All right, well, we will go ahead and get started. And so this is lesson 26. I guess, or lecture 28. And we're gonna be going through the second lesson of the biblical counterfeits. And so I would like to just jump right into it. Let's pray. Lord God, please be with us tonight. And for anybody listening online, that Lord, what is spoken here will be fruitful and true and prepare all your believers who listen to be able to give an answer. for the hope that's within us, that we'd be able to provide a defense and that we'd be able to destroy arguments and take thought or take captive every thought that's raised up against you and your knowledge, Lord. So we just pray all of this to you, have me teach clearly, and it's in Jesus' name. We pray all this to your glory, God, in Jesus' name we pray, amen. So again, getting right into it, last time when we were going over the biblical counterfeits and I started, we started with Islam. And just one thing that I pointed out then is that biblical counterfeits, they borrow bits and pieces and large portions of the biblical worldview. And what they do is they create damning faiths and false faiths, but here's the problem. because they borrow significant portions of the Christian worldview, what happens is they can meet some of the preconditions of intelligibility. But they can't meet all of them, and they're going to be inconsistent in how they do it. And so we're still going to be able to defeat them with the presuppositional approach. But there's a little more difficulty with the biblical counterfeits because they absorb a good amount of our worldview. Now, as I mentioned, there's three subcategories of biblical counterfeits. You have Unitarian counterfeits, you have Polytheistic counterfeits, and you have Pseudo-Messianic counterfeits. All of these will try to use the Bible, you know, in some way for the false faith. So Unitarian counterfeits, that's what we're talking about right now. I started talking about Islam last week. We will continue with that. you know, tonight. And of course, Unitarian counterfeits would include the Jehovah Witnesses, it would include modern Judaism, Unitarian Universalists, quite a few. Now, the polytheistic counterfeits, that's Mormonism, where they'll use the Bible, they'll use biblical terminology, but really what they're advancing is a polytheistic religion. And then pseudomessianic refers to cults that they're religious leader in some way identifies as Jesus, whether we're talking about David Koresh, Jim Jones, you know, the leader of the Moonies. And so we'll get to that next time. But anyhow, as I was saying, last time we began to refute Islam, it is the single biggest Unitarian biblical counterfeit. And so if you can knock down Islam, you can knock down the other ones. And what I did last time is I use the argument from truth against Islam. Since they claim that the scriptures are from God, meaning the Old and New Testament, that opens up just a can of worms. A lot of contradictions enter their faith because of that. And so we went through the argument of truth last time to show all the ways that Islam does not work. Today, we're going to use the argument from folly. We're going to enter Islam's worldview by its own claims and show how it is absolutely incoherent and unintelligible. And so, the Christian can readily dismantle Islam with an internal refutation. There are clear contradictions within the Quran itself. Now the most important contradiction is found in Surah 6, verse 103, and this is what it reads. It says, No vision can grasp him, but his grasp is over all vision. He is above all comprehension, yet is acquainted with all things. Now, what is this saying? It's saying that Allah is so transcendent that there is nothing in human experience that could be likened to him. He cannot be grasped or comprehended. Now, the Bible describes God in a similar manner, but it also makes it clear that God is imminent. He is both transcendent, meaning he is completely other and beyond this universe, but he is also imminent, meaning he fills it. He fills the universe. And therefore, since He fills the universe, we who are made in His image, we can know Him. He makes Himself known as far as a creature could possibly know Him. And because of that, we can use words that speak truly of Him, that grasp Him. But the Koran, where it's different, is it focuses only on the transcendence of Allah. It rejects the idea that He is imminent. And so, and they have to do that because that's their basis for rejecting the incarnation of Christ. That their God can't in any way be in this universe, in the world. Now, why is that problematic for the Qur'an? Well, if, according to that verse, if nothing in human experience can be likened to Allah, if nothing in human experience can comprehend Him, then what is the Qur'an? The Qur'an is human words and human experience, right? Human words of a human language attempting to describe Allah. and his revelation, right? And it's given to us in human experience, right? Human words, human thoughts, that's human experience. This is the worst kind of contradiction imaginable. Really, the Koran cannot be true if the Koran is true. Or we could put it this way, if the Koran is true, then it's false. This is an inescapable dilemma for the Muslim apologist. Think about it. The Quran cannot be the revelation of God based on its own criteria. If what the Quran says about Allah is true, and if what it, excuse me, let me put it this way. If what it says about Allah is true, the Quran, then what it says about itself cannot be true, right? If what it says about Allah that no human experience could grasp him, right, he can't be grasped, If that's true, then what it's saying about itself can't be true. It presents itself as a revelation that explains Him, that reveals Him, that can grasp Him, right? So if what the Qur'an says about Allah is true, then what it claims about itself cannot be true. Even calling Allah by the masculine pronoun of Him is relating the deity to human experiences of personality, masculinity, and categorization. Human language is a part of human experience and comprehension. And therefore, if nothing in human language can describe Allah since human language is an aspect of human experience, then nothing the Quran says about Allah could be a fair comparison to him. Its own revelatory claims undermines the very possibility of revelation. That is self-defeating. This contradiction destroys the credibility of the entire Muslim worldview. I mean, they believe the Qur'an is eternal and has always existed, which is another problem in and of itself. But anyhow, Now, I do want to give a quick excursus for a minute. Christian thinkers historically have argued that the biblical descriptions of God are analogical rather than univocal, although there have been people in history like Scotus who have advocated univicity. Now, what do I mean by this? Analogical language means like nothing we say about God truly captures the fullness of who or what God is. But by analogy, it does truly describe Him. Like when we say, you know, God is good. Our word good can't fully capture what it means for God to be good, but it's an analogy from our own experience that reveals something true about God. All language is analogical, even the Bible, the whole Bible's analogical language about God. And that's fine. We make that claim. That's the way it works. And so some people might say, well, and univocal just means you would say that, no, this language actually does capture God and who and what he is. And we would say, no, he's beyond it. Most Christians would say he's beyond it. That's why we appeal to analogy. And so this analogical understanding of language and how it applies to God, some people might argue, well, that's all the Koran is saying. That's what it means here. But this claim does not stand the test of scrutiny. analogy still uses human experience to state true things about God. We are making a comparison from human experience to God, and we are partially grasping Him through that. The Koran claimed the opposite. There is no vision, nothing can grasp Him. So they are ruling out analogical language as well. It is a contradiction of the worst kind. Now, there are also smaller contradictions. For example, the Qur'an's treatment of Jews is one example. Prior to Muhammad turning on them when he was trying to woo them to his religion, the Qur'an provides a lot of favorable statements about the Jews. For example, Surah 247 speaks of the favor Allah bestowed upon them in the past. Surah 5, 20 and 21 recounts Allah sending them prophets in the past. Surah 262 claims that Jews and Christians are saved if they do good works. Now, after the Jews rejected Muhammad, the Quran's revelation all of a sudden shifted dramatically. Surah 446 and 578 claim the Jews were cursed due to disbelief. Surah 291 and 570 and 771 blames them for killing the prophets. Surah 385 reversed the earlier salvific declaration for Jews and Christians by claiming that salvation only exists in Islam. So think about that. Before, he says, oh, Jews and Christians will be saved if they do good works in their own religion. Well, then they reject Muhammad. He's like, nope, they'll only be saved now if they leave that and become Muslims. That's a contradiction. Surah 560 declares that Allah turned the Jews into monkeys and pigs as part of his curse against them. And that's a doctrine that Muslims claim was literally fulfilled. Now, the point behind these texts is simple, right? On the one hand, Jews are favored of God and they can be saved by good works on their own terms. But on the other hand, they're cursed of God and cannot be saved unless they're Muslims. These are contradictions. The Qur'an cannot keep its story straight because it's not a true revelation from God. Instead, it's nothing more than the 20-year record of Muhammad shifting policies to solidify power underneath himself. That's all the Qur'an is. Now, of course, Muslim apologists do have an answer for this. Their answer, however, really just gives us one more reason to reject Islam. They answer this with an interpretive motif called Nasik. Nasik is their version of progressive revelation. Nasik is the doctrine that Allah revealed the truth to