 right now we would just like to ask if you can help us by letting us know if the audio is coming through smoothly we're gonna keep an eye on the live chat just to be sure that it is coming smoothly if it is then we'll get rolling and we had done a test right before but just to do a second test as we've had a long day already so thanks so much for everybody hanging with us today it's been a long one thanks for that feedback Brian Stevens should we check all of us yeah check check one does everyone hear me I'm on a different mic make sure you not hearing me through his mic are you hearing this mic check check one check check one right and that check one two three testing oh no audio no idea that might be someone messing with you we can do the joke here please do it when we're back home we'll do the joke about no audio but if you could be honest right now and we'll get rolling thanks so much so if you okay you've got David check thanks Andrew Martin and then how about Samuel check check one can you guys hear me out there okay great Brian Stevens things that feedback saying both mics are great all right awesome thanks so much so folks we are going to start as if we just flipped the camera on right now and basically we'll edit this audio check out later David's idea brilliant okay so very excited we really appreciate it folks so we will be starting in about five seconds so oh yeah because the way this thing is the way you've got a crop around there yeah that's what they're saying you see I'm saying do you see I'm saying I'm like all the way over here on the edge because of this this thing I should we move it slightly I can tilt it slightly before you before you actually get started so that it sure when you do that absolutely okay this is why we're doing this wait he can cut this off later thanks so much folks by the way I want to say thank you so much to both the speakers who have been extremely patient and thank you so much to all of you who have been so supportive as this is like the first day in a long time I felt like crying so you have no idea how much it means that you guys are have been so kind and patient so let's see what looks we're on a little delay here so let's see once I move this thing around awesome thoughts everybody look good looks good thanks Brian Stevens appreciate that all right so appreciate it scoot down a little more you scoot a little bit all right we should be a business now okay folks here we go starting as if we adjust turn the camera on and three two one ready set starting now hey welcome to modern day debate today we're debating whether or not Christians can mock and criticize unbelievers and unbelievers beliefs and we are starting right now thanks so much for being with us today it is a true pleasure I want to say thanks so much for being with us being patient with us as in a couple of technical difficulties I want to say a huge thanks to our debaters who have saved this so the debate can still happen they have honestly been so gracious and so also want to say thanks so much folks for your encouraging words it's really you have no idea how much it means so with that I want to let you know what the format is going to be it's going to be 10 minute openings followed by seven minute first rebuttals five minutes second rebuttals 30 minutes of discussion followed by three minutes of closings and then 25 minutes of Q&A from you so if you happen to have a question feel free to fire it into the old live chat and if you tag me with an at modern day debate it makes it a little bit easier for me to see it so I can try to get as many as possible can't guarantee that we'll get each and every question but we'll sure try folks and want to let you know if it's your first time here consider hitting that subscribe button is we've got a lot a lot more debates coming up in fact tomorrow we're very excited Matt Dela Huntie and David Woods sitting with us right now they will be debating God morality and secular humanism namely which has the better philosophical foundation God or secular humanism when it comes to ethics and so with that we're going to get started given that the affirmative usually takes the start we're going to give David the opening and I have got the timer set so want to say one last time thanks for being here gentlemen want to let you know folks both of their links are in the description so if you're listening and you would like to hear more please check those links in the description box and you can subscribe to both of their channels so with that David would thanks so much the floor is all yours and I will start the timer on your first word well hello everyone I like to thank James for arranging this debate and Samuel for challenging me there's a world out there filled with non-christians always always a good topic of how we are to interact with them my personal view is that there are all kinds of different people there are all kinds of different ideologies there are different kinds of cultures that respond in different ways and so we need a variety of approaches and so we need a variety of Christians with different backgrounds to go out and reach different people from different backgrounds one approach that's especially effective with Muslims is completely wrecking their profit until they realize that he's the most obvious false prophet in history at which point they become much more open to alternatives to Islam and yet I'm told by many Christians that we shouldn't we shouldn't wreck Muhammad we shouldn't we shouldn't go after Muhammad we shouldn't hurt Muslims feelings about Muhammad because that will just drive them away and so on that's false according to my experience I make fun of Muhammad all the time and Muslims can't stay away the the main issue here though is whether it's ever biblical to criticize and mock someone like Muhammad and I would say yes Samuel can give his position but I'm just for my opening statement here I'm just going to read a bunch of passages from the Bible and after that I'll have a few words to say as far as what message I would draw from the different ways of the Bible response to different kinds of people so let's start with the most common passage people think of when this topic comes up in first Kings 18 Elijah has his show down with the 450 prophets of Baal the prophets of Baal cried out to their God from morning until noon begging Baal to set fire to their sacrifice in verse 27 we read and at noon Elijah mocked them saying cry aloud for he is a God either he is deep in thought or he is relieving himself or he is on a journey or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened two points worthy of note here one this verse specifically says that Elijah mocked them to he did so in a fairly graphic manner some translations don't make this clear but he asked the prophets of Baal if their God was relieving himself so he's saying hey what why isn't your God answering your prayers is he on the toilet in Amos 401 we read hear this word you cows of Bashan who are on the mountain of Samaria who oppressed the poor who crushed the needy who say to your husbands bring that we may drink he's talking to the women of Samaria who were oppressing the poor and he calls them cows cows of Bashan i.e. nice big fat cows in Ezekiel 23 God compares Jerusalem to an adulterous wife lusting after men because their genitals are the size of a donkey's genitals God could have used any language he wanted but he chose extremely graphic language to shock his listeners into paying attention in Isaiah 44 the prophet Isaiah makes fun of idolaters and we'll go ahead and read a bit starting at verse 12 the iron smith takes a cutting tool and works it over the coals he fashions it with hammers and works it with his strong arm he becomes hungry and his strength fails he drinks no water and his faint the carpenter stretches the line he marks it out with a pencil he shapes it with planes and marks it with a compass he shapes it into the figure of a man with the beauty of a man to dwell in a house he cuts down cedars or he chooses a cypress tree or an oak and lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest he plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it then it becomes fuel for a man he takes a part of it and warms himself he kindles the fire and bakes bread also he makes a god and worships it he makes it an idol and falls down before it half of it he burns in the fire over the half he eats meat he roasts it and is satisfied also he warms himself and says aha I am warm I have seen the fire and the rest of it he