Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence. Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602-973-4602 or toll free across the United States. It's 1-877-753-3341. And now with today's topic, here is James White. Good afternoon. Welcome to The Dividing Line on a sunny, warm, yes, very warm afternoon here in Phoenix. Last I looked, I think I saw a reading of 108, no, 107.2 degrees currently. And it was supposed to get up to like 110, at least supposed to tomorrow. So yes, it is that time of year. And I'm really looking forward to riding my motorcycle home through that, especially in traffic where you get to stop and sit there with your engine idling in the sun. at those stoplights, and after about 15 seconds of that, pink elephants start running through the intersection in front of you. It's great! I love it. It's wonderful stuff. Those aren't pink elephants. That's a fire truck, dude. It's coming to put me out. At least put my feet out. That's the problem, man. You put your feet down on that asphalt, there's a reason why it's melting. And I tell people back east, they've got those old potholes from the water getting underneath and freezing and breaking and stuff. We don't have that. We have the little, what do you call those ridges in front of the intersections? Because as people slow down and accelerate, the asphalt gets sort of like fabric. It's kind of cartoonish. Yeah, it's like fabric that you'd push back and forth. That's what it does here because it's so hot. Yeah, of course, as you're sitting there, you're wondering, okay, which is going to melt first, the asphalt or my shoes? That's right. Oh yeah, you can feel it. Believe you me. You can feel it. It's fun. But anyway, 877-753-3341 is the phone number for you to call today. We did not quite finish listening to Jamal Badawi and his presentation on the deity of Christ. We only have about five minutes of that left, I think, maybe a little less than that. And he's going to be getting into now the the section where he is actually presenting where he believes Jesus denied his own deity. Now remember we weren't overly impressed nor could we actually be overly impressed with what was presented earlier there in regards to the trying to deal with the positive evidence is because we didn't hear any of the strongest positive arguments addressed. We didn't hear the Granville Sharp constructions. We didn't hear anything about the identity of Jesus as Yahweh and Jesus is the creator of all that stuff. was just passed over in silence, which truly makes me wonder, you know, when someone passes over in silence, it's a little bit, I'll be honest, a little bit like I'm just working on a blog article right now. Yesterday I posted a blog article where I began discussing a little bit of Dave Armstrong's book, The One Minute Apologist. And I made the statement there, you can find out a lot about the quality of a person's understanding and their study. by what they do in a brief period of time. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, it's one thing if you're writing a huge book or you're spending a tremendous amount of time to collate facts and to put together research and things like that. That's one thing. But if you are asked, and this is frequently an apologetic situation, what we have to deal with in our society, if you are asked in a brief period of time, to give a clear, communicative, cogent, understandable presentation, response, positive presentation of something regarding the deity of Christ, response to an attack upon the deity of Christ, response to an attack upon the doctrines of grace, whatever it might be. That's where the rubber meets the road. That's where you find out if someone really understands what they believe, or whether they've got some major holes in what they believe. It's a little bit like I've always said, if you can't take what you're teaching, and especially when it comes to theology, there might be some super technical things that require more of a foundation like teaching the syntax of Greek participles or something like that. But if you can't take what you're teaching, especially in the area of theology, if you can't go into the youth group, if you can't go into the kids' classes, and make an understandable presentation, you're probably over-dependent upon scholarly language and lingo and things like that. Or you're overly dependent upon some other form of argumentation. For Mr. Armstrong, it's called verbal flooding, or in this case, written flooding. If it was spoken, it would be verbal, I guess. But it is what you do when you don't really have a whole lot to say, so you just say a whole lot more than you need to. and you keep citing yourself and you talk about things that really aren't relevant to the issue at all and make it sound like you really know what you're talking about when, in point of fact, you're just dancing around and hoping that people are sitting there watching you dancing around and they're so fascinated they forget that you're not actually answering the question. And so if you have to answer something briefly, in this case, Jamal Badawi only has five minutes left, and so now you really start finding out how accurate is his understanding? You can't nuance things as well. In Armstrong's book, he's got two pages to address an issue. And that means you've got to pick your best stuff. And if you've got misrepresentations and miscitations and misunderstandings in only two pages, well, it doesn't really matter if you expand that out to 200 pages. The problem is in your foundational understanding. And that's where the test really is, I think, for for many people is, what can you do in a brief period of time? And let's face it, in our society today, you normally only have a brief period of time. You might have a brief period of time at the gate at the airport, sitting on a flight, on a bus, on a train, in a taxi cab, whatever it might be, very frequently you have a brief period of time. And if you can demonstrate that you have the ability to make a meaningful statement and you can do so accurately and you can also represent the position that you are decrying or that you are contradicting accurately in a brief period, that demonstrates you actually know what it is you're talking about. And so as we listen to Jamal Badawi, you will see, you will hear Very frequently what you get in debates, this rat-a-tat-tat, this semi-automatic presentation of argumentation. This is where it gets the closest to what you see in collegiate debate, where you have people who literally physically train their bodies to be able to speak three and four hundred words per minute. They're not trying to convince anybody. There's only a small group of judges who can even understand what they're saying. It's like the FedEx guy in