Muhammad one step at a time, and in so doing, he changed his position on various matters due to various circumstances. So Allah says one thing early in Muhammad's time, but then circumstances change, and so Allah changes what he says. That is the idea of Nasik. Under this principle, Muslim apologists and imams and theologians will tell you that the newer revelation cancels out the older revelation that it contradicts. The nullified revelation is called mansuk. It is now referred to as mansuk, okay? So, when you are interpreting conflicting passages of the Qur'an, a dedicated Muslim will always accept the later revelation as naseek, as authoritative, and the earlier revelation as disregarded, as mansukh. Most of the later revelations occurred in Medina. Whereas the previous revelations took place in Mecca when he had no power, he's trying to win people to his religion, so he's being very accommodating. But then once he has power in Medina, he doesn't have to accommodate anybody, and the revelations now all of a sudden change. And so the point is, if a passage was revealed to Muhammad in Medina, and it contradicts one that was revealed to him in Mecca, then the interpreter is obliged to live by the precept of the later, or the Medina, revelation. Now, Mark Gabriel illustrates this principle of nasik by appealing to Surah 2, 106 and Surah 16, 102. This is where the Quran states this, this hermeneutical principle. It says, It says, whatever a verse or revelation do we abrogate or cause to be forgotten, we bring a better one similar to it. Know you not that Allah is able to do all things? Okay, so that's Surah 2, 106. And then 16, 102 says, and when we change a verse of the Quran in place of another, Allah knows best what he sends down. Okay, so these Quranic passages are blatant admissions that Allah changes his mind and he strikes down his own previous revelation. It's kind of like the American Constitution. In the American Constitution, you have the three-fifths compromise. No, it does not mean that the framers thought that African-Americans were three-fifths of a person. It was actually the South who had the slaves were trying to count them as full persons because that would increase their population and allow them to send more people to Congress. The North said, well, you don't give these people any rights, so we don't want you to count them at all. And then that would allow the North to have the bigger population and send more representatives to Congress. So the compromise was, okay, for every five slaves, you could count three people in your population. And what that did is that equaled out the, leveled out the population between Northern states and Southern states, which kept a balance of power in Congress. That's all the Three-Fifths Compromise was, right? That's in the Constitution, Three-Fifths Compromise. But the 13th Amendment, which came later, abolish slavery. And so that literally now crosses out the three-fifth compromise. It's abrogated by the later amendment. Now that works perfectly fine with a human governing document that has a system by which it could change due to the, you know, changing nature of society and things like that. But when we're talking about the Word of God, that doesn't work at all. It doesn't work at all. Okay, the implications of this are staggering. How can the Qur'an be the perfect word of Allah that is eternal from heaven, meaning it has always existed in an eternal way from heaven as Muslims claim? How could that be the case? But at the same time, Allah has to correct himself in time based on human circumstances in the life of Muhammad. That's when those changes came. How could it then be the eternal unchanging word when it changed in real time and space? And then you even make up a hermeneutical principle to describe this. It just, it doesn't make sense. This explanation amounts to mental gymnastics that is designed to deal with the factictions. They know it. And so this is supposed to cure that. The problem is the cure is worse than the disease. Hoping to remove the Quranic contradictions, they offered a solution that sacrificed the immutability of their deity, right? He changes based on circumstances. Also, it is worth noting that nasik, it's not progressive revelation at all, even if they say it were. And here's what I mean. If it was progressive revelation, it would be additive. It would add things to Allah's revelation. But nasik only serves the purpose of deleting, of annulment. It subtracts from revelation. Thus, it is not progressive revelation. It's deleterious rather than additive. So, who would trust his soul to a deity that can't even make up his own mind on the very revelation that was given to guard the soul? Now, Nasik radically differs from the Christian concept of progressive revelation, because some people might be wondering, okay, well, we believe in progressive revelation. Is ours different? Yes, in the biblical view, God revealed his truth over time, but never did later revelation contradict or abrogate the older revelation. In fact, the Bible says you judge the later revelation by the older one. That's what Deuteronomy says. So what we have happening in the Bible is later events within salvation history or redemptive history, it will fulfill the older revelation and it will render parts of the older revelation inapplicable because they've been fulfilled, but the older revelation is not contradicted by the newer revelation, nor is it struck down. It's still the word of God. There's just, like for example, in Deuteronomy, or no, let me backtrack. In Exodus, you know, you weren't allowed to just kill your own animal and eat your steak or your lamb chops or whatever. You had to bring it to the tabernacle to a priest and the priest would, you know, sacrifice it the right way and then you could eat it, right? But then when you get to Deuteronomy, God says you don't have to do that anymore. Why? Is it a contradiction? No. When they're in the wilderness in Exodus, they're all right around the tabernacle. Everybody's walking distance from really the presence of God, the mobile temple. They're right there. But Deuteronomy is all about, hey, you're about to enter the promised land. When you get there, you're going to be spread out over the whole territory. And I'm going to pick a city where my name will dwell. Obviously, if you live 130 miles from that spot, you are not expected to bring your lamb chops down to Jerusalem. for that. So again, the circumstance changed. And so what happens is it's like, look, this is now the next level of this, right? So here's what you do. You'll have a Levite assigned to your town, take it to him, and just make sure you spill the blood on the ground, don't consume the blood and the fat, and you'll be good. The point is there's planned obsolescence built into certain parts. of God's revelation, but it doesn't contradict it. Like, once they're in the promised land, it's not saying, oh, we've now struck down what was the case in the wilderness. No, it's saying, hey, what was the case in the wilderness is great. That's the word of God, and in the wilderness, that's operative. But we're not in the wilderness anymore, so the new operative rule is, you know, take it to the Levite that's in your city midst. Okay, that kind of thing happens a lot in the Bible. And then, of course, when we get to Jesus, He fulfills so much because it all pointed to Him, right? And so, yeah, there's gonna be some things that will be rendered inapplicable based on later fulfillment, some things that are still applicable, and, you know, Christians argue about this and have been trying to figure out the right way to slice and dice this for a long time, but In the Christian view, the Older Revelation remains the Word of God, it's not struck down, and it reflects His immutable nature and character. That is why Paul says all Scripture, speaking in the Old Testament, is breathed out by God and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness. All of it, even the parts that that aren't operable anymore, right? Even the parts that's not the law for us right now, they still teach you something about God. They teach you something about holiness, right? So again, it's still all God's Word. Our system of progressive revelation is only additive. It is not deleterious. So anyhow, one cannot possibly justify the claim that Islam and Christianity present two equal worldviews, with either one having an equal chance at being correct. No, no, this is a clash between the true worldview of Christ and the arbitrary and inconsistent worldview of Islam. And last time, I pointed out how Islam doesn't even answer the questions that a religion like it brings up. But Christianity, in contrast, answers everything. Our need to have a changed nature, to even be able to obey God's commandments, right? Atonement, to take care of past guilt. Adoption, to bring us into relationship with God. Substitutionary atonement through the God-man, the one who could pay the debt that's infinite because he's infinitely God, but the one who could pay a distinctly human debt as a substitute because he's fully man, right? The Bible answers every question that is brought up by what it says. The Koran leaves so many questions unanswered. These are not two equal worldviews clashing it out. You have one worldview that's the truth that came from God, it's Christianity, and then you have Islam, which is just a hot mess of inconsistency, okay? There are so many internal contradictions and arbitrariness within the Koran that it renders it moot before the eye, which is inconsistency, and before the A, which is arbitrariness, of the PIA critique. As if the internal refutation was not enough, external deficiencies of Islam also heap upon it even more fatal wounds. For example, as I mentioned last time, the lack of manuscript evidence presents a major embarrassment, right? That's huge. Okay, but additionally, Muslims claim that Islam is the original religion of Adam and Abraham and Moses, right? Yet no archaeological dig to date has ever uncovered any scroll, any building, any graffiti, or any artifact that demonstrates any aspect of Islam to predate Muhammad. Okay, in other words, Nothing we've dug out of the ground from any time