Latest / The Living Waters Podcast / Ep. 222 - What Christians Need to Know About Islam

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Ep. 222 - What Christians Need to Know About Islam · The Living Waters Podcast

• 1:05
  Speaker 1: And so you just have to realize that there are here.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: This is really important.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: There are three major objections.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: I know you guys are not getting any talking in here, and all of you knew all of you knew exactly.
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: You would not get any talking in here.
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: We hear our voices way too much.
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: Just go.
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: This is awesome.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: So there are three major barriers to presenting the gospel to Muslims, and every Christian should understand, should understand what they are.
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, some people are fascinated with cars, others are fascinated with artwork, still others fascinated with ancient artifacts.
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: Ray Comfort is fascinated with eggs.
• 1:49
  Speaker 4: Oh, I love eggs.
• 1:50
  Speaker 4: Prear purse cooked.
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: If you are you're E-dominant?
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: Seriously, Ray, I've rarely found such an idiosyncratic Excuse me Fascination.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: I don't like the way that word began.
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: Idiot, idiot, idiosyncratic.
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: Seriously, ray, what is it with you and eggs?
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: Like you like to eat them?
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: No, like everything about eggs, absolutely fascinating.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: You've never heard them just like.
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: Go on and on about eggs, go on.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: So excited.
• 2:19
  Speaker 5: He's so overwhelmed with joy.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: Scotty about eggs, the scientific teaching of from one of the better words about eggs, how incredibly they're made and how the chicken can breathe the air that's left in the top before he breaks the shell and all this sort of stuff.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: And yeah, these are hygienically sealed packages that you can fry, scramble, poach or make into an omelet.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: Look at the passion.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: Hang on a minute, so don't interrupt.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: You can throw trash at a chicken at night.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: Next morning she produces these incredible eggs that are so good for your folioprotein and that Don't separate the yolk from the white.
• 2:52
  Speaker 4: Use them as God.
• 2:52
  Speaker 4: No, I do that.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: No, no, no.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: They say God created them.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: And Jesus said eggs are good food to give to children, luke 11.
• 2:58
  Speaker 4: Are you joking?
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: No, it's true.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: No, it's true.
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: Mark, are you as fascinated by eggs as Ray Sure?
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: I eat four eggs a day, my daughter.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: He just made me two more months just today.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: I eat four eggs a day.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: What is it with you?
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: Every day, without fail.
• 3:13
  Speaker 5: Stop, wow, are you serious?
• 3:17
  Speaker 4: We go through eggs like it's got to be one of our biggest grocery bills.
• 3:19
  Speaker 4: Do we give you eggs?
• 3:20
  Speaker 4: Does Sue give you eggs, Like once a year?
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: We have to give you more eggs Because you gave us that celly.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: What was the name of the chicken you gave?
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: Betty, betty, sorry.
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: Demonic Betty the chicken, that's where.
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: Legion went into Ray.
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: Now this is because Ray heard you like eggs.
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: This is going to be an excuse for him to get more chickens.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: Yes, we're on the legal limit 25.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: I'd get more you found it.
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: They had to create the law for you.
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: Ray's going to buy the house next door.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: Oh I never thought of that.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: Oh no, here we go.
• 3:46
  Speaker 5: My daughter Eden always wants me to mention her name, so Eden, eden, eden Eden.
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: Eden, eden, eden, even.
• 3:50
  Speaker 5: Grace Pence.
• 3:50
  Speaker 5: She made me two omelets yesterday.
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: Is she always Eden eggs?
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: I knew that was coming.
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: It was really good.
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: It was in bed next month.
• 3:58
  Speaker 5: Do you know what?
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: came to mind yesterday.
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: Was you guys remember Mork and Mindy?
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: Yes, Mork and Mindy he came in an egg.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: He came in an egg, he did.
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: I remember when they had it's more intelligent than evolution.
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: But I remember when they had a baby yes, and he was born in an egg.
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: Was that Robin?
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: Williams.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: Yes, but remember it was pretty brilliant.
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: I never really watched it, but I don't know why I got this etch to look it up.
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: So they had a baby and he was someone winter's.
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: He was a famous guy.
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: Oh, cut it out.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: I don't remember.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: He was brilliant, but he was the hero of Williams.
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: And then he ended up.
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: But he was born as an older man and then he would reverse an age over time.
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: Benjamin Buck, I'm a baby, yeah, anyway, bunch of stupidity.
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: Well, friends, here's a comment from Bucky77.
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: Love this podcast.
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: My 14 year old daughter loves it too.
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: It has encouraged us to dig deeper in the word.
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: Thank you for being your godly goofy selves.
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: Well, that's only one of us, elves, bucky Elves.
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you for that, brother.
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: So bless your daughter.
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: Listen as well, brother.
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: Oh, we haven't done that in a while, brother.
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: How are you doing, brother?
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: That's when you forget the name, yeah.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: This podcast is brought to you by Tough.
• 5:13
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• 5:18
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• 5:20
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• 5:24
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• 5:26
  Speaker 3: Of course, of course, of course, of course.
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: That's a horse Moving Waters mug.
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: They have a study Bible, all living waters.
• 5:32
  Speaker 4: Period calm, Period calm, that's funny.
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: All right friends, back at G3.