the old commercials from about 10 years ago. How fast can you talk and how many facts can you throw out? Now, obviously, then the other side has to speak just as fast. But you can never contradict all those facts. So it's not a matter of honestly dealing with the facts, it's just throwing stuff out and whoever gets to throw the most stuff out, doesn't really matter if it's good or cogent reasoning or whatever, that's how you win. Well that's what we're about to get here. When you hear someone just throwing this out, throwing that out, throwing this out, it's a great rhetorical device and it sounds real good and it can get your base all revved up and excited. It's impossible in the context of debate to then analyze each one of these texts or each one of these claims in a meaningful fashion, especially since the next guy is going to have a lesser period of time to respond to these things anyways. I've said many, many times that it takes 10 seconds to enunciate an error that takes at least two minutes to correct. And so if you take two minutes throwing out ten seconds of falsehood each time, it would take you quite some time to unwrap all that, and that would be difficult to do in the context of a debate. And so we're about to catch sort of an example of that in Badawi's presentation, starting right here. The references in the Bible are given there. Now, moving to the 2B, which is the last portion in that second page, I would say that In return, as opposed to this allegorical language, which obviously can bear more than one meaning, we find that Jesus, peace be upon him, make explicit and clear statements that clearly shows that he is not divine and shows his subordination to his creator and the creator of all. Now, just so you remember, to this metaphorical, allegorical language, so basically all that he had presented before this about Messiah, Savior, etc., etc., is just meant to be taken allegorically. Now remember, he didn't actually deal. with a meaningful presentation of the deity of Christ. He didn't deal with the best text. He didn't deal with the use of theos. He didn't deal with the use of tetragrammaton, kurios, all that stuff. He just, you know, went zooming right past all of that and did not deal with it. But now we have clear, compelling, what? Evidence that Jesus is subject to his creator. Well, that would mean you'd have to find someplace that says he's created. But always, always, always remember that for the Muslim, And I think you saw this in the exchange with Greg Stafford. He's started posting, he's put the first two sections up, but he says there's more coming, so I'm just waiting until it's all there, but he started posting a big huge response about two months after I once again demonstrate that it's you know any fair-minded person honestly this I don't think it can be a question about this any fair-minded person who examines the information about John chapter 12 verses 39 to 41 and Isaiah 6 one looks at the Greek Septuagint asks themselves a basic question what is John drawing from here what is he trying to present I don't think is a question about what the text is but Greg Stafford is Jehovah's Witnesses in a position where he cannot believe that he cannot accept that Simply, he has to come up with another way around it. And it may be just so far-fetched, but he's got to, because his final authority is not the Bible. His final authority is the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, and it's theology. So he can't allow the Scripture to do that. And so, when you do that, you start with certain presuppositions. The Muslim, you know, we were in the debate that I had with Mr. Stafford, the presupposition that came out was, God cannot become incarnate. There can be no incarnation. God, somehow, when he created, created in such a way that he can't enter into that which he himself made. Now, they'll never explain why that is. It just is. God can't do that. Remember Hamza Abdu'l-Malik in our debate, when I pressed him on that issue. Well, just God doesn't do that. That's what the Quran says, in essence. And for the Muslim, it is an absolute given. absolute given. Allah would never ever ever enter into his creation. There can be no incarnation. So they by definition immediately dismiss the nature of Christ as revealed in the New Testament. They cannot allow for Jesus to be God incarnate. He cannot voluntarily submit himself to the Father. Therefore, all texts where Jesus talks about being lesser than the Father and everything has to do with his having made himself of no reputation, Philippians chapter 2, all of that is taken to be an indicative of, oh, see, this means he can't possibly truly be deity. Because they will not allow for the incarnation. They will not allow for a true human being who is truly divine as well. Because they say, well that has to be 50-50, there's no such thing as being half God, half man. And of course we don't believe that Jesus is half God, half man. It's the Logos who became flesh. The Logos did not cease being the Logos. The Logos did not cease being divine. And the flesh does not become divine. You have one person with two natures. And we can go to John and we can go to Philippians, but the only way that you can make that work is to allow scripture to be scripture. And since they can't allow scripture to be scripture, because remember, Islamic anachronistic eisegesis, looking backwards upon the text with the ignorance of Muhammad as the filter. The ignorance of Muhammad as the filter. Now some people, oh, you're so mean. No, the man was ignorant of Christian theology. That is a fact. If it was anybody else, anyone else, that you could go to what they allegedly said and demonstrate the same level of ignorance, nobody would object. But unfortunately, a religion has developed out of the man's words that will kill you if you speak the truth about his own ignorance. That is an amazing thing to realize. But that's the fact. Anyway, it is the ignorance of Muhammad that forces, through the Quran, the Muslim to look backwards upon the text and to smash the text, to atomize the text, to break it apart, and only what fits with Muhammad's misunderstanding of the Trinity, misunderstanding of Christian theology, can stand, and everything else has to be dismissed. And so that's why Islamic anachronistic exegesis. based upon the ignorance of Muhammad. That would be I-A-E-I-M. I'm not sure how much longer this can go, but we'll keep putting it together here so that we all have an understanding of what's going on. So, with that in mind then, guess what the objections are all going to be based on. It's pretty easy to guess it right ahead of time. For example, he said that he does not do anything of his own authority. That's not a character of God. How long did that take? Less