Ahmed Deedat on the Deity of Christ

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In light of one of my upcoming debates in South Africa next week I took the time to review one of the audience questions from the talk upon which our debate will be based, “Is Jesus God?” Of course, in the course of an hour, we covered a lot more than that. Hopefully helpful information for sharing with our Muslim friends!

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...do a question to change... ...a little bit of the language, you can't put the statement into a form of a question...
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...certainly I want to do that, my question is only can I speak more than six sentences, because you interrupted me yesterday night...
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...unless you listen to the whole, and it might take maybe two minutes to put the whole question forward...
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...one correction please for you, may I quote last night and the night before, or some evening...
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...you said, I cannot see how all the Muslims can sit still without asking a question, without doubting...
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...in other words, you're thinking for them, now you're giving the impression that Mr. Didat will not understand you if you cannot put a text...
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...please, I have now three minutes, could you put the question, see if he knows the text... ...okay, if you give me three minutes, Mr. Didat said that if Jesus would have claimed to be
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God... ...he would immediately bow down, even be cut off his head, now for me the crucial question is not whether somebody...
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...claims to be God, but whether God appoints him and authorizes him to be
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God... ...may I read to you what God says on Jesus Christ, please, that is the question, and I would like to ask what
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Mr. Didat thinks to that... ...God says about Jesus Christ, about the
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Son he says, that is in Hebrew, chapter 1, verse 8, if you want to read... ...your throne,
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O God, will last forever and ever, and righteousness will be the scepter of your kingdom...
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...you have loved righteousness and hated wickedness, therefore God, your
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God, has set you above your companions... ...by anointing you with the oil of joy, he also says, in the beginning,
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O Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth... ...and the heavens are the work of your hands, they will perish, but you remain, they will all wear out like a garment...
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...you will roll them up like a robe, like a garment, they will be changed, but you remain the same, and your years will never end...
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...now my question is, this is clearly stated about Jesus Christ, about the
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Son, how can Mr. Didat claim that Jesus was not authorized as God?
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How will the others come up, let me say, you know, out of tolerance, I didn't wish anybody here, even my brethren who would cut me up...
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...if they feel that I've cut you up, but I say, if a lecture is given, and we state what the conditions are,
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I ask you please to accept... ...and I said, those people who are coming up now, are then accepting those terms, we've allowed it with you, in case you think
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I'm being unfair... ...would the others please formulate a question, if you don't mind? Sorry, that was a question.
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My question is, Mr. Didat, how can this statement say anything else than that Jesus is
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God? I think that is straight forward. I think what has happened is, Mr. Chairman, our brother doesn't understand
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English, or my English at that. I said, there is not a single unequivocal statement where Jesus says,
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I am God, or where he says, worship me. You quoted a lengthy text, and there's not one word about Jesus.
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Did Jesus speak that? God speaks about Jesus, that is more authoritative. Look, who told you that God spoke that?
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Paul. Look, this is Hebrew. It says here in scripture. Hebrew was written by Paul. I am asking, what did your
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Lord Jesus say? He says, I cannot my own self do nothing. That's not the point. He says...
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The point is what God says about you, not what you say about yourself. He says, my father is greater than I. He says, my father is greater than all.
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Right. Where does he say I am equal to the father? I am the father. He's his own father.
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Where does he say? Could I have the next question, please? Well, there you go.
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Well, I was working on preparation for the trip to South Africa that I engage in, start on tomorrow evening.
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And the first debate, as I mentioned before, is with Graham Codrington on homosexuality.
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Really appreciate your prayers for that. Excellent speaker. First night
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I'm there, nine time zones, I'm concerned. Okay. I've expressed that. So your prayers will be appreciated for that.
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Spent a lot of time studying for that debate, reading all of Graham's stuff.
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And, you know, I know where he's coming from. I am certain that he's actually one of the few people that's read my stuff.
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And so it should be a should be a good debate. But then once we go down to Durban, we have two debates with Yusuf Ismail in the
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Juma Masjid. One is a topic I've never debated before. And that is peace and violence in Christianity and Islam.
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I've heard a lot of debates on that, but I'll be honest with you. I have not heard one that actually addresses the heart of the issue.
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And I'm going to try to address the real heart of the issue there. We will also be looking at the fact that Muslims always raise questions concerning the synoptic
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Gospels. I've been teaching to the synoptic Gospels using the parallel harmony of the
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Gospels for almost a decade. And the
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Koran, likewise, has parallel accounts.
