, I'm thinking about it because I woke up at some time in the middle of the night and was in the midst of thinking about, well, incipient socialism and communism in the

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United States. Maybe that's not a good thing to be thinking about when you're trying to sleep, but I certainly was thinking about it.

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And given that we are only one month and four days out from a national election that will have a huge impact, we cannot help but consider the fact that while many of us in this audience have deep concerns about the moral and ethical, philosophical and cultural implications of this election, many of our fellow citizens do not share those concerns.

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And in fact, I think it is clear evidence of what has happened since we have given up the educational system to the leftists and the unions that represent them that have all power and all authority.

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The vast majority of citizens in this country don't even know what free enterprise is.

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They don't know what the difference between a representative democracy and a socialist nation is.

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And as a result, people in the highest form, the highest levels of government, and I mean the highest levels of government, can talk about, what was that term yesterday, economics of justice?

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Or was it, what was it? It was economics of justice,

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I thought. Now it's just blown it.

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What? Oh, economic patriotism. That's right.

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Economic patriotism. That's what it was, which was then defined as economic justice, which is not everybody having the same opportunity, having a level playing field.

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No, no, no, no, no. That was pretty much everybody having the same stuff. And I go, I remember that.

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That was Khrushchev. Yes. There you go. Yeah. OK. Scary.

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I mean, you would think that people would be up in arms, but it's like, oh, that sounds nice.

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Oh, my. Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.

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And let me tell you something. Anyway, what has caused me to think of all of that was the signing, as if anyone was surprised by this.

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But the signing by Governor Moonbeam, Jerry Brown, this past few days ago of the bill introduced by a homosexual

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Democrat state assemblyman, state

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Senator Ted Lieu, banning what they call non -scientific therapies in regards to homosexuality.

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Of course, Governor Brown said these practices have no basis in science or medicine and they will now be relegated to the dustbin of quackery.

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Of course, what is scientific in the psychotherapy community changes by the hour, depending on who has published what of late.

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And the fact of the matter is, of course, that it is a sad reality that what the psychotherapeutic community determines to be scientific is purely,

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OK, ninety nine point nine nine percent political. It is.

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It's all politics. Everybody knows how homosexuality was removed from the

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DSM and it was because of political pressure and protests.

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And it's not science. It is politics. And so now you have this.

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And, of course, once the once the state, not just California, but the state, get used to that, because while many other nations have realized the failure of socialism and communism.

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Evidently, most people in the West in the United States are just slow on the uptake.

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And evidently we're going to have to go through our own period of of collectivism and become a second rate nation before we finally figure out what the rest of the world's already figured out that that doesn't work.

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That's evidently that's that's we're going to have to do. But anyways, the state. That is deeply entrenched in its owing political favors to the homosexual lobby.

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How long has it been now? I used to say I've been saying this for 10 years now and saying this for 20 years now.

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Homosexuals do not want equal rights. They want Uber rights. They want to silence everyone who would criticize their way of life and their behavior.

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And as a result, we see this kind of thing, the law, which just take effect on January 1st, states that no, quote, mental health provider, unquote, shall provide minors with therapy intended to change their sexual orientation, including efforts to listen to this, quote, change behaviors or gender expressions or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same sex, end quote.

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So even if a teenager is uncomfortable with this. Does not want these desires, wants to know how to deal with these desires.

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Well, of course, I would say they're going to the wrong place. You're going to a psych anyways, but. Illegal. Can't can't do anything about that.

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Sorry, I can't help you. And why would that be? Well, it's simple. The ex -gay, the very existence of ex -gays is the walking, talking refutation of the entire argument of the homosexual community.

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This is just the way we are and nothing we can do about it. And if they did something about it, then they're just wrong.

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And we don't want to be reminded of them. So stop that. There you go.

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So it we've all learned,

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I hope I really, really, really, really hope that we have learned that these types of.

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Removals of our freedoms are not done in one big fell swoop that would cause everybody to stand up and go, oh, they're done incrementally.

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You do a little bit here right now, it's the the psychotherapy community, and then you expand it a little bit more if it's good enough for them, then we we prohibit it for these people.

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And then you just keep making it grow and grow and grow. It's the it's the proverbial. Nose in the tent flap thing with a camel or whatever else, a big animal you might want to talk about, yes, sir.

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Question, how would the sense, as I recall, ministers are licensed by the state.

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And oftentimes a lot of ministers these days consider themselves to be counselors.

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And at what point does the state then take this law and impose it upon the state license?

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There's already a lot of people who are saying that it that it doesn't have that kind of application. There are people who are saying that that fully expecting the homosexual community to utilize this for that very, very purpose.

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No, no question about it. But someone in channel just point out what Robert Dagnon said, which, again, does point out the utter hypocrisy of the legal system today as it is being distorted and perverted by various groups.

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Why is it illegal for people to want to change if they are feeling homosexual tendencies and can't do it if they have parental consent but yet do not need parental consent to get an abortion or something of that sort?

