Ehrman and Islamic Apologetics and More on Andy Stanley and Russell Moore

Greetings and welcome to the Divine Line. My name's James White. I don't see anything on the screen, but I'm assuming that we are there somehow, maybe. I even pulled the microphone closer, but I still don't have anything on the screen, so we're doing the best that we can.

Sorry for being late in the day. It was all my fault. Scheduling, so on and so forth, and rushing about and doing things like that, but it's good to be with you. So as to demonstrate that we haven't completely forgotten about the rest of the world, and so you don't think that we have an Andy Stanley fixation.

In fact, it has nothing to do with Andy Stanley, actually. It's just that what's coming out from this is just so effective in casting light on key issues that we've been talking about for a long, long time.

And a lot of people, I just don't think, have necessarily caught how important it is. And all of a sudden, we're hearing stuff like, what do you mean you start your every Easter service saying, we don't believe in resurrection because the Bible tells us so.

We've got something better than that. What do you mean by that? What's that supposed to mean? Well, you know, we've been worrying about this stuff for a long, long time, and now you're hearing it from an extremely popular guy who 40 ,000 people listen to him.

And how did that happen? And it's just illustrating stuff. But before we get to that, wow, we have a listener in France where it is 1 a .m., and I guess they want to be recognized for the devoted follower of the program that they are.

Earlier in the day, a couple hours ago, we were tweeted this message. Dr. Oakley, 1689, due in part to listening to the dividing line, I plan to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation by leaving the Roman Church.

Seems appropriate. Well, it does, as long as you're leaving for the proper reason. And of course, having listened to this program, the only real reason to leave Rome is that you have come to understand the gospel of Jesus Christ and want to follow Him and honor that gospel, because Rome does not honor that gospel because of her additions there, too.

Bart Ehrman, Islamic Apologetics, and the Double Standard of Higher Criticism

So, before we get back to Dr. Moore and Andy Stanley, a couple months ago, well, actually, maybe a year ago, you know how these, it used to be more of something that happened more often. People would start impromptu email lists, you know, back when the internet was fairly new and you didn't have all the social media and stuff like that.

You'd start a group and you'd use the CC, reply to all stuff, and that's how you sort of did the poor man's Facebook group or something before there was a Facebook. And about a year ago, maybe, I'd have to go look.

An impromptu email list was put together that I was added to that is primarily populated. There's a couple of Christians in it. Tony Costa is one of them. I think Jonathan McClatchy's in the group. But it's mainly Muslim apologists, Yusuf Ismail, Paul Williams, Ijaz Ahmed, a few others, Yaya Snow, etc., etc.

And there's been a number of times I've just wanted to say, hey, you know, I'm not really interested in this, you know, I don't know. But, you know, it is helpful to sort of hear what people have to say and there's been a few interesting things and, you know, I don't have time.

Those things can be just so time-consuming and stuff like that. Well, to make a long story short, a couple of days ago, Paul Williams, Paul Blau Williams from London, posted an article from Bart Ehrman.

He loves to post Bart Ehrman articles and so he posted a Bart Ehrman article and it was about how textual criticism is safe for conservative Christians. And in and of itself, it's rather interesting. It would be something that I would respond to.

You know, it does shed some light on Ehrman and his apostasy and the reasons therefore. It's stuff we've talked about before. But what I found so strange is that Paul Williams and pretty much all of our Muslim friends have a fascination with Bart Ehrman.

They just view him as their favorite weapon, their favorite weapon of choice. And it was just so obvious to me, the double standard that was involved here, that what I did is I wrote back to Mr. Williams and I said, do you agree with what Bart Ehrman said here?

Well, I get this short little one-line response that basically says, he made many claims, I don't have time to go through all of them. Okay. All right. Well, how about we do it this way then? I find you all rather fascinating with how much you are into Bart Ehrman.

Let me repost part of what Bart Ehrman said, but make a few little changes. And so I took the time, I was in the middle of something, but I took the time to take about, I don't know, one, two, three, four, five, oh, six.