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For example, the fall of Iblis, Satan, Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot.
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These stories are told sometimes three, four times in the Koran. And they're not told in the same way.
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And if we utilize the standards that are utilized by many
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Muslims in attacking the validity of the New Testament, then we should do the same thing with the
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Koran. But the question is going to be, if the
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Koran is what Sunni Muslims say it is, why would there ever be differences in how a historical narrative is given if it's all just one person telling the story?
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Why would there be changes? Why would there be differences? This is one of the questions. This was not an issue for the earliest
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Tafsir literature. It becomes an issue for later Tafsir literature. Anyway, so those would be the two topics in the
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Jumu 'ah Masjid in Durban. And once again, very honored to have that opportunity.
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But the last debate is with Ayub Karim.
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Some of you may have seen, do we have linked? We have the crucifixion or crucifixion debate linked on the website, if you could check on that.
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Some of you may have seen, or may not, I don't know, the debate we did last year.
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Ayub Karim represents Ahmed Didat's positions. He speaks as Didat, dressed as Didat, argued as Didat.
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I did not ever have the opportunity of debating Didat. That would have been a tremendous opportunity.
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But he had a stroke, I believe, in 1996. And I did my very first debate on Islam in 1996.
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And I had only started studying it just before that. So we never crossed swords.
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But this is as close as I'm going to get, being much younger than Didat was.
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And what you just listened to is part of the Q &A. It is on our
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YouTube channel. All right, good, in the Islam section. Ahmed Didat gave a number of lectures that he had his repertoire.
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I mean, a lot of people who travel and speak have stump speeches, the standard speech that they might make a few changes to here, there, and everywhere.
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But, you know, a limited number of things you need to know. And the crucifixion or crucifixion one was one of his most popular ones.
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Muhammad in the Bible, another very popular one. And then Is Jesus God?
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And this is from Q &A at probably the most watched version of his
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Is Jesus God presentation. Now, some people say, well,
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I don't like listening to Didat, he's hard to understand. Well, OK, fine, but you need to realize something. I believe to this day, even including
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Zakir Naik, that Ahmed Didat is the most listened to, even after his death, the most listened to Muslim in the world.
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Not just by Sunnis, but by Shiites and Ahmadi Muslims. I mentioned that when the
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Ahmadi Muslims came and listened to my presentation in the New Testament in New York a number of years ago, the arguments they brought forth they got directly from Ahmed Didat.
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So if you know Didat and you know how to respond to Didat, which is not difficult to do because all due respect to my
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Muslim friends, Didat was not a scholar. He was a showman. What makes, and let me explain that, what makes
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Didat difficult to review is that it takes him forever to make a single point.
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Make a single point. That's why he always wanted all the debates to be, the person who goes first gets 50 minutes, the person who goes second gets 60, and then the person that goes, then the responder that got 10 minutes less gets 10 minutes more in the second part.
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But there isn't any cross -examination. It's just a 50, 60, I think it's like 10 and 5.
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And then audience questions. That's all it was. And he needed those huge amounts of time.
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Because in essence, if I were to summarize
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Didat's Is -Jesus -God presentation, I could honestly, without any misrepresentation, give his entire presentation that he gave in an hour, in five minutes, without leaving anything out.
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Why? Because he was a storyteller. And he would wander down this trail over here and wander down that trail over there, and it was all meant to give the air of absolute confidence and mastery of the information.
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And he did memorize a tremendous amount of the Bible. Doesn't mean he understood the context or anything. He certainly did not know the languages.
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It would be very easy for me to play the section from this very lecture, where, again, one of the very first videos we ever put up, one of the very first ones you'd find on my
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YouTube channel, was documenting Didat's consistent misunderstanding of John 1 .1.
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He just, I mean, the overhead, this was before digital projection, the overhead that he used to talk about John 1 .1,
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right there, in what he made and what he repeatedly said over and over. He couldn't read the
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Greek. He didn't know what was there. And so anyway, it's next to impossible to play
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Didat. Because you just have to start him and then, you know, maybe 10 -15 minutes later, he might finish making his point, and it's just hard to do.
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And a lot of people don't have the patience to listen to him for that period of time. The one place where you can start to see the real
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Didat is in the audience questions. He doesn't have, well, he will.
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There are times he will take forever. But normally he doesn't have the time to just go on and on and on in the audience questions.
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Here you had a young Christian of German extraction, obviously.
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And he's asked Didat a question. This is at the end of the presentation.