makes into a god his idol and falls down to it and worships it he prays to it and says deliver me for you are my god notice he doesn't simply say idolatry as wrong is wrong turn away from idolatry he mocks the entire process of growing a tree chopping down the tree and building something to worship out of it but those passages are all in the Old Testament how much nicer is the rhetoric in the New Testament not much in Matthew 23 Jesus rebukes the scribes and the Pharisees insults them calls them names and mocks them we're going to read starting at verse 13 but woe to you scribes and Pharisees hypocrites for you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces for you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in woe to you scribes and Pharisees hypocrites for you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte and when he becomes a proselyte you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves woe to you blind guides who say if anyone swears by the temple it is nothing but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple he is bound by his oath you blind fools for which is greater the gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred and you say if anyone swears by the altar it is nothing but if anyone swears by the gift that is on the altar he is bound by his oath you blind man for which is greater the gift on the all the gift or the altar that makes the gifts sacred. So whoever swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it. And whoever swears by the temple swears by it and by him who dwells in it. And whoever swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by him who sits upon it. Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites for you tithe, mint and dill and come in and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done without neglecting the others. You blind guides straining out a net and swallowing a camel. Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites for you clean the outside of the cup and plates. But inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee first clean the inside of the cup and plate that the outside also may be clean. Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites for you are like white washed tombs which outwardly appear beautiful but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. Jesus goes on but I think we get the picture. In Matthew 23 Jesus calls the scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, blind guides, blind men, blind fools, white washed tombs, serpents, brood of vipers. If this isn't criticism and mockery I don't know what is. In Acts 13 Elimus the sorcerer tries to hinder the preaching of Paul and Barnabas. We read beginning in verse 9 but Saul who is also called Paul filled with the Holy Spirit. So Paul's filled with the Holy Spirit here looked intently at him and said you son of the devil you enemy of all righteousness full of all deceit and villainy will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the Lord so son of the devil enemy of righteousness full of all deceit in and villainy. In Galatians 5 Paul responds to the Judaizers who are telling the Gentile Christians that they needed to be circumcised and convert to Judaism in order to properly accept the gospel. Paul says in verse 12 I wish that those who are troubling you would even castrate themselves. In other words if these guys think that cutting off part of your penis will bring you closer to God then Jesus already brought you through dying on the cross for your sins why don't they go all the way and just castrate themselves. Did Paul really want them to castrate themselves? No he was mocking them. Paul warns his readers about the same group in Philippians 3 2 watch out for those dogs those evil doers those mutilators of the flesh. In Titus 1 12 to 14 Paul makes fun of everyone from the island of Crete. He says one of Crete's own prophets has said Cretans are always liars evil brutes lazy glutton's this saying is true therefore rebuke them sharply so that they will be sound in the faith. In 2 Peter 2 the apostle Peter describes false teachers a few quotes from this passage verse 12 they're like unreasoning animals creatures of instinct born only to be caught and destroyed and like animals they too will perish. Verse 13 there blots and blemishes reveling in their pleasures while they feast with you. Verse 14 with eyes full of adultery they never stop sinning they seduce the unstable they are experts in greed and accursed brood. Verse 17 these people are springs without water and mists driven by a storm. Verse 22 of them the proverbs are true a dog returns to its vomit and a sal that is washed returns to her wallowing in the mud. So the apostle Peter compares false teachers to dogs and pigs. What am I leaving out here? Well all the passages in the Bible which talk about being gentle and showing gentleness towards people. What's the takeaway message? Well that there are general rules for interacting with others and these would include things like generalists but there are exceptions namely for people who are oppressors religious leaders who are leading other people astray people who are engaging idolatry things like that and according to the Bible those are situations where we can criticize and mock. Thank you very much David Wood for that opening statement we will now be switching it over to Samuel just to give you a quick introduction of these speakers as if you had not heard although you definitely I'm sure seen David Wood at x17 apologetics if you haven't I will tell you that it is a huge apologetic channel here on YouTube and oftentimes uses more of a satire style and so that's kind of the the background or purpose for this debate namely Samuel Nassan who's been on the channel before and thus you may recognize him he is giving a challenge to David's methodology regarding apologetics and he is that explain apologetics he has done many speeches in Malaysia and this is uh is this your first time in the United States for a debate at least okay first time having a debate in the US so it's a true pleasure to have him so I will move it over to Samuel for his opening statement as well right that clock uh you bet just wait for the clock to get started all right thank you David for participating in this debate with me and thank you James for setting this up and your patience and being so supportive to the work I do well first of all let me make this clear this is not a challenge to David personally this is basically a debate between two brothers in Christ discussing as to what the Bible says concerning Christian apologetics so I come into this debate with a lot of respect for David recognizing of course that his life has touched so many people and continues to do so and basically it's a massive honor for me to even share this this this stage with him so the context of this is basically how should Christians do apologetics in light of the Bible and when we look into the scriptures both David and I affirm the scriptures as the sole infallible authority for Christian faith practice rule and practice so the question of whether Christians ought to be allowed to mock or criticize proponents of different faith is a question it must be settled biblically not by popular consent not by pragmatism as to what works better but basically what does the Bible say concerning this in my contention today is that it is unbiblical for Christians to criticize and mock unbelievers and their views and I come into this debate as I mentioned to David even before this debate I'm not firmly saying no this is a it's basically what I believe in it's the apologetic methodology that I have employed but I'm very open to learning from David in this debate as well again as I said this is a debate among brethren in Christ and we're open to searching the scriptures together so before I begin let me define my key terms because that is going to be really where the subject of the debate is the key terminology based on my opening contention is that number one it's unbiblical for Christians to criticize and mock unbelievers and their views by Christian I'm referring to believers or disciples of Jesus Christ as described in Acts 11 26 by this definition Elijah and the prophets of the Old Testament are not Christians number two by criticize I mean to quote indicate the faults of a religion and quote in the context of engaging a non-christian so I'm speaking in the context of apologetics to the unbeliever and I strongly believe there is a place for godly criticism of other religions in