than 10 seconds, maybe 5-6 seconds? No reference given, it's John 5, but no reference given. If you go into John 5, the actual emphasis of the text is upon the unity of the Father and the Son. The fact that the Father has sent the Son, that's the same context that the Jews recognize, that Jesus' language about the Father means that he's equal with the Father. and they want to kill him, and everything Jesus is saying in that is that he's not some separate competing deity with the Father, that he and the Father are doing the same things. He does nothing of himself means that he's in harmony with the Father, not that he's some angel or just simply a Rasul, a prophet, apostle, etc, etc. That needs to be kept in mind. But you see how short that was? Just boom. No reference. Just throw it out there. No context. That's just, that's just, you know, I would call that sort of in the lines of gerrimatics, you know? You just throw stuff out there and you know that if you're forced to actually deal with it, the wheels are going to fall off, but you just hope the other guy doesn't have enough time to actually force you to deal with it, is what you're hoping. Speak any word of his own authority, but what the father said to him. Okay, John 5 again, and all that means is perfect unity between the Father and the Son, the speaking of the Word of God. He is not a competing deity. He's not someone separate who is trying to draw people's attention and worship away from God the Father. There is a unity that exists there, which is why that same chapter ends with, you must honor me even as you honor the Father. That unity is what becomes the basis for that. That he said, my father is greater than I. There is nobody who is greater than God. Now there, John 14, 28, just thrown out there. Again, no references for some reason. I'm not sure exactly. He might be doing that because the references are on the sheet that he had passed out. He's made a reference to a handout. So, you know, maybe he's just assuming you're going to read that. And so he doesn't have to because he's in a hurry. So we won't pick on that. But John 14, 28. Well, that's a standard one you get from Jehovah's Witnesses all the time. And you need to be prepared to have a meaningful response to it. It's not difficult to do, given the context of John chapter 14 and everything that comes beforehand. But I think the best way is to be ready and go, wait a minute, you're only quoting a portion of that particular text. When Jesus says, the Father is greater than I am, what he's saying to the disciples is that since he's going back to be with the Father, if they had loved him, they would have rejoiced because he's returning to be with the Father for the Father is greater than he is. And so you see, it's not just Jesus saying, oh no no, you just need to understand, I'm a lesser being, and so on and so forth. Instead, what Jesus is saying is, if you loved me, you would have rejoiced because I'm going back. To what? Well, what does he say in his high priestly prayer? To the glory which I had with you before the world was. Jesus has voluntarily entered into human flesh. He's walking the dusty roads of Galilee. He is surrounded by enemies who are constantly trying to catch him in every word that he says. and he's now told his disciples he's going to be going back to where he was before where before the world was he shared the very glory of the father which take that back to Isaiah and there's only one who has his glory Jehovah doesn't share his glory with anyone else and so they should have rejoiced because he's going back because the father is greater and that term is a positional term it's not an ontological term he is in a greater position obviously it's not the father who's walking the dusty streets of Galilee And so he's going to be going back to the position where he was before, where he was the object of adoration of the angels and the heavenly host, and we see this again in the book of Revelation, and they should have rejoiced, but they were focused upon themselves. That's what John 14, 28's about, not, oh, see, I'm not Dita, but here, Jamal Badawi just sort of throws it out there, no recognition of context or anything like that, just sort of throws it out. And it is quite pointless for Satan to tempt his creator, the creator of heavens and earth, and say, you bow down to me and I give you a little piece of what you created yourself. It doesn't make any sense. And of course, why does it make no sense to him? Because there can be no incarnation. There can be no true human nature. Allah cannot enter into his own creation. Now, it seems to me very clear that, especially given some statements he's going to make here in a moment, that he does not understand the doctrine of the Trinity, he thinks it's not understandable, and so he will do what Jehovah's Witnesses will frequently do. Sometimes, you know, remember the little red book, You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth, that had all the pictures in it and stuff, that was their main study book that they would study with people for many years. They stopped using it, I don't know, about five, six, seven, eight years ago, something like that. But in that book, within just a few pages, you would find the Watchtower Society at one point accurately defining the Trinity. And a few pages later, inaccurately defined the trinity, once properly, once modalistically. Now, of course, on their part, I would say that was purposeful. I think they are well aware what the doctrine is, and they were purposely deceiving and misleading their people. But many of the cults and isms, and in this case Islam, they will... flip-flop back and forth because they just don't take enough care to accurately represent what it is they're talking about. And as a result, we'll either attack modalism or attack tritheism or whatever it might be. And you've just got to be careful. Just because someone is making objections to your faith, don't get wrapped into, don't get wrestled into defending a position that actually isn't yours. You've got to be very quick to be willing to say, wait a minute, that's not what we believe. When I do role plays, I love getting people to defend positions that actually are not Christian positions. They sound like it, but I tweak it just enough that it's actually heretical. And man, I've seen people go to the mat defending that thing. And once I've got them doing that, you know, the role play is all over with. It's real easy. And unfortunately, I hear that a lot in apologetics encounters as well. is one who could be subjected to temptation. Now notice that. A full human being, nothing but, into which I say, why? And you're not going to get a why outside of because Islam says so. I mean, that's, you know, it's like going back to