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Didat's presentation has demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding of the
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Doctrine of the Trinity. He makes another error, even in what he says here, in his understanding of the
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Trinity. But he has not dealt with almost any of the primary texts that teach the deity of Christ in the
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New Testament. And that's because, from his perspective, anything other than what's in Jesus' words, allegedly, which he doesn't even believe are
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Jesus' words, but, you know, it's a double standard. But if Paul said it,
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Paul's irrelevant. If anybody else other than the
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Gospel writers said it, it's irrelevant. And so it's hard to listen to the audience questions because the president, the moderator, whatever, was seemingly doing everything he could to protect
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Didat in the questions. And so you've just got this constant back and forth and back and forth.
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And it's just like, come on, just let the people ask a question for crying out loud. And it's not that I'm sorry, but a lot of the
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Christians just did not ask good questions. They set themselves up. And Didat took advantage of that.
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He did that all the time. Like I said, he was a master showman.
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But what you just saw, well, actually, almost 12 minutes ago now, what you saw was a man asking a question based upon Hebrews chapter 1.
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Now, the question was not asked in an overly strong way. You don't just read a text and assume that people are going to understand what it's saying.
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No context was given. The fact that this is a quotation from the
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Old Testament in Psalm 102, 25 to 27, that it's brought over directly, that it specifically speaks to the
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Son, that it specifically speaks of the immutability of God, the fact that he is unchanging, that while the creation ages,
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God does not change. None of that got mentioned. It could have been if the questioner had better preparation or better knowledge of how to engage in this type of situation.
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But the reality is, the
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Q &A at the end of a debate, well, this isn't even a debate, this is a lecture. But the Q &A at the end of a lecture is under the control of the lecturer himself.
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And he's going to get the last word. But again, the text itself was not really addressed.
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And the fact that Jesus is being identified as Yahweh, not really addressed. But still,
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D -Dot's response was utterly vacuous. There was no substance to it whatsoever. It was complete misdirection and demonstrated an element of anger, impatience, and ignorance on D -Dot's position.
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I mean, I could have given a much stronger response from a
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Unitarian perspective. I mean, you know, I know exactly what a Unitarian would do.
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Who knows the text? You're going to go back to verse 6. You're going to talk about firstborn.
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You're going to talk about, therefore, God, your God. You're going to talk about relative positions of worship,
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Israelite kings. I mean, you know, I'm sure that there are a bunch of Internet Unitarians who do
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Internet debates. They do a little more than that, but that's pretty much their bailiwick, that look at D -Dot and go, ah, that wasn't much of a response.
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His response was to again bring up the
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D -Dot challenge. And this has been, again, this has been repeated so many times that it has become absolutely lodged in the minds of Muslim people.
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And I've heard it repeated not only by D -Dot's disciples who
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I have debated, but taxi drivers and people on the street because they've heard it over and over and over again.
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There is not one unequivocal statement in the
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Bible by Jesus where he says, I am God, worship me.
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This is, Zuckerneich repeats it constantly, just stole it straight from him. Zuckerneich just does the,
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I'm going to channel, I'm going to D -Dot thing. And has not, as far as I can see, in almost any area gone beyond D -Dot, which is sad in many ways.
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Remember, Nike has a standing challenge for us to debate, but he won't, he won't debate knowledgeable people. He knows better than that.
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Anyway, so this
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D -Dot challenge is utterly fallacious. It is as bad as my saying, show me in the
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Quran, not in Bukhari, not in Muslim who wrote long after the days of Muhammad and long after time period wise where Matthew, Mark, Luke or John wrote by over a century.
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So anything in the Hadith is irrelevant. Given the standards that the
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Muslim apologist uses for themselves when attacking the Testament, where in the
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Quran does Muhammad say, I am the final prophet and the
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Quran is the final revelation that corrects the corruptions of all previous revelations.
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Now, by stating it in that way, I can then become rather bullheaded and say it needs to be in those exact words.
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Well, that's absurd. Of course, I am making an utterly absurd demand that those exact English words or the equivalent in Arabic, I suppose, have to appear in the
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Quran for those things to be true. And no Muslim would ever let me get away with it. But that's what they demand of us.
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Jesus may speak as God. Jesus may act as God.
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Jesus may use the names of God. His disciples that were his, the only disciples that left any evidence for us of their beliefs may have unanimously and from the beginning identified him as God.
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But none of that matters because the only thing that would prove the deity of Christ are the specific words quoted by Jesus, I am
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God, worship me. The fact that literally tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people have accepted that as a valid argument does not say much for the inter -religious complexity and advancement of Muslim thinkers.