discipleship for instance when we are discipling a church or when you're discipling believers who are ones of a different faith it's good to explain to those believers why it is that their faith their reasons for believing in those religions previously do not hold water I think that's there's a place for that but I'm speaking here in the context of engaging the unbeliever that's why I believe we should not be engaging in what I call negative apologetics by mock I mean to tease or laugh at someone in a skonfu or contemptuous manner that's what I mean by mock by unbelievers I'm generally referring to those outside the Judeo-Christian worldview now this is an important definition because by unbelievers technically I'm including even Jews and a whole bunch of people inside the Judeo-Christian worldview the reason for this is as the Jewish studies expert Lauren Schiffman explains the split between Judaism and Christianity did not come about simply or quickly it was a complex process that took some 100 years Paul himself claims he was a Jew in Acts 21 39 so when we see the apostles and Jesus criticizing the Jews remember Jesus himself was a Jew so it is not really criticizing the unbeliever and I think that distinction is important in the first century was Christianity an independent religion or was Christianity part of Judaism that is a subject for a different debate but in my definition for this debate I am treating them in one category of course I don't believe Jews are saved but in terms of unbelievers the the I see the apostles as holding the Jews accountable to the scriptures that they affirm as the word of God and in that sense they're dealing almost believer to believer so that's my definition and I believe that I also should add that I would strongly encourage criticisms of belief systems within the Christian worldview so for example movements like the prosperity gospel the oneness movement which denies the trinity and even hyper Calvinism for that matter I believe should be criticized and rebuked according to 2nd Timothy 4 2 and as David said the episode to the Galatians these are either false teachers or believers who have succumbed to these false teaching and in the context of my main contention do not come under the unbelievers finally unbiblical and this is an again an important term I'm using here when I say it is unbiblical to criticize or to mock proponents of a different religion or unbelievers I do not mean that it is a sin to do so I'm not saying that the bible explicitly forbids criticizing unbelievers because there's no way in the bible I think that explicitly would clearly forbid such a thing and I'm happy to concede that rather I think in the same way that we would say I would say things like being slain in the spirit or you seeing someone rolling on the floor it's unbiblical in the sense that we don't see a a a a precedence for this in scripture and hence need to trade with caution that is my approach in today's debates I'm not saying that someone who engages in negative apologetics or criticizing or mocking someone of a different religion is necessarily even sinning so I hope that is clear in in the process of of of this debate so when I say the biblical model of engaging the the believer is gospel-centered and positive positive what I mean is that this is the way the apostles did it and we should follow in their footsteps the apostles actively pointed people to Christ the apologetic methodology was gospel-centered and it they you don't see them mocking the unbeliever in the process of engaging them of course you see that in the episodes when they speak to believers so now that's my contention and my clarification I just want to briefly summarize three uh uh evidences or three reasons for my my view and they can be uh they come under the letter s a m and my name is Samuel that should be easy to remember the first one is spiritual I believe that the scripture teaches us that when we engage people of a different faith there is spiritual factors at play that we need to be aware about and I believe that criticizing and mocking unbelievers is not sometimes can be you know we can be unconsciously not dealing with the spiritual aspect rather I think the gospel-centered approach engages that because the gospel of Christ is the power of God unto salvation so I believe a gospel-centered approach takes into consideration like what Paul suggests in Ephesians 5 when 12 when he says we do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against rulers against the authorities against cosmic powers over this present darkness and against spiritual forces of in heavenly places so that is uh it's a spiritual and the methodology that Paul uses in Ephesians 5 is truth righteousness readiness of the gospel of given by the gospel of peace the sword of the spirit which is the word of God and praying at all times prayer is one of the most powerful tools at the hands of the apologists because our battle is not primarily against flesh and blood second A stands for agape love now you can see I'm trying hard to fit this into the S.A.M acronym but what I mean is that the apologetic model described by scripture has to be one of gentleness and respect first Peter 3 15 says but in your heart revere Christ the Lord always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you reason for the hope that is within you but do so with gentleness and respect in 2 Timothy 4 20 2 Timothy 2 was 24 to 26 Paul says and the Lord servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone able to teach patiently and during evil and correcting his opponents with gentleness Ravi Zachariah has once said cited an Indian proverb that you cannot give someone a rose to smell after you cut off their noses you can't present the sweetness of the gospel after you've just shown them uh basically an ugly side of why they are wrong and you know hitting them on the head with it and finally in my remaining 90 seconds uh I will deal with the M which is the Messiah Christ centeredness Christian apologetics exists for the purpose of pointing people to Christ I just cited first Peter 3 15 and you remember that what Peter describes as a part I mean in the defense of the faith is number one before you even defend the faith you remember that you are doing it out of reverence for Christ he says in your hearts honor Christ as holy revere Christ as Lord so the reason we even engage in Christian apologetics is to glorify Christ to simply tear down the belief of another person is not really Christian apologetics number two it's to defend the hope within us sometimes defending the hope within us does not mean we have to tear down the opposing view and finally we see with gentleness and respect which means our approach our methodology is very important as well and finally with having a good behavior he says that in verse 16 as well so let me just end by saying this that sometimes in the process of engaging these people you do see the apostles tend to move into criticisms for example in x 17 29 Paul would say things like you know being then God's offspring we not we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone an image formed by the art and imagination of man we ought not to think of it in that way so there is in a sense some sort of a criticism but it's all peripheral in the context of presenting a Christ-centered apologetic in order to teach someone two plus two is four we don't have to tell them two plus two is not five it is not six it is not seven just telling them two plus two is for sometimes would be sufficient I think my time is up oh I just I think the I think the timer stops whenever he clicks on something else oh said why I thought I had 90 seconds huh I might have crossed my time then oh you might as far as I'm concerned you can take as long as you want all right I'm good I'm not I'm not stinky we're we're we're good here thank you very much Samuel for that opening statement we will now be going into the first rebuttal so for that it will be seven minutes and I may not be able to respond in the live chat because it that might be what's sometimes pausing our timer and so I will be as responsive as I can but thanks so much folks and we will kick it over to David wait for that if you uh if you uh if you want to respond in the chat you can always use my watch if you want to keep time so you know I have the timer right here so you bet smart yeah thanks so much thanks so much Samuel appreciate it on your first word David thanks so much all right in my opening statements I showed that whether we go to