Hamzah Abdul-Malik. And so which manuscripts don't contain this? Well, they're there. But you can't say, well, no, I can't tell you which ones they were. But I've read scholars of which scholars like I don't have their names. You know, just it just has to be because we know the Koran's true. So when the Koran runs up against facts, then it just just has to be. That's that's just all there is to it. He denied the knowledge of the unseen in several occasions. And one of the most important attributes of God is the knowledge of the unseen. Except, as Anish Arosh is going to point out, there were many times when he actually claimed to have that. And so the one time where you have the issue of the date and hour of his coming, might there be a purpose why the father has that knowledge and the son in his incarnate state voluntarily does not, over against the son having supernatural knowledge, for example, of Nathaniel, when he sees him, and the knowledge that he has in the healings, for example, that take place, remote healings, where he doesn't even have to be around the person, and he's able to do that. Again, since you're not worrying about context, and not even worrying about references, as far as going to them, reading them, quoting them, anything like that. And again, I understand, this is right toward the end of his presentation, he's checking stuff out there very fast, and sometimes that happens, but it doesn't help in making your presentation overly sound or solid. When somebody called him good master, he said, why call you me good? And said that God alone, or the Father, is absolutely good. Now it's funny, he didn't say absolutely good. He said good. People try to use this one and say, oh see, Jesus was denying his absolute goodness. No, he didn't say that. He used the exact same term that the man used. So you don't have any basis for reading good in the man's usage and then changing it in Jesus' usage to absolute good so Jesus becomes something less than the Father. The point of Jesus' response to the man is, You call me good, why? You need to know who you're dealing with. You need to know, this man doesn't know who he's dealing with. He's throwing out these terms and he doesn't know who he's talking to. And if you're going to use this as an argument, then you can't change it to absolute good. You have to come out, Jesus was not good, period. And that's sort of funny for a Muslim to say, who of course does believe Jesus was good. And in fact, did we not hear Jamal Badawi just on the last program talking about how the prophets are as close to being sinless as men can be, and Jesus would be even more so in that context? Bad text to use. He was subject to change. It says in the Bible, he grew in wisdom and knowledge. Yeah, that's called the incarnation because if he's fully God and fully man, men do grow and that's how it's supposed to be and so once again we see that overriding presupposition which really has nothing to do with his deity because it would have reference to something else. God is immutable. God does not change. And God didn't change just because Jesus grows, because he's growing in his human nature, not in his divine nature. God is eternal and his knowledge is complete from the beginning. He referred to himself as a prophet and did not say a prophet and priest and son of God. He didn't say that. Which is really, again, super, super bad argumentation. He called himself a prophet. Okay, yeah he did. And he called himself, you know, Son of God, Son of Man, and I Am, and all sorts of stuff like that. But upon what logical principle can you argue that if he called himself prophet, then it means he can't be anything more than that? What's the logical foundation for saying, ah, you called yourself a prophet, and therefore that means you can't be anything else other than that? There is no logical basis for that. So why even make that kind of argument? Well, because there are some people who do not think logically and therefore will accept your argument, even if it's not logical. Sadly, that's that's the only conclusion I can come to. He referred to himself as a prophet and people believed in him as a prophet. And he made a clear distinction between him and the father. Yes, he did make a clear distinction between himself and the father, because that's what Christians believe and have always believed. And so why would anyone make reference to his distinguishing himself from the Father, unless they are attacking modalism, which of course isn't what we believe in the first place, but just as with so many Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses and everyone else, they'll attack that. Now, having clarified this point, let me raise a couple of other issues very quickly in the remaining few minutes. Some people say, how about the miracles of Jesus, peace be upon him? Are these the actions of any ordinary human being? The answer to that is very simple. Of course, no, who's arguing he's just an ordinary, even a Muslim isn't arguing he's just an ordinary human being. On the basis of the Quran, whenever it mentions any miracle of Jesus, peace be upon him, it says, by the leave and permission of my Creator. And we have seen before in the Gospel of John, That Jesus himself say, I do nothing on my own authority, which means even the miracles, it's not my authority. It is the power of God that has made to appear through my hands. However, there is still a major difference between the means by which Jesus works miracles and anyone else who worked miracles. Because when the prophets worked miracles, those miracles were meant to demonstrate their prophetic authority. But when Jesus works miracles, he utilizes that even to the point where he then accepts worship as a result of those miracles. And he demonstrates his lordship, his power over life and death itself. And they are meant to look forward to the fact that he would rise from the dead, and in fact that he had authority, as he puts it in the Gospel of John, to take his life back. So that's a different context than that which is found in the previous men who had worked miracles as prophets of God. I have given you a list but to shorten the time of presentation since you have all the references I listed eight important and outstanding miracles of Jesus peace be upon him all of which has some sort of parallel in the Old Testament of other prophets especially Elisha and Elijah including bringing the people who are dead to life again Which might mean that in the Old Testament you have foreshadowings and lesser presentations of what would be ministered in Christ's life, but that doesn't mean that, well, Jesus is just like all the other prophets. That's what they've got to do. They've got to make, Jesus is no more than a Rasul. No more than. So you can't have