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That's what he said. That's what actually was being paraphrased of what he said. That's NTPOT saying that was me.

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Yeah, I saw something that he said, and he's not the first one to say it. I mean, what what a world we live in where minors can get an abortion without parental consent, but even with parental consent, they cannot get any help with homosexual feelings.

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Hello, could someone point out the hypocrisy here? Close your eyes and point.

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You won't need to be. They won't need to point very accurately because it is all over the place.

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What an amazing, amazing thing. Yeah. And then, of course, you can then go to jail.

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And in Massachusetts, you can get a federal judge to force the state to pay for your sex change operation when you're 60 some years old.

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Hey, it's a it's just when

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I guess there's just so much of it now that the temptation is to throw your hands up in the air and say there's nothing to do.

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It's done. It's over. I give up. The world has gone insane. Common sense has thrown out the window, has been thrown out the window.

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But what's there left to do or to say? And LaShawn this morning on on Twitter said, you know, why do we even speak up on some issues anymore?

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It doesn't really change anything. We do it and it still stays the same. And the only thing I could come up with was a was a response.

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And I actually spent about 30 seconds coming up with this, which for me was a long time.

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I said something along the lines of. The when one whispers the whisper of the truth is more beautiful than the shouting of a lie by the many or something along those lines of the point is we keep speaking the truth.

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And if we are if we're pragmatists and we judge ourselves solely on the basis of how many people are agreeing with us, then we will shut up and we will just move into our communes and we will stop being salt and we'll stop being light.

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And that's the easy way out. No two ways about it. But we can't be pragmatists and we have to accept the reality that God has called his people many times, many, many, many times.

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To be salt and light in a dying society, God knew what was going to happen,

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God was bringing that judgment to bear. But how many times do we see in the

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Old Testament, how many times do we see in church history? Those situations where God's people, they're in the minority, they're persecuted, it costs them, and yet they remain faithful as salt and light, even in a society that is on its last legs and it's going down.

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And why? Because God does not leave himself without a witness. And we cannot pragmatically go, well, but, you know, we would just look at the polls.

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No reason doing this, just look at the polls. So. We aren't called to live by polls.

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There is only there is only one poll and there is only one person who is polled in the poll.

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And as a result, the poll is already always 100 percent. So you've got, as Steve Camp likes to put it, you've got an audience of one.

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An audience of one, that's all you have to worry about. You don't have to worry about the rest of it. And if he calls you and if he chooses to sanctify you and make you more like him, by having you be the last light and the last bit of salt.

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Right before it all comes tumbling down. Well, that's what you've been called to do. Embrace it.

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Be thankful for it. Be a faithful servant. And I just think for me.

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I mean, it's real easy for me to look around right now and just really lose my joy.

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I mean, I look around at at my society and I'll be honest with you,

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I saw the video. I didn't queue it up. I'm not going to I'm not completely stupid, but I saw the

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Obama phone video. I got my Obama phone and I look at that and I just I just want to go.

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It's over. If that's the voting public in United States, it's over because you've just got people that are going to say,

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I'm just going to vote for whoever is going to give me everybody else's money. And that is look,

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I've I'm not an expert. On all the views of all the founders, but I've read more than my fair share of historical works on the subject of the founders of the

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United States. And I can guarantee you one thing. There is not a one of those men, not a one of them that had they somehow been able to be exposed to that video, or at least to the mindset of that video, who would not have said that will be the death of this republic, that will be the death of this republic.

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Because I know one thing they said all the time. Was that the people of this republic had to have.

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An ethical and moral foundation. And that woman does not have an ethical and moral foundation, no way.

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And I just have to at times I just have to think, I guess we've we've reached, we keep talking about the tipping point.

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Where people are just going to keep voting themselves stuff until we vote ourselves into oblivion, we fall over the cliff, everything collapses.

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Our military collapses, the economy collapses, and you see what come rises out of the ashes,

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I guess. I guess that's how that's how it works. But I think for most of us, we're like, it just couldn't happen that fast, could it?

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Wasn't this the nation that that that saved the world in 1945? That wasn't that long ago, there are still people alive that fought in that war.

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Yeah, they're old, but it wasn't that long. How could it happen so fast? How could these people be so incapable of understanding history?

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I don't know. I don't know. I'm sure my my particular generation has a lot to do with it, though.

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We must, because, you know, it's the we look at the young generation and they look at us like, well, you didn't tell us anything about.

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This this stuff, I guess we were so. I guess we were just so centered upon ourselves, maybe just like the next generation,

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I don't know. I'm disconnected from phones that I do something I am. It doesn't say

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I am now. But I didn't.

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That's not good. Did you did the system reset or something like that, because because it's yeah, it's completely confused over here.

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So I'm going to have to try to try to get connected. So we have phone calls. I'm trying to get in, but it doesn't seem to want to let me.