Six paragraphs of Ehrman's blog and just little creative editing and reposted it. Well, Williams' response was, you are not a scholar of the Quran, so I'm not going to read anything you say about it. That's it.

And of course, my response was, you're not a scholar of anything, therefore, I guess we shouldn't listen to you about anything. Which is true. Man's never taught any place that I know of. It's not published.

It's not taught in any schools. Nothing. But what he had skipped over, well, I doubt he skipped over. I imagine he read it and he just used that to get around it. What I did is, I'm going to read you what I posted.

My edits to the Bart Ehrman article. And listen and hear what you... Now, when it says Quranic, it used to say New Testament. And when it says Sunni, it used to say Conservative Christian. Something along those lines.

You'll see what it means. So, here's Bart Ehrman's article edited. This is what I posted and this is what Paul Williams wouldn't respond to. And there's an obvious reason for it. Because it exposes the double standard.

And I think he knows that. Most Quranic scholars are deeply interested in and committed to views of higher criticism, the rigorously historical attempt to understand the Quran. Engaging in this kind of critical work virtually presupposes that one will acknowledge and be willing to discover that there are historical problems with the Quran.

Discrepancies, contradictions, historical errors and factual mistakes. The goal of higher criticism is not simply to point out such problems. The goal is to provide a historically rooted understanding of the text.

But for most scholars, doing so means acknowledging that such problems exist simply at the starting point. Now, I just stopped right there. Applying what Ehrman was saying about the New Testament, the Quran.

Impossible for Sunnis. Because this exposes what is it to be a scholar of the Quran from Ehrman's perspective. It's to engage in higher criticism. It's to approach it from a thoroughly secular perspective.

And to take as a given, as a starting point, that it is not what it claims to be. That it does contain errors. That it's not the very word of God. That's just where you have to start. And he's posting this because, oh, and Williams especially, this has been his very snobbish approach all the way along.

I'm not a real scholar because I believe in inerrancy. See, Ehrman's a real scholar. So I'm just turning it around and saying, oh, so in Islam, the people who believe that the Quran is actually the word of God, and it is without error.

And it actually eternally exists in the very form that it has right now. They're not scholars, according to Bart Ehrman. They can't engage in scholarship. But for most scholars, doing so means acknowledging that such problems exist simply at the starting point.

Well, if you can't do that, then you fall into the category he then goes on to talk about. But Orthodox Sunni scholars simply refuse to acknowledge that view. Which means they cannot start where all the other critical scholars start.

Now, I stop right there and say, Ehrman is wrong to say that believing New Testament scholars do not acknowledge that this other view exists. Of course they do. They interact with it all the time. We interact with Ehrman's view far more than Ehrman and his people even acknowledge the existence of ours.

But I'm changing this around. Orthodox Sunni scholars simply refuse to acknowledge that view. Which means they cannot start where all the other critical scholars start. That's exactly right. They start not with the sense that the Quran needs to be treated like all other books from the ancient world, but that it needs to be treated differently as the inspired word of God.

But if that's the starting assumption, you can't really do the kind of analysis that others apply with their own assumption that the Quran is a very human book with all the frailties that a close connection with fallible human authors entails.

And so it is very hard to be an interpreter of the Quran as an Orthodox Sunni if you want to work in and contribute to scholarship done by others in the field. It can be done depending on which interpretive issues you're dealing with but it's very tricky.

This is true on so many levels. For example, if you don't think there can be any contradictions in the parallel accounts of stories in the Quran, then your interpretation of a passage in Surah 7 that is also in Surah 26 will be affected because you will not be able to acknowledge that these Surahs have changed and altered wording and content.

But that kind of acknowledgement is absolutely fundamental to a historical, critical understanding of each of the Surahs. Or if you refuse to acknowledge that there are Surahs in the Quran that claim to have come from Muhammad, which in fact give evidence of a later origination, then your interpretation of those Surahs will be radically different from someone who, on historical critical grounds, thinks that some of the current Surahs in the Quran were written, in fact, by someone else.