anything that would make him more than. You can't have the other prophets being but dim lights in preparation for the great outflowing of light in the ministry of Christ. You can't have that. So that's why you're hearing what you're hearing right now. Including rising or going up to heaven. Now if these were evidence of divinity, then other prophets other than Jesus, peace be upon him, should have been regarded also as divine. If that was the only argument that a person had, if you didn't have people worshipping him, if you didn't have the divine names being used of him, if you didn't have the fact that he's described as eternal and creator of all things, well, okay, sure. That's the whole point here. It reminds me a little bit of the Mormon who tries to get around all of the historical evidence that demonstrates the first vision did not take place as Joseph Smith made it up later in his life. The analogy that I've used in the past has been the person who thinks that they can escape a landslide because theoretically you can dodge each and every rock in a landslide. Yeah, but the rocks come at you all at once. If a landslide came one rock at a time, okay. But truth doesn't have that nature. It comes at you all at once. And you simply can't keep begging the question every time the facts come along and demonstrate that Joseph Smith didn't have the first vision. The same thing here. You've got all this evidence, but what he does, you just dismiss each one without seeing the relationship to the whole body of the text of the Bible. And again, there's your anachronistic, Islamic anachronistic exegesis, blah, blah, blah, because you are breaking apart the text. They'll never allow you to do that with the Quran. But they'll do it to the New Testament, because they have to. Because they're reasoning backwards. Then some people say, the most important thing really is not the miracles or the claims about Jesus, but the message of salvation. And that raises a very serious question. Because the whole notion of vicarious or substitutionary sacrifice is based on the assumption that you need an infinite sacrifice to take the sins of humanity. That there is some inherent conflict that existed between God's mercy and God's justice. It presumes the concept of Trinity, which for 2000 years nobody has been able to give any cogent explanation. It assumes that Jesus was full God and full man at the same time, which in my humble understanding is a logical contradiction. For there is nothing human, if you're a full human, of being divine, and there is nothing divine if you are fully divine of being limited by human limitations. Now, you've just heard the Islamic mindset. No one's ever explained the Trinity. Well, yes, of course they have. You may not be willing to listen, you may not be able to listen because of your pre-existing commitment to Muhammad and to Islam. You may be precluded from obtaining an accurate knowledge of the doctrine of the Trinity because your holy sacred book misdefines it. because your prophet didn't understand it, even though there was no reason for him not to understand it. It was well known at his time period, but the man was ignorant of those things. If he didn't have access to the Bible in his own language, or in the original languages, then he certainly wouldn't have had access to such things as the canon decrees of the Council of Nicaea, or any of Athanasius' writings, or anything else to truly be able to understand what was being said and what had been taught. And so it does not follow that just because Jamal Badawi or anyone else does not understand the doctrine of the Trinity, that it is not understandable. In the same way, there is no contradiction in the Incarnation. He's assuming some kind of joining of human and divine so that they are changed. And the divine is changed into something human, the human is changed into something divine. He even said it correctly, fully God and fully man. But then his confusion demonstrates he doesn't understand what that means, or does not accept the Christian definition of what that means because, again, of an overriding pre-commitment, an overriding acceptance of the Islamic theology that forces him into a misunderstanding of the theology that came before it. contradiction that I do not wish to dwell on. I have quotations from not Muslims but many honest biblical scholars that this is just an impossibility. Now catch that. The honest biblical scholars, and who are the honest biblical scholars? Unbelievers. So of course if we were to use this kind of argumentation then we would refer to the Orientalists who today even question the existence of Muhammad uh... who will say for example that uh... mohammed is a later development islamic theology that originally islam was a christian heresy interestingly enough the first early christians the first christians to encounter islam sought as a christian heresy and uh... they will they will point to such things as uh... uh... a number of facts that can be collated and put together, that Jesus was the focus of Islam initially and then Muhammad takes over for that. Not that there was a historical person named Muhammad at all, but that this is a development, a political development over time. So, are those the honest scholars of Islamic history? I mean, how would they respond if we in essence made all believing Muslims dishonest scholars? And all of those who don't believe Muhammad exists, those are the honest scholars. How would they respond to that? So why do it in reverse? That's called hypocrisy. Inconsistency is a sign of a failed argument. And if there's anything that can be identified in Islamic apologists, it is inconsistency. The application of one standard to Christianity and the opposite standard. to their own documents. Here it is again. The classic volume, edited by John Hick, called The Myth of God's Incarnation. John Hick! Well there's my honest biblical scholar! Oh my goodness, you know, I might as well be quoting from the lady who's been on Fox News and stuff, you know, talking about Islam, the former Muslim, and her life. I might as well make her the greatest expert on the Quran and try to use that in an argument against a Muslim as to cite John Hick as being an example of an honest biblical scholar. It's quite representative, and these are believing Christians, theologians, and members of the church, and this is not the only case. I have numerous other indications of biblical, honest biblical scholars, people within the church, except for various churches, who raise a serious question about this dogmatic notion of Jesus being full man and full God, and this notion of vicarious sacrifice. Now, it's interesting to me, they're within the church. Well, basically, that's probably because in the West we don't kill heretics. The