before Muhammad reflects anything theologically that you find in the Quran or in Islam in general, okay? So supposedly, supposedly Abraham, the prophets, and Jesus were Muslims. They even tried to say they were Palestinians, which is the stupidest thing ever, okay? But if Jesus and Moses and the prophets were Muslims, okay, then, We have a problem because there are no ancient texts that come close to Islamic doctrine that are talking about Moses, the prophets, Jesus, or whatever, right? In fact, Moses is the one who wrote the earliest, Moses is the one who gave us the earliest writings about Abraham, and he contradicts Islamic theology in it on multiple points. The Israelite prophets left behind a huge corpus of their writings, and once again, not one shred of Islamic theology is in it. Not one, right? The closest texts to Jesus are the New Testament documents. And once again, not a single trace of Islam there. Now, Muslims will say, well, you know, John 16, when he talks about the other paraclete, he's talking about Muhammad. No, the text comes right out and says he's talking about the Holy Spirit. So, these people, they're liars, right? And then even outside the New Testament, you have what we would call secular statements, meaning they're just not Christian, okay? But you had Josephus, Tacitus, Pliny, Suetonius. These are all first century, early second century non-Christian writers, and they are agreeing with many of the New Testament statements concerning the ministry of Jesus, right? So we got the New Testament, saying all the stuff about Jesus. We got secular stuff from around the same time corroborating it, and yet the Islamic understanding of Jesus as a prophet of Islam is totally absent in these. Apparently the Romans didn't get that memo, Josephus didn't get that memo, and the New Testament didn't get that memo. And not only that, even before the time of Muhammad, there were monotheists in the Arabian Peninsula. They had their own brand of monotheism. And the thing is, this predated Muhammad, and their brand of monotheism was nothing like Islam either. It was not Islamic in the doctrine or the thinking. Even the area where supposedly Ishmael went and founded, you know, spread the true faith of Abraham, the point is, none of the monotheism in the Arabian Peninsula matched the doctrines of Islam. All the known facts of history contradict Muhammad's claims concerning the past, whereas the details of the Bible continue to be confirmed repeatedly by archaeological digs. Every time they dig something out of the ground in Israel, it is pointing at and corroborating something the Bible says. Surely, if Islam was true, something should be dug out somewhere that shows these ideas existed before Muhammad. And yet we got nothing because Muhammad made this all up. And so when Muslims act like they have the truth, they got the real religion, they don't. They just believe it blindly. And if they question it, well, you know, it comes with huge consequences. So anyhow, anyhow, Islam, continuing the critique, Islam fares even worse when it comes to meeting the preconditions of intelligibility. For example, we can ask, can Islam account for the uniformity of nature? No, not really. It's God cannot exist due to the contradictions ascribed to him in the Quran, which we've already saw. But even worse, the Unitarian conception of God is gonna, it leaves you a God that is bound by creation rather than being Lord over creation. For example, if the attributes of love and personality belong to Allah, then as attributes, there can never be a time where Allah did not have these attributes. especially if he's supposed to be unchanging and immutable. But think about it, love is an attribute of persons and it's relational. For somebody to love, there has to be a subject and an object. So, in order for Allah to be love as the subject, the one who's a lover, who loves, there has to be an object for him to love. Okay, but if he's just a unitary person, then who did he love before he created anything, right? He couldn't have. He could love no one until he first created angels and man. That means he could not possess the attribute of love until there was a creation. And if that was true, then Allah's attributes are dependent upon creation, thus proving him not to be distinct from creation. In fact, creation adds to him. It makes him something he was not before, which by definition is impossible for a necessary being that is immutable. These attributes always had to be part of him. In a Unitarian conception of God, it doesn't work. And here's the thing, if he's not distinct over creation, because creation is now additive upon him and gives him attributes he previously did not have, so if he's not distinct from it, then he depends on creation. And if he depends on creation, how can he be sovereign over it? And if He's not sovereign over creation, how then can He guarantee the uniformity of nature? He Himself is depending on creation for parts of His own nature. How in the world could He then impose or guarantee the uniformity of nature? He couldn't. Listen, a God that is not distinct from the creation cannot be relied upon to make it uniform. Thus, the one and many problem of philosophy that's discussed in Lesson 2, it destroys all the Unitarian counterfeits. So you could go back and look that up there, but I pretty much gave the same explanation right here. And so then, you know, second point when it comes to the preconditions of intelligibility. Can Islam account for the laws of logic? Not with all the contradictions we see in the Koran, right? That speaks against the idea of their God being the ground of logic. It just doesn't make any sense. Furthermore, if logic is reflective of God's perfect mind, then would not God have to be imminent? Wouldn't He have to fill creation for His creatures then to analogically or derivatively access His mind, logic, these laws of His mind? See, the transcendent descriptions of Allah would make this impossible. He's so separate. And so if logic is just, you know, the thinking patterns of Allah and we're derivatively using it, he would have to be imminent for that to be possible. There would have to be a way that we are connected to him, okay? But since humans can't experience Allah, we can't participate in a function derived of Allah's mind. Therefore, in Islam, logic would have to come from a different source than Allah, thus proving that Allah cannot account for the laws of logic. Just like he can't account for the uniformity of nature, he can't even account for logic. It would be independent of him, and it would just be the idea of he and us both use logic, and apparently he can't even use it well, because he contradicts himself all the time. Now, going to the principle of absolute morality, another precondition of intelligibility, Islam's got problems. Although Islam possesses a moral code, it doesn't line up with the previous revelation of the Old and New Testaments on many points, and that shows it to be contradictory. For example, like talking about the moral code, does Islam have an explanation of the bloody sacrificial rights of the Old Testament? Like, for example, the Old Testament, you had the sacrificial system, but it explains it. We needed atonement for our sins. In addition to that, the fall has completely affected us. Death is everywhere. So certain things that point to death, those are things that make us unclean, like bleeding, emissions, corpses, and stuff like that. And so God, who is perfect and not touched by the curse, is not going to walk in the midst of a people, as he did among Israel, without a means for them to be cleansed of the impurities that come from the curse. That was the whole point of the sacrificial system. Do you know Islam claims the Old Testament is from God? But it's got no explanation of that. So at least the New Testament says, look, Jesus as the sacrifice fulfilled it all. And I would argue that in the 40 years after Jesus, the temple was still operating, and it's clear in the book of Acts that the apostles were still participating in it, right? And so do with that what you will. That's not the purpose of this course to address that. But the book of Hebrews makes the argument that even if that temple system goes away, we have the high priest in heaven, and the Holy of Holies who's fulfilled all this, right? So we'll do just fine without having these cleansing rituals, especially since God isn't physically walking in our midst right now. He spiritually dwells in us through the Holy Spirit. Okay, so the New Testament argues, or it gives an argument, it gives an explanation of why these purification rituals aren't necessary for us right now. They're all valid, they're just not necessary. Islam's like, What's a purification system? It has no explanation for this. It doesn't grasp that this was God's localized presence in the community of his people through the tabernacle and later the temple. These items are not addressed in Islam. They just assume, well, why would we have to be clean, right? Why would we have to be ritually clean? And so, Within the Old Testament, these things demonstrated the holiness of God, the sinfulness of man, the need of divinely prescribed redemption through atonement, and all that. So the question is, did God somehow forget these moral realities when Muhammad was born? Obviously not, it's just Islam's unaware of these, at least when Muhammad was, and so he didn't know what to do with these. Now, another problem, morally speaking, for Islam is many of its moral standards are rightly viewed as oppressive and barbaric by non-Muslims. Now, listen, that's not to say that the majority opinion of man decides what's right or wrong. No, God forbid. But the human conscience does cause man to revile certain evils. It's part of our conscience. Sociopaths are the only ones who have seared their conscience to the point where they don't have this. And I bring this up to say that many of Islam's moral practices cause this kind of natural revulsion in most people. Although unbelievers cannot justify their moral disgust with Islam, we Christians, we can because our God and the Bible provide the precondition for absolute morality. So that's one thing to note right there. Furthermore, Allah