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: As we told you, we were there, did 11 interviews, and the one today is with our brother James White.
• 5:46
  Speaker 4: I got to say 11 interviews in two days.
• 5:49
  Speaker 4: I know I was a scrambled egg.
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: My brain was scrambled.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: That sounds good to me, yeah.
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: And James White is talking about a very important subject what Christians need to know about Islam.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: Do you remember James White came to film for a television program about 15 years ago?
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: We sat at a meal with him and none of us said a thing for two hours because he was so brilliant I know.
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: And then we had him out for Living Waters Equip and we hijacked him for like three days.
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: Anyway, we talked about that on the podcast.
• 6:16
  Speaker 5: I love the fact that when we went to do this interview he didn't know what we were going to talk about, but he just kind of shifts some things around in his brain, yeah, and he says if he's reading from a book, he's so smart and I knew that.
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: That's why I didn't tell him at a time like this isn't going to be a problem, he's one of us.
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, friends, no more of this.
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: Here's our friend, james White.
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: Well, friends, it's not often that you meet someone who bikes at least 100 million miles per year, but we have him here with us, not anymore.
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: Oh man, no more.
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: James White is sitting here with us at G3, as you can hear from the background noise.
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: What happened, man?
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: You were like Mr Bike Everywhere guy.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: Lost control of my heart condition, and so there are days that I just simply can't get on.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: I'm still on schedule for about 6,000 this year, with about a third of a million feet of climbing but I'm doing that mainly in my RV now on a smart trainer.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: So I can't go out and do the 100 mile rides anymore, not because I don't have the physical ability, but if you've got a heart condition and all of a sudden it decides to go wonky on you and you're 50 miles from home, you're a long ways away from help.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: So I just don't have the confidence to be able to do that anymore.
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: Well, it's crazy.
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: I remember when we had you out for what we were doing at Living Waters with Living Waters Equip some time ago, boy, we held you for a long time on that, but you brought a bike with you and you took it in your hotel room.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: I did.
• 7:40
  Speaker 4: The same bike that you have in the RV.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: Probably the same one, yeah.
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: Well, james, I'm sure almost all our audience knows you, but for those that don't, dr James White, director of Alphan Omega Ministries Christian Apologetics Organization in Phoenix, arizona, and you're also the elder at Apologia Church in Arizona.
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: And, james, we want to talk to you today about Islam.
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: I've been wanting to do a podcast episode on Islam.
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: We've done a couple hundred podcast episodes, not one on Islam yet.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: Really.
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for good reason.
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: We want to be with the expert, and so we're so glad you're here.
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: In fact, the first time I met you was at a debate that you did at Biola University.
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: Yes, that might have been your.
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: I don't know if it was your first Muslim debate or not.
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: Was it with Shabir Ali?
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: It was.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: Shabir Ali, and it was May of 2006.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: And it was officially the first Muslim debate.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: But I had debated a Muslim before.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: I had debated a Muslim on the deity of Christ on Long Island, but I hadn't started saying Islam yet, so I was just defending the Christian position.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: I wasn't able to provide a meaningful critique of the Islamic position, so I don't consider that one.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: My first Muslim debate, shabir was, and I think Shabir and I have now debated.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: I think we've debated at least seven times since then.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: In London and, in fact, one of the most amazing things, and people can look this up on YouTube, while it's still available on YouTube, I debated Shabir Ali on how a person has peace with God in the Abu Bakr Siddik mosque in Erasmus, south Africa, in 2013.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: Wow, and it's a beautiful mosque and it's fascinating because all the Muslims are seated on the floor and all the Christians are in chairs.
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: So the Christians are wimps and the Muslims can sit for hours on the floor and I am standing in front of the Qibla, which is where the Imam leads the prayers.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: The Qibla points toward the grand mosque in Mecca, and so I'm literally standing in front of the Qibla proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ, and I'm able to be speaking to these Muslims and telling them about the imputed righteousness of Christ and the fact that everything we do is marked by sin and rebellion against God, and God knows our hearts, and so all the good deeds we can do can never do anything.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: We need to have a perfect righteousness, and they've never not only have they never heard anything like this, but they're in their own mosque.
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: And hearing this, and that whole thing is on YouTube.
• 10:10
  Speaker 4: I love it.
• 10:10
  Speaker 4: It harkens back to Paul, and you know, on Mars Hill In a sense yeah, in a sense it really is.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: And people ask well, were you ever afraid when you were in mosques?
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: Because I also debated in the Grey Street Mosque, which was Akhmed D'dat's mosque.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: Now, if you've never heard the name, akhmed D'dat, akhmed D'dat debated Josh McDowell.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: That was the only time Akhmed D'dat made that mistake to debate someone who could actually take him on.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: And he's a gentleman, but he's probably, to this day, the most listened to Muslim in the world.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and so the apologetic methodology that he used is still the standard that you would get if you went to Egypt, if you went to Saudi Arabia, you went to Pakistan.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: That's the kind of stuff that you're going to encounter, not some of the better stuff that second and third generation Muslims in the United States develop, because they've been interacting with Christians and so they develop a better methodology of defending their faith.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: It's called Dawa in Arabic.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: It's interesting the Muslims.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: Dawa for them is an explanation of Islam and an invitation to.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: They don't have a distinction between apologetics and evangelism In their mind.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: They're both the same thing, yeah, which, in a sense, is actually true.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: That should be how it is, and so, anyways, that was Ddot's mosque.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: He had died about 10 years earlier, but that was Ddot's mosque.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: And people ask weren't you ever afraid when you're in a place like that?