fact that these people are not in Islam, in Islamic countries, is because they would die in Islamic countries. To use that as an argument, we don't have these, these liberals aren't in our country. Yeah, that's because you take them out and shoot them. I mean, come on, there's a little bit of a difference on how we handle these things. And so to say, well, they're in the church. Well, I would say they're not. I would obviously very consistently say that any person, what do you, quote a Mormon, denies the trinity, quote the Jehovah's Witnesses, they're not in the church. Oh, but they're Christian. No, they're not. That's the whole point. And of course you have very willing accomplices with the Muslims at this point in post-modernists and liberals who want to just totally destroy the ability of anyone to define the term Christian. Now these same men will say they can define Islam and in fact if they're Sunnis they'll define it so closely that they can get rid of the Shias and vice versa and blow each other up. So upon what basis and on what foundation Do you allow yourself that when it comes to Islam I can define it so narrowly that these groups out here can actually end up becoming the objects of my wrath and in fact my military action. But Christians we have to just allow everybody and anybody doesn't matter what they believe to bear that name. Inconsistency, inconsistency, inconsistency. But finally some people would say listen You people, Muslims, just believe in only rational and logical things, but we people take it only in terms of mystery. Yeah, I've, you know, sadly, they're probably, you know, I remember a fellow back in seminary, we were sitting around talking about theology once and he says, you're just, you know what, you're just too logical. You want more answers than we can actually give. And I just remember being shocked by that. But, you know, I suppose there are some Christians like that. And so maybe he's run into some of them. But I can guarantee you one thing, that's not an argument we'll ever hear coming from someone like me. I'd like to make a distinction that Muslims accept that there is mystery about God. God is a mystery. But if somebody comes to me and says 1 plus 1 plus 1 is equal to 3, And you should, it is equal to 1. 1 plus 1 plus 1 is equal to 1. And since you should accept it because they're mistreated, no. This is an idea that is made by human beings. If those human beings know what they're talking about, let them explain to me in what sense 1 plus 1 plus 1 is equal to 1. You know, I wish that in the presentation that followed this, an explanation of that had been offered. It wasn't, unfortunately. But that's not difficult to do. I mean, honestly, is someone going to argue that if a person really wanted to know what the doctrine was, they could not find meaningful resources to do so? I mean, obviously, I've written on it. I don't know when this debate took place, but, you know, it probably was after my book went out and was out there. And there's been books for a long, long time. B.B. Warfield, his work on the Trinity is just just classic. It's it's tremendous. The information's there if they wanted to know, but I don't think they really want to know because their own religion tells them it's unknowable in the first place. And if that's the case, you're not really going to extend a whole lot of effort figuring these things out. There have been many attempts to explain it, and I would be glad to respond to them, none of which really make any sense in view of the whole notion of the Trinity. Now, I've heard Dr. Badouin in a number of different debates, and I'm sorry, he just doesn't hear. He does not hear accurately. He has very firm, strong opinions about the way things are, and if he's wrong about them, he's not really open to being corrected on them, at least not from what I've heard. I would like to think that he's changed since then. That's a nice way of putting it, but the fact is he hasn't responded to a meaningful Trinitarian presentation. I conclude by saying that the main difference between Muslims and their Christian brethren, again, is not loving, honoring, believing in, and respecting the honored Prophet Jesus, peace be upon him. I think that it is, because to have to, in essence, identify every one of Jesus' early followers as a liar is not to honor Jesus. And that's what you have to do. I mean, can we be very serious here? Listen to Shabir Ali's presentations. Listen to Jamal Badawi's presentations. What do they have to say? They have to say that the Apostle Paul, in essence, made up this false Jesus that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John followed him, that even Peter probably wasn't written by Peter, see? And so you have to take the far-leaning left viewpoints of the entirety of the New Testament, throw out their entire presentation, and inconsistently accept only those portions that fit with your Quranic interpretation, throw everything else out, and to do so is not to honor Jesus. To do that on the basis of a man who lived 600 years later, who had no access to the original languages, who did not have any access to what actually took place, who presents a Jesus in his own works that's never a person. He's an argument. He doesn't ever exist anywhere other than when he speaks from the crib, which was borrowed from a Gnostic-type source anyways. That's not honoring Jesus. Coming up with a Jesus who never existed is not honoring Jesus. And I've been very consistent on that. I've said that of Mormonism for a long, long time. Mormonism can talk about being the Church of Jesus Christ, Latter-day Saints all they want. If you have a Jesus, who is one God amongst many gods, the first begotten spirit child of Elohim after his exaltation to Godhood, a separate God from Elohim, who is the spirit brother of Lucifer and our spirit brother as well, whose blood does not atone for all sins, whose atonement begins in the Garden of Gethsemane. That's not the Jesus of Scripture. That Jesus doesn't exist. He can't save you. There's never been a Jesus like that. He's not returning. And you can't be looking forward to his coming. And you don't honor him by believing falsehoods about him. And I've said that for a long, long time about Mormonism. I say the same thing about Islam. Same thing, same issues. Opposite end of the spectrum, you know, rank polytheism for Mormonism to Unitarian monotheism for Islam, but same issues in regards to uh... the falsehoods budget is you're not honoring jesus to believe the second of the question of divinity which is a blessing again is that so i think it's a any creature of god and in the jesus with a creature of god it's empty attempt not at the competitor or any of the dogma of the church on any of you just know actually a friend