the Old Testament or the New Testament we find um a lot of criticism and mockery directed towards a variety of people and this includes believers and unbelievers so the the basic pattern you find in the Bible Old Testament New Testament is the criticism and mockery were directed generally most harshly towards towards idolaters towards oppressors and towards religious leaders who are leading other people astray all right Samuel says it's unbiblical to criticize and mock unbelievers and their views well we're gonna have to take a closer look at this because I would say that the passages show the exact opposite um Samuel says believers are people who are followers of Jesus Christ and therefore that the Old Testament prophets don't fit because they're not they're not Christians and show so we shouldn't be paying attention to how they acted but we have passages like James 5 10 which says take as an example of suffering and patience the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord so James in the New Testament says take the prophets as an example of suffering and patience so the question is are we just supposed to take them as an example of suffering in patience or are they an example in other ways but you can't just write them off because they're not Christians the New Testament tells us to take them as examples and so if they're giving us examples on how to communicate I don't see any reason we shouldn't we shouldn't take those into consideration when we find ourselves in similar circumstances uh Samuel says negative apologetics may be used with believers such as with discipleship but not with unbelievers um I really really really have to disagree here because it's kind of most important it's kind of most important with believers I mean with with with I mean not with believers with unbelievers so let me give an example here Nabeel Koreshi my friend for years we spent about two and a half years discussing the evidence for Christianity so I was doing what Samuel would call positive apologetics so we went through the evidence for the reliability of the New Testament and Jesus death by crucifixion and Jesus divine nature and Jesus resurrection so we went through this for for years and Nabeel told me much later so after that we actually went into examining the claims of Islam and focusing specifically on whether Islam's claims about the Quran are true or whether Islam's claims about Muhammad are true and we spent I don't know probably a year year and a half focusing a lot on that and that's when Nabeel changed a lot and so Nabeel told me after he became a Christian they said you know when we were talking about the evidence for Christianity I could see that you guys actually had some good reasons for believing what you believed but he said but the reasoning I had was even if they show me with 99 percent certainty that what they're saying is true I'm still 100 sure that Islam is true because of all the evidence for it now notice if Samuel is correct I shouldn't have responded to Nabeel's beliefs about Muhammad and the Quran well if no one responds to Nabeel's beliefs about Muhammad and the Quran and he's 100 percent convinced that Islam is true based on these claims which were all false then you're just leaving him with 100 confidence that Islam is true in the meantime you're trying to preach the gospel to him I have to say that probably upwards of 90 percent of the ex-Muslims who've converted to Christianity that I know of only took the gospel seriously after after their beliefs about Islam were challenged and refuted so if we're just gonna say hey we don't do that anymore we just focus on the positive I think we are going to cause a lot of problems in the world of evangelism. Samuel says Jesus criticized the Jews but Jesus is a Jew and he said that Jesus and the apostles were holding people accountable to the sources that they believed in so they had the common ground of belief in the Torah and so says they could criticize and mock the Pharisees because they had that common ground well if that's your if that's your definition of a believer someone who believes in the Torah and has that common ground great then I can criticize and mock Muhammad because Muhammad believed in the Torah so Muhammad puts himself in that same category of Jesus and the Jews who all believe that the Torah is the infallible authoritative word of God so if that's your criterion for a you know having some common ground that would allow you to criticize and mock well that includes Muhammad and that includes Muslims Muslims are required to believe that the Torah is the word of God so they would all have that that common ground so notice what we have here so far if we're allowed to criticize Christians or heretical Christians and now we're all we're allowed to criticize Jews because they believe in the same sources and now we're allowed to criticize Muhammad and his followers we are already dealing with about half the world's population that we're allowed to criticize and mock if they're doing something that that deserves it Samuel says we aren't sinning if we engage in what he calls negative apologetics he's just saying that it's not the biblical model again I mean if you're if you're classifying the you know the scribes and Pharisees as somehow on the same page with Jesus because they believe in the Torah I mean these are there are some of these guys who because he was performing miracles wanted to kill him all the more I don't know how we should say that we have much common ground with with people but if you're on that basis but if you're saying hey you have that common ground guess what I can find common ground with with everyone I'm debating Matt Dilla Hunty tomorrow guess what I have common ground with with Matt Dilla Hunty we both believe in morality we both like why can't I why can't I criticize and mock his position based on that I'm wondering because if you're saying Jesus had common ground with these guys therefore it was okay to criticize and mock oh well great I have common ground with pretty much everyone on this planet um as far as uh Samuel's um is three points he made he was saying that you know we we focused on a gospel centered approach and we focused on the spiritual you know prayer and so on I don't see any inconsistency between that and in addition to that criticizing and mocking where where it's needed this doesn't mean you go around mocking all the time not saying that I'm saying there are occasions where it is relevant and biblical I said we focus on agape gentleness and respect first Peter 315 that's in a certain context Peter says if someone is asking you about the hope that is within you then answer them with gentleness and respect this doesn't say hey this guy's over here oppressing and leading people astray approach him with gentleness and respect so a couple more points but out of time here thanks so much David for that first rebuttal we will now be switching it over to Samuel for his first rebuttal which will also be seven minutes and so thanks so much for his yours Samuel well thank you David for that uh and let me just deal with David's opening statement first before I deal with what we what he said in the first rebuttal period so David began by saying that he realized that negative apologetics I'm using that term because I'm actually still planning to do more research on that term as I mentioned to David even before this debate but he says that it's effective with Muslims I'm not sure maybe in the discussion period we can discuss is it only Muslims that this is effective to or would he apply this in a general principle to even atheist as well and I'm glad that we are both in agreement he said in his opening statement the main issue is is it biblical I agree now let's deal with the Old Testament passages and I and I hope we have enough time to get to David's first rebuttal as well he mentioned first Kings 18 where Elijah mocked the false prophets and taunted them now remember what I said here we first of all they're not considered believers because believers are held to a different standard as opposed to the people of the Old Testament now that is true for example you see many times without getting into too much detail that believers are held to a higher standard just watch the sermon on the mount can we follow Elijah's model in terms of mocking the false prophets well I would suggest here that if we are going to follow Elijah's model then we've also got to go ahead and kill the false prophets because that's what Elijah did after mocking them he got them and