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And now I've been in and it's going, yeah, don't doesn't even know where it is on the on the net and on the network anymore.

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Oh, there it goes. Just popped in. Boing. Oh, look at that. We have people. Oh, him.

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Oh, man. Really? I mean, you can't even speak English, right? Oh, all right.

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Well, all right. Before I go back and talk about some of this,

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I won't let's go ahead and clear the phones here. And, you know, we are an equal opportunity web based call in program with a few people listening.

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And so, you know, you take the good with the bad. And so here we want to extend our ministry and grace and mercy, you know, even when it's tough to do so.

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So let's go ahead and talk to John in Phoenix. Hi, John. Hey, my friend.

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Hello. How are you? Thank you for this wonderful, audaciously warm welcome.

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Well, you know, you always send me stuff in the mail, links to your own blog and stuff like that.

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And I keep telling you, look, I've got you in my list, but you just keep sending to me anyways. You need to be kind to me because I know where your underground bunker is.

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I've been there, man. Yeah, we, yeah, we let you in once, but we move every little bit.

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So you may know where it is. Oh, yeah, yeah. So if I give you a call, you're still safe, huh? Um, no, we'll just drop you before you actually get a chance to say that.

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So anyways, I hope you're not calling with some deep, difficult question or something.

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No, this is an easy one, I'm sure. Oh, OK. Hey, it's a question about Acts chapter 3, and I was reading a verse there, verse 16, and I just wondered what your input would be.

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There's obviously a number of verses in the New Testament which teach that faith is God's gift.

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I'm thinking of Ephesians 2, 8 and 9, Philippians 1, 29, and there's a growing list.

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But there's a phrase I saw in Acts 3 that just caught my eye, and I looked at it in a number of different translations, and looked at what

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I could map out, and just thought, let's call Mr. Dr. White, Right Honorable.

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There's a phrase that says, it's faith that is through Jesus.

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My basic question is this, do you believe, in looking at the text, that this is a verse that could legitimately be added to the list of verses that teach faith is a gift?

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Or is it not as strong as that? Well, I'm sort of wondering why I haven't seen it in that kind of a list.

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It's just an interesting phrase. Normally you'd say it's faith in Jesus has made this man strong and healthy, but it doesn't seem to say that.

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Yeah, it is. I'm looking at the Greek, and of course, Luke's Greek is, well,

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Luke's Greek, and it's unlike anybody else's. By the faith in his name, this one whom you have seen and know, and then you have this phrase that evidently, this man has been strengthened by faith in his name.

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Then you have the phrase, the faith, and then you have the repetition of the article, which normally refers back to, though that would be very strange to repeat that immediately that closely, the faith that is through.

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Actually, it would seem that the major translations are understanding that article as being a functioning almost predominantly.

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The ESV renders it with, that is through Jesus, through him.

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ESV says Jesus, but it's actually him. The word him is there in the

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Greek, not Jesus, but the ESV is interpreting that to mean Jesus, not the man, obviously.

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That wouldn't make any sense to him, because it says it was given to him. Now, the

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NASB says it is the name of, on the basis of faith in his name, it is the name of Jesus which has strengthened this man whom you see and know, and the faith which comes through him has given him this perfect health in the presence of you all.

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The NASB capitalizes the him rather than repeating the word

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Jesus, which at least actually flows a little better than the ESV.

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Yeah, the ESV is sort of funny. His name, Dash, by faith in his name,

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Dash, has made this man strong whom you see and know, and the faith that is through Jesus has given the man this perfect health in the presence of you all.

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So, obviously, it is not an easy text to render into English.

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But I'm just trying to see how the faith which comes through him.

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It just seems, you know, the normal way of talking about an event like that, healing, which is obviously outstanding, is it's faith in Jesus.

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That's the emphasis. It's faith in the name of Jesus that has made this man strong. But that's not, seemingly, how it's been expressed here.

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It seems to be saying that the faith itself has come through Jesus.

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Well, yeah, that does seem to be what's saying. And I'm just wondering, because I've not looked at commentaries, but just looking at the text in the language,

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I don't think I have, I cannot think of any other situation where I have seen an article repeated in this format, which makes me think, in light of all the many fascinating ways in which the

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Greek article was used, which makes me think that it's not just simply restating faith.

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It's being translated as which, yeah, but I wonder if the reason that it's repeated is it's specifically identifying the faith in the name of Jesus.

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In other words, saving faith over against any other kind of faith. I have to wonder if that is not something, and I'm just going off of what

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I'm seeing on the screen here. And, of course, the wider context is the apostles are told not to preach in his name, and the emphasis in verse 16 seems to be on the name.

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Right. Well, the name is definitely, you have tepistai tu anamitas, so you have faith in the name and then autu of him.

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That is clearly the faith that's being referred to. And I just have to wonder if the reason the article is repeated in that later phrase is to tell us that this faith, which is through Jesus, is the faith that is in his name.

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In other words, it's specifically Christian faith. It's specifically faith in the name of Jesus.