and at the time indicate the corrective and the story of the through eternal monotheistic faith Now, notice he refers to it as blasphemy. It is blasphemy to believe that a creature can be God. Well, of course. But that demonstrates, once again, the error in Batawi's understanding of the presentation of the doctrine of the Trinity, because we're not saying a creature became God. We're saying that Jesus Christ eternally existed as God, as the second person of the Trinity, not Allah, Jesus, and Mary, as Mohammed seemed to understand, but the second person of the Trinity, the eternal Son, entered into human flesh. So that's not a creature being elevated to Godhood. That's God entering into his own creation to redeem his creation through that perfect sacrifice. And so there you have, I think, again, sometimes people say, you know, I don't like listening to that stuff, you know. If you don't hear it now, the first time you hear it, it's going to be much more difficult for you to respond to it. You know, people will go out with us on witnessing encounters or go out in Mesa and they, you know, the first few times they're out there, they sort of want to hang around because they want to see how this is done. They just don't want to get broadsided by somebody. Well, I guess there are some that do that, and they learn pretty quickly. And then they're hanging around the veterans to figure out what in the world is going on. But they recognize that when you've been down this road before, you're going to be able to give a better response. And so hearing these things, you know, it may bug some folks, it may not be as entertaining as, you know, I suppose we could have some music going or something, you know, but it's not overly entertaining, but it is educational and hopefully edifying and something that can prepare you for the encounters you're going to have because these are the folks the Muslims are listening to. They're listening to Ahmed Didat. His stuff is still running around as bad as it was. And Bataoui is a step up from DDOT. And I would say Shabir Ali is a step up from Bataoui. But they're listening to these things. I mean, where do you think I got these? I didn't have to buy them. They're free on the web. All you got to do is go looking for them. They are out there. And Google's pretty good at finding this stuff. And so, especially within our context, where the Muslims know that they're in the minority, in a very small minority, in light of the two recent facts recently, we should mention, A, the extensive census study that revealed that there are far fewer Muslims in the United States than CARE wanted to claim there was. Of course, CARE wants to inflate their numbers so that their political clout goes up. But the actual number of Muslims in the United States is much lower than CARE claimed. And then the discovery that CARE's actual membership list has decreased by like 85% since 9-11. And there's reason for that too. Has been a pretty big black eye as far as those things go. But anyway, those are interesting factoids to note as well. So, that was what I was listening to a couple days ago when I was writing. Hopefully that's useful to you. Switch back in the last 13 minutes or so of the program here. Don't see any calls on hold. Switch back to Shabir Ali. In fact, I want to get to this because I think it might be good here to hear the difference between Ali and Badawi at this point. Shabir is finishing up a PhD, but my gut feeling is that Shabir will always be a much better communicator than Jamal Badawi is. And I don't just mean in the sense of just raw speaking skill, but he knows what people will be able to hear and how they will interpret what they will hear. And he knows that better, I believe, than Jamal Badawi does. And so listening to him should be helpful. So if you recall, A debate's been going on between Mike Licona and Shabir Ali on the resurrection. And we now go into Shabir's asking questions. I wish it was a formal cross-examination. It's not. It's just sort of a free-for-all. But back to the Shabir Ali and Mike Licona debate. Mike, in your presentation, you presented what you called three irrefutable facts. And they're facts, you think, that have been agreed upon by everyone. One is the death of Jesus on the cross. Two is the empty tomb. And third, his reappearance to his disciples. Now, if you trace the logic of where I was actually leading with my questions, I've already started the question period for you. Now, where you have actually put yourself in difficulty here is with first acknowledging that it is historically certain that Jesus died on the cross. Now, the circumstances of his death would mark him off as a blasphemer. As a Muslim, I believe in Jesus, but I believe in him by virtue of my belief in the Koran. I've said that in my opening presentation. But what Christian apologists are asking me to do is to leave my Koran aside. to say that this is not historical. I must go with the information that is there in the Gospels, based on which the historical conclusion is that he certainly died under Pontius Pilate. Now I'm going to stop just there, just for a moment, because there's two things he said I want to comment on. One of them, I received an email just this morning by someone asking, well, why would, from an Islamic viewpoint, the Jews view Jesus as a blasphemer? Overriding emphasis as you listen to Muslims rejecting the cross over and over again is God would not allow a prophet to die in that way. To die in that way is to demonstrate that you're a blasphemer, to demonstrate that you're under the curse of God. And if Jesus was who Jesus was according to us, a great prophet and nigh unto sinless and so on and so forth, then he could not possibly have been allowed by God to die in that fashion. It is an overriding mental block, an overriding concept in the thinking of the Muslim at that point. And what was the second thing? It was what he had just said here. And the nice thing about a WAVE file is you can do this. Christian apologists want us to lay aside the Qur'an and say it's not historical. It isn't! I mean, on any level at all, how can a Muslim argue that when it comes to Jesus, when it comes to the words of Jesus and the facts of Jesus, how can anyone argue that a single author In the 7th century, a single author, without access to the original languages, a single author, not even in the environs of Jerusalem, a single author is giving us anything historical about Jesus. I mean, that's as bad as the tomb people, the Talpiot tomb theorists, and they are still out there cranking their stuff out, That's as bad as them using the Acts of Philip and calling it historical. It's not historical. Something that's 300 years down the line is not historical. Especially when it's from the same place. It's