he got these people killed but we realize as New Testament that we can't do that at all so in a sense even though James sorry even though David quoted James 510 take into example the prophets it's it's important to realize that that is qualified as David mentioned it's it's qualifying in suffering and in patience because you can't take it in the full extent if you're going to follow the prophetic model then killing is also permitted by that standard remember it's under a different covenant that we're talking about here so I'm not saying we cannot follow the prophetic models I'm just saying in this respect I don't think that same model applies but again I'm open to during the discussion period exploring this even further well what about God doing it to the Jews in God doing it in Ezekiel where you know he uses this mocking language well notice what I said in the context to believers it is different there is an intention behind it you know for example I think that God brought those up and I've been I spoke in an Islamic center once when this question was raised to me why is that in your Bible that's pornographic material I think we tend to get that kind of thing quite often that same question so my response is that God is intending to use that to show how disgusting the practices of the Assyrians were to Israel to help them realize that actually sorry it was not even to Israel it was to Judah telling them even you didn't learn the lessons of what your your older sister Israel did so in a sense the purpose in which it's being applied is very much to teach to warn the people of Israel about the disgusting depraved nature of the idolatry that was practiced by Israel the northern kingdom what about Isaiah 44 again Isaiah 44 was written to the Jews and remember it's written to a Jews that if they don't repent is going to go into exile that's the purpose of Isaiah now without getting into that whole Isaiah dispute when was Isaiah 44 written during the exile or before the exile I'm not getting into that debate but Isaiah I believe in a single authorship was written to warn people that if you don't repent you're going to go into exile and hence strong messages being brought in almost like a discipleship context telling them why you should not sway why you should not succumb into idolatry explaining to them the foolishness of idolatry well David also went into the New Testament and he brought out Jesus mocking the Pharisees and he brought out Jesus saying that they were hypocrites they were brutal wipers employing mockery in the sense now remember what I said in my opening statement as well I think if they believe in the same thing and I think maybe there's a slight misunderstanding here I'm not saying if there is common ground you're allowed to mock them that's not what I'm saying what I'm saying is if you if they are considered a believer remember what would be a believer in the first century AD would Paul be considered a believer I mean you think of it in Jesus' time how would what would you mean by a believer they were a believer in Yahweh they were believers in the old covenant the same covenant that Jesus came to fulfill so we're not talking about a different religion in the first century today it's a bit more complicated than that but not to them in the first century as they were believers he's holding them accountable to what they ought to have believed the law says you shouldn't have done this the law says to this Jesus' entire approach to the Pharisees John chapter 5 was that the scriptures testify to him and if the scriptures testify to him you who study the scriptures should basically come to me in order to have eternal life that's what John 5 says so I think that's what is being done here what about Galatians exact same thing it's almost like mocking the prosperity gospel for the nonsense that it spews out quite frankly I know this is not a topic about them but I couldn't resist taking a shot while at it so if I come across someone who believes in the prosperity gospel that God wants you materially rich and God wants you healthy and it's always God's will for that to happen I'm going to basically demonstrate the folly of that idea Jesus saying for example you can't serve God in money but the point is that's what Galatians is it is people who have believed in God but on the verge of succumbing to the false teachers the Judaizers what about Titus 1 12 to 14 cretins as liars now here I believe that Paul again is doing the same thing he's speaking to believers and telling them what is it about I mean the the cretins and basically dealing with them I think that is true of all the passages now the one passage I think that David brought up that kind of challenges my position would be x 39 where basically I think this would be the strongest passage that I think poses a problem for my position x 39 where Paul basically calls refers to the person he was engaging as the son of the devil or the enemy of righteousness now this is going to be a big challenge for my position but I would hear simply respond by saying that in this way Paul was not engaging the views of that person he was a witchcraft he practiced witchcraft Paul was not engaging any of that Paul was basically saying that you know this is what you're doing wrong and he's engaging enough was the language hard yes I'm happy to concede that if you want to go around and you see someone of a different faith that is distorting preventing others from coming to put their faith in Christ and you want to say that hey listen here you son of the devil stop it well I guess you have a biblical model for this here and I think that was a good point David brought up but apart from that I think that my position based on the way I've defined it is still intact thank you very much Samuel for that first rebuttal we will now move into second rebuttals and so these will be five minutes long and I have got the timer set the floor is all yours David all right thank you Samuel um Samuel said uh and first if we want to take the prophets as examples which by the way we are again we are we are commanded to do well if we wanted to follow Elijah's model we would have to kill the false prophets the way Elijah did but Samuel Samuel actually pointed out the answer we're under a different we're under a different covenant right the original covenant was tied to a piece of land and it included all kinds of commands that had to do with enforcing the law for the people who had entered into that covenant which is tied to a specific piece of land that people had agreed to if we go astray then here's what should happen to us that's very different from what kind of rhetoric is acceptable from a different position right as I don't see where the kind of the way you would package your message is limited to a specific covenant in other words you have all the all the covenants and commands to to execute people for certain crimes and so on that was associated with the old covenant not with the new covenant so we are commanded not to we're commanded not to do that sort of thing as part of our covenant the question would be well if it's how you present a message how you present a message is that something that was limited to one covenant and then once the new covenant come then that has no longer an acceptable way to communicate I don't see that anywhere so the difference is we have clear commands that we are not to follow certain things of the old covenant I don't see rhetoric as one of them Samuel says that you know God uses disgusting language in Ezekiel 23 to teach people about what they're doing I agree completely that's exactly what God is doing the point is if I see someone doing the same thing can I take God's way of speaking as a model and say okay well this is how God decided to rebuke what they were doing right he decided he could have just said hey guys what you're doing is wrong it's not what God does he compares them to you know an adulterous wife lusting after someone because of the their generals are the size of a donkeys that's disgusting language it's meant to shock so the question is am I allowed to use language that's meant to shock in order to wake people up because they are on a very very dangerous road I don't see anything that would tell me tell me I'm not Samuel says Isaiah was written to the Jews so that still fits within his paradigm but but I mean keep him he was mocking I dollars he's mocking people who make idols so these are these are these are pagans right he's mocking someone who grows a tree and then sits down and takes a part