If you think Muhammad dictated Surah 9, Sunnis as a rule do, Orientalists among the scholars as a rule see other possibilities, then you would use Surah 9 as evidence for what Muhammad thought and taught, and you would interpret Surah 9 in light of what Muhammad says elsewhere, and you would interpret what Muhammad says elsewhere in relation to what he says in Surah 9.

If you think Muhammad did not write the Surah, you simply would not treat it that way, and your interpretation would be massively different. See, all this is exactly true. It fits perfectly, and what it demonstrates is that Paul Williams will buy one, not the other.

Just change the words, exact same application, exact same categories, and yes, that proves the New Testament's wrong. No, that does not prove the Quran's wrong. It's just glowingly obvious, and I think that's why he decided that, well, you're not a scholar of the Quran, so I'm not going to listen to anything you say.

That's nice. And so, if you want to talk whether the scholars in the field or publish articles and books in the field and journals and presses and presuppose historical critical views and approaches, and you have a completely different set of assumptions and presuppositions, well, it's very hard.

Most of the time, it doesn't work. Let me stress, I can't stress this enough, although roughly 36 of my readers won't believe me or possibly hear me, I am not saying there cannot be Sunni scholars of the Quran.

That is absolutely not the case, in the least. There are lots of Sunni scholars of the Quran, some of them superb scholars, but if they approach the Quran from the point of view that there could be no mistakes of any kind in it, that would be a very hardcore Sunni and certainly a Salafist position, then they have to restrict their scholarly conversation partners to one another, publishing in journals and with presses that support their theological views, not in the standard critical journals and presses.

It was, if I say so myself, an extremely accurate editing job to demonstrate the epidemic of inconsistency demonstrated by Paul Williams. Yes, I know, there's a bunch of them. Anyway, hey, if Rush Limbaugh can talk to people outside, then I can respond to Rich when he's looking around at stuff.

Anyway, so, once again, I think the reason that Paul Williams didn't respond to that is because it's just too glaringly obvious that this really does demonstrate the fundamental problem that Islamic scholarship has on this issue.

Peace with God in Christian-Muslim Dialogue

Now, I don't have the specifics as far as place and time yet. I hope to have that as early as Thursday. But I am exceptionally pleased, exceptionally pleased to be able to announce that coming up in just a matter of weeks, at the end of October, when I visit Brisbane and Sydney and Wellington, New Zealand, first time in New Zealand, that while we are in Sydney, we will be having a debate, a discussion, a dialogue between myself and Abdullah Kunda.

The subject will be Peace with God. How do you obtain it? A Christian-Muslim dialogue. And most of you, well, I hope most of you have seen the debate that Abdullah Kunda and I did what year was that?

2011, 2012? Somewhere around. It was the last time I was in Australia. On can God become man? Because in more than 40 moderated public debates with Muslims, it still ranks number one in my mind for clarity and my greatest, the greatest positive thing that I can say toward Abdullah Kunda is that he is one of the only Muslim thinkers that I know that actually hears what the other side says, that actually extends himself to try to understand, to try to dialogue, to try to engage in a meaningful fashion.

And so when you have both sides trying to do that, that makes for great discussions. Quite honestly, in the Christian-Muslim area, really unusual discussions. Really unusual discussions. And so we tackled a tough topic before.

I thought this would be a real good addition to that. There's a number of other topics that we need to get to someday, but we're picking off the big, you know, the top ones, the heavy ones, and this is certainly a subject with tremendous range of application.

How do you have peace with God? And you know, Abdullah has joined my classes a number of times in the seminaries that I've taught via Skype to interact with my students, and this is a subject that has come up.

And so I know that already, Abdullah has much more understanding of what it is that Christians are saying about the Atonement, and about peace with God, and stuff like that, than the vast majority of Muslims I know.

So it should be, I hope it will be, exceptionally useful. So I'm very excited about that. And we will see what comes of that. So, I'm excited, and we can still use your help in getting to Australia and New Zealand.

There's a link on the front of the web page to help us to do that. Michael Kruger, one of the most brilliant minds in believing Reformed Christendom today, President of the Charlotte Campus of the Reformed Theological Seminary, today posted a blog article at michaeljkruger .com.

Is the Bible Foundation of Christianity Engaging with Andy Stanley? I do not know if Dr. Kruger has the time to have listened to the dividing line, or maybe someone summarized. I don't know. All I know is we're saying the same things.

He raises the same issues in responding to Andy Stanley. If you'd like to have the written version of that, michaeljkruger .com is where you can read that blog article posted today. Again, sort of a shortened version of the rather elongated version that we have been doing.

I would recommend that to you. I don't have time today because I do want to dive back into this. If you have not been listening to the briefing, I pretty much overdosed Monday. I caught up with all the briefings in one day.

Six briefings in one day will possibly cause you to either become the Unabomber or leave all social media and become the Unabomber. There's not much of a choice. It's depressing. It's not depressing because Dr. Mueller is depressing.

It's just that he's documenting the moral and cultural revolution. It's pathetic to watch and listen to. Please especially take note if you have not listened to it. Take note of the U .S. Commission on Civil Rights report on Religious Freedom and Discrimination entitled Peaceful Coexistence Reconciling Nondiscrimination Principles with Civil Liberties.

Ben Sasse, the senator from Nebraska, real sharp young man, really is. You know you're getting old when you call senators young men. But he said it reveals a disturbingly low view of our First Amendment freedoms.

It puts religious liberty in scare quotes and says religious liberty must now be subservient to other values. And you need to understand those other values are erotic freedom and the exaltation of sexual perversion.

That's what it is. That's the only way to put it. Take a look at that. If you have not listened to Dr. Moeller's comments on it, he rightly made it the lead story. I think it was Thursday of last week.

I don't remember exactly, but take a look at that. We will have more to say on that. We have been talking about the Uber rights for a very, very, very, very long time. And now we're seeing this taking place.

There's no, absolutely no question about that at all. All right. I want to go back to Andy Stanley and Russell Moore. We stopped at the end of the atheist letter and made some comments at that particular point.

Just to remind you, obviously, one of my greatest concerns here is the very nature of the church and the function of the church. And it does seem to me that Pastor Stanley has decided that the idea of being limited by New Testament revelation as to what the church is to be.

There's clearly no concept of a regulative principle in his mind. There is no concept that is derived from the Reformation example of seeking biblical foundation for positive actions within the church or the definition of the nature of the church, the constituency of the church.

I have no earthly idea how this conglomeration of fellowships, of hundreds, thousands, maybe, fellowships under the loose technical leadership, and it's technical in the sense of somebody up on a screen on a Sunday.

I don't know how this loose confederation engages in church discipline, or if it even does. I don't know how it could because if atheists are members of your church, then how do you disfellowship them, and for what?

I don't understand, don't get it, but we have obvious foundational differences and these foundational differences are beginning to become more and more blatantly seen once the pressure of the society is coming more and more upon our churches.

I hate to say it, but that's what I've been saying for a long time. As that pressure increases, as we get pushed closer and closer to one another, the fundamental, foundational differences will become more and more evident.

It's like with Roman Catholicism. If you are a non-Roman Catholic of mere convenience, of taste, of prejudice or bigotry, rather than of conviction, the time's going to come when you're going to have to wonder, is it really worth my doing this?

Is it really worth my suffering, or should I just go ahead and compromise? Because taste, preference, prejudice, those aren't good reasons to oppose Roman Catholicism. So, getting back to this issue with Andy Stanley, people are just, they hear what he's saying, and first of all, most of us can't understand the distinction he's making between Scripture and Bible.

We don't see how, well, I'm just trying to, I'm overcoming barriers, you see, because so many people have barriers because of Noah, or because of problems in the Old Testament. Well, there are people who have barriers because of problems with the concept of the Resurrection.

So, I'm sorry, just saying, well, we need to go back to the Resurrection, that's foundation. Well, we don't know the Resurrection outside of, not the general historical reliability of the Scriptures, but outside of the authority of God's Word pronouncing it to us.

I'm sorry, I know all you minimalists just are screaming right now, but the idea that generally reliable but errant non-religious, non-inspired historical sources are not sufficient to establish the fact and the meaning of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

You may want to pretend that all you want, it doesn't work. And you'll never find an apostle doing that, and okay, I get it, some of you go, we don't need to. The apostles didn't live in our day, we're not looking to them as examples.

Well, once you go that direction, do you have any idea where you're going to end up stopping? And here's a place where, again, the pragmatism of apologetic activity ends up creating theology. The theology sort of lags behind, and if the theology starts slowing you down, you start chopping parts of it off, you know, until all you got is just a little bit left, and that's what the minimalization movement is all about.

And so we've been pointing this out and saying, hey, folks, there's reason for all this, and it goes back to theology again, and it's important, it's important. So, with that said, let's pick up with now, one of the issues was that when the Andy Stanley clip from the ERLC first made its way onto the web, the only thing I saw was right at the very end, the Pope thing.

If you were the evangelical Pope, and Andy Stanley saying, you know, don't focus on the Bible, but we talked about all that before. And Russell Moore took a lot of heat on the basis that being a partial clip, that he didn't push back.

Well, he did push back. It was just earlier in the program. And so, he's just now read that atheist letter Andy Stanley has. So here's Russell Moore after Andy Stanley gets done. Thanks for letting me read that letter.

That really gets us to some important conversations here. When you're thinking about that atheist woman, would you say that your goal would be to sort of subtly introduce her to Christianity? I see in the New Testament the distinctiveness of the Gospel message being what brings its power.

We have a very clear proclamation from John the Baptist all the way through to the Apostle Paul and Peter and elsewhere. So, would you say we ought to sort of gradually as this woman does start to become comfortable with the church or instead is there a place for 2 Corinthians 5.

I'm pleading with you as though Christ is pleading through me be reconciled.

To God. That was a letter to the church. Yes, it's a letter to the church. But it's a letter to a church.

That's in error. But it was a letter to the church. I think as I'm listening to this.

What Stanley's doing there, I think what he's trying to say is that proves that the church is made up of believers and unbelievers because this statement in Paul's letter to the Corinthians be reconciled to God.

If you take that as a primarily evangelistic exhortation that is problematic in the very conversation you're seeing here. I'm not seeing it as a primarily evangelistic external thing. I see it as addressed to the church and it's a need that all Christians have to recognize the reconciliation that has taken place in Christ and how that reorders all of our relationships, our priorities, our behavior, everything else.

And so, you know, I attended a Southern Baptist megachurch for many years. Was on staff for a while just as a staff assistant. I wasn't some pastor or something. I was still in Bible college. But I saw it from the inside.

I get it. And I think Andy Stanley and I are pretty much around the same age, I think. How old is Andy Stanley? Late 40s, maybe? Can't be too much younger than I am. If we were, you know, seeing the same things around the same time, the absolute what?

58? Wow, he's really looking good for 58. He's older than I am. I don't look nearly that good. I'm younger than the man. I'm sure he does have a makeup artist, but I don't have one. And I will never have one.

1958. See, I was complimenting the man. People say I don't have a heart. I was complimenting the man. Anyway, the emphasis on making the church a numbers producing production from beginning to end. I'm sure that's what he experienced in his father's megachurch.

That's what I experienced in the megachurch I was a part of. And just as the emergent church is a counter reaction to that. Maybe some of this is Andy Stanley's reaction to that, but without recognizing where the real problems were.

And so he's still got the, we've got to have the numbers thing, but now he's just recognizing the old way of getting the numbers isn't going to do it. We've got to do it a different way. The problem was both ways are based upon bad theology.

The old Southern Baptist way, manipulating people into doing things, etc. etc. The 32 choruses of Just As I Am. The kids' baptistry made like a pirate ship that shoots cannons when you get baptized and stuff like that.

The old way doesn't work with an ever more secularizing society. So now you've got a new way. And the new way is to get atheists to feel comfortable in your church. As part of your church. By throwing the net wide and watering down the message and making them feel comfortable.

That kind of thing. I get it. I get where it's coming from. No two ways about it.

But it's talking not just about the church, it's talking about the world. God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. I totally believe that. So how would you, how do you decide?

It goes back to what I said earlier. It's a three and a half hour sermon that I'm going to break up into bite-sized chunks. And people say, oh, but people miss. But here's the great thing about the culture we live in.

You can see everything on demand. If you miss week two, you just watch online. Everything's out there, which gives us even more freedom not to feel like we've got to go from zero to 60 in 25 or 35 or 45 minutes or an hour or however long that you preach.

So absolutely yes. It's just when you prepare a sermon, you have an introduction, and at some point in the minutes you have, you get to the text. All we've done is stretched it out further because something very important that she talks about that we hear all the time and I know you do too, it's not just us.

When people who aren't, who are far from God and people who don't believe and people who don't take the Bible seriously show up in a church environment and enjoy it, that is shocking. It is shocking. For them to want to come back because of who I connected with and my kids loved it, and as I hear all the time, I don't believe the whole thing, but you're a good motivational speaker, you hear those kinds of things, you think, I don't care.

You just come be with God's people after a while and it's going to start to rub off on you. Rub off, this is rub.

Off on you evangelism. Let's not call it evangelism because what's the message being presented? See, what more is trying to say is the apostolic message was in former times, you worshipped and served those which by nature are not gods.

But now that you've come to be known by God, you serve the one true God in spirit and truth. There is a break, there is a call, there is a radical, it's repentance. You're going one way, going another way, not slow down a little bit, slow down a little bit, turn a little bit over this direction, maybe a little bit further this way, a couple weeks from now, maybe...

This is the incrementalism and I didn't take the time to listen to it but the idea of the Holy Spirit of God being able, capable, willing, powerful enough to actually change hearts and minds, not through a slow culturally friendly process but through the proclamation of the gospel which the world considers to be um, um, um, oh foolishness!

I don't hear that.

It's missing. It's M-I-A. Missing in action. I have that moment that we all had where it's like oh, you know, the Holy Spirit just does that thing. So, one way...

Okay, uh, uh, uh, the Holy Spirit does that thing. Rub off and the Holy Spirit does that thing. Okay. Alright. It is.

I want people to fall in love with the author of scripture and I want them to fall in love with his son. I cannot make anyone fall in love. All I can do is set up the dates.

Um, if you believe that that the heart is in rebellion and is in love with itself with its idols there's only one thing that can change a heart. And it's, it's the gospel. It's the gospel presentation.

It's, it's, it's the message of what God has done in Jesus Christ. That's the power. And if all he was saying is, well, we need to make sure we don't get in the way of that. I would still be going, um, where is that message supposed to be being proclaimed?

In a alleged church service by some dude on a screen? Or one-on-one in the highways and byways of life? That's what's really concerning to me.

In listening to what we're listening to here. I see Sunday morning we're just setting up dates and hoping that God does his thing and we're not shying away from difficult topics. That may be one thing we talk about.

But the point is, approach is everything. Approach is everything. And here's how I know that you know that. Men, you're driving home. You've got to have a difficult conversation with your wife. And you know the point.

And you know the application. What are you obsessing over as you drive home? The what? It's the approach. How do I bring this up? You've got to talk to one of your kids about something they've done again.

You know your main point. You know the application. Stop going in your sister's room. But what you obsess over is, okay, what's the right approach? Because here's what we know in relationships. If you choose the right approach, the right thing does not happen even if you're right.

If you approach relationships, especially marriage topic the wrong way, you may be absolutely right with your kids, but all of us who are parents have apologized to our kids because we were saying the right thing.

We said it the wrong way. They're crying and I'm apologizing. But wait a minute. Why am I apologizing? Well, so your approach to your audience and your approach to preaching is as almost maybe as close to as important as the content of your preaching because the wrong...

Did you catch that? Your approach.

Is as... He wants to say it's as important and he finally gets to it at the end there. It's as important as the content. The content. Now, look, I understand. Stephen Anderson blasphemes the gospel even when he happens to stumble upon it.

Remember, he's a radical anti-lordship heretic. But even when he says things that are true, he does not adorn the gospel by his behavior. So, we can't go, it has nothing to do with our approach. No, no, no.

Don't get me wrong. You have to recognize the world you live in. You have to recognize the context of the people you're talking to. I mean, it wouldn't make a lick of sense for you to walk into a congregation of people who can only speak Spanish and try preaching to them in German.

There has to be some kind of a... You need to be able to communicate. You know? You don't speak to a huge, large group of very elderly people in a super large room without proper magnification of your voice.

I mean, sure, there are things we have to think about. And it's appropriate to give consideration to these things, make sure the message can be clearly communicated. But all of that is secondary. Radically secondary to the fact that it's the content of what you're saying that is supernatural.

Not you. Your approach isn't supernatural. It's the gospel that changes hearts and minds. So yeah, I want to get out of the way of the gospel. I want to adorn the gospel. But woe be to me if I ever get to the place of thinking that my approach is equal to the gospel.

That's the content of the preaching before the people of God. No. No. No. Never. Can't be. And what I'm afraid of is if you end up building some megachurch with 40 ,000 people, you just go, hey, the proof's in the pudding!

Rather than the proof's in the Scripture.

Approach can cancel the content. And we know that relationally. And I think the same thing happens when we put on a mic and stand up on a platform. So a lot of this is just about approach.

There was where I stopped. You want to bring that down? Because I'm going to switch. That's where I stopped the first one. And then I started listening as I was working on a presentation to the rest of the presentation and said, you know, there's stuff here worth doing.

So I'm now sending you a new one that's slightly smaller, I think, but it'll still work for us. Let's just press on and finish off the hour commenting on this.

The Authority of Scripture, the Church, and the Limits of Pragmatism

Platform. So a lot of this is just about approach. That's a long answer. One of the things I would say is.

I also think it's important that what we're approaching people with is an encounter with the risen Christ who speaks through his word. And so if you have a service in which you're not appealing to the word of God, you're simply.

Building the platform. I'm simply doing what you might do the first five minutes before you get to rest.

In a worship experience, what you're doing is communicating to your people, I think, and to the people who are watching, what's the basis for our authority? Now see, you do have two fundamental.

Differences here in approach. Andy Stanley is saying, look, we can go ahead and let's not call it a worship service. In fact, I would say let's not even call it a meeting of the church. If you want to have evangelistic meetings, then have evangelistic meetings.

I don't think there's anything wrong with getting together, inviting the public in for a public talk. Just don't call it church. Just be honest about what it is. We're going to have a get-together, and we'd like to, you know, we're going to have child care and some music, but just don't call it the church, because that's not the church.

That's not a worship experience. And what Andy Stanley is doing is, well, look, it's just, I'm preaching a really long sermon, and I'm cutting it up into parts. That's his excuse for what I'm doing is, I'm stripping anything distinctively Christian from the service.

I'm just left going, you know why so many people bought into this? Because, drawing on my megachurch background and experience there, when I was at that church, I never, I do not recall ever hearing a serious discussion of ecclesiology.

Any serious discussion of what the church is supposed to be in the first place, of the offices of the church, plurality of elders, didn't have that. Oh yeah, we had big staff, but they were all just extensions of the one mega-pastor.