from Asia Minor someplace. And here you've got someone down in the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century And the only time Jesus is even placed in a historical context in the writing is on the basis of a Gnostic myth. Otherwise, every time Jesus speaks, he's just a disembodied voice floating around through space. How can you call that historical? There's nothing historical about it. That's what's got to be kept in mind. What they're asking me to do is to leave my Quran aside, to say that this is not historical. I must go with the information that is there in the Gospels based on which the historical conclusion is that he certainly died under Pontius Pilate. Now if he certainly died under Pontius Pilate as a blasphemer, as a curse of God, as Paul would put it, Notice, as Paul would put it, so when you see the same concepts outside of Paul in the Gospels, in Shabir's mind, it's because Paul created that. And somehow those original disciples of Jesus, even though the Quran promised they'd be victorious, they weren't. And they are corrupted by Paul's teaching. That's why you hear that phrase. And you know, sometimes apologetics is hearing phrases. When you hear the Mormons say, the only begotten Son of God in the flesh, the phrase in the flesh has a meaning and most people just goes right past them if they don't know the theology behind it and that is certain and if the evidence for his resurrection from the dead is not certain but you can say 75 percent of scholars agree on that and of course you mean evangelical conservative scholars and if you say scholars who study it you're not referring to scholars who have just dismissed it and do not bother even to look at it Now, this goes back to Mike Licona's use of the William Lane Craig argument about numbers of scholars and things like that. Again, you've never heard me argue that way and you're not going to because once you start making your position dependent upon the consensus of scholarship, It's just too easy to find 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or more to argue on the other side and now all you've got are percentages and probabilities. You don't have a foundation. for the proclamation of the resurrection as the certain testimony that God has given to Jesus Christ. Now it becomes a probable testimony. And for many people, you know, epistemologically, that's all we've got. They just don't believe that you can have any higher level than that. I don't think that's consistent with the apostolic testimony. Now, because of course of other conclusions that have already been firmly fixed, conclusions that they know about the history of the Gospels, the way they have been written, and so on. So now, having backed yourself into that corner, you have to provide irrefutable evidence that he also resurrected from the dead. And that is the evidence which you do not have, because you have Gospels which have been evolved over time. The earliest gospel, the gospel according to Mark, does not have the ending which we would love to see Jesus reappearing to his disciples. Somebody had to fix that in later on. You have the later improvements that I've spoken about. How do you respond to that? Well, as far as the irrefutable evidence, that is a tall burden of proof right there. I don't think we can do that for anything. I mean, we can't prove anything with 100% certainty. I can't prove that I'm 42 years old for all I can prove. I mean, everything here was created five minutes ago. Now, see, I don't share that epistemology. I really don't know where that's coming from, but I think it is consistent with some of the argumentation I've heard from William Lane Craig. I would agree that Shabir is trying to create an argument here that has some holes in it, but I wouldn't approach it from that perspective at all. And we were given memories of events that never took place and food in our stomachs from meals we never ate. I can't prove that that's not the case. What we have to look for is high probability and what is the most plausible explanation for the data. And from what you've given me, you haven't attacked any of the evidence at all. Regarding the Gospels, I mean, you're bringing up the Gospels again, but the evidence I provided is decades prior to the Gospels. And so attacking the Gospels again, for the sake of our debate this evening, I'm more than happy to grant that the Gospels are totally unreliable and filled with errors and contradictions. I don't believe that, of course. But for the sake of our debate, I'm willing to, because I want to get our debate focused on the evidence. Now, again, I already mentioned this. I don't want to belabor the point. We're just about out of time. But I simply would never go that direction. I can't. If you're willing to accept as givens in a debate things that will mean that your conclusion is completely improbable and impossible, I don't think you're doing your argument any favor. And when we get to the end, we're going to see, you really can't do it anyways. He's going to have to go back and try to defend the Gospels by then, it's too late. Which is, that I presented, which is decades before the Gospels. And so, you questioned the death of Jesus, you said. And on what basis do you do that again? Okay. Now, you're supposed to cuss at me. I'm sorry. You're in control. First, I should remind you, Mike, that I did not say that none of the gospel is reliable. But I did say that the gospels have evolved over time. And once we peel back the layers of evolution in the gospels, we realize that in the earliest strata, there is not sufficient evidence to conclude that Jesus both died on the cross and resurrected from the dead. Now, obviously, I don't think that's even slightly a possible interpretation of any reading of the Gospel text at all. But, again, if you start off granting the amount of ground that is granted to him in regards to the Gospels, it's going to be pretty difficult to respond to that kind of argumentation in the first place, which I wouldn't grant to him to begin with, and I didn't when we debated this very same issue. Well, as you can hear, the sound in the background is the closing music for this week's edition of The Dividing Line. Next week, I believe we have both editions. I don't think that I'm gone until, I believe, Friday morning. So we should be back together again, Lord willing, both Tuesday and Thursday of next week. Continue pressing on with your calls and review of the debate. Everything we can do to help you to be a Christian who refuses to be silent here on The Dividing Line. We must contend for the faith our fathers fought for We need a new Reformation day The Dividing Line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries. 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