of the tree and makes a god out of it and worships it so he's mocking pagans here and keep in mind these are these things are being put into books that would be read by people so if you're a pagan sitting down and and you hear this reading well I mean gosh this this is this sounds really negative and critical of your position Samuel says if people are considered that the the Jews in the New Testament scribes and Pharisees they were believers because they were believers in Yahweh and Jesus was just holding them accountable to what they believe well guess what I mean Jesus could hold them accountable to what they believe without mocking them in the way he did without insulting him in the way he did so Jesus is trying to get a point across the question is why does he use why does he use this literary device of satire and ridicule and mockery and insult as a Christian I have to look at that and say well there's obviously a place for criticism and mockery and satire and insult and when I say what is that place it seems to have a lot more to do with religious leaders who are hypocrites and are leading other people astray leading other people into their hypocrisy it seems to be have more to do with that than that we both believe in in the god of the Old Testament he says Galatians in Galatians 512 once again he's talking about believers who had false beliefs yes but notice Paul the apostle Paul can say everything he wants to say he can say everything he wants to say the question is why does he use extremely graphic language again that this this isn't just a book that you would you would have at home like it is now back then if Paul writes a letter to the Galatians the church reads this they read it out loud this is this is this is meant for a reading among believers and he's saying I wish those guys would go ahead and chop all their genitals off if they really believe what they're saying why did he do that again as as someone who believes in that I have to believe that there's a place for that kind of language he says in Acts 13 where Paul says to Elimus you son of the devil you enemy of all righteousness if you see he says if you see an unbeliever mocking evangelism blocking evangelism getting in the way of Christians who are evangelizing you might want to use that kind of language but you know what I think we're getting to some common ground if he's only thinking in terms of certain cases where you wouldn't do that then we might uh we might get to the bottom of this here in the the discussion thank you so much David for that second rebuttal we will now switch over to Samuel for his second rebuttal and this will be the last rebuttal which will be five minutes before we go into open discussion thanks so much David and thanks Samuel the floor is all yours all right thank you thanks David for that now I just want to continue in getting into David's first rebuttal and basically addressing some of the issues that he raised there I've already addressed the James 5-10 passage when I spoke about when I spoke about Elijah and the way in which he did it I'll respond to David's second point or his follow-up later but I want to deal with the point about our late brother Nabeel and people like him who have come to Christ and of course David has mentioned David has mentioned this before in fact he mentioned that you know for example that Nabeel said that the case for Christianity is good but that because his fate in Islam was so rooted that you first have got to dismantle that first now I am no one to basically question the legitimacy of Nabeel's belief or even the approach that David has used I'm not qualified to do that at all I don't think I'm worthy to do that at all so if that approach in terms of his produced results if David would is saying that that has produced result I'm going to take his word as it is and not even challenge that because this debate is not about statistics as I said in the opening statement it's not about popular consent it's not about pragmatism those were the two words I used in my opening statement because as I said he has done a lot more in apologetics than I have I'm nothing compared to him so I'm not going to challenge him on the level of pragmatism but I'm simply going to say this that ultimately what I do know is this and that is no one comes to fate as a result of the evidence alone it takes the inner working of the Holy Spirit to transform the life of a person and bring about fate in them Ephesians 2 was 8 to 9 says what is my fate the true but for it's my fate for it's my grace true fate that you are saved this is not of yourselves it is a gift of God not of works less anyone should boast so I believe that God plans to see the fate in the heart of the person now of course the task of the evangelist is important but I don't think I'm going to even address the point of pragmatism here as I said that but ultimately it is the role of the Holy Spirit to convict and sometimes I'm also open to the possibility that God the Holy Spirit could work not because of our methodology but in spite of it I think that's something that we can consider as well now David also pointed out that about the common ground that you know what I said in the earlier is that the Jews held on to the Torah and that basically Jesus was holding them accountable to that David's question is then why did Jesus use the approach of mocking them ridiculing them now I actually have no answer to that I'm not sure why Jesus chose to say what he did but one thing I do note is that the same approach that Jesus used to the Pharisees he did not use to Pontius Pilate you would look at Jesus's conversation with Pontius Pilate you see a completely different approach if Jesus basically goes on the positive telling him it's for this purpose that I was born and I think you will actually see two different approaches here being used so David also asked going into your the secondary battle period he said well Elijah's basically is under a different covenant and that's why we are not allowed to kill because under the old covenant it was permitted in the new covenant we are clearly told not to do it that's my point precisely in the new covenant we are also told to treat everyone with respect we are also told for Peter 3 15 and the passage I cited earlier in 2 Timothy 2 24 to 26 that the Lord servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone be able to teach patiently and during evil correcting his opponents with gentleness there is also a command for gentleness and there is also a command and that's why I believe the methodology used in the Old Testament that's not quite carry forward to the New Testament now can you be can you mock someone while still being kind to them I'm not sure I would love to go to the discussion period to see whether that at all is possible so and basically can we use God's model in the way that God speaks harshly to them can we to the Jews in Ezekiel can we use that model and speaking to others today no because God was not evangelizing remember what I said here apologetics exist for the purpose of evangelism must be gospel centered and I don't think God was evangelizing rather it was a rebuke of the Jews who already believed in him but were backsliding for a bunch of different reasons now finally I think David ended by saying that Jesus held them accountable let me see what's the last point you said oh yeah David mentioned that I grant that could you remind me what's the last point you said David that I you said we're on common ground um oh yeah yeah when you said um you can give him a few extra seconds for this since he's asked for clarification um you said uh when you were responding to acts 13 you were saying something along the lines of uh you know not in the context of evangelism but if you're not trying to evangelize this person where this person is simply stop blocking you from evangelism right then maybe you could take a harsher approach than you would if you were trying to right to preach the gospel to him right you said something like that yeah yeah I said well just to clarify what I said what I was saying is that when you look at the way in which uh Paul approached this man I forgot his name I do remember his name was it Simon the oh LMS the sorcerer he had the sorcerer yeah yeah yeah two names so yeah uh the sorcerer I'll just call him the sorcerer uh what I was saying is that in it was not in a sense negative apologetics because it was not as if Paul told him that his religion was wrong or what he believed in was wrong rather he was rebuking him for something