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Because that is such an obvious error. It's such, it's such an obviously false argument.
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But Didac got away with it. Well, there was one person that challenged him on that. And that was
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Joshua Powell. But he got away with it on almost every other instance that he utilized it.
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And he repeated it right here. He repeated it right here. So with that in mind,
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I'm going to see if I, it's very difficult. I'm going to see if I can back it up just a little bit.
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So we can hear it again. ...other than accepting those terms.
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We've allowed it with you, in case you think I'm being unfair. Would the others please formulate a question, if you don't mind.
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Sorry, that was a question. Yes, but I mean... My question is, Mr. Didac, how can this statement say anything else than that Jesus is
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God? I think that is straightly false. I think what has happened is, Mr. Chairman, our brother doesn't understand
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English, or my English at that. I said there is not a single unequivocal statement where Jesus says,
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I'm God, or where he says, worship me. So there's the Didac challenge. And obviously, quoting from Hebrews, is not going to answer the
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Didac challenge. Because the Didac challenge, by its very construction, and this is purposeful.
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By its very construction, excludes all the evidence that would come from anything other than the
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Gospels, as if it was intended by Christ that there would be nothing other than the
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Gospels. Now the author of the Quran knew none of this. There is no evidence. If you are a
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Muslim, please, please, step back from your traditions for just a moment.
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And ask yourself the question, does the author of the
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Quran show even the slightest familiarity with the content of the
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New Testament itself? Does he know that the Gospel, the Injil, of which
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Christians speak, is communicated to us historically in four books, but also through Paul, for example.
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All Christians would have believed that 1 Corinthians chapter 15, one of the most primitive explications and communications of the
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Gospel. Where in the Quran is the first bit of understanding of the rich meaning of Injil in Christian theology?
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It's simply not there. It's simply not there. So, with that in mind, this kind of response, sure, it's an easy way around having to deal with Hebrews.
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And he made another mistake in this lecture. He said there was no place, and here he really set himself up.
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He said there was no place in all 27 books of the
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New Testament where Jesus is identified as Almighty God.
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Now, you can make a pretty strong argument that he is in the book of Revelation.
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But, I can guarantee you, if someone had tried to catch him on that, and if someone had tried to say, well, what about this?
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His response would have been, well, you need to understand that's in the book of Revelation, and there are seven -headed monsters and ten -headed monsters.
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It's like someone who had a bad pizza that night, and he just simply laughs it off. He just simply dismisses it as being irrelevant to any type of having any claim to have scriptural authority.
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That's what he does. But he made that statement, and he made the error. But what he's done, in essence, is to greatly narrow the range of data from which information can be derived to answer his claim.
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And so, on one level, Hebrews 1 does not refute the
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DDOT challenge. The DDOT challenge has to be refuted, first of all, by challenging its very formulation.
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And once you challenge its formulation and demonstrate that it's a completely arbitrary challenge that limits what information can be brought in, and it does so in such a way that the
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Quran itself, Islamic theology, could not survive the same type of limitation.
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I mean, if you just limited our knowledge of Muhammad to what is found in the
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Quran where Muhammad himself speaks, we'd know nothing. Nothing at all.
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They'll never accept that, but they'll demand it of others. Now, of course, 99 .999
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% of them have never been challenged to think through that inconsistency. That's where we come in, and hopefully have the opportunity of doing so.
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But, anyway. You quoted a lengthy text, and there's not one word about Jesus.
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You quoted a lengthy text, there's not one word about Jesus? I think what he means, there's not one word from Jesus.
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Because it's very obviously about Jesus. And the reality is, the book of Hebrews has every mark of being written prior to the destruction of Jerusalem.
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I cannot see how anyone can make an argument that it was written after the destruction of Jerusalem. It would be irrelevant. It would be completely irrelevant, because the entire argument of the book is that there's something to go back to.
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The sacrificial system is still there. And that would only be relevant prior to the destruction of Jerusalem, and really, prior to the beginning of the siege.
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So, I think you can make a very strong argument for the early 50s, 55 -ish, for the book of Hebrews.
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So, this is an incredibly early witness to what
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Christians believed about Jesus. Now, he's going to dismiss it.
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What's Paul? Paul was self -appointed. Paul was, you know, this automatic anti -Paulinism.
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It's just accepted as a given. And that's what he's going to say here in a moment.