is an arbitrary character in the Quran and the Hadiths. He could change his mind frequently, as demonstrated by the surahs concerning Jews and Christians. In the Christian worldview, moral goodness is what it is because it's reflective of God's nature. Therefore, it is unchanging and is certainly not arbitrary. Now, what about Islam's consequences? Okay, because that's another thing we look at when we're looking at the preconditions of intelligibility. Well, it is true that at the peak of Islamic civilization, literature, art, and science, it did advance. But it could also be argued that this happened mainly because of the similarity between the way Christians, Muslims, and Jews viewed the world. In other words, they stole enough of the biblical worldview that they expected nature to be uniform and logic to exist. And so they were able to build on some of the earlier contributions of Christians and Jews. Now, Islam can't account for the laws of logic. They still use them to survive in a fallen world. But here's the thing, okay, that's the good. We'll give them the good that, hey, they did have a golden era and some good things came out of that, okay? But despite the good that Islamic civilization brought, its evil is far greater. The sword spread from Arabia all the way to India. Eastern Europe, North Africa, and Western Europe. In the process, millions have died. They killed millions in Egypt alone when they conquered it. And even today, terrorism finds its most loyal practitioners in radical Islam. The many millions of Muslims that surround Israel are dedicated to the annihilation of the Jewish people. And it's not just about Zionism. They lie. They're attacking Jews all over the world right now. I mean, this is Islam. It's not radical Islam. This is Islam that is obedient to their founding texts and their founding what they would call a prophet, what I would call a false prophet. So politically correct liberals could deceive themselves concerning this. They could even lie to themselves and think rape is resistance as long as a Muslim does it. And they could even think that, well, they're just pushing back against colonialism. When the Muslims have been the, they have, provided the greatest project of colonialism in history. This is an Arabian culture from a single peninsula that spread its stuff all the way to Indonesia, to Morocco. You know, they whine about the Crusades, when really all the Crusades where it's like, dude, you've been attacking people for centuries. And then finally one of them says, you know what, we're gonna come back in and we're gonna reclaim some of what you took from us. And then they whine about it. And people let them whine about it. No, it is a barbaric, medieval death cult. And when you look at their morals, that's just how it is. When men can chop off the heads of their wives and their kids in honor killings, something's wrong. When they're allowed to rape the people that they are conquering, something is wrong. And when they can use Terrorism, as a means, when they are allowed to lie, if it helps them achieve the spread of Islam, it's called taqiyya. It's, I guess, a sanctified lie. This tells you everything you need to know. Their moral code is not from the one true God. It's from the father of all lies. So the point is, Islam falls short when an internal critique is performed. It's highly arbitrary, blatantly inconsistent, it lacks external evidence, it fails to account for all the preconditions of intelligibility, and it's pregnant with negative consequences. The Christian is by no means at an impasse with the Muslim. Where Islam fails, Christianity succeeds. Now, I do quickly want to address other Unitarian counterfeits, not just Islam. Now, even though they all teach different details than Islam, they still all carry the same fundamental problems. Whether we're talking about the adherence of Judaism, or Jehovah Witnesses, or Unitarian Universalists, none of these can survive the one and many problem that I already articulated about attributes and things like that, okay? In each case, their version of God will depend upon creation for any attribute of personality, whether we're talking about love, personhood, whatever. It will be dependent on creation. Thus, the basic precondition of absolute personhood is lacking in their Unitarian conception of God. And remember, any dependence on creation blurs the creator-creature distinction and casts much doubt on the deity's ability to maintain the uniformity of nature. This, in turn, then questions any notion that their version of God is sovereign. In summary, any Unitarian concept of God fails to be an absolute person that's distinct from creation. Additionally, their deities can't possess sovereignty and they can't account for the one in many problem. Just repeated myself a lot there, but I'm saying this is what we need to grasp. This is the problem with all Unitarian versions of biblical counterfeits. Now, despite their claim that they believe in a God that is sovereign, personal, and distinct from creation, the rejection of the Trinity makes these beliefs impossible to sustain without a self-refuting contradiction. Therefore, their conception of God can't account for logic or morality either. So once again, if the Christian knows how to refute one Unitarian, like I did with Islam, then the Christian could refute all the variants. But, as you notice, as I was dismantling Islam, some of it was this argument I just gave, but some of it required knowledge of their beliefs. You have to do that with each of the Unitarians. You gotta know these variants, what they believe, that way you could point out their arbitrariness and inconsistency as well. So what I said before this is how you point out the preconditions of intelligibility failure, the one in many problem. They're all going to fail on that. But if you're going to point out inconsistency and arbitrariness, you have to know something about these particular Unitarian counterfeits. So, I'll talk a little bit about Jehovah Witnesses. They claim their one God, Jehovah, is perfect, and that He declares that it's wrong to lie, right? That's what they say. And they claim that the Bible, their version, the New World Translation, is the Word of God. Yet, even in their version of the Bible, Deuteronomy 18, verses 20 through 22 says that the false prophet must die, and it defines the false prophet as the person who prophesies in the name of God, and yet the prophecy does not come to pass. Now, I bring that up because the governing group for the Jehovah Witnesses is the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, and they claim themselves as an institution to be prophets. Well, the Watchtower is known, it's infamous for its numerous predictions of the return of Christ. They set dates and it never happens. They've always been wrong. The Watchtower predicted that Christ would return and you'd have the end of human government. They said this would happen in 1874. It didn't. So they said, okay, 1914. It didn't. And so they said 1975, and it didn't. In 1925, the Watchtower predicted that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the prophets would return in 1925. And so that's when they're going to come back and they're going to live in San Diego. So they built them a mansion in San Diego. And of course, the patriarchs did not come back and so some Jehovah Witnesses moved into that property, and then I think eventually it got sold. But anyhow, by their own definition, from their own version of the Bible, they're false prophets. They're false prophets, you're not to trust them. So if their theology is true, that is wrong to lie and be a false prophet, and yet their organization lies and is false prophets, well then if their religion is true, it's false, right? Everything that comes out of the Watchtower Press should be rejected if its own standard is true. But without the Watchtower Press, you wouldn't believe anything that's distinctive of Jehovah Witnesses. Again, it all comes from them, so if what they say is true, then it is false. The JWs, they attempt to escape this problem by claiming that apostles and prophets made mistakes, that they were not inerrant. But they can't show a single example from Scripture where any prophet of the Bible or apostle made a false prophecy. So their answer doesn't work. To say they made mistakes is one thing, to prove it's another. When we look at the scripture, what these guys wrote and what they predicted was without error. So, by the standard set forth in Deuteronomy chapter 18, verses 20 and 22, the watchtower, they're false prophets. On the issue of lying, right, because God says it's wrong to lie, these people are known for their dishonesty in their proof texting. Now, one example from the many is the blatant misuse of the New Encyclopedia Britannica in an attempt to undermine the doctrine of the Trinity. So they, in one of their Watchtower tracts, say that they're quoting from the New Encyclopedia Britannica. And when you read what they quote, it looks damning, like, wow, the Trinity is a fraud. Okay, but I can't show it to you because I don't have it in the slides. But if you were to, I'm going to read the excerpt. And I want you to know that they put a lot of ellipses. Now, do you know what an ellipse is? An ellipse is when you see those three dots. So you got this paragraph and then you see three dots and then there's more writing and then three dots and more writing. Whenever you see those three dots, it means they're leaving out, they're omitting stuff because they're trying to make it shorter or succinct. But when you find a lot of ellipses, that's usually evidence that they're twisting it to say something it doesn't say. This is what got the BBC in trouble recently, where on the whole January 6th thing with Trump, they took something he said, and then spliced it with something he said 53 minutes later, and put them together, and it looks like it's one continuous thing that he's saying. Okay, but it wasn't. and it makes it look like he's saying something he's not. If you delete the 53 minutes of everything he said and the separate contexts between those two statements and put them together to make it look like he's saying something he didn't