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And in the context being that the Jews are opposing the presentation of the gospel, they're opposing the proclamation of the resurrected

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Messiah, etc., etc. And if this is a part of the argument that true faith now for the true followers of God involves confessing

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Jesus, it's not enough just to say, I follow Yahweh. Yahweh has now identified himself through the incarnation, death, birth, and resurrection of Jesus in a way that it has to include, to be pleasing to him, faith in the name of Jesus.

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So that crosses my mind. There's lots of other things

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I think we could probably look at, and maybe if I have time, I'll look at some of the critical commentaries that might discuss the repetition of the article.

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Have you noticed that phrase in those terms? Not to my recollection, but right now, having just gotten back from your old stomping grounds in Germany and Scotland, I don't even remember

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Rich's name. I've really been fuzzy -brained ever since.

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Well, I worked so hard the last two weeks before I left on the book, and then straight into four debates and lecturing in Germany, and all the rest of that stuff, that the recovery time has been longer than normal.

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So I would imagine at some point in time that I've looked at it, but it's not ringing any bells at this particular point in time.

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Sure, sure. So yeah, it's definitely something to look into. Yeah. Well, thanks for doing that, my friend.

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All right, and thanks for not hanging up while I was doing the introduction there. I mean, you know, some people would.

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All right. Thanks, brother. Yeah. God bless. Bye -bye. God bless. Bye -bye. John Sampson putting up with more of my behavior toward him.

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John was on, I don't know when that was, we were talking about his book on Calvinism, the 12

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Answers book, which we do have on the website, as I recall. For some reason, however, I just hit the drop thing on that, and it's not, does it show

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I've disconnected again? No? Okay. Well, I'm going to try putting

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James on here, and we'll see if it works. Hello, James. Nope, I've lost connection.

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Hello. Oh, he is there. Okay. I am here. The weird thing is, it doesn't show you as on the air, it shows

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John on the air on my side. So obviously, I'm having problems. But what's even weirder is

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I'm also a British guy who lives in America. Oh, no. Well, John's lived here longer, so he doesn't sound quite as cultured as you do.

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Yeah, last time I called in, I was living in England, and it was one in the morning. Oh, there you go. There you go.

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Well, what are you doing in Seattle? I mean, that's the left coast. I actually did an internship for Mars Hill Church, and now

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I married a girl, and not the Rod Bell one, the Tristan one. I have to clarify that.

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Okay. But then I met a girl who I married, and now I work for a company called

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Subsplash. Oh, that's how you managed to get your green card, is you just found yourself a woman over here.

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I see. Okay. All right. I'm sure you weren't intending to do that.

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No, no. I didn't come here to mess around. I mean, I have my green card now, so I can talk freely.

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Okay. All right. Well, my display just caught up with reality there.

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It was just very, very, very delayed. So anyways, do you have a question about Albuquerque? Yeah, actually,

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I have two questions, if I'm allowed to ask two. Sure. So the first one on Albuquerque, I'm listening to it on audio right now with mellow

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Arabic instrumental music to make it go down a little easier. Are you serious? Where'd you find that? There's a playlist on Spotify.

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Really? Yeah. Because see, I'm doing it by going to the...

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I forget which site it is. I've got... there's a couple of versions. And I just select... I do a text select of the entire book, drop it into TechSpeech Pro, and convert it into MP3.

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And that way, I don't have the music. But one of the funniest things, though, I'm glad you mentioned...

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I'm glad you mentioned this. Now, is yours an electronic voice or is a real person reading it? It's an electronic voice.

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Okay, electronic voice. Now, this is one of the fun things about reading the

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Hadith while riding a bicycle. My program, for some reason, interprets postal codes.

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And so every once in a while, I've noticed this in the past, like in Arabic, you'll have

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Al. And that, of course, is Alabama. So I'll have Muhammad, Alabama, somebody.

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And then there's Az Zubar is a very common narrator in the

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Hadith. And so it always comes across as Arizona Zubar. I like Az Zubar because he's from where I am.

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He's in Arizona. So I don't know if yours does that. But my program does that. And it's rather...

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it's entertaining anyway. It sort of wakes you up when it starts getting really boring. Because if... I'm not sure how far you've gotten through Bukhari, but especially the stuff on, you know, like going to the bathroom and stuff.

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It's just... it's not really scintillating reading. It's really not. Yeah. And honestly, a lot of it's stuff I really don't need to know about any human being, let alone...

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Oh, yeah. Oh, man, you know so much more than you need to know about Muhammad, Aisha. You just...

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There is just, you know, I could stamp TMI over the vast majority of all

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Bukhari. No question about it. So I'm now... I'm about to start 35.

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Going to start what? I'm about to start the 36th chapter. Okay, 36th book?

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Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I'm ahead of you. I'm somewhere in the 70s right now, I think.

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Sweet. Yeah, the great thing is I can do it while I work, because I kind of email people, so I can just do whatever's going on in the background.