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Did Jesus speak that? God speaks about Jesus. That is not authoritative. Look, who told you that God spoke that?
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Paul. Look, this is Hebrew. Hebrew was written by Paul. He means
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Hebrews was written by Paul. But he doesn't even seem to be aware that this is a citation from the
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Psalter. And aren't the Psalms of David referred to in the
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Koran as being something special? They are.
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Whether D -Dot was aware of the fact that that was what was being cited or not, I don't know. He doesn't give any evidence of it here.
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But he's simply dismissing the whole concept of going to anything other than the
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Gospels for evidence concerning who Jesus Christ is. I'm asking, what did the
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Lord Jesus say? He says, I can of my own self do nothing. I can of my own self do nothing.
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If you go back and you look at the videos that we've posted over the years, and then you watch
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D -Dot, you start getting an idea of, well, why did we address that subject? Why did we put an entire video up a number of years ago, walking through John chapter 5?
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Because of D -Dot. Because of the misunderstanding of Jesus' words from John chapter 5.
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When he's talking, the Unitarian, when they hear Jesus saying, I can do nothing of my own self,
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John chapter 5, just yesterday my fellow elder became ill, and I got the call to do the fill -in.
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And so I just decided to do John 7, morning and evening. And the folks were kind enough to put up with my feeble efforts.
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And one of the issues, of course, was dealing with Jesus' statements in John chapter 7, which echo what he said in John chapter 5.
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The words, the teaching that is mine, the words are not mine.
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They've been given to me by my Father. And you don't know Him, but I know Him. And He is true, and there's no unrighteousness in Him.
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And this is a constant theme. And the Unitarian like D -Dot, or people like that,
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Jehovah's Witnesses, and other forms of Unitarians that are lurking in the shadows of the Internet these days, they see that as a disjunction of Father and Son, and a subjugation of Father and Son, rather than what it is, especially in the
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Gospel of John. And that is the demonstration of the unity of the Father and the
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Son. The Son is not some separate deity out here. When He says, I am, He's not saying that in exclusion of the
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Father. When He is called God in John 20, 28, that's not setting up another
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God to be worshipped other than the Father, in competition with the Father. There is perfect unity between the
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Father and the Son. The Son does nothing, op, ml2, by myself, or by Himself, separate from the
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Father as a competing authority or deity. And so, is it a valid argument for D -Dot to respond to Hebrews, by quoting
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John 5? No, because John 5 also says, you're to honor the Son, even as you honor the
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Father. The day will come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and they will live.
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The resurrection always being God raising the dead. Here, the Son is the instrumentality by which this takes place.
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And there's all this other stuff in John 5, 18, and so on and so forth, that He just doesn't touch on.
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And at the beginning of this lecture, D -Dot acknowledged
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His deep dependence upon the book
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I've mentioned a number of times to you, that if you want to understand why modern
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Muslims think about Christianity the way they do, you have to understand the book,
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Itzhar ul Haq. Itzhar ul Haq, the 1864 publication in India, D -Dot mentions it by name and says, it's why
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I'm here this evening. I read that book and it made me who I am today. And by the way,
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I mentioned on the last program, and I'll mention it again, Gordon Nickel has written a new book,
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The Gentle Answer to the Muslim Accusation of Biblical Falsification. He wrote it in India.
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And when he mentioned it to me, I wrote back and said, well, isn't that ironic, given the origination of Itzhar ul
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Haq? And he writes back and says, that's exactly what it is. This is a response to Itzhar ul
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Haq. And so, I recommend it to you once again,
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Gordon Nickel, The Gentle Answer, dealing with Itzhar ul Haq. And Itzhar ul
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Haq does not seek to engage the biblical text with fairness, with depth.
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It's not seeking to argue against the best arguments of Christianity.
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It is more than happy to stay with the lower level arguments of Christianity, which unfortunately is very frequently what
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Muslims find themselves dealing with. But that's what D -Dot did. And this quotation from John chapter 5 is just that.
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It does not show a serious engagement with what John chapter 5 is actually saying. That's not the point.
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He says what God says about you. He says my father is greater than I. Now, he's not listening to what the young man is saying.
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He's saying God said this about Jesus in the book of Hebrews. Well, D -Dot doesn't care.
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He doesn't think God said anything about Jesus in the book of Hebrews. He doesn't think the book of Hebrews is scripture. And so, he's just going to dismiss it.
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I mean, they'll quote from Paul or other portions of the New Testament when it's convenient to do so.
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But when it's against their argument, well, it just doesn't even exist.