that was a moral issue standing in the way of the gospel and I didn't quite mention that earlier I'm adding that now uh but I just want to just finally end on the point that David said that that leads to us having common ground and I think before the day before the debate I actually told David that I think that by the end of this debate we're actually going to have a lot more common ground uh than two different views and yeah thank you for that extra time thank you very much gentlemen and we will now move into the open conversation section so I uh this will be roughly 30 minutes and then we will go into the closing statements which will be three minutes followed by the q and a so thanks for your questions so far I'm keeping an eye on the live chat for more feel free to fire more questions in there if you'd like and we are off to the open discussion um I think there are a few there are a few issues where we are having disagreement but if we we could iron those things out um as far as no one coming to faith as a result of uh evidence alone um I agree completely but what I find is a lot of Muslims simply can't take anything we're saying seriously when they believe that um that the Quran has been perfectly preserved right down to the letter and that this could only be the result of a miracle and that the Quran is filled with scientific miracles that no one can know until our time that Muhammad is clearly and indisputably the greatest man whoever live and that he performed all kinds of miracles and can shoot water out of his fingers and that he's prophesied over and over again in you know in the bible and they believe all of these things and if you come along and preach hey here's an alternative to Islam here's this other here's this other message and they're thinking what what could be what could be more true than that um and notice it's all false claims all of the claims that that that their confidence in Islam is built upon is constructed upon are false claims that could easily could easily be dealt with if you sit sit down with the muslim and go through them um so if if I know that hey while he believes all these things he's not going to really take these things seriously right but if I do deal with those things maybe realize wait I got some problems here and maybe he'll take it more seriously so that we can actually have a serious conversation of the gospel why wouldn't I want to do that so that he can actually pay attention to the gospel message and and sort of internalize it and again that that's that's not what that's not what saves him we we agree that the Holy Spirit has to do this but the Holy Spirit seems to use a lot of different things that we could do in bringing people to faith right the two two responses I would have to that and number one would be that uh I believe that these ideas should be dismantled I'm not I've never denied that these ideas I mean I think second Corinthians 10 I thought you would have brought that passage out because I've heard you use that passage before you know to tear down you know the scripture tells us our battle is not against flesh but but to tear down arguments that raises itself against the knowledge of God I believe that we should tear down arguments that raise itself against the knowledge of God the for example that the muslims believe that their prophet Muhammad is the greatest example for human beings to follow now the way in which we tear that down is I think the area where we differ the way I would tear that argument down is simply by pointing to roman street 23 human depravity to show why each and every person is so sinfully depraved that we're in need for a savior so I think I'm completely for tearing those arguments down dismantling them but I'm using a positive approach as opposed to saying let me show you why he's not I'm just switching that to be an opportunity for the gospel by saying let's go down show you total depravity and from there show why even if Muhammad is the greatest human being not challenging that he would still need a savior I think that's what I'm I'm proposing here so that's one um yeah I think that was what I mean two points one quick follow-up and then there's some other issues that we should get to um I don't know how many sort of muslim apologetics books um you're familiar with but uh one of the classics here in the U.S. that's been it's been passed out on on college campuses is called uh towards understanding Islam by Maududi and if you read that it goes on page after page after page praising Muhammad talking about how he is so far beyond all great men of all times and so this is including Jesus he he says he's like a diamond in a heap of stones and so on but he goes he praises every possible uh feature of Muhammad it's all nonsense if you read the life of Muhammad if you read the life of Muhammad everything he's saying is complete nonsense it's false like false claim after false claim after false claim after false claim so he's just spouting complete nonsense and as he's doing this as he's doing this people are reading it and if they haven't read the muslim sources they're looking at this going wow it's indisputable so if you were to come along after someone read that book and say but the apostle Paul right here in the bible says that no no no no people are people are people are depraved they would look at that and say he's clearly not depraved he's clearly the greatest man who ever lived and therefore so much for the apostle Paul how do you deal with that with again notice it's a parallel situation where they have all of their confidence based on false beliefs so my my inclination would be refute the false beliefs and then and then go where and then go where i was going yeah i remember what what my second response was and i think a lot of the methodology that i think you seem to be what i'm hearing from you please correct me if i'm wrong is that we ought to first of all break i mean dismantle the belief that they have in islam for example we're using islam as an example dismantle that belief and then show them cries and i i actually find in my experience of dialoguing with a lot of people from different faiths that actually the muslim again this does not directly address that point but i'll get to it the muslim actually has a lot more in common with us than for example in 80s does muslim believes in god the muslim believes in vahiu that god's revelation is there so while i'm remembering that the muslim holds a lot in with me in common i'm very eager not to dismiss islam and totally because once they become an 80s then they become a lot more harder to reach because now they've gone a few steps back belief in god has gone down uh and all that but rather what i would what i would do if this was me and i'm not uh i'm just saying that this is what i would do is i would make an even stronger case for human depravity and i believe that if i could make a strong enough case for human depravity i've actually taken down the argument that Muhammad is the greatest man in fact not even directly even if he is he still needs a savior but again you see that point would lead to me arguing that not only is every human being depraved but there is one human being whose name is jesus christ he's not merely a man he's fully man but he's also truly god and then transition from that to talk about christ while basically the dismantled to to basically dealing with Muhammad becomes a peripheral issue i'm just engaging the gospel directly and still taking down that argument i'm not sure yeah yeah thoughts on that yeah i understand i'm basically uh wondering if uh how that would work if the muslim believes everything he's he's he believes about Muhammad uh and he's read something like towards understanding Islam and he's absorbed the idea that Muhammad's greatest man who ever lived um and then you tell him no jesus is is is the the only sinless righteous one so on i just i don't understand how you would how you would never have to deal with because he'd be saying okay well i guess these two prophets are perfect right that that would be the conclusion rather than oh i need to abandon this perfect man and this perfect book and these scientific miracles and all these prophecies and uh you know all the miracles he performed i have to abandon all of that just because you told me how great jesus was i'm fine with jesus being great you know as a muslim i would say i'm fine with jesus being very great he's sinless too great now we have jesus and jesus told us Muhammad is coming and because Muhammad said so and uh