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I'll keep that in mind if I ever get an email from you, and it's got some very odd comments in it. Anyway. Yeah. So my question is,

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I was listening to 29, and I noticed it was talking about sort of in people who can't walk properly, or who are too old to go, or even people who just died couldn't go on the

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Hajj. Right. And Muhammad gave permission for family members to go and do that on their behalf.

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Right. So I'm just curious, I've never really heard anyone talk about, when

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Muslims talk about substitutes, like you can't pay the debt of another person, you can't be punished for another person.

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Could that be a useful way to kind of talk about how Jesus does good for us?

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Right. There have been Christian apologists and missionaries who have pointed to the specific incident of a woman coming to Muhammad and asking if she could perform

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Hajj in the place of another. And there have been people who have utilized that.

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I'm trying to remember the specific debate. For some reason, I'm thinking either of Sam Shamoon or David Wood.

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It might have been somebody else. But those are the names that are popping into my head as I'm thinking about stuff that I've listened to in the past, who have used that very argumentation to say, see, here is an example in the life of Muhammad, where in doing something that is very important in Allah's sight, substitution is allowed.

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And so, yes, that has been utilized. I haven't done it that way.

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In the upcoming book, I do discuss briefly in the salvation chapter, primarily in a lengthy end note.

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And once again, warning to everyone, if you don't read the end notes in this new book, you will be missing a lot of the, in my opinion, best stuff, because that's where it's tucked away just to keep the flow of the text going.

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But I do address the hadith in Sahih Muslim, where you have

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Christians and Muslims, I'm sorry, Christians and Jews being given in the place of Muslims on the

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Day of Judgment, who have many sins. Their sins are taken off of them and placed on the

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Jews and the Christians. And the Muslims are allowed into paradise, and the Jews and the Christians are cast into the hellfire.

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And there have been some who have said those particular hadith are weak, because they're actually

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Sahih, because a single narration hadith can be

36:14

Sahih. But one of the main reasons I included them is I discovered in preparation for the book that not only does

36:22

Muslim have that, but they're actually, that whole concept of sins being placed on Jews and Christians in place of Muslims, also is found in the hadith

36:34

Qudsi, where Allah is quoted. And hadith Qudsi have the highest level of authority outside of the

36:41

Quran, basically, because they are the prophet who is always truthful, reporting what

36:47

Allah said. So while the hadith Qudsi is not the Quran, it's not the uncreated word of Allah, the

36:54

Muslim is forced to give a special authority to hadith Qudsi because as long as Muhammad is telling the truth, and the hadith is correct, then this is

37:04

Muhammad telling us something else that Allah said outside of the Quran. And so since that exact language is found in a hadith

37:14

Qudsi, I think that greatly strengthens the weight of the three hadith in Muslim that has the same thing.

37:23

So that's what I've raised is that particular text, because it is so directly relevant to substitution in regards to sinfulness.

37:33

Now, of course, I've also said, that means that there's great injustice here because the

37:38

Jews and the Christians are already bearing their own sins. How can they bear somebody else's? That raises all sorts of other issues.

37:44

But yeah, there are a couple of ways that you can raise the issue of substitution, and you are not alone in thinking that that particular story, and there are others like it in the hadith, could be used that way.

38:00

Sweet. Yeah. It's also nice to have, I mean, you're the only, I think you may be the only other person

38:05

I've ever talked to who's listening to the hadith on audio. I don't know anyone else,

38:11

I don't have anyone to actually talk to about that. Well, okay. You've got me though, because you've got, what did you call it?

38:18

Mellow Middle Eastern Music? On Spotify, it's Arabic Instrumental.

38:24

Arabic Instrumental Music in the background. I don't know if that would sort of change my interpretation of the hadith, you know?

38:31

Because, I mean, would the hadith sound differently with Glenn Miller in the background? That's the question.

38:37

Maybe. It might be more interesting to listen to it, to be perfectly honest with you with that.

38:44

But anyhow, well, press on, James. I want to keep going. I'm not spending quite as much time on the bike now for a number of reasons.

38:54

And so my progress through it, you might catch up with me eventually. And I have a class,

39:00

I'm going to be teaching a class for Golden Gate, actually for Golden Gate and for Cornerstone Seminary in California.

39:06

Um, I need, we need to get something up on this too. I'm going to be in California at Cornerstone Seminary, January 2nd through the 5th, teaching an apologetics class.

39:18

The very same class I'll be teaching for Golden Gate here in Phoenix the very next week, which is really interesting how that worked out.

39:24

It was, it was talking about Providence, how that happened. But anyway, I need to be dealing with Hinduism and Buddhism in those classes.

39:33

And so I have a bunch of lectures on Hinduism and Buddhism to get through. And that's sort of going to slow down my progress through Bakari, but we're going to keep, we're going to keep moving forward.

39:44

Speaking of fun instrumentals, if you get like triplet instrumentals and play them over Doctrine and Covenants audio, that's kind of awesome.

39:56

Doctrine and Covenants audio? Really? Okay, now you're really going to confuse, you know, most people would think there's a little bit something.

40:04

They understand why I, on my iPod, have

40:09

Bakari and I have introduction to Hinduism and I've got some Buddhist stuff and I have the

40:15

Book of Mormon. Now they would understand why I do that, but they might not understand why you would do that.

40:22

Because see, you know, that's what I do. Why, you know, most people would find that just a little bit odd.

40:28

I would not tell a prospective future church what your playlist looks like, because that might, that might cause a problem.

40:36

It really, it really could. Hey, thanks, James, who is sleepless and sad because he's listening to Al Bakari with Middle Eastern music in the background.

40:46

Oh, sorry, I had another question on Mormon. Real quick, real quick. And if you, if it's possible to speak a little more clearly in the microphone or whatever it is you're using, it's a little bit difficult for me to hear.

40:58

Yeah. There you go, much better. Okay, so I've had a, I've had a few, I'm having a few interactions with former

41:05

Mormons at the moment, not Christians yet, but who have left the, who have left the church.

41:11

Why did they leave? I'm just, just sort of preparing myself in advance. I know the argument, the argument, once you've kind of exhausted all kind of logic and evidence and debate often is, well, you're just supposed to pray, have faith and feel it.

41:27

How do you, how do you tend to walk through that when you're talking to people? Well, now, these individuals, why have they, why have they left the

41:35

Mormon church if not for the truth? They just became disenchanted or what? Well, I guess it was for the truth, but they both left for different reasons.

41:45

Oh, okay. Completely unrelated to one another. So the first one was a guy who was two weeks away from going on his mission trip and just realized the

41:56

Book of Mormon wasn't true. And he left. He's in, he's kind of in the place right now where he actually claims he believes the gospel.

42:07

He believes Jesus is God, but just isn't sure he's willing to sort of give up his lifestyle, which he doesn't even like, which is incredibly honest.

42:18

And then the second one is kind of a little more, it is a little different, is his brother left the church and his sort of family kind of followed.

42:29

And he's just sort of, he's starting coming to my church, but isn't really sure of the differences yet, and is just sort of working through the differences between the

42:41

Mormon church and biblical Christianity. Well, I don't know that either one of them necessarily sound like they'd be a real candidate for using that kind of Mormon argument, the testimony, the feelings issue, because it sounds like,

43:02

I mean, if you come to the conclusion that the Book of Mormon is not what it claims to be, then there was some kind of critical thought process that you applied there that went beyond your feelings.

43:11

And you already recognize the need for some type of foundation in truth, and that if a revelation claims to have historical pedigree, and there isn't any, that's an important aspect of things.

43:31

So I'm not sure that the first one would raise that. But if you're asking just how do you deal with the general argumentation that people present, that many

43:41

Mormons present, and I, a little over a year ago, had the opportunity of talking to some

43:48

Mormons in a ward chapel, in fact, sitting in the place where they have the services, right in front of the pulpit.

43:54

And I was struck once again by the abject subjectivism of the argumentation that they presented, more so than I had recollected, to be perfectly honest with you.

44:09

It seemed that there was even less desire on their part to try to make any kind of a rational argument at all.

44:18

And the only way to deal with that is to bring Scripture to bear in regards to the deceptiveness of man's heart, the utter reliability of God's revelation, but the fact that that's an objective revelation, that it's not what it is just because I feel it or something along those lines.

44:35

And so we look at Proverbs, and there's a way that seems right unto a man, but then there are the ways of death.

44:41

And the text along those lines, in fact, on our website, in the old, old, old, old, old 1990s version stuff, articles under Mormonism, you will find the 100 -verse memorization system and probably the first,

45:01

I don't know, six, seven verses that I deal with are dealing specifically with that, dealing with the

45:07

Mormon testimony and how the Mormon testimony works and bring the light of God's Word to bear on that.

45:15

Okay? Great. Thank you. All right. Thanks, James. Thanks for your call. Thanks.

45:20

All right. All right. Bye -bye. Bye. All right. I'm trying to drop that, but you're gone too?

45:28

Oh, okay. This will catch up in about 30 seconds or something. I don't know. I've never seen it do this before, but reset time,

45:37

I guess. Anyway, I did want to make some comments in the last 15 minutes. We've got here, actually, 13 minutes that I didn't get to.

45:45

Oh, I don't see any phone calls here. It's not going to do me any good because it's not going to work on this end.

45:54

Hello, Mike? Hello. Hello. Hello. Yes, sir. Go ahead. I had a question for you on limited atonement.

46:03

I've been talking with a friend of mine about Reformed theology and he pretty much said he was for Reformed theology, but he didn't quite accept limited atonement.

46:18

Okay. And he has some background in Greek. I don't. And he brought up something he hasn't yet.

46:26

He said he was going to put together for me a list of some different verses, but he said in the

46:31

Greek, like, for example, 2 Peter 2 .1, where it uses the term bot, that there's a difference in the

46:41

Greek if it's talking about people who wouldn't be Christians. The term bot just means that he paid for them, whereas in reference to someone who is in Christ, that it would be the term which would mean bought and set free.

47:00

And I haven't seen what he's put together yet, but I just wondered if there was any validity to that or if you'd heard that kind of argument before.

47:07

Well, we've certainly dealt with 2 Peter 2 .1 many times. There is a very lengthy article, again, on the website.

47:15

If you go to the articles section, go to Reformed theology, you will find a many -page article on 2

47:23

Peter 2 .1 and Universal Redemption by Simon Escobedo. Just go to vintage .aomen

47:30

.org and you'll be able to find it there. And he has a full discussion of agaradzo and the fact that if agaradzo is being used here of redemption of a saved person, then this is the only place in all the

47:49

New Testament where the purchase price is not mentioned. And there's a lengthy discussion of that.

47:56

Something tells me that you'd find that article to prepare you for whatever it is he presents to you.

48:01

Okay, thank you very much. All right, thank you very much. All right, bye -bye. Okay, I did, like I said, want to say

48:11

I ran out of time basically on Thursday. I know that you can still see sort of the video of the debate from Monday evening with Adnan Rashid that was a week ago last evening.

48:28

And, you know, the quality is real poor, but I'm still very thankful that people were able to watch that.

48:35

But if you saw that, you know, that there were two cameras set up, there were lights set up, the recording should be really, really good.

48:44

And I'm really looking forward to that becoming available to people because I felt that despite the rather strong confrontation, which

49:01

I expect with Adnan, I debated Adnan on does the Quran misrepresent the trinity?

49:06

And that was a strong confrontation. That's just, that's the only kind of confrontation

49:12

Adnan knows. He's a, his followers are very much

49:17

Salafi and Wahhabi. He's very much a speaker's corner style

49:24

Muslim debater. And so you're not going to have a sit down over a cup of coffee chat with Adnan Rashid.

49:34

It's just not going to happen. That doesn't mean that he's angry with you or that he hates you or something like that.

49:41

It's not the case. We've had some nice emails since the debate. And I like Adnan.

49:48

I think Adnan likes me. And there's a, you know, relationship there.

49:54

And some people just find it difficult to understand how that could be, but that's the way it is.

50:00

So anyway, if you set that aside, however, what I thought was extremely useful about the debate,

50:07

I am not a prophet nor a son of a prophet, but I got this prophecy right. I said from the start,

50:13

I said, what you need to do in this debate is you need to listen to both of us and you need to determine who is using a consistent standard over the two debates.

50:28

And the reason that I wanted to debate Adnan, I've played here, I've played on this program, the comments that he made about the

50:36

New Testament in his debate with Jay Smith at Trinity College. And they represent what

50:44

I would call the Muslim street. They represent what the average person on the street is actually thinking about the

50:52

New Testament. Now, is that the most scholarly Islamic view?

50:59

No, it's not. Does Adnan know that it's not the most scholarly view? I don't think he does. And I don't think most

51:05

Muslims do. And so there are times when you have to engage majority viewpoints, even when they're not necessarily what you would rank as the best expressed or most scholarly viewpoints, because they are the viewpoint that you're going to be dealing with more often than you would be dealing with something else.

51:26

And so people will say, well, didn't you debate such and such a person on that? Well, having a debate with Shabir Ali on one subject is one thing.

51:35

But for example, I debated Shabir on the atonement and the death of Christ.

51:42

In Seattle, in what was that? 2006 or 6, 7, somewhere around. And I did it again with Sami Zatari in London.

51:51

Why? Because they take very different views. Shabir takes a non -normative view.

51:56

He doesn't represent the Muslim street on that subject. Sami does, and therefore, it's worthwhile to address that.

52:04

And the same thing here. And I thought, you know, I did point out that there's a tremendous parallel between the arguments that Adnan presented and that of King James Only fundamentalists.

52:19

And some people say, ah, you're just being mean, those King James Only guys. They're good Christians, blah, blah, blah. Well, some are, but that's not the point.

52:26

The point is that you heard the exact same kind of argumentation.

52:33

And I would think this would actually be helpful to someone who's in the King James Only camp to hear a Muslim doing with his text what he does with his.

52:43

You see, the Muslim has the Ithmanic codices. And from his perspective, this is where the very locus of God's providential preservation of the

52:54

Quran is to be found. So what do you do when you find earlier readings that differ from the

53:02

Ithmanic? You just simply reject them. You don't deal with them.

53:09

You demonize them. So, for example, people said, what was going on? You had said you didn't understand what was going on with why

53:16

Adnan asked this guy, is there anybody here who's memorized the Quran? And I was surprised at this.

53:27

I was surprised that he did this, that if you're going to do this, as they say, don't ask a question unless you know what the answer is.

53:36

And for most people, this is sort of an embarrassing point because I sort of put my head down because it obviously did not go really well.

53:44

This is not how he wanted to go. He's put a portion of the Su 'ana manuscript up on the screen, and you all couldn't really see that on the video, which may be why you didn't really understand.

53:54

You're just listening to it. So he's put a part of the Su 'ana manuscript up there, and he just wants someone to stand up and start quoting the

54:02

Quran at what was it? Surah 2, 256. That's just the number that off the top of my head I think is what it was, 226.

54:09

I forget what it was. It was in Surah 2. It was in Surah Al -Baqarah. And the guy couldn't do it.

54:18

And he actually had to take a Quran and he had to read from it. And then as he's reading from it, Adnan is using his laser pointer to point to this very ancient manuscript, which is at least the, and I didn't really spend a lot of time on this, at least the underlying portion of the manuscript has a good chance of being pre -Uthmanic.

54:41

Well, the problem is, as I then stand up, and that would have been an interesting illustration. See, there's a consistency.

54:47

Well, I can do the same thing. I can put P66 up and I can go, there's, you know, here's

54:53

John 1, 1. N -R -K -A -N -H -L -O -G -S. I can just go through John 1, 1, just the exact same way. What does this prove?

54:59

Well, that both of our texts have been preserved pretty well. But the issue is, what about before that?

55:05

What about what is said in the Hadith concerning the destruction of other manuscripts and so on and so forth?

55:11

That is the key issue. But I get up and I point out, why didn't you have him read the under text in the

55:22

Palimpsest portion of Surah 2, 222, which I showed you, I documented to you, is completely different on a text.

55:31

That's actually what the radiocarbon dating is connected to. And they don't get it.

55:37

They do not see how that was a debit on any meaningful debate level.

55:43

That was a devastating refutation of what

55:50

Adnan clearly thought was a really important point for his side. And I don't know if Adnan understands that.

55:57

And obviously my great challenge was to explain to these folks.

56:03

And I know, folks, I know, and I've explained this more than once. I know going into those debates, there's a certain portion of the audience on the other side that is not going to hear a word

56:15

I have to say. I know that, I know that. Is that frustrating to me?

56:20

Sure, I mean, it should never become unfrustrating. It should never be, oh, I don't care about them. But I know that there's certain people on the other side that are not going to hear a word

56:30

I have to say. I cannot be concerned about them. I can only be concerned about that middle portion of the audience, both that are on my side that need to be encouraged and have things explained to them, and on the other side where the

56:44

Spirit of God is at work and they have an open heart and mind to hear what I have to say. And then the next portion of their side, which maybe is very biased against me, but maybe if I behave in such a way and show them respect, that it might move them toward the other portion.

57:00

And maybe next time someone else will be able to have some impact upon them. I go into that understanding that.

57:07

But I had a tall order to try to explain how having more manuscripts and the free transmission of the text, but I had a guy come up to me after the first part of it and say to me, and he wasn't a

57:22

Muslim, but he said, I've had a lot of questions about the Bible. That is the first time

57:28

I've ever had anyone explain to me why you can trust the New Testament in a way

57:33

I could understand it. That was amazing. Why don't more people do that? Well, you know why? Because I had to do it because of the context

57:41

I was in, because this was a debate and because I knew what my audience was, I had to try to give the clearest.

57:48

And it was the fact that I'm contrasting it against another position that gave the clarity.

57:53

That's what's so wonderful about debates. And that's why I'm concerned that we may not be able to have them in the future.

58:00

Because what's going on right now don't blaspheme the prophet and the dimitude of the

58:07

Obama administration and the West and going, well, we shouldn't, arresting people for making videos that people don't like.

58:14

Yeah, it was a dumb video. But Muslims who really understand things know that what we're doing is far more important than some stupid, badly made video.

58:30

And if they can shut them up, they can shut us up too. I mean, we've just got to recognize the necessity of what free speech is and enjoy it and use it while we can, because I don't know how long we're going to have it.

58:47

Hey folks, thank you very much for listening to The Dividing Line today. Thanks for the callers calling in. Lord willing, we'll be back on Thursday at our regular time in the afternoon.

58:57

I do have some trips coming up. I'm going to be in Delaware the week after that and the week after that,

59:03

I'm going to be spending a week in lovely Detroit. Yes, I'm going to be speaking up there at a conference and also during the day, trying to get over to ABN a little bit, maybe do some teaching for them, try to help them out as much as I can as well.

59:16

So we've got more traveling coming. We'll let you know some more about that on the next program here.

59:22

We'll see you then. God bless. We must contend for the faith our fathers fought for We need a new reformation today

59:43

It's a sign of the times The truth is being trampled in a new age paradigm

59:50

Won't you lift up your voice Are you tired of plain religion It's time to make some noise

59:56

I'm going back to Oh, Wittenberg I'm going back to I stand up for the truth

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