actually say, that's dishonesty, that's lying. That's an example of an ellipse. Well, check this out. This is what the Watchtower writes. They say the New Encyclopedia Britannica says, Deuteronomy 6.4, Okay, there's an ellipse here. Okay, so you read that, you're like, oh, looks like the apostles and Jesus were not Trinitarian, and this just developed over time. Yeah, so you'd think, wow, non-biblical doctrine, at least according to the New Encyclopedia Britannica. But a reader with a keen eye would be like, you know what, there's a lot of ellipses in there. I think I should probably go back to the source and read the whole thing myself. And by the way, ellipses aren't always a sign of deceit, but with the Watchtower, yes, they are. And so it's a good idea to go back, read the whole thing, see what was omitted. And in this case, the Watchtower portrayed the New Encyclopedia Britannica in a false manner. Now, I've got a huge block quote. So what they quoted was like about this long, okay? But the full excerpt from New Encyclopedia Britannica is like this long. And so again, something funny is happening there. And by the way, I'm indebted to Brian Orr on this. He was doing research for a thesis many, many years ago to refute the Jehovah Witnesses, and he uncovered this, and it's like, wow, this is just shameful. So here's what the New Encyclopedia Britannica does say. It says, The Trinity in Christian doctrine is the unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as three persons in one Godhead. Neither the word Trinity, nor the explicit doctrine appears in the New Testament, nor did Jesus and his followers intend to contradict the Shema in the Hebrew Scriptures. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Deuteronomy 6.4. Now that's where they put an ellipse, but here's what it says. It says the earlier, right after it says that, it says the earliest Christians, however, had to cope with the implications of the coming of Jesus Christ and the presumed presence and power of God among them, i.e., the Holy Spirit, whose coming was connected with the celebration of Pentecost. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were associated in such New Testament passages as the Great Commission. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Matthew 28, 19, and in the apostolic benediction, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all, 2 Corinthians 13, 14. Thus, or I think that's 1313, thus the New Testament established the basis for the doctrine of the Trinity. That's what New Encyclopedia Britannica just said. The New Testament established the basis of the doctrine of the Trinity. Okay, all that was omitted. This was the next line that was then in the Watchtower one. The doctrine developed gradually over several centuries and through many controversies. And then they ellipse again. Here's what the original source keeps saying. It says, initially, both the requirements of monotheism inherited from the Hebrew scriptures and the implications of the need to interpret The biblical teaching to Greco-Roman religions seemed to demand that the divine in Christ as the Word or Logos be interpreted as subordinate to the Supreme Being. An alternative solution was to interpret Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as three modes of the self-disclosure of the one God, but not as distinct within the being of God itself. The first tendency recognized the distinctness among the three, but at the cost of their equality, and hence of their unity, subordinationism, The second came to terms with their unity, but at the cost of their distinctness as persons, thus modalism. It was not until the fourth century that the distinctness of the three and their unity were brought together in the single orthodox doctrine of one essence and three persons. And it goes on to say more like who the main thinkers were like Athanasius and Basil of Caesarea and all that. There's probably like three or four more sentences and then you get to the next part that the Watchtower wrote where it says the doctrine of the Trinity took substantially the form it maintained in and ever since. What's fascinating with this is, one, they're clearly lying. They're making it look like the New Encyclopedia Britannica is saying the Trinity has no biblical basis. It's a man-made doctrine. What the article actually says is its basis comes from the New Testament, and Arianism, or subordinationism, which is what the Jehovah Witnesses hold, it says that came about because they were trying to explain this to Greco-Romans, who pagan worldly philosophy required them to find a way to say, well, how could Jesus as the Logos, you know, how do we put this all together? It was actually man-made theology. It was Greco-Roman philosophy that gave us Arianism. because it could not accept and it would not accept just what the New Testament said. So this is like the worst kind of lying imaginable here. The Watchtower misrepresented what the New Encyclopedia Britannica wrote. So the only appropriate word to describe their action is a lie. Now, what's my point? Okay, my point is they claim that lying is a sin, but its prophet organization seems to have no problem with lying to convince people of its false doctrines. This is just one example of inconsistency, besides the fact that many of you who are familiar with the subject also know that the founder, Charles Taze Russell, was put on trial in a civil suit and lied, saying he understands Greek and Hebrew. And then when the opposing attorney brought out the alphabet, he didn't even know the letters of these two languages. So lying is baked into their system. A close study of the Jehovah Witness cult reveals that this is just normal for them. Now when you add to this the weight of the one and many problem, which causes their entire conception of God to fall apart, there's nothing left upon which they can stand. Unitarian Universalists will fail on the philosophical grounds that I've already mentioned. So in addition to their conception of God being unable to meet the preconditions of intelligibility, another problem with the Unitarians, here's their arbitrariness and inconsistency, Another problem is that they differ, they vary so much from one group of Unitarian Universalists to the next. Some will claim to be somewhat Christian and even hold to the Christian doctrine of the atonement, and then some will completely reject that and really be nothing more than deists, yet They all call themselves Unitarian Universalists. Their ultimate authority changes from one group to the next, and none of them truly rely on Scripture as the rule and authority in life. And so the easiest way to deal with them is to deal with them on philosophical grounds. and show them that they are arbitrary, inconsistent, and they have no right on their worldview to rely on logic or reason. I remember, because I'm a chaplain in the United States Army Reserves, and I remember when I was going through what's called Chabolic, our basic training, you have all these guys with their MDivs from every religion you could think of that actually gives MDivs. And I remember there's this one Unitarian Universalist, just a cocky, arrogant, pompous fool." And he's just like, well, we base everything off reason. And he's just so cocky. But I'm just thinking, you can't even account for reason. I mean, you can't. Your conception of God cannot account for reason. And right after he said that, he then said, any religion could find comfort or a home and be accepted within their view because they're not going to push any doctrine. It's like, hold on, so you just said you're about reason, but now you've invited endless contradiction among the people who fall under your umbrella of reason. That doesn't sound very reasonable to me. Now, modern Judaism, this one I think is a little different than these other ones, not just because I'm ethnically Jewish, but there are reasons for this. But I will say modern Judaism, in terms of the one and many problem, does not fare much better. And so, adherence of Judaism may, they may use as a comeback, and I think it would be there's some validity to this comeback, they'd say, hold on, we're not biblical counterfeits because the Old Testament revelation came first. Two thirds of your Bible is our whole Bible, right? And so Christianity depends on the Jewish scriptures for its conception of God. And that's absolutely true. And I would say that the New Testament's also Jewish scripture, written by Jews, okay? But even with that, two points need to be kept in mind. First, Judaism, as it's practiced in its current form, and really most of its forms, there's no monolithic Judaism. You have Orthodox, and within Orthodox you have the Haredi, ultra-Orthodox, you've got all these different groups. But then you've got Reform Jews, which are the theological liberals, they're no different then. you know, Episcopalians or PCUSA. You have conservative Jews, which are liberal, just not as liberal as the reformed ones, but they're by no meaningful sense conservative. And then you have restoration Jews, which are atheists. They just culturally, you know, keep the feast and all that because, you know, it's an identity issue, right? So there's not a monolithic Judaism, okay? But whatever form of Judaism we're dealing with, in some way, is based upon rabbinic tradition and teaching that emerged after the destruction in AD 70. And I'm a little bit of an expert on this, and it's not my point to talk about this here, but the thing is, A lot of the stuff that's in the Mishnah does go back to the time of Jesus and before. And some of it's fine, some of it's not. Some of it's the stuff that Jesus was critiquing, as they just got the wrong interpretation on some things and some of their minutiae made no sense. But what you have to understand is in the time of Jesus, you have what's called Second Temple Judaism, or scholars call it Early Judaism. Christianity, the school of Hillel, the school of Shammai, the Sadducees, the Hellenists, the Essenes, these all, you know, the people who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, these were all forms of Judaism. They had an apocalyptic element. They relied on the Old Testament as their revelation. They had a sapiential