therefore we have that um so yeah it's uh i think we're gonna i think we're gonna gonna disagree on that i just want one more quick point if you don't yeah what i'm saying is i'm believe that if i made a case strong enough for human depravity the idea that Muhammad was depraved logically follows oh yeah that's what i'm trying to say yeah that's that's what that's uh yeah i wanted to respond to that and then of course you can uh you can address that but there's two basic ways you could go you could say well the bible says that you know humans are really depraved in which case if muslim believes Muhammad's not depraved at all he's really as great as he believes he is then it would be well great your your sources have been corrupted because it's just not true this guy's this guy's really great um on the other hand if you started actually like giving empirical evidence about human depravity you're like look at Stalin look at you know Hitler and uh look at pol pot and look at you know all these people mass murdering tons of people and it's not just the person it's not just the person doing it he's got everyone else involved too look at all of this depravity in the muslim mind if you haven't if nothing has been directed towards Muhammad i think the reasoning is well that's just wow Muhammad looks even greater now so you're talking about how horrible everyone else is but Muhammad is the greatest man who ever lived and so now i hate i even have more evidence that he's the greatest man who ever lives so yeah i'm just wondering how strong the case for depravity could be if it's not based on you know empirical evidence because you can see a lot of human depravity right or or if it's just you know if it's based on the bible and he's saying i don't i don't believe your bible right okay i mean i get what the point that you're trying to say but i guess what what i'm and i think i've already said this before and started repeating myself but what i'm saying is that uh i guess where i'm standing on this is that if i make the argument for depravity clear enough and include every human being which in this case would include Muhammad i'm thinking that that would do the job but okay uh yeah i guess that's why i'm holy yeah i'm just saying that the hinge is going to be your case for depravity as opposed to your case for Muhammad and what i'm saying and this this really gets to to the core of what what i see as the problem right is whatever your case for human depravity is going to be right it's it's like here's the situation i see it's you're presenting evidence right and but the muslim believes that he has a lot of evidence that isn't there right right but he's looking and he has a mountain of fake evidence right and he's looking at whatever case you can build for your for your position and he's saying but i have this mountain of evidence and it's all it's all it's all it's all false claims right but until someone challenges that until someone shows them these are false claims it's uh okay you gave me a three-point argument in in favor of human depravity and you quoted the bible and you showed some examples and so on but i've got indisputable divine revelation over here that anyone can see is is proven by history and logic and philosophy and science and everything proves that my message is true i think you'd end up with a situation with the be like where even if you were to show me with 99 percent certainty that you're correct about human depravity i'm still 100 percent certain about this so again i just don't see how you would ultimately get away from from dealing with those false beliefs i mean yeah this is something that i guess that it is in different positions and i actually have something that that's sort of that's sort of connected there um i've noticed within the reason the reason i i mentioned with with uh ellie miss the sorcerer with you saying hey if there's a different situation yeah there might be a situation where you would you would uh right uh you would you know insult people or something like that say hey you know you're standing in the way of the gospel where you're not actually trying to evangelize them so um so i think you're looking at saying hey you know if you're if you're doing different things in different contexts yeah those might those might require different different different strategies and so on and it looks like what you're saying is in the context of evangelism this is what you should be doing maybe if you were doing something else like if you were a soldier you might be you might be assigned to shoot someone in a certain situation in a certain situation that's not that's that's different from from evangelism and the way i'm thinking is i'm usually focused on like doing multiple things at once i don't see any inconsistency i don't see i don't see that i don't see why i wouldn't you know if i'm talking to a muslim be doing positive apologetics in the context of evangelism but also at the same time recognizing that he has all these false beliefs that i have to deal with and so doing polemics over here and exposing them kind of doing all these different things um at once and right so yeah so that's why i don't see any inconsistency between these these different things right right so yeah regarding the the the sorcerer again it's just finally hard to remember the guy's name there's so many versions of it yeah so uh yeah but my what i'm saying is that i'm just trying to look for as you i think you'll rightly summarize my position i'm looking for a biblical model to follow and what what bothers me i'm basically i'm just going to share my heart and say that what what what really bothers me is that when i see apologetics being done um christian apologetics in particular um it what bothers me is that people uh when they try to engage a person of a different fate is very eager to first and foremost find out what is the weaknesses of that area like if i'm i know someone who is going to be dealing with a Mormon missionary tomorrow um they're going to be looking up googling weaknesses in the book of Mormon and the entire focus of that kind of an apologetic movement is basically dealing with why is Mormonism wrong why is this like Joseph Smith is a false prophet here's the reasons and it's never to actually get the gospel true and i guess that's what i'm responding to uh when i said and that's why uh yeah i guess just to explain to you so i'm looking for a model that i can apply but in the case of the sorcerer i'm looking at it and i'm saying well i i did concede and i said that that that's challenged my position a little bit right because it kind of messes up my my model um but i'm looking at it and saying that well i don't see paul looking at him and saying whatever religion that you affirm uh is wrong or whatever your belief system is wrong he's just basically it's a moral rebuke you're like in the same way that if i were to see a an atheist uh taking something that is not he's not his i would rebuke him but that's not it's a moral rebuke it's not a religious uh criticism i guess that's why i'm i'm seeing the difference but i'm also realized that uh it can be seen from a variety of different ways and i think that you're seeing it a little bit differently in this case yeah i mean really what what you're saying right there that's kind that's that's kind of how i i'm thinking of something like islam and i and i'm talking about islam specifically because that that's one of the that's one of the few things i deal with i don't you know i don't i don't i don't have a lot of discussions about hinduism or buddhism or anything like that deal with islam but with islam um i'm thinking a lot in terms of uh look at what this ideology is convincing people to do right and they're going out and so i mean like like a lot of people don't know islamicize me it was it was actually based on a true story uh my friend vocabs uh had a friend who's a muslim friend convert to islam this guy went out and died trying to slaughter uh robert spencer and pamela geller he laid down his life for it and so uh i'm thinking you know and by the way got vocab shared the gospel with him he spent a lot of time sharing the gospel with him he just didn't believe he had all kinds of confidence that islam was the truth so that's a situation where it for me it's it's not just a matter of of sharing the gospel it's this thing is causing people to do lots of horrible things and so i'm thinking in the context of biblically dealing with oppressors and people who are leading people astray right i mean mohammed is leