Wood, Qureshi, Dunn

Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. It's Tuesday. It's hot and sticky here in Phoenix. Well, not overly hot. It's supposed to get up to like 109 over the weekend, but hey, it started off all right.

But that time of year where it's no longer hot and dry, it's... Well, I know people down in New Orleans are saying, it's always dry compared to us. Well, maybe. But the humidity is significantly higher between now and the second week of September.

So this is the time period where... This is our January. This is our January, February. This is why not everybody lives here. Because if we didn't have August beginning of September, everybody would and we couldn't...

There's not enough water for everybody. So that's bad. Somebody on Twitter says, we miss the chat. What chat? YouTube chat. Oh, the Hebrew Israelites can't engage in nice... They don't play well with others, huh?

Yeah. Yeah, that seems to be going around a lot today. There are many people who don't play well with others these days, sadly. Announcement, we're doing the dividing line two days in a row. In fact, we might do it three days in a row.

Who knows? But tomorrow, we're just going to have to find some way of maybe playing with the lights, doing something with the cameras, but we need to have a decent shot of right over here so that it's not just a bunch of somebody hiding in the midst of all these microphone arms and stuff like that.

Well, what I could do is get some of the real hot lights and bright ones, super bright ones, and put it right in his eyes, like the old interrogation movies in the 40s and the 50s they used to do. That really wasn't my intention.

No, listen, no. All right, buddy, let's hear you. Some people would like if I did that. Yeah, I know. There are some people who would go, that's what you need to do. Put that Jeff Durbin guy under the hot light.

Just found something in my pocket. You know, there was a day when finding a quarter in your pocket was pretty cool. Now it just rattles in the dryer. It's about all that's worth anymore. Jeff Durbin is going to join me.

And finally, in some people's minds, after all this time, it's actually when you think about it, less than a month after I left for Colorado, but today is the day of the internet and the day of deep patience on the part of many.

Jeff and I are going to get together and there's been, I even hate to call it a controversy, certainly been distracting and taking a tremendous amount of time and caused all sorts of problems and difficulties, but it's a tempest in a teapot.

It is the result of the manipulation of events, misrepresentation of those events combined with agendas on this part of certain people. And it's sad, but we are going to be talking about ReformCon. And I guess there are people out there now who are actually saying that no one ever said, now that we have demonstrated there was no such thing as this, now the narrative is changing.

And no one ever said that there was a beer and tattoo fundraiser. And I guess, I suppose I should have seen that coming. Yes. Oh, okay. You're just, oh yeah. Getting out three dog night, huh? Okay. I wouldn't know what that is because I was raised as a Christian.

But anyways, I'm just going to play one little quick clip here and it speaks for itself. We have the written examples and there's plenty of these, but this will be one of the things I've gone through.

What I'll do tomorrow is I've gone through one of the polemics reports. And it was the one that was, I thought, best at laying out what the real issues are. And the real issues here is real simple. There are certain people who really detest less land fear and the ReformPunk.

And anybody who will even talk to them, be seen the same room with them, walk on the same planet with them, breathe the same air with them, are automatically really bad people. And even if you have, as I have on this program so many times, I mean, I started, I remember starting a number of threads in the ReformPub.

I didn't start them, but I started them by comments that I made. Because on this very program, I would speak about people who confuse externals, who think if they read Calvin, smoke a pipe, wear a hat, and drink wine, this somehow makes them uber cool.

And then completely miss the point of anything that say Calvin was saying in book three of the Institutes on the Subject of Prayer, for example. That the externals are never a substitute for the reality.

And I have many times gone off after people who would confuse these things, and who would show a, who would think this is how I can be cool. And I've met these folks, and you know what, they don't last long.

They don't last long. Um, this is not something you can play with. To truly be reformed ends up impacting all of your life. Notice I didn't say in the exact same ways, but it does impact all of your life.

And it will have tremendous impact in the sick room, in the hospital, at the graveside, in every aspect of where real pressure comes along. And if you're doing it just to be cool, that won't last. That'll collapse.

That falls apart. The coolness, real shallow. And I've made comments about this on the program, and I remember entire threads that popped up. Was he talking about us? And what do you think about this?

And what do you think? And so it's something that, again, that's why I didn't want to call this a controversy, because basically I've been painted as the new promoter of the new Calvinism. I don't even know what it is.

Uh, Polygium, hipsters, they don't even, they laugh, and as appropriately so. Um, seeker-friendly, yeah, I'll have to admit. I have preached at a Polygium, and normally I have to leave, uh, because then I go to my own church, uh, because they go so stinking long.

I'm sorry, but anybody who knows what seeker-friendly is, who would go to a church that rents facilities from another church, that has uber long services, and is family integrated, they don't know what the word seeker-friendly means.

I'm sorry. It's just, it, that's why, you know, if it was a real controversy, that'd be one thing, but this is, this is just simply silly. It's just, it's just based on people just not having a clue what they're talking about.

But anyway, um, the idea that I have some intention of promoting the idea that we all should be sitting, well, first of all, I can't stand any kind of smoke, and I, you know, I've got a couple friends that smoke a stogie or something like that.

I'm, I'm always looking for which way is the wind blowing? I, you know, but I'm not going to cast them off into the outer darkness. Um, and this is where the real issue, this is, you know, Jeff and I have to talk about this, because for some people, if you do not reject any association with someone, then you're promoting them.

And that, of course, is where adults go, excuse me, that doesn't work. Um, there is, there is literally a maturity issue here, because for some people, it's like, well, if you won't, if you won't, if you, if someone over here does something you don't like, then you need to put as much distance between you and them, lest someone think, well, you know what, it's amazing the things that people think today.

The level of irrationality is shocking. And just because someone engages in a particular behavior that I disagree with, who is a Christian, does that give me the right to therefore either condemn them or to deprive them of my fellowship?

This is some of the things we're gonna be talking about. But anyway, I, I, I have digressed. The meme that developed early on, uh, that was initially brought about by the grossly mistitled, um, article, which is one of the reasons it was, it is appropriately and properly called yellow journalism.

And I'll repeat that, I will not back off of it, because no one has given me any reason to do so. I don't care if someone nice wrote it. It was not journalism. It was a hit piece. There's no question about this, none.

And the documentation is already out there. It has been for weeks, but documentation, you know, anyway, um, the meme that developed was that there was this beer and tattoo, um, fundraiser. And so you've got, you know, people have got pictures in their minds of, uh, of a church event.

It's a Sunday morning and, um, you've got people running around with, uh, with bottles of beer, uh, and you can barely hear the sermon over the buzz of the, uh, of the tattoo machines, I guess. And this was identified as debauchery, licentiousness, lasciviousness, carnality.

Uh, and we actually happen to know what the word debauchery means. We have dictionaries. And when you use it with other words like lasciviousness and licentiousness and stuff, it's pretty obvious what you're actually saying, even though you afterwards try to backpedal away from it and come up with other definitions, which again, humorous, if it wasn't so sad.

Um, but now people are saying, Oh no, no, no, no. Whoever said that, whoever said that, well, the problem is the internet has an incredibly long memory. Um, I mean, every once in a while, someone will pop up a link to some of our old stuff on the, from the Texas 387 .net 19, late 1990s stuff with blinking HTML and color bars and just, you know, all that fun stuff.

And the internet just doesn't forget stuff. So just, just one little, one little clip from what I've got queued up for tomorrow. Just, you know, and I, you know, just in case I've missed it, I, I, I suppose I should listen to here, but just, just one, one little clip here.

Oh, I suppose I should actually.

Activate the right program here. Here we go. People are finding a tattoo booze fundraiser.

No, what was that? I didn't catch that. What, what was that term?

People are finding a tattoo booze fundraiser and the video chiefly put out by Marcus Pittman.

As being appropriate. I think unless I'm not hearing, I think that was Pastor Hall saying tattoo booze fundraiser. And there are many others, but, uh, yeah, it's, it's that stuff still posted there. It's, it's there.