element or wisdom element. And so the thing is what you had was not a monolithic Judaism. You had this big milieu of Judaism in which all these were at home and they were arguing with each other and debating each other. Now, with the destruction of the temple in the year 70, You only have two surviving strands out of that Second Temple Judaism. You have Christianity, which is claiming like, hey, Jesus is the Messiah. He is the sum of all of our hopes. He is the ultimate interpreter of Torah and the ultimate authority. And through the apostles and the rule of faith coming from that, this is the tradition we then develop, right? The rabbis that were particularly just of one school, the school of Hillel, met at Yavna, or Jamnia, and they decided to take it in a different direction. Did they keep some of the stuff that predated Christianity? Yes. Some of the stuff in it is clearly a reaction to Christianity. Some of it is actually borrowing from Christianity. You know, the crazy thing is the celebration of Hanukkah, the oldest written mention of it is in the New Testament, the Gospel of John. The way that Jews practice Passover, the first reference or written record of it is in the Lord's Supper. And the details given there is how we could see there's the four cups and all that. And I could get into that. and talk all day about it and I don't want to. My point is you have these two alternative strands coming from the same place. One is obviously the true one. The other one is based on human authority and human tradition that was based on a rejection of God sending Messiah. But it is important that Christians should familiarize themselves with Second Temple Judaism since both Christianity and rabbinical Judaism emerged from that. Now, I'm going to tell you New Testament hermeneutics and doctrine in the way it uses the Old Testament fits very comfortable in the norms, very comfortably in the norms of Second Temple Judaism with only a few exceptions. So, I say that to the modern Jews that their form of Judaism does not possess a better claim or pedigree to Judaism than early Christianity. It doesn't. In fact, all of its writings post-date Christianity. But here's the thing. What happens with Judaism is its doctrinal understanding, its religious forms, and its combined worldview actually are far more based on tradition, Jewish tradition from the rabbis, than it is on the actual Old Testament itself. And as I said, they post-date New Testament doctrines. Another thing we have to consider is, yes, they have the Old Testament, but the Old Testament does not present itself as a complete revelation. And the prophets clearly understood that complete revelation comes with the Messiah. Therefore, it is in the Christian worldview that we have the complete special revelation from Adonai to man, and it is mediated through Mashiach, his Messiah, Jesus. It's for this reason that the Christian worldview meets the preconditions of intelligibility and stands against the PIA technique, whereas modern Judaism fails on certain parts of the test. Now, comparatively speaking, adherence of Judaism might be the most difficult to refute because they possess two-thirds of God's divine revelation, and they have loads of archaeological evidence to support their special revelation, and the Old Testament bears no inconsistency or arbitrariness. Now, some of their interpretations do. But here's the thing, modern Judaism forfeits these strengths due to its dedication to its rabbinical tradition. Now, you do have to understand though, even though that tradition kind of defines Judaism, they're not bound to it like a lot of times it's presented. And that's why you have so much variety within within Judaism. But you should know that the whole project of the rabbis was the claim that they have this oral law that comes all the way from Moses, even before Moses, from Abraham, all the way then to Moses, and then passed on to the sages. And then, obviously, these rabbis are the ones who've memorized that oral law. And it tells you how to interpret the written law. So you can't interpret the written word of God without their oral word of God. and you just have to take their word for it, that this is how it happened, and it goes all the way back to Moses, even though it has Greek loan words that Moses would have never heard. But anyhow, a lot of that oral law does contradict the plain teaching of scripture, and that's where you would show them they're being arbitrary. And as I said, some of it developed in reaction to early Christianity. Now, one thing I do want to say, though, is because they're not Trinitarian, A lot of times Christians wanna say, well, they worship a false God. And Jesus does say, you don't know the Father if you don't know the Son. But here's what you have to keep in mind. Paul the Apostle in Romans 10 too said, of the Jews that reject the Messiah, so they don't know the Father, he says they have a zeal for God. Not zeal for a false god. They have a zeal for God based on the revelation that was given to them. They are consistent in their belief of God. They're consistent with what is revealed in the Old Testament, right? And so Paul is saying that, yes, they have a zeal for God. Not a different God for God, but it's not according to knowledge. And that's why they're saved. That's why they're not saved, excuse me. They are missing the most important part, Messiah. And so they cannot be saved without that. But this is not the same as the false God of the Jehovah Witnesses or the false God of Islam. You know, Jehovah and Allah are not the same, okay? So I think if we're going to be biblical, we have to talk about the Jews a little differently and at least concede that according to the scripture, they do believe in God, just not according to knowledge, okay? And so anyhow, let me see. Yeah, I figure... Anything else I have to say? Like the rabbinic tradition obviously was designed to allow Judaism to continue without a temple and without Kohanim, the priesthood, and all that. And that's why the expression of Judaism today doesn't match what you would have seen in ancient Israel. You need a temple for that. But they have preserved some traditions that are biblical very well that has kept the Jews as a distinct identity and prevented their assimilation into the nations which makes the final promised redemption possible. So I'll just leave it at that. But anyhow. Yeah, so they're still going to have the one in many problem. You're still going to be able to show them as arbitrary and inconsistent and all that kind of stuff. So anyhow, it doesn't matter what Unitarian variant you're dealing with. The one in many problem is going to really show the contradictions in their philosophical conception of God. And usually their doctrines and standards are arbitrary. Each Unitarian version of the divine will be plagued by inconsistency. So the Christian just needs to listen to their story and let them offer enough rope by which we will then tie them up. Okay, so now what I'm gonna do, we're done with Unitarian counterfeits. Unitarian takes the longest because that's the hardest one we're gonna have to deal with. Now I'm gonna start, we're only gonna start, we're not even gonna get close to finishing yet. But next time we're gonna finish, so we're gonna start the polytheistic counterfeit, mainly Mormonism, and then we won't finish it, but we'll finish it next time and the pseudo-messianic. Okay, so when it comes to these polytheistic counterfeits, right, Mormonism is the most prevalent and successful polytheistic counterfeit in the world. Most of us have likely experienced Mormons knocking on our doors to spread their Latter-day Saint religion. And they're usually very nice, pleasant people, family values. And one thing they say every single time is that their faith stands or falls on Joseph Smith. And that's where we need to plant our flag, right there, okay? Because with that being the case, we should then evaluate Joseph Smith's story. And therefore, what I'm going to do is I'm gonna familiarize you with the basic story of Mormonism. And then we will apply the PIA technique to it. Just like every other false worldview, Mormons prove themselves incapable of meeting, or Mormonism proves itself incapable of meeting the preconditions of intelligibility and is both arbitrary and inconsistent. So let's consider the story of this very large polytheistic biblical counterfeit known as the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter-day Saints. Now, the Mormons, as I said, they invite us to challenge their prophet. And because of that, the basic story of his life is a good place to start. Concerning the man himself, before he founded his new religion, he was charged with being a peep stone diviner. Although, there's ambiguity as to whether or not he was convicted. I've read the court documents. It sounds to me like he was convicted. But some people will say, well, we don't know if there's a conviction there. But he was definitely charged, and the record makes it clear he was guilty. Okay? Like, he was guilty. He was definitely guilty of being a peepstone diviner. And you could find this record in the indisputable county records of Bainbridge, New York. Now, what's a peepstone looker? In the 1800s, peepstone lookers were charlatans or conmen that would place supposedly magic stones in their hat. And with these magic stones, they would then walk over the ground, almost like a metal detector, what have you. But it would, the magic stones, they could see into the ground through it, and then they could tell people where to dig. If you wanna find a well, or if you wanna find a buried treasure, or whatever, pay me, and I'll find the spot that you need to dig, and by the time you get far enough to realize I swindled you, I'm gonna be in the next town, and you'll never find me again. Now, gullible people would pay for these type of people to tell them. where to dig for these hidden treasures and water wells and all that. So because of this, because it was clearly fraud and a lie, the state rightly considered this profession to be fraud and illegal, so it was criminal, right? It was illegal in New York. Now, many Mormons are unaware of this fact about Joseph Smith. They don't know he was charged with fraud. And what I've found is when you point out the facts that show their prophet was a charlatan, they don't really mean it when they say their faith stands or falls on him. They're taught to say that, but when you expose it, sometimes they'll cry, sometimes they'll just mark your house and not come back because they don't want to deal with the cognitive dissonance. But the point is, they open themselves up to it because they say it stands or falls on Joseph Smith. Now, some Mormons will say, you know what, whatever he did prior to his call from God is irrelevant. Okay, so he might have been a convicted Peepstone viewer, but that's irrelevant. Well, this argument's false. It really is. Joseph Smith claimed to receive his first vision in 1820, but he was charged with the money digging in the court of law in 1826. You catch that? He was convicted or arrested for this six years after he claimed he received his call from God as a prophet. Hmm. Now even if there's ambiguity on whether or not there was a conviction, the testimony of his guilt is still clear, right? He had already received his call as a prophet and still worked as a con man for at least six years. They are correct that his conviction as a con man doesn't prove that Mormonism is false, but it certainly raises the probability that Mormonism was just his next con, okay? Since Mormons trust their soul in Joseph Smith's revelation, it should endure as a sobering thought that before the man was a prophet, he was also a convicted con man. Well, actually, he was a convicted con man after he was a prophet. So again, that really, that tells you everything you need to know right there. Now, this aforementioned fact certainly calls Joseph Smith's character into question. And by the way, on this slide, the QR code was supposed to take you to these court documents and stuff like that, but I was told the QR code doesn't work. It worked when I made these slides, but something must have changed. But you can find this stuff online. It's all open source. But anyhow, anyhow, This fact that I just mentioned calls his character into question. And related to this, one of the best practices in refuting false religion is just to repeat its basic story and look for inconsistencies. Because liars can almost never keep their story straight. One thing I remember, because my wife likes to watch, she used to like to watch Judge Judy a lot. And at first I didn't care for it, but the more I watched, I'm like, you know what? Judge Judy's a genius. And there's a line she said once, she said, She said that people who tell the truth don't have to have a good memory. If you tell the truth, you don't have to have a good memory. Liars, though, are always being caught in their lie and then telling more lies and more lies, and they can't keep track of everything they said. So if you're going to be a liar, you have to have a great memory. Well, they don't have great memories and that's how they get caught in their lies. It's going to be the same thing with Joseph Smith, trust me. And so Joseph Smith, he's born in 1805 in the state of Vermont, but settled with his family in New York when he was 11 years old. His family held membership in a Presbyterian church, but Joseph Smith strayed clear of biblical Christianity from a young age because by his own words, he was perplexed and confused because of how many denominations there were. Right? So according to his account, he's praying in the woods to God at age 14, please show me the truth. And God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared to him with the Father telling him to listen to the Son. Now that's interesting. Nobody could see the Father and live. But Joseph Smith somehow saw the father. You know, when the apostles had that experience with God on the mountain and God says, this is my son, listen to him. They didn't see the father. They heard him, but there was a smoke and all that so that they couldn't see him. You know, the father was protecting them so that they would not die. But apparently Joseph Smith could see the father and be just fine. Now, allegedly, God commanded Joseph Smith to join no church because all the churches are corrupt. and they all give their fealty to abominable Christian creeds. And so Joseph Smith used this supposed vision to reject the church of his family. Now, in September of 1823, he claimed to have another vision where an angel named Moroni bestowed upon him the commission of a prophet. At this time, Moroni informed him that there is an ancient book that is written on golden plates, and it records the history of the former inhabitants of America. They were actually Jews that got on a boat and sailed over here before the Babylonian captivity. and they filled this continent, and there's this whole history, but the Native Americans were actually descendants of the Jewish people, according to this, right? And so, yeah, he took, and that's an older idea that I can't remember who else came up with that, but he took that idea from someone else, right? Now, this book, These plates allegedly contain the fullness of the gospel because it bears the gospel as delivered by Jesus Christ to the American inhabitants in the distant past. And what that means is, you know, Jesus says, I have sheep who are not from this fold. We know that's talking about Gentiles that are gonna be brought into his people with the Jews. But the Mormons say, no, that's talking about the people in America. And the idea would be after Jesus rose from the dead, he then appeared in the Americas and preached the gospel, and it was written down on those golden plates. And so even though the gospel has been corrupted by the church in the old world, they still have Jesus' original testimony on those gold plates in the new world. And that's what Joseph Smith is being given access to. So, he was told that these plates were nearby. He claims to have found them in a stone box, but he was not at first allowed to take the plates with him. So he kept returning to the same spot for four years, maybe to study them. And then in 1827, now he was allowed or permitted by God to take them with him for safekeeping. Around this time, he eloped with a woman named Emma Hale of Harmony, Pennsylvania. And, you know, he wasn't able to, you know, I guess, provide for her. And so they moved into his father-in-law's house. And it was there that he starts supposedly copying the alphabetical letters or characters from these plates and he began to translate them because he's a prophet. Now word of the story spread because he was telling people that I've got these plates and so you have a New York farmer named Martin Harris and He proposed to publish the book that Smith was writing. But there was one condition for this, however. He would only publish it upon verification that the plates were both genuine and correctly translated. At least, that's what Joseph Smith says, right? So Joseph Smith gave him paper copies of the characters that he copied from the plates along with their translation. He claimed it was a language called Reformed Egyptian. Now according to the Mormon story, Martin Harris had the characters and translation confirmed by a professor in New York City named Charles Anthon. in 1828. Now, Charles Anton was an expert in Egyptian language and really a lot of the languages of the ancient Near East. And remember, Joseph Smith said this language is reformed Egyptian. That's gonna come back to get him later. But anyhow, so this is taken to this expert, Charles Anton, and the Mormon story, and it's in their introductory material in the Book of Mormon and all that, it says that this professor confirmed Joseph Smith's translation. He identified the characters as Egyptian, Chaldean, Babylonian, Assyrian, and Arabic, which is very interesting because these are very different languages. Some of them are Semitic, some of them aren't. He obviously didn't know better, but he says there's experts saying this cohesive written thing comes from all these different characters. Now, I have to interrupt the story at this point to clarify one point. When rumors began to spread that Dr. Anton confirmed Smith's plates, the professor made public statements that you could find that he never saw the plates, nor did he confirm the writing, and he says that Reformed Egyptian's not even a real language. It never existed. Apparently, Joseph Smith was lying. In an 1834 letter, okay, 1834, It says this, Dr. Anton wrote this letter publicly, he said, quote, the whole story about my having pronounced the Mormonite inscription to be Reformed Egyptian hieroglyphics is perfectly false. I soon came, and there's an ellipse here, I soon came to the conclusion that it was all a trick, perhaps a hoax. That is Dr. Anton's statement about Joseph Smith, and I bring this up because I remember I used to carpool with a friend down to my old unit when I was, you know, two units ago, long time ago, my military career, and he's a Mormon, great guy, and one time he was telling me the story of Mormonism, and he brought up Charles Anton, confirmed the plates, and I interrupted him at that point, and I said, no, he didn't. There is a public record of Anton saying Joseph Smith lied. This guy had never heard that before. And you know, it didn't change him. I saw the cognitive dissonance and I saw him like redirect and just move on to something else in the story because they've got no room for their prophet to be a liar. But he's clearly a liar. And if they did follow the evidence and they really cared about the truth, they would conclude that he's a liar. But anyway, in 1829, a former school teacher named Oliver Cowdery became the amanuensis, or the scribe, for Smith as he continued to translate. And so it's suspicious, though, because the scribe was not allowed to see the plates himself. Smith erected either a blanket or a curtain, something, a sheet, as a visual barrier between himself and Cowdery so he could never see the plates. Now, does Smith have an object? Yes. But Cowdery was never able to see this metal object himself. Conveniently, only Joseph Smith was allowed to see it, not Cowdery. And so he's on the other side of this curtain reading off the translation as Cowdery wrote it down. Not long after this, The