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And so, anyone who deals with Unitarians, deals with Jehovah's Witnesses, is just waiting for John 14, 28 to be quoted.
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And there it is. The father is greater than I am. And I've always encouraged people to be ready to jump on that and say, do you know the context, sir?
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Because he loves to mock Christians and not knowing the context. And I'm sure he talked to many Christians that did not know context.
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You know, they come up and, well, didn't you say I am the father? Well, there are a lot of ignorant Christians. No question about that.
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But Achmed D -Dot was just as ignorant as the ignorant Christians. He just learned a little bit more so he could stand above their level of ignorance without ever actually understanding the scriptures for himself.
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And that's a shame. But that's what happened. And I like to say, have you ever thought about what
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John 14, 28 is actually saying? He's talking about his going back into the presence of the father.
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Just a few verses earlier, he had actually talked about people praying to him. He had said in John 14, 14, if you ask me anything in my name,
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I will do it. And this is after he's gone back into the presence of the father. The only way you can do that is if you pray. If you're praying to Jesus.
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And so in verse 28, he has said he's going back into the presence of the father.
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He says to the disciples, if you loved me, you would have rejoiced because I'm going back in the presence of the father for the father is greater than I am.
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So what's his point? His point is here on earth, he's surrounded by his enemies.
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He's walking the dusty roads of Galilee. He has people constantly trying to twist every word that he says.
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But this same gospel writer, and you know,
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I say you as a Muslim would never allow me to quote one text from Surah 9 without bringing into consideration
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Surah 2. Now, if you're in the doctrine of abrogation, you may think that Surah 9 abrogates
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Surah 2. That's another issue. But you would want me to be honest with the text of the
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Quran. And if there are other statements in the Quran that directly address this issue, they should be brought to bear.
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They should be examined, right? Well, here in the very same book, the
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Gospel of John, in John chapter 17, Jesus talks about the fact that before creation itself, he was glorious in the presence of the father.
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So when he says the father is greater than I am, he's talking about the position that the father has.
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He's going back to that greater position. And he's going to be at the right hand of the father.
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And according to the book of Revelation, all of creation bows down and worships he who sits on the throne and the lamb.
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Same author, by the way, at least most people think that's the case. So you have a consistent biblical testimony.
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You have a consistent biblical witness that is being ignored.
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Being ignored. So he uses these texts just simply to throw them out there. And that's why, you know,
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Zakir Naik hides from debate challenges, because he knows, I think he really does know, that if he were put in a position where he would actually have to answer, to go deeper, that he can't go deeper.
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He doesn't have the scholarship to go deeper. And I don't believe
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Didat did either. Now, did you catch that?
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I am equal to the father. I am the father. Now, this was one of the things that, I listened to a number of Didat's debates on this subject, too.
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It's not that I haven't heard these before. But this was some of the first stuff that I studied.
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And so some of these, it might have been literally, wow, 2005. When I first started listening to Didat and doing stuff like that, it was a decade ago.
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And I'm much younger than Rich is. And in fact,
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I should have had John Sampson call in. Stay focused. And sing happy birthday to you with a
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British accent, because tomorrow is your birthday. And I just wanted to extend my condolences at the incredibly advanced age that you're going to be attaining tomorrow.
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And I'm a little concerned that I'm going to South Africa, because if you fall and break your hip here at the office, have we ordered the little medical pendant for you yet that you can press the button and, help,
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I'm falling and I can't get up. Okay, you're being distracted again. There you go.
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So if you all want to wish Rich a happy, very elderly, please don't put all those candles on a cake, because the fire department will have to show up wishes tomorrow.
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You can all do that. But I'm much younger, much, much, much younger than Rich is.
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But still, we're both past that half century mark. And so maybe after 10 years, you could forget something.
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So I was listening to, notice I got back to where I was. I remembered this. I got back to where I was.
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I was listening to some of the debates. And there was one particular debate that DDOT did with a fairly well -known
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Southern Baptist, actually. And I was just,
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I wanted to, again, I've said many times, ride off the road and do a face plant into a saguaro cactus to feel better, because here is a guy who is a seminary graduate and a minister.
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And it seemed pretty obvious to me that he was defending a modalistic viewpoint of the
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Trinity. And the people in the audience could tell. I mean, it just, it was bad.
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It was really, really bad. So I have to keep in mind, especially when
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I go to South Africa, that many of the
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Muslims that I'm dialoguing with have never heard a clear, compelling, consistent doctrine of the
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Trinity. They've heard something significantly less than that. It's not that there aren't good folks in South Africa that are speaking the truth.