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: Never, not once.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: I was always treated with respect, and in fact, at the Gray Street Mosque, when I was defending the deity of Christ, I'll never forget this young Muslim man sitting pretty much straight out from me, and you know how you can tell when you're all accomplished speakers.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: You've been in, you've talked to crowds and things like that.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: You know when people are really tuning in and listening and you've got their attention.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: And so here's this young Muslim guy.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: He looks young to me and he is hearing me and I'm saying, look, we have to use the same standards.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: You can't use one standard to criticize Christianity, then a different standard to defend Islam.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: You can't attack the New Testament with one set of standards and then defend the Quran with a different set of standards.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: And this guy is nodding his head and he's focused and he's listening.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: And at the end of that debate he has brought up to me he's the Imam of the Mosques what?
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: He's the Imam of the Mosques.
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: No way.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: And so it is just.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: The opportunities we had, especially down there in South Africa, were just truly astonishing.
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: They're truly amazing.
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: That's amazing, and I'm very thankful for those opportunities.
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: Well, james, I want to ask you this you know there was a time when Islam seemed to be front and center, it was on everyone's minds right 9-11 hits and then after that, a whole string of a terroristic attacks in different ways, and people were thinking about it.
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: The church was starting to train apologetically.
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: But it seems like recently, or more recently, you know, the whole COVID nightmare and debacle.
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: And then you know, you've got, you know just more recent stuff happening the whole Russia-Ukraine issue, you've got.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: AI, you've got World stuff, CRT, All that right Everything.
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: So do you feel like, because of all of that, islam's kind of gone under the radar again, like out of sight, out of mind?
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: In a sense and I think that's probably purposeful to be honest with you.
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: I think they like it right, I mean.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: Well, they is not a unified singular body when you think about it.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: Most of the time when you hear about Muslims, it's because of Muslim on Muslim violence.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: So you've got the Sunnis and the Shiites and they're blowing each other up.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: They still do that.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: The news just doesn't report on it.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: The tensions still exist in the Islamic world.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: But back then it really seems to me that the mainstream media was using.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: It seems like the media's job these days is to continue to keep us in a state of fear yeah, that everything is bad and you need someone to protect you.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: And that was useful up into a certain point.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: And then it started losing its utility and I think that's honestly why you just don't hear as much about it anymore.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: And the church?
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: we tend to go along with the media which is scary when you think about it, given the nature of the media today, and so it's not being reported as much and so people don't think about it as much and so, yeah, the concern has diminished, even though in reality you look at the actual violence going on overseas, it really hasn't debated or anything.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: The only reason we were reporting it before is it was useful for a narrative in the West.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: It's not useful for a narrative in the West anymore, so we're not going to report anymore, so people don't really concern themselves about it.
• 14:57
  Speaker 5: So, james, if you were doing a debate and let's say the crowd was 50-50, with some Muslims there Done that, how strong is the polemic on the Islamic side compared to the Christians that are present?
• 15:08
  Speaker 5: How can they defend their faith?
• 15:10
  Speaker 5: Are we as able and capable and as studied as the Muslim side?
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: Well, the people that would come to a debate, the Muslims that would come to a debate, are probably much more familiar with how to do dawah.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: They have their arguments.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: The Christians that come are more interested in what this is going to sound like and things like that.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: It depends.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: Your average Muslim knows no more about the Bible than your average Christian knows about the Quran.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: Really, oh yeah, in fact, I would say a higher percentage of Christians have read the Bible than Muslims have read the Quran.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: The vast majority of Muslims, their knowledge of their faith comes from what they hear during the Friday sermons in the mosque.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: You must understand the Quran does not function in the same way in Islamic experience as the Bible does with us.
• 16:06
  Speaker 4: How does it?
• 16:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I want to know.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: It's almost more of a superstitious text.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: It's almost more how you treat the book, where you keep the book, how you view the book.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: It's not.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: Let me give you an example.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: Like 2007,.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: Shortly after you saw me debate Shabar Ali, I was flown into the CBN headquarters and secretly because I'd recorded a bunch of television stuff to be beamed secretly by satellite into Iran.
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: At first we tried to do live translation in the Farsi.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: That didn't work, so we just recorded and then did the translation.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: Later on I did a study and most of the people that were recording it secretly were former Muslims.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: So I did a study on Surah 112 called Surah Taliqas.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: It's a short Surah but it's key to Muslim theology, especially in regards to Christianity.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: The third ayah verse of it says lem yelad wa la mulad he has neither be gotten nor does he beget, so most Muslims understand that as a denial of the Christian doctrine of Jesus as the Son of God, things like that.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: It's as close as you're going to get to a creed in the Quran that can be memorized and things like that.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: So I walked all the way through that Surah in my they're like 21 minute presentations.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: I forget exactly what it was, but I walked all the way through it and I exegeted the text, even in Arabic, and when I got done the Muslim people that were recording the former Muslim people that were recording it and stuff like that came up and said you need to understand that never happens in the mosque.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: That never happens in the mosque.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: You do not have what you're hearing from the pulpit here at G3 never happens in Islam, it just does not happen.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: The vast majority of what you're going to hear, what they're going to be hearing, In fact.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: You want witnessing stuff?
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: Let me give you the witness.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: Every single time I took an Uber or a cab in the United Kingdom, my driver was a Muslim.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: Every single time when I was in Samara, russia, teaching in January is 28 degrees below zero.
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: That's nothing.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: In January of 2019, and we had to take a cab to the location of the class.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: My driver was a Muslim Everywhere.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: You want to know how to open that door.
• 18:41
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: Real simple.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: It's not real simple, but here's how I did it.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: What they hear in the sermons from their imams is not exegesis of the Quran.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: It is the repetition of stories from the hadith.
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: Now do you know what the hadith are?
• 19:00
  Speaker 5: We've talked about the hadith quite a bit.
• 19:02
  Speaker 5: When you came into Living Waters Equip yes, yes, we did.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: The hadith are, and that was a long time ago and I'm glad you still remember me, I'm getting old, you're getting man.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: It's a lot of gray in that beard.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: I have a lot to talk about.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, look who's talking.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah indeed, the hadith are the stories and sayings of Muhammad and his companions that were collected hundreds of years after Muhammad, but they, the Sunni, have certain collections that are considered Sahih.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: That is sound and that becomes.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: That's the matrix out of which Islamic law comes and how the Quran is interpreted, because the Quran, the Quran, does not make sense in and of itself.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: The Quran assumes you know the Bible.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: The Quran provides no meaningful context, and so there has to be a lens through which you look at it, and what the Muslims do is they look at it through the hadith, and so those are the stories that Muslims hear all the time, and I've read all of Sahih al-Bukhari, sahih Muslim.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: That's seven volumes and six volumes respectively of the hadith.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: I did them while riding bike out back when I could still do that, listening to them over, and, over, and, over and over again.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: And so what I would do is, once I realized my driver was a Muslim, I would say do you remember the hadith where you had the man who killed 99 people?
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: Now this is what's called a mutawater hadith.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: That means it's universally accepted.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: So the chances, if your driver is a Muslim who has been raised actively as a Muslim, they're going to know this.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: They've heard it dozens of times before and they're about to drop their dentures that you as a Christian, actually accurately narrate this hadith to them.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: But the hadith, by the way, is there's a allegedly Muhammad said that there was a mass murder.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: He had killed 99 people.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: And he goes to a scholar and he asks the scholar will my repentance be accepted by a law?
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: The scholar says no, so he kills him.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: So he goes to a priest and he says will my repentance be accepted by a law?
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: I don't know if the priest knew about the scholar, but he says go to such and such a village and they will instruct you as to how your repentance can be accepted by a law.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: As he's going to the village, the time of his death comes.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: In Islamic theology, the day and moment of your death is written on your forehead 40 days after conception.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: There's nothing you can do about it.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: That's when you're going to die, that's it.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: And so he drops dead in Mildorotan.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: And in Islamic theology, an angel comes from paradise and an angel comes from hell.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: To argue over the soul of this individual Now you would think this one would be a slam dunk.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: Okay, I mean, you know it's killed 100 people, you know.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: But the angel from paradise argues that he was going to find out about repentance.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: And so a law decrees that if he's one cubit closer to the city he was going to than the city he was coming from, that he will go to paradise.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: And then, in some versions of the story, a law actually makes the earth shrink between the man and that city.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: So he's one cubit closer and he goes to paradise.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: Now think with me for a second.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: First of all, every Muslim knows the story, every single one.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: And so what have you done?
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: You have just demonstrated that you have enough respect for them to know something about their own faith and they don't get that from.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: Christians at almost any point at all.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: Okay, so what have you done?
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: You've purchased yourself an ear, you've opened an ear up to hear what you have to say Now.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: think about that story though.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: Think about that from a gospel perspective.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: But you see, you have to think about it before you're talking to the Muslim in the cap.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: Okay okay, don't, don't just hope that the Spirit will show me.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: No, you have to think ahead of time and go.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: Okay, this means that a law will bring people into paradise with his law completely broken 100 innocent people killed.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: No atonement has been made, but God's just simply going to close his eyes and forgive those sins.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: On what basis, wow?
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: So what does that do for you?
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: That gives you every possible way, because you're going to have to.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: This person has preconceptions in their mind that are going to be in the way of you being able to present the gospel to them, Right?
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: So they're going to hear everything you say and they're going to reinterpret those words within the context of their own faith.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: So you're going to have to explain how Jesus can be the Son of God and that doesn't mean that God has kids and all the rest of that kind of stuff.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: And you're going to have to explain what substitutionary atonement is and why it's necessary and how it allows God's holiness to stay connected to his law.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: In Islamic theology it's torn apart, and that's why I mentioned that debate earlier.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: That's what came up in that debate was I kept pressing the fact that, from the Islamic perspective, their entrance into paradise involves a fundamental denial of the holy nature of God.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: His law has been rejected.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: And they're in the mosque, you're explaining that.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: So you've got to think these things through ahead of time.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: But you have purchased the opportunity to really think about it and to really speak to them about it.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: And so another one of the Hadiths that's really, it's Mutawater, which means it's universal.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: They all know it.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: Muhammad allegedly said that there are people of the fire that do the deeds of the fire their entire lives, up until the point at which it is written for them, and then they go into paradise.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: So, in other words, from his perspective, there was a fatalistic you're going to paradise, you're going to hell, it doesn't matter what you do.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: So you do the deeds of the people of the fire your entire life, until the point in time when it is written of you, and then you go into paradise.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: And then he says there are those who do the deeds of the people of heaven their entire lives, until what is written of them overcomes them and they go to hell.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: So you can't know, since there's no mediator, there's no atonement.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: You cannot know whether you are, whether you have peace with the law or not at all.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: So now think about just those two Hadiths.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: There's a third one I can throw out here if you want to hear it, but you can.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: You can use these stories that they all know, open up the door and then make the connection to a biblical presentation of the gospel.
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: That's a great approach.
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: Let me ask you this how you know, a lot of Muslims seem to have this impression that obviously, the text of the Quran has been perfectly preserved.
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: How do you counter that?
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: What evidence do you give that that's not the case?
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: Well, this is.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: This is when I mentioned earlier about the Imam, the mosque.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: One of the things I was saying is you have to use the same standards.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: You can't use one standard for the Quran, no standard for the New Testament, right.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: When you use the same standard for both, then it's obvious that they have both been transmitted by handwritten mechanism and that there are textual variants in the manuscripts.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: Most Muslims do not know the history of the Quran and most Christians don't know the history of the New Testament either.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: And so when I tell audiences that the average conservative estimate as to the number of textual variants in New Testament we have about 5,800 manuscripts of the New Testament in Greek and the average number given by conservative scholars is 400 to 500,000 variants in those manuscripts and people go and then you explain what that all that means.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: The average Muslim does not believe that there are variants in their manuscripts at all.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: Right, they have been taught otherwise.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: And you might say well, how could you prove that there are variants?
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: That's tough to do if you don't have the resources.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: I happen to own two museum quality reproductions of two of the earliest Mushaf manuscripts of the Quran.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: They were 1400 bucks a piece.
• 27:18
  Speaker 4: Wow.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: And I might have one of like three or four in the United States grand total, so I can open it up and show them and so I can do presentations, digital presentations, where you can show pages that have been cut out and things that have been erased and stuff like that so I can demonstrate the existence of those things.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: But the vast majority people would not have access to that material, and so you just have to realize that there are here.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: This is really important.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: There are three major objections.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: I know you guys are not getting any talking in here.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: And all of you are new all of you are new.
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: Exactly, you would not get any talking in here.
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: Maybe our voices way too much.
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: Just go.
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: Well, this is awesome.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: So there are three major barriers to presenting the gospel to Muslims, and every Christian should understand, should understand what they are.
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: So I'm not going to go in the normal order, since we're on the topic.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: One of those barriers is the fundamental belief on the part of the Muslim that the Bible has been corrupt.
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: Okay, and so what's interesting is that's only been a fairly universal Muslim perspective since 1864.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: And you might go 1864.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: There was a-.
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: That's your easy's dad was born Close.
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: I thought you could say it was an easy, was born 1911, not far off.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: There was a book published by a Muslim scholar in India where he drew from German liberal scholarship.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: It's our ahak, the vindication of the truth, and it's just basically an attack on the Bible.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: That's similar to what you'd get from atheists and stuff like that, but it's being done by a Muslim.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: That book has had more impact on the worldwide Muslim population than any other book that's ever been written.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: That's the book that made Akhmed D dot.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: Akhmed D dot Okay, he believed that.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: He put that into practice.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: He's taught others to do the exact same thing, and so, up till that point in time, there was two streams.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: There were Muslims that believed that the Bible couldn't be changed Because in this, according to the Quran, the Torah in the injil, the law in the gospels Old Testament, new Testament is what we would call it.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: The author of the Quran, I don't think knew the difference.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: To be perfectly honest with you, that they are, and that's all.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: They're, sent down by Allah, and so for a lot of Muslims down through history is like well, the Quran sent down by Allah, the Torah in the injil is sent down by Allah.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: If you could change the actual wording of the Torah in the injil, why couldn't you change the actual wording of the Quran Exactly.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: And so there were lots of scholars, stuff like that, that held the view that the only thing that had been corrupted had been the interpretation of those scriptures, not the form of those scriptures.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: And then you had people on the other side that believed that it could be changed Once it's Ar-Lahak was published and got translated and went all around the world.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: Now 99% of your Muslims in the world take that perspective and believe that the Bible has been corrupted.
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: But, james, real quick street level for people that are listening to us.
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: Isn't this a valid argument that we can use with the average Muslim on the street to say, hey, if the Quran cannot be corrupted because it's a word of God, how can you say that the injil and the Torah were?
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: Yes, except the vast majority would say that there is a special promise for the preservation of the Quran.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: That does not exist with the tried injil, and at that point you need to go into Surah 5.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: I is 41 through 46 and demonstrate that they don't have a way of actually understanding that, and you can see exactly how it works.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: Go to YouTube, watch my debate with Bessam Zawadi from London in about 20, I don't know who knows when it was.
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: It wasn't all that long ago and you'll be able to see how to use that particular text, but I want to make sure that's the first barrier.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: The second barrier is called shirk.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: You need to understand this.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: Shirk is the unforgivable sin in Islam, and what I mean by that is if you die as a mushrik, a person who is committed shirk, there can be no forgiveness.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: Remember the guy had killed 100 people.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: Allah forgave him because he hadn't committed shirk.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: So what shirk?
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: Well, shirk is to associate anyone or anything with Allah.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: It's the closest thing that we would have in Christian terminology would be idolatry.
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: And so most Muslims believe that we are mushrikun, that we, because of our belief in Jesus, are associating a mere human with a law and worship and therefore we have committed the sin of shirk.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: Now, there's different kinds of shirk and things like that, but the Quran is very straightforward If you die in that sin, there is no forgiveness for you.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: But they're also told that what we are asking them to do in bowing the knee to Jesus Christ is shirk.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: Right, so you can see how that's a massive barrier.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: It's the one sin, in fact.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: I don't know if we have the time here.
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: Go for it, we got time.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: That's all we have left.
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: I know we can go beyond that.
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: Just go man, okay, okay.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: One of the things to remember is how serious is shirk Shirk.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: Abu Talib was Muhammad's uncle and he protected him when he was a minority prophet in Mecca.
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: And when Abu Talib was laying dying, muhammad comes and says you know, I'm a prophet.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: Say the Shahada, become a Muslim.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: The rest of the family is saying do not deny the ancestral gods.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: He dies as a mushrikun, he dies as a polytheist, and a law did not allow Muhammad to pray for his parents, who died as idolaters.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: He did not allow him to pray for anyone else who dies as an idolater, except for Abu Talib, and, as a result, abu Talib has the best place in hell.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: Now you immediately are going what exactly is the best place in hell?
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: I've been there and it's outside of I don't know.
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: It's the Phoenix, abu Talib.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: now there's different versions of the story but Abu Talib is either wearing sandals that are on fire and are so hot that his brains boil, or he just stands in fire up to his ankles that boil his brains.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: That is the garden spot of hell.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: The garden spot of hell.
• 33:50
  Speaker 4: That's the best place, dude.
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: You rock band named called it.
• 33:52
  Speaker 4: So what's the point?
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: The point is if the prophet himself could pray for this man and he committed shirk and that's the best he can hope for then you better not commit shirk, and the Muslim is taught.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: You are inviting them to commit shirk by believing in Jesus.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: What?
• 34:13
  Speaker 5: do, you do.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: You have to be able to explain that Jesus Christ is not merely a man that we are associating with God.
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: He has eternally been God and therefore to actually not give him worship would be actually to commit idolatry.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: But you've got to know your trinity to be able to do that.
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: And you've got to be able to demonstrate from Scripture, not simply from creeds or confessions, but from Scripture.
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: I think a good title for a book would be something like the forgotten trinity or something.
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: Yes, something like that might help, but I've only given you two of the three.
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: If.
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: I don't give you number three.
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: We've wasted our time.
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: So the third barrier is from Surah 4, 157 in the Quran, which is just one verse, but it's one verse that says that Jesus well, it's understood by the vast majority of Muslims to teach that Jesus was not crucified on the cross, that someone else was made to look like Jesus.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: Now, most Muslims, especially those who come from outside the United States, believe that that was Judas that was made to look like Jesus, but that Jesus was not crucified on the cross of Calvary.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: That's what they understand Surah 4, 157 to mean there's a whole history behind that.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: There's no Hadith interpretation of it.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: It's really weird, but they believe it.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: And so, obviously, if there's no crucifixion, then there's no resurrection and hence there is no heart of the gospel itself.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: And so if you'll go and watch the debate I did also in London on that subject, you'll see that the Muslim that I was debating what he did was not so much defend, because even the most skeptical people like John Dominic Crossen or Marcus Borg or people like that, they all believe Jesus was crucified.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: They will say that's one of the few facts of Jesus' life that we can really know for certain he was crucified.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: So the Quran puts Islam outside of even the most skeptical elements of history.
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: So they won't so much defend that as they'll attack the resurrection and say, well, there's no evidence of this or there's no evidence of that, and think that that's enough to deny the crucifixion.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: So those are the three to remember.
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: They're afraid of committing shirk, they don't believe Jesus Christ died upon the cross and they believe that the Bible has been corrupted.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: You put all three of them together and the person who is actually going to impact the Muslim obviously is not the person who's only going to have five minutes with them.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: What can you do if you have five minutes?
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: You can plant a seed and hope that they will.
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: I can't tell you how many times I got out of those cabs and the driver was writing down the YouTube address to watch my debates on YouTube.
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: That's how you do it when you only have five minutes, because you're not going to be able.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: If you try to do a normal gospel presentation against those three objections and not deal with them, you're not accomplishing anything.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: So obviously the most effective way of reaching Muslims is in a relationship with them, where you can go over these things over time and you actually know your faith well enough to explain how Jesus can be the Son of God without that involving polytheism, and give a defense the accuracy, the text of New Testament and the crucifixion of Jesus, and these are things that really anyone we're sending into a Muslim country should be absolute experts on.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: They should actually have their their stuff lined up and ready to go.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: That's good.
• 37:46
  Speaker 5: So who does people, who do the Christians, go to?
• 37:48
  Speaker 5: Who should we be reading, looking up, watching videos, listening to audios?
• 37:51
  Speaker 5: Who are those top Christian Apologists you're saying?
• 37:54
  Speaker 5: Go to these guys.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: Well, there's been a.
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of great work that has been done on the subject of Islam and unfortunately a lot of it is not really Popularily available.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: I've done a lot of debates.
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: There have been others who've done debates.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: Sadly, there have been some that I could name who were very much involved in Islamic apologetics, who have become apostates and have greatly damaged the testimony of Christ amongst the Muslims by the things that they've done heartbreaking.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: It is.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: It is.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: It's sad to see, but obviously the bibliography and footnotes in my book Whatever Christian needs about, about the Quran is going to give you a lot of stuff.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: One of the problems, honestly, is I was speaking to church in Boulder and a Muslim came up after my presentation and he said the only thing I would disagree with you about is you said that it's it's almost absolutely necessary to To know and understand certain elements of Arabic to discuss this subject, and so you and I started talking.
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: We talked for half an hour and after half an hour I stopped and said by the way, how many Arabic terms have you and I used over the past half hour?
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: And he sort of stopped and said yeah, a whole bunch.
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: I said yeah, that's that's how we started this conversation.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: It's true, and that is one of the problems is it's a lot of the best information on the subject of Islam seems Difficult and hard for people to grasp because it does use terminology that is drive from the Arabic shirk and hadith, and you know All this type of stuff, and that means it's not quite as easily available as well.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: So I've done, for example, I've done a number of multiple day, like I did one called Islam a to z.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: That really goes into a depth in a lot of these things.
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: You've got to have a real desire to reach these folks.
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: You got to have a love for them.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: That's one of the biggest problems.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, most Christians fear Muslims.
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: They don't love Muslims man James, I'm so glad you said that because this is what it should all circle back to.
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: You know, you're giving us a lot of information and and some great knowledge, but it all ties into love.
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: I mean, this is why you've done this.
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: You've dedicated so much your life.
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: It comes back to love because of the gospel for the most of it.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: Muslims have never known what to do with me.
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah because I will not compromise.
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: I know their faith.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: I make strong arguments against their faith, but they can tell, I care.
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: In fact, one of the things that really started changing my Muslim debates is I started meeting with my Muslim opponents For lunch or dinner before we would do the debate.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: I love it and they just did not know what to do with a Christian who was going to stand firm but very clearly cared about them as a person.
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: They just didn't know what to do with that.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: And if you want to see how it works at this conference, a few years ago I debated Adnan Rashid as part of the pre-conference of G3 Wow.
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: And if you watch how Adnan and I interact today and you go back years to Videos of Adnan at speakers corner in London, you'll go.
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: That's not the same guy and you know what happened.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: We had lunch in Dublin and I explained to him why I do what I do, and he discovered this isn't a Christian, just wants to scream at me man.
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: This the Christian actually cares about me as an individual, and I remember we had lunch at its place called quesadillas in London, believe me there are very, very.
• 41:12
  Speaker 5: I think the only person that likes chips and salsa more than me is you there are very few Mexican places in London.
• 41:19
  Speaker 4: Wow edible.
• 41:20
  Speaker 4: I would just say why there's so many other better options in London.
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: No, if you want Mexican?
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: This is about all there is.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: We met for lunch I'm sure the Secret Services were watching us because he's about a six foot four tall Pakistani and we left that restaurant and we hugged before we left.
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: I love it and every debate you watch us do afterwards.
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: There will be this time when I'll I'll look over him and I'll go Adnan and he'll just sort of go.
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: I know, that doesn't happen unless you've established that relationship.
• 41:55
  Speaker 5: Have you always been like that?
• 41:56
  Speaker 5: Because I think of like you have a relationship with Michael Brown, right?
• 41:58
  Speaker 5: Yes, theology is way over here.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: I have.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: No, I have not always been like that.
• 42:02
  Speaker 5: What was the turning point?
• 42:03
  Speaker 5: Why I?
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: Don't know what the turning point was.
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: I'll be perfectly honest with you, but Something happened at some point in time where, for example, I developed a sense of humor.
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: First of all.
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: I really didn't have that earlier on in my life.
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: I Don't know what.
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: I can't answer.
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: That's interesting.
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: I cannot answer that question, but that's.
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: It's different with Michael or Doug Wilson or someone like that, because there is a faith connection there.
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah some people would say there isn't, but obviously I believe there is with Muslims.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: It is a situation where here is a person who has been given Really a hopeless message.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah it doesn't, they have no way of knowing they have peace with God and and that breaks my heart, especially when I see how hard they fight for something that that cannot give them peace.
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah and I don't know how you cannot feel tremendous Empathy for someone like that.
• 42:58
  Speaker 5: You get a knock at the door and you see that it's a Mormon, a Jehovah's Witness.
• 43:01
  Speaker 5: Does your heart first think these are fellow image bearers?
• 43:05
  Speaker 5: What do you think?
• 43:06
  Speaker 5: All right, here we go, here I go, I'm gonna.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: I'm sure they don't come to James's house anymore more Actually actually what's interesting is they came to my house after they started going back door to the Jehovah's Witnesses came to my door Because they had suspended during COVID.
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: They went to letter writing.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: Oh, that was effective.
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah right, so their numbers have been going Like this.
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: They did come to my door and what was interesting was the guy they had doing the presentation was Mentally retarded.
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: Okay, he was not really capable of having a meaningful come.
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: He was doing his best from a piece of paper.
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: But there is a more experienced guy behind him.
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah okay, give the guy credit, all right.
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: So we start talking and very quickly I have to turn to the more experienced guy.
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: And the other guy is just sort of watching this conversation going on, and what is my thought?
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: It's both.
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: It's not an either, or If it's Jehovah's Witnesses.
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: These people spend five hours a week preparing to deal with you.
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: You don't spend five hours a week preparing to deal with them, yeah, so they're gonna be some of the most challenging people you're gonna deal with, okay, and so that's what's going through.
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: My mind is I wonder where we're gonna go.
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: How long is this conversation gonna be?
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: So on and so forth.
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: But again for a Jehovah's Witness, here are people who are in very much the same situation as the Muslims.
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: They've been given a false hope.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: They've been told that they can't truly have a relationship with Jesus Christ.
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: They have a false Jesus.
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: He's Michael the Archangel.
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: They, they can't partake of the Lord's Supper.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: It's.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: It's a sad, sad thing.
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: I mean, I've been to district conventions of Jehovah's Witnesses and they were Stultifyingly boring.
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah they were dead.
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: There was no life.
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: There was no.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: When they would sing, every sings, every song sounded like a funeral.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: Dirge, wow, and if you don't feel for someone in that situation, yeah, I think your feelers broken.
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, james, what you're talking about in terms of your love and your approach.
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: It reminds me of what scripture tells us.
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: You know, second Timothy 2, 24 to 26, and a servant of the Lord must not quarrel, but be, you know, gentle, patient, able to teach, and humility, correcting those who are in opposition.
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: If perhaps God may grant them the gift of repentance.
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, colossians 4, 5 to 6 make the most of your time with outsiders.
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how to answer each one.
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: Peter 3, 15,.
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: You know, with gentleness and respect in terms of.
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: You know how we, how we, make the gospel known.
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: So I love that brother and man.
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: We could really literally and we, we did pretty much only waters go on for tens of hours with you.
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: But, brother, we want people.
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: This is kind of wetting the appetite of our listeners.
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: So we want them to know how they can connect with your ministry, how they can find out about all that you're doing, what you have going on, so give it.
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, aominorg is the main way.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: The dividing line is the main way we communicate with folks.
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: We have an app out now that allows people to know when we're doing the program.
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: I now travel in a fifth wheel that's how I get around the country and my fifth wheel.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Rich Beers, we pulled the bedroom out and we have built and installed a fully functional two-camera 4K webcast studio.
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: No way, and you're a fifth wheel.
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: Nobody else has what we have.
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: You're unreal man.
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: We're going to be doing the dividing line here pretty soon and we're going to be using the same cameras.
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: I pulled them out of the unit to come over here, and so that's how I get around now.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: And so we do the program even while on the road.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: We just did a debate last weekend, a very important debate, with Dr Gregory Coles on gay Christianity.
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: And coming up in February, I'm going to do a road trip.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: This may be absolute suicide, but I'm going to do a road trip where I'm going to do five major public debates on one road trip, so I'll do it on your bike, bro.
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: No, no, no, I will be debating Trent Horn of Catholic Answers on Soulsville Tour and Purgatory.
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: And then I'm debating a landmark Baptist on whether a Baptist can be reformed or Calvinistic.
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: Then I'm debating Layton Flowers on John chapter 6.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: And then I'm debating Dr Dale Tuggy, the king of the Unitarians, on whether Jesus is yawing.
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: Oh, that's great.
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: Four of those debates are all at first, lutheran of Houston Wow.
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: I think we'll need to go boys, We'll need to figure out a way to go there.
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: That's great, james, so aomorg.
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: Aomionorg.
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: Aomion.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: Aominorg.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: Ok, so Apple Onion.
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: Mormons andorg he's been going to the wrong website as well.
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: I don't know where he's going.
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: Well, brother, thank you so much.
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: We'll have to do this again, hopefully, lord willing, very soon, and keep pressing on.
• 47:42
  Speaker 3: You're an inspiration, appreciate it.
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: Thank you, god bless.
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: James White brought the delight Again.
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: I love the fact that he's all about the heart.
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: You know that he talks about walking in love toward these guys.
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: I mean, James White is sharp and he's one of those guys who can twist someone into a pretzel, but he's tactful because he wants to win them.
• 48:05
  Speaker 5: I remember those two stories from the Hadith that he mentioned, because we always have Muslim drivers with our Uber or taxis.
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that was good stuff.
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: Gave us enough to research and look stuff up.
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: They call me the James White of Mexico.
• 48:17
  Speaker 4: Jaime Brown.
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: Si, Simon Ray, what's your name in Spanish?
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: Ray speaks Spanish Bueno, Bueno, pronto.
• 48:28
  Speaker 3: All right, friends, don't forget to give us your comments Podcasts at LivingWaterscom and your thoughts.
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: Don't forget to give us a rating.
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: Check out the Tough Questions course Living Waters, Mug, the Evan and Study Bible all at LivingWaterscom.
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: Thank you for joining us, friends.
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: We'll see you here next time on the Living Waters podcast.
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: The ultimate cure for insomnia Hee-wee-wee-wee-wee, Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.