two then go into the woods to pray together, and another vision occurs where John the Baptist from heaven bestows upon them the Aaronic priesthood. You have now been given the priesthood of the Levites, the Aaronic priesthood. You're high priests on this earth, and you are now enabled to understand scripture and prophecy. And then at a later date, Peter, James, and John conferred the Melchizedekian priesthood on them at the banks of a river. In opposition to what Smith claims, the book of Hebrews makes it clear there is only one priest in the order of Melchizedek, and that is Messiah. So for him to say that he and some of his Mormon followers become Melchizedekian priests, that's crazy. It really is. Hebrews 7.17 makes it clear. Only Jesus is the priest of that order. Now, in 1830, the Book of Mormon officially went on sale, and on April 6th, the Mormon Church was incorporated as a church of six members. Within a month's time, it grew to 40 members, but because Smith had such a bad reputation because of his crimes and all that kind of stuff, he was an immoral man. New York knew he was an immoral man, so he relocates to Ohio where nobody knows him. That's a good strategy. It'll get more numbers. And the Mormons did try to perform missionary work at first among the Indians in Kirtland, Ohio. And during this time, Smith published his next work, the Doctrines and Covenants. Now, a lot of people don't understand this. The Book of Mormons, one of their religious documents, but then they have the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price. And all of these collectively have the Mormon doctrine. Now, in Kirtland, Mormon numbers grew dramatically, but still the majority of the population considered his religion to be a hoax. They also accused him of immorality because he had a recent claim there that God now allowed polygamy, that God revealed that Mormons can have more than one wife. What's interesting is God reveals that to him, but then when the Supreme Court declares polygamy illegal, the prophet who was in charge of Mormonism at that time got a new revelation saying they can no longer do polygamy. Sorry, you can't make this stuff up. It is not a serious religion. It just, it isn't. Now, during this time in Kirtland, he claimed that the King James Version of the Bible was corrupt and it had a lot of errors, and so God gave him the ability to correct those errors. And so the Mormons have a specific King James Bible that has Joseph Smith's additions or corrections to it. Now, he declared through prophecy that God chose Jackson County, Missouri to be the land of promise and the true city of Zion. So taking this prophecy seriously, the Mormons then moved to that county in Missouri, specifically Independence, Missouri, but the resettlement didn't last long because the mobs didn't want him there. They attacked his group and so they left. Now, apparently this forced God to choose a different city for Zion in Western Missouri. So now it's like, okay, no, it's not that one. This is what God says is Zion. So Smith's followers in this new Zion, they begin to fight battles against settlers who are moving into Western Missouri. And so now the state militia gets involved. You have the Mormons shooting at and being shot at by the militia or by the, the other people who were settling into that area. And so then the state sends their militia in Missouri. And it ended with Smith and some of his followers being imprisoned. The state determined that Smith and the Mormons were the ones who were breaking the law here. They were the ones at fault. So these guys escaped the prison, did a prison break, and then they fled to a different state. I mean, Missouri was probably, was it a state yet or was it a territory? I don't know. But they fled eastward to Illinois, where Smith settled in a new city called Nauvoo, Illinois, and that's in 1839. In Nauvoo, he starts being called the general by his followers, because he founded a small army called the Nauvoo Legion. And the goal was, supposedly it was only supposed to be a defensive army. It was supposed to be just for protection, okay? But of course, he wanted to be called the general. And there was an anti-Mormon newspaper in Nauvoo called the Nauvoo Expositor, and they published an unfavorable article against the Mormons. So Joseph Smith ordered that his Nauvoo Legion destroy the printing press and all copies of the article be burned. So they vandalized that property and destroyed their press. Okay, well, that's criminal. So Smith's criminal actions led to a complaint to the state governor, which then prompted the authorities to arrest Joseph Smith. Now, even though he was released, he was soon rearrested with his brother Hiram. And while they were in jail in Carthage, Illinois, on the night of June 27th, 1844, a mob attacked the facility and killed Joseph Smith and his brother. Now, Greg Bonson, you know, great presuppositional apologist, he believed that this event, the killing of Joseph Smith, above all else is what allowed the Mormon Church to be a success. Because while he was alive, it was hard to take Joseph Smith seriously. But now he's a martyr, and people have a soft, heart for martyrs. And what Bonson says is prior to this, before he got killed, authorities were on the verge. They were investigating evidence that the golden plates were really counterfeiting plates. There's evidence that he was producing funny money, counterfeiting money. And so he did have metal plates, but not gold plates with ancient text on it. These were metal plates that you use to counterfeit currency. And they were about to prove it, which would show him to be the fraud that he clearly was. But he died. And once you die, the investigation closed. They're like, ah, we're about to prove it. What does it matter now? He's dead, right? That would have served as one more proof that the man was still a con artist and Mormonism was just his biggest con. It really would have. But instead of the truth being exposed, people now had a martyr that was presented by the Mormons as a hero that died as a true prophet of God because this world just wasn't worthy of him. And now two centuries later, young men show up to our doors wearing white shirts and black ties, repeating this false story again and again with tears in their eyes. And they move people with their sincerity. And Mormons are nice people. The best kind of people to have as a neighbor, and they're really sincere, but they're wrong. Okay, so like Islam, that's the opposite. They're violent and they'll kill you when they become a majority if you don't get locked and step with their program. But the Mormons, no, they'll love you to death. It's interesting how Satan will use both extremes. to bring multitudes to hell and to try to pull real believers off the right path. But anyhow, doctrinally speaking, Mormonism is a polytheistic faith. It has nothing to do with biblical Christianity. A lot of Mormons don't know that. They think that, oh, it's just the God of the Bible, but being, you know, he gave revelation over in America too. But the thing is that when you read the documents like Book of Mormon, Pearl of Great Price, and the Doctrine of Covenants, there's a lot of polytheistic passages. And we'll go over this next time. But at the end of the day, you know, the god of this planet, Elohim, was once a man like us. And then, you know, whatever God made him, rewarded him godhood, gave him his own planet. And all Mormons who do what Elohim wants will also one day be awarded godhood in their own planet. Again, it is polytheistic. Now, they only worship the one God, but they don't believe He's the only God that exists. So, official Mormon doctrine teaches that there's many gods, okay? So, I guess since they only worship one, you could classify it as henotheism. Henotheism is the idea that there's many gods, but you only You only give your fealty to one of them. Well, biblical Christianity, in contrast, is monotheistic. We believe only one God exists. And I do say this with the acknowledgement that sometimes the Bible presents fallen angelic beings as being those who are behind the polytheistic pantheons. A lot of verses bring that up. Deuteronomy 32, 17, Psalm 106, 37, 1 Corinthians 10, verses 20 through 21. And the Old Testament does present angelic beings as participating in a divine council in heaven. You see that in 1 Kings 22, verses 19 through 28, and Job 1, verse 6. But the reason why biblical Christianity cannot be classified as henotheism is because God alone is presented as creator and as Yahweh and as worthy of worship. In other words, there's three distinct things that the Bible says about God alone, that no other being has these three things, that God is creator, he made everything, nobody else made the universe, that he is Yahweh, meaning the covenant God of Israel, and he alone is to be worshiped. Okay, those are the three things about the one true transcendent God. And just, it's interesting to note that the New Testament presents a very high Christology because it goes out of its way to present Jesus as the creator, as Adonai or Yahweh, and as one who is worshiped. Those are the three clearest ways within a Judaic system you could declare the Messiah is God in the flesh. But anyhow, The point is monotheism is the best term to describe the one true God, and it is far cry different than what the Mormons believe. So with that brief general story of Mormonism now presented, we can ask the question, how does this hold up against the PIA technique? We'll turn to that next time, okay? So make sure you have this all in your mind. As I conclude, Unitarian counterfeits failed to pass the PIA test. Islam, as we saw, is filled with contradictions. It's an incoherent version of a Unitarian God. And the Jehovah Witnesses and the Unitarian Universalists and modern Judaism, they also have insurmountable problems. The polytheistic counterfeits are also, they got problems, right? And Mormonism is really the main one. Okay, Joseph Smith, so far what we've seen without doing the PIA yet, What we've seen is Joseph Smith was a con man, and the details of his story point toward Mormonism being his biggest con. So we'll pick this up next time, but you have a blessed rest of your day.