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There are. You know, John Gilchrist has been down there forever doing his thing, and Uncle John's great, and we've got
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Antioch Bible Church down there, where I'll be speaking at over the next weekend, and all the rest of that kind of stuff.
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There are. But sadly, they're the minority in Christianity down there, not the majority.
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And most of the Christians that, in an everyday exchange discussion there in South Africa, are not even functionally
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Trinitarian. So you can't blame them for not really having a sound understanding when there's no one to give them a sound understanding, or when they're constantly hearing a modalistic perspective, or stuff like that.
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But that's what he just did. He just hit the modalistic stuff. I was distracted by Twitter for a second, because someone on Twitter said, the first sermon yesterday on John chapter 7 was great, which
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I guess means the second one wasn't. Yeah, well, and they said, no, gungus man, about the exegesis.
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And I was talking about the fact that, both in John 6 and John 7, one of my favorite
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Greek words of all time appears, and it's gungus man. Gungus man. Gungus man.
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It's murmuring, grumbling. Now, give the brother a break here. How do you even know that he hasn't even had a chance to listen to the second one?
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That's what he said. He said the first sermon. Yes, he's heard that one, yeah. And who knows if he's even heard the second one yet?
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He doesn't say that. I mean, come on. I'm just preparing myself for the other shoe to fall.
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That's my Eeyore. The Eeyore part of my personality is showing through there. Just expecting it.
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It'll hit eventually. Anyway, yeah,
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I would tell my kids, no gungus mooing in the back seat. So that was one of the things we shared yesterday.
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See what happens when you don't go to PRVC. You don't learn about things like gungus mooing. Anyhow, we go back to the response here.
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Okay, and that was it. So there was no meaningful interaction on Hebrews 1.
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Another guy got up. I can't find it this quickly. I apologize. But another guy got up, and he brought up the issue of worship.
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And again, it could have been presented well.
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It really could have been. If you're going to raise the issue of the worship of Jesus, please, please, please, please, please understand there are different Greek words for worship.
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And by the way, I just want to mention in passing, I was southbound on 27th
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Avenue when I was listening to this. I remember exactly what part of the road it was. I love how that works.
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DDOT mentioned the Roman Catholic mechanism for avoiding dealing with their own worship of Mary by saying that there are all different kinds of worship.
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Well, actually, there aren't. DDOT accepted the
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Romanist perversion of this, didn't challenge it. And here's yet another place.
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You've got to understand, Rome and Roman false teaching is a major stumbling block in reaching the
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Muslim world. A major stumbling block. They see
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Rome as representing the majority of Christianity. And therefore, they see division.
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And of course, as consistent monotheists, they see idolatry.
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And they are right to see idolatry. Most of them don't realize that we
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Protestants, believing Protestants, as few as we may be anymore, have been raising this issue against Rome for a very long time.
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A very, very long time. But he brought it up. Back to worship.
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You have the kind of worship, the liturgy, the
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Truro, that took place in the temple. And when the issue of the
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Son of Man came up in another debate, the guy he was debating completely blew this one too, unfortunately.
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Jesus, as the Son of Man, receives the Truro in Daniel chapter 8.
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You go, what? Daniel? What? What? What? Remember Mark chapter 14? Jesus, in answer to the question,
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Are you the Son of the Blessed One? I am. You'll see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of glory.
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You see the right hand of power. He conflates the quotation from Daniel with the most often cited text from the
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Old Testament, which is Psalm 110. And the Jews fully understand exactly what he's saying.
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And the response of the high priest is what? Tears his clothes, blasphemy, what further need do we have? He's deserving of death.
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So they got it. They understood it immediately. But most of the time, well, all the time,
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I think all the time in the Gospels, when Jesus receives worship, it's the
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Greek term proskuneo. And any Unitarian worth his salt knows that proskuneo can be used in a number of different ways.
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When a soldier approaches his superior officer, he proskuneos him, he bows down.
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And they'll say, see, it doesn't have to mean worship. And if that's all that you can say about the subject, then no, it would not have to mean worship.
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However, context always determines whether proskuneo is being used in a religious or non -religious way.
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And so when a soldier proskuneos his superior, that's not idolatry.
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However, when the people tried to proskuneo, Paul and any of his companions, they said, don't do that, proskuneo only
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God. And why? Because it was religious context. And in the book of Revelation, when
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John, overwhelmed by what he has been shown, attempts to proskuneo the angel, what does the angel say?
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Do not do that, I'm your fellow servant. Proskuneo only God. So in the religious context, proskuneo does mean to worship and is only to be done to God.
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And yet, without question, Jesus receives proskuneo, he receives worship, and he never says, don't do that.
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The apostle said, don't do that, I'm just a man. The angel says, don't do that,
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I'm just an angel. Jesus says, I accept that. So if you know just some basic facts about the utilization of the terms, then, you know,
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I don't know how, maybe this is why, you know, now
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I'm thinking about it, maybe this is why D -Dot had such strong moderators and people like that was to protect him.
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He knew that this was when he was vulnerable. When he's standing up there doing his stories and he's a great speaker, command of the language, so on and so forth.
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That's one thing. Once someone has a microphone and your case is as vapid and surface level as his was, that's when you're in danger.
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That's when you're in danger. Maybe that's why he did what he did. I don't know. But the worship issue came up in the question and answer and the answer that was given.
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And again, once you've asked your question, you're not allowed to do a debate. I understand that. I'm not, you know,
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I'm not saying that that was wrong. I'm just saying that as the presentations were made, you can ask questions that make a point and they're still questions.
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That's what the whole key of cross -examination is. I've never understood why all but one attorney that I've ever debated didn't know that.
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I mean, generally my preference is to debate an attorney because with, with one exception and maybe two,
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I've debated a lot of attorneys. They didn't get the idea of cross -examination at all.
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Remember Martin Tanner? Wow. There was, there was an example of just softball questions to me.
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Just, just, and then I'd ask him hard leading questions that make a point and he was just left without an answer.
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Well, you remember Carl Keating's explanation for that? Carl Keating's explanation for that? Remember when we had breakfast with Carl Keating that day?
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He brought this issue up. Yeah. And his point was the vast majority of lawyers never see the inside of a courtroom.
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Oh yeah, that was true. Yeah. He wasn't the only one that said that. You know, a lot, a lot of them have said they never see the inside of a courtroom.
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And I get that. And I think the two that I'm thinking of that did do cross -examination well probably were trial attorneys.
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So yeah, I get it. I understand that. But there is a way to ask a question that makes a point and that specifically tunes it so that it is most effective in the context you're using the question.
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I didn't know that when I first started debating. No clue, no clue.
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I mean, I was sitting here and I'm thinking about that first debate. And by the way, just over, what, about nine days from now, nine or 10 days from now, if everything goes by plan and by schedule,
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I will do my 150th moderated public debate, not including radio shows and stuff like that.
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It has to have been a debate format, equal times, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But, and unlike certain people who make claims similar to that, you can watch or listen to the vast majority, not all of them, but the vast majority of them on YouTube and Sermon Audio and places like that.
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But we'll be, do I get like a, I was gonna say, do I get like a pizza party for, you know, number 150 or anything like that?
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Think you could let Rudolph know we need to have a little something special? Because I think it'll be the second night with Yusuf Ismail.
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Yeah, it'll be the second night. That second night will be the 150th, I think. So anyway, there you go.
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That's gonna be, actually having looked at how many calories there are in each slice of pizza,
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I'm not sure I want to do that anymore. But, oh, it's just sad, ridiculous.
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Anyway, I didn't know that when I first started. When I, I remember that first debate with Jerry Matitix in Long Beach.
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And we got to the questions and I was almost panicked. It was like, oh, questions. Uh, mm, uh, okay.
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You know, I'd been so focused on the presentation and trying to get as much into it as I possibly could that for the first five or six debates, it was just sort of like, oh, is there some way to get around this?
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Then I started realizing, no, this is where the debate actually takes place. This is, yeah.
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Had to learn, had to learn, took some time. We all, we all have to learn, take time. So I want to comment on that here on the last dividing line before our trip to South Africa.
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Thanks to all of you who have made this possible for us to do. Obviously, I'll be trying to report from down there as best as I can with limited internet access.
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But your prayers, much appreciated. Obviously, if I attempt to go into these debates, coughing, medicated, exhausted, sick, so on and so forth, can be a real, a real challenge, real challenge.
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So your prayers, much appreciated. Lord willing, we'll be back after,
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I believe, the 1T. Let's see, I get back, what, when here?
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The 16th, so we should be back here the 19th or 20th, either Monday or Tuesday.
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We'll try to be back here with a full report on what took place. Thanks for listening to the dividing line. We'll see you next time.