Um, and you know, uh, people can go through this stuff and, um, you know, there was the, here's another one about, uh, booze and tattoo article and, uh, so on and so forth. It's a beer and tattoo thing that night.

Yeah. Here's, here's, here's,.

Here's one. Uh, regard, who has all the information? Just the people actually inside the church. Was there enough information to be had, uh, regarding the beer and tattoo thing?

Beer and tattoo thing. And it seems to be, seems to be all over the place. So yeah, it did. It was, was used, didn't happen, but it was used. And, and now the facts are out that it didn't happen, but, but anyway, that's, that's what we're talking about tomorrow.

Not today. Actually, uh, I have a whole number, another group of people to offend today. Uh, some days, some months, uh, some lives. If this is relevant though, this is relevant. And right now I can tell you Yaya Snow is going, Oh, good.

What do I get now? I, you know, I really appreciate the fact that, um, David Wood, Sam Shimon, both have, you know, come out and said the same thing. I have been thinking about quite some time addressing the issue of Yaya Snow.

Uh, but they've, they've done so, uh, already. And I'll just add my, my voice to it. Yaya Snow exists to cause division and to end meaningful conversation between Christians and Muslims. That's his entire purpose in life.

Um, I have never seen a positive, meaningful, uh, addition to the dialogue from Yaya Snow. His videos are specifically designed to slant uh, to, uh, divide, to misrepresent. Um, I, I've just never seen the man do anything fair in his life.

Not, I've just never seen it. If he's done something, I missed it. But, um, he really is a, a stone in the shoe of anyone, Muslim or Christian, who is actually trying to get communication going. And there aren't all that many Muslims that want that kind of communication going already.

So you, uh, throw someone like that in there. And as David, David produced a video that sort of went viral over the weekend, where he defended his good friend, Nabeel Qureshi, uh, from the hit piece produced by none other than one of the contributors to the Rolex of Polemics blogs.

I, guys, don't you realize every time you use that phrase that everyone laughs, but they're laughing at you and not with you? I mean, seriously, it's just, guys, stop, wake up. Bad phraseology, uh, really strikes everyone, including myself, as just, I guess the term, term today is tone deaf, really, really tone deaf, um, really bad.

Anyway, uh, Seth Dunn, uh, decided to, um, produce a, a hit piece article on Nabeel Qureshi. And you'll remember I responded to it. I think the day it came out or the day after, I forget which one it was.

It was very, very soon. And what I addressed is a subject that I have addressed over and over and over again in regards to Akhmadi Islam. We'll talk about that in a moment. So Seth put this things out.

And so David did one of those responses and I retweeted it to my followers. Now there are things in it that I'm going to disagree with or take a different slant on during this program, but you see, here's, here's the problem.

There are a lot of people today who seemingly think that you have to have 100 agreement with someone to either think they're a Christian or to recommend them or anything like that. Well, well, do you agree with him about that?

Well, then why would you retweet it? There's just, our society is demonstrating in this current political season, um, an incredible immaturity in thought. And sadly, that is reflected in the church as well.

It should be a given that any one of us can express appreciation for someone without demanding that they agree with us 100 on every single thing. In other words, it used to be a given that we recognize that there was a hierarchy of truths.

There are things that are absolutely central and definitional. And then you have Adiaphora and not all the Adiaphora are as important as other Adiaphora. And there are some things that will divide our fellowship in churches, but does not divide our fellowship in Christ, for example.

So I could not properly be an elder in a Presbyterian church. I do not have the proper view of church government. I do not have the proper view of baptism from their perspective. And yet we can have close communion in the gospel and we can stand together for the gospel and things like this.

Well, it seems that that fundamental basic adult maturity is missing in a large portion of the culture today. And therefore, it ends up going missing amongst a lot of Christians as well. And certainly there is amongst the, you know, if you've got a good long stripe of the independent fundamentalist Baptist in you, there tends to be this doctrine of separation.

And unfortunately, that doctrine of separation, which is necessary on the definitional things, ends up going way down the of the Adiaphora. And so we can all sit around and chuckle about the person who, you know, well, we can't have anybody in our church who isn't of this particular eschatological perspective.

You can agree with us on the Trinity, the deity of Christ, the resurrection, whole nine yards. But you're, you are mid-trib? You heretic. It's sort of like, it's sort of like the joke about the guy, you know, he's about to jump off the bridge.

The guy comes up, hey, life's worth living. They start talking, go all the way down the list about, you know, oh, you're a Christian, you're a Reformed Baptist and you up until you get down to I'm Reformed Baptist, May 1875.

And the other guy is June of 1875 and die heretic and he pushes him off the bridge. Many, many permutations of it, but it speaks to a truth. It speaks to a reality that unfortunately does exist. And so a lot of people struggle with the simple reality that we live in a fallen world.

And even within close fellowship of faith, there are going to be differences of opinions amongst believers. And there are two different kinds of people when it comes, well, there's, I'll take that back.

There's, there's more than that, but amongst seriously minded Bible believers, there's a limited number of options here. You know, you got the liberals that anything goes and stuff like that. Leaving them out.

There are those who basically say, well, this is a term that I heard from someone recently. If you can live with me, I can live with you. This is, we don't, here's where I stand. But if you don't agree, we will not divide over.

And then there are others that will go, if you don't agree with me, I can't live with you. Now, obviously, if you take that position, what you're saying is what we're talking about is absolutely definitional.

It, it, it defines the faith. It defines the faith for me. It should define the faith for you. The problem is a lot of people, as I said, will take that down the list past the definitional things into the things that do not make a difference into the adiaphora.

And so I think there's a lot of folks who live in a world of inconsistency, where on the one hand, they'll say, oh, well, I've learned so much from my Presbyterian friends. Oh, yeah. And then in life, it's sort of like, but I'm not really gonna treat them as Christians.

I mean, I'll technically say they are, because I know I have to. But I can't, I can't really act that way. Because acting that way would mean I have, I have to show love and, and do the things that Christians do for other Christians, you know, encourage them.

But I disagree with them. Well, you know, have good conversations, have good debates. You know, I'm never saying, don't, don't hear me saying you shouldn't discuss these things. But you know, if you can be open with someone and say, I disagree with him, here's why you might end up being used to bless them, and to be used in bringing them into a fuller understanding of the faith.

And this is what scares a lot of people. And you yourself might end up learning something too, and discovering that maybe you had a few things way high up on the list right near the border of definitional that might not be as definitional as you thought they were.

And it might make you less popular in your certain circles. Yeah, that's, that's a lot of what's going on. That's a lot of what's going on. All right, back to the story here. So David puts out this video.

Now, look, I love David Wood. I love Nabeel. Have I criticized certain things that are, I have. I'm going to disagree, for example, with what is said, that basically the Michael Icona, if you're in this list, and it's a list that is, does not have the gospel as its filter, then you're my brother and sister in Christ.

That's, that's where Nabeel is. And everybody knows on this program, how many times I have talked about mere Christianity, defining the faith solely upon the least common denominators. I've warned against it.

I've explained why it's not possible, a whole nine yards. And you're going to be of one or two mindsets. Let's use this as an example, because one of the things that David said, there are two, there are two areas in the film, in the video, which I recommended that people watch.

There are two areas where I would express things differently or have disagreement, A, in regards to the Muslim right of self-definition and the Akhmadi issue, and how I think that Nabeel should handle that, which I've already talked about in the past, but I'll talk about it again.

But B was this issue of, what was it, the Resolve 2016? I keep forgetting what the name was. United something, look it up, I don't know. This thingy, with all the ecumenical overtones to it. And basically, David's take was, oh, I'm shocked that Nabeel offered the opportunity to, what?

Oh, it was Resolve. But I've seen it described a lot of different ways. Oh, well, whatever. Anyway, basically it was said, oh, opportunity to preach to a million people? Sure, I'm there. Together? Together 2016, okay.

Uh, well, if it was an opportunity to preach the gospel and call even some of the people that were there to the gospel, that's different. Being a part of the event without expressing clearly your belief that there are many people who are participating in the event that do not possess the gospel.

That's the issue. The issue is not, oh, would you like to have an opportunity to preach to a million people? The issue is, in my preaching to a million people, am I clarifying or clouding my understanding of and my proclamation of the gospel?

That's the issue. And obviously, this is where I just simply have to say to Nabeel, can you look at the New Testament and find the apostles functioning on this foundation? Or is it not clear that in light of Galatians, that for the apostle Paul, the gospel was absolutely definitional.

And we're talking the central aspect of the gospel and sola fide being a non-negotiable thing. It's not adiaphora. And at that together 2016 thing, you have people who not only will not affirm justification by grace alone through faith alone, but preach a different message than justification by grace alone through faith alone.

And so, the issue becomes one of participation without pushback, participation without clarity. Now, some might say, well, you've been on Michael Brown's radio program. Exactly. What do we do? We debated.

We debated these issues. No one had any confusion whatsoever as to where I stood. We talked about Calvinism. We talked about reformed theology and the freedom of the will and the bondage of the will and the sovereign decree of God and the nature of evangelism.

And had somebody call in and ask about tongues and we gave two completely different responses to the particular issue. There is absolute clarity and openness when I take that opportunity. Everybody knows when Michael asks me to guest host for him, his people know exactly what they're getting and exactly where I stand.

When I taught classes at his school back in January, the students looked forward to the interaction that they were going to see. They were not looking forward to seeing me get beat up. They fully knew exactly where I was coming from.

I don't know how that could happen at Together 2016. And so, I heard what David was saying and I go, okay, I get that, but I disagree. And here's why. Because one of the overriding themes of the conference was this unity and this togetherness, but without the clarification of what the issues that have divided us for so long really mean.

And unfortunately, for many Protestants and many Roman Catholics too, those issues no longer matter. Doesn't matter whether you use that word alone or not. It's now an irrelevancy and that does not help to clarify the gospel at all.

So, for some people, what Nabeel's stance on that is, is enough to go so much for him. Now, that's not what Seth Dunn was saying, unfortunately. Seth's point is, well, there's bad people here and it's the whole association thing and then combine that with this minor contradiction issue that David took apart quite well.

And of course, it was somewhat humorous because Seth could use an editor and he served himself up on a platter to someone like David Wood at that point. He had made the exact same kinds of errors in his writing.

That he was then pointing to in Nabeel's story, which again, causes many conservative evangelicals a problem because it raises the issue of dreams and visions. And when, in fact, if you'll go back, and I don't know, I know we don't have it indexed in such a way you can, but I know that it's true.

If you go back on this program, all the way back to 2008, I think, because I think I met Nabeel either in 07 or 08, I think it was 08. It was whenever we went to Norfolk and I did the Nader Ahmed debacle in Norfolk.

I remember we were setting up for a debate and it was David and Nabeel and I, and maybe somebody else, but we were setting up for the debate and Nabeel and I were having theological conversation and the issue of dreams and visions came up.

And I've told the story over and over again that I said to him then, I said, look, I hear your testimony. I had heard his testimony. I believe in Sola Scriptura. I do not believe there is authoritative binding revelation from God, but at the same time, I can't say that God can't use the exact same ways that he communicated with others in the past today, not to give scripture, but in a personal fashion.

And I said, my ground rule here would be very simple. If a person remains faithful to the Word of God, is always looking only to the Word of God, does not continue to look for dreams and visions. And I said, look, I've gotten to the age now where I recognize one of the best ways of determining who's true in the faith is this little thing called he who endures to the end shall be saved.

It's not my endurance, but if I have true saving faith, it will endure. It's a thoroughly reformed concept. And I said, look, 20 years down the road, let's take a look at what's going on amongst people who've claimed to have these visions.

If they are solid, orthodox believers, there you go. If they're off in other religions or in cults and wild, wacky craziness, that says a lot too. And he fully agreed at that time that he doesn't look to dreams and visions for revelation or anything like that.

It's just simply the mechanism that was used in his situation and obviously in the situation of others to draw them to the biblical gospel. Now, I haven't had a lot of contact with Nabeel for a number of years.

He's often doing highfalutin New Testament stuff. He's gotten very much involved with RZIM. He's a member of RZIM. And I have criticized, hopefully respectfully, Ravi Zacharias' comments on the subject of Roman Catholicism.

Unlike some people, I play the comment and then interact with it and hopefully have done so in a respectful fashion. Obviously, that's going to be the greatest influence on Nabeel's life is going to be that spectrum.

And basically, what I have seen is he's adopted the Mike Licona. And Licona is a big influence. The Mike Licona, if you're a Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, you're my brother, sister in Christ. But here's the question.

Who has a better opportunity of speaking truth into Nabeel's life and asking him to really seriously think about the centrality of the gospel and a consistent theological position? Myself, who continues to see him as my brother, for whom I'm greatly thankful, for whom I see tremendous gifts in his life, I pray.

I pray for anybody who goes into any university education, but I especially pray for someone who goes into places like that because I've seen so many bright, promising young men fundamentally handicapped by less than biblically conservative theology and worldview.

I've seen it happen many, many times. I hope and pray it doesn't happen in Nabeel's case, and I would encourage you to pray for that too. Who's going to have a greater opportunity of speaking to him? Someone like myself, who adopts that position, or someone like Seth Dunn, who quotes from Yaya Snow, takes a cheap shot at his credibility, and then basically says, yeah, I'm not really sure we should promote this guy.

I don't know. Who's going to have more of an opportunity? Who's he going to hear? That might be one of the questions we might want to ask. So, I can guarantee you, if anyone has talked to Nabeel about this, he knows where I stand.

He knows that I've engaged in debating Roman Catholics for many, many years. And so, the question is, can you be clear in your disagreement with grace, or is there a fundamental contradiction between these two things, and that the only grace you know has to have the sharp edge of a sword?

That's one of the questions. The other thing, as I see time passing by, the other thing that I had some disagreement on, I did find David's discussion and his defense of Nabeel as a Muslim interesting.

There is a lot of backstory in regards to the nature of Ahmadi claims. But at the same time, I still think it needs to be understood that, and this has been my, you can go back, we archive all this stuff, there's a reason for it.

My recommendation to Nabeel Qureshi has been, and I think I specifically said this right around the time that Seth put out the article initially, Nabeel needs to use this issue of his Ahmadi upbringing in a positive way.

And hence, he needs to be the one that brings it up, determines what the foundation of the conversation is going to be, and then uses it in a positive way. How would you do that? You would do that by saying, now I was raised as an Ahmadi Muslim.

Sunni Muslims do not consider us to be Muslims, and in fact, they persecute us, and there's a fairly lengthy martyrology of Ahmadis at the hands of Sunnis, and this is a terrible thing, and I obviously, I'm speaking as Nabeel here, I obviously think that it's an important thing that the Ahmadi are a peaceful people, but Sunni Muslims say that we were not Muslims.

However, I think it's important for you to understand why they say that, and how it's pretty much irrelevant to my story of becoming a Christian. Because, and then go into, Sunni Muslims and Ahmadi Muslims are in complete agreement on the fundamental theological affirmations within Islam that are specifically denials of Christian truth.

So in other words, he as an Ahmadi Muslim had to overcome the exact same objections that the Sunni Muslim has against Christianity. So I believed in the Quran, I believed in the prophethood of Muhammad, not that he was the final prophet, and since there was one that came afterwards, but I believed in the prophethood of Muhammad.

I believed in the reality of the teachings of the Hadith. I believed that Jesus Christ did not die upon the cross. I had a belief that he was crucified, but that, you know, you can go into the swoon theory because that's one of the other Ahmadi things.

If you've listened to my debate with Shabir Ali, you have heard some of these discussions before, but didn't believe that Jesus is the Son of God, did not believe in the doctrine of the Trinity, did not believe in the Gospel, that there is a resurrection, that there is a sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

All of these issues, I have a complete fear of engaging in shirk. I believed in Tawhid. Go through all of these things, use them as the connection, the bridge, and say the reason that the Sunnis rejected me was because, reject the Ahmadi, is because of then introduce the later prophet and any of the other variations that are there.

Use it as an opening. Don't use it as something to where, well, I was a Muslim. You leave that alone, and then they go look it up, and you've got Yahya Snow videos saying, yeah, he was never a Muslim.

He was an Ahmadi. Well, why didn't you say that? Use it right up front as a mechanism of introducing the subject and saying, when it comes to the things that you're going to be talking to a Muslim about, I believed all these things, and here's how my interaction with David, we had a conversation about this, and we had a conversation about that, and I was telling David this, and then you can go into the whole thing.

That's been my suggestion. But I just felt like there was somewhat of a, and look, there's truth in what David said, and that is that there is significantly closer, if you were to take the circle of Ahmadi theology and the circle of Sunni theology, the area of overlap is huge, and if you were to take what is actually the central definitional beliefs, Unitarian Monotheism, denial of the doctrine of the Trinity, those absolutely central, Tawhid, Shirk, Hell, that kind of stuff, yes, David is exactly right that the Sunni and the Ahmadi in definitional areas share much more in common than, for example, the illustration used by Seth Dunn, and that is the Mormons, and there is even this really uber confusing sentence that I guess was fixed later on about Mormons not being Mormons or something, I don't know, but with Mormonism, you have the very heart and soul of what defines the Christian faith missing.

It's only the shell where you have agreement. What's at the center is gone because you have polytheism, polytheism just on a rank level, which is why I can say that Islam will always be closer to Biblical Christianity than Mormonism ever could be because at its most fundamental level, it is monotheistic as is Christianity.

So, I have used the illustration only to explain the Sunni understanding of these things, that the Ahmadi are to the Sunni as Jehovah's Witnesses are to us. I was not using that as an illustration of how much overlap or to compare the two, just the fact that for Sunni Muslims, the Ahmadi are anathema.

They are not to be considered within the fold because of the centrality of the confession of the uniqueness and finality of the prophethood of Muhammad. And if we are going to demand the right to dispute with the Muslim when they say, oh, well, there were Unitarian Christians and this kind of Christian.

No, no, there's not. I realize historians will utilize that terminology in a vague sense, but on a theological sense, those are meaning as like atheist Christian, it just doesn't make any sense. The Sunni looks at the Ahmadi and says, this is definitional to our faith, the finality of the prophet Muhammad cannot be negotiated.

If you therefore hold to Ahmadi beliefs, then you're not a Muslim. In the same way, we say to Jehovah's Witnesses, you may have a Bible, you may believe much of what the Bible says about this, that, or the other thing.

But the fact of the matter is, if you have a Jesus who's Michael the Archangel, that's not Christianity. And so that must be acknowledged, that cannot be swept under a rug or anything else. It absolutely positively must be acknowledged and you must allow the Sunni Muslim the right of self-definition.

You're going to end up in pure hypocrisy. If you then on your own part say, we demand right of self-definition as well, stop defining people as Christians who are not Christians in the first place. But none of this is relevant to what Nabeel addresses.

Nabeel addresses, here are my beliefs as an Ahmadi Muslim. Everything he had to get over, trinity, deity of Christ, the cross, the resurrection, the concept of sin and atonement, alleged corruption of the Bible.

When I met with the Ahmadi congregation a number of years ago in New York, they raised the exact same issues that any other Muslim I'd ever spoken to raised. And showed us, sadly, a tremendous familiarity with Ahmadiyya arguments, which are not the best arguments by any stretch of the imagination, but that's what they showed a familiarity with.

And so the point is, the things that he would be talking about in his journey, the things he had to overcome, the beliefs that he had to see fundamentally modified on the basis of examination and thinking through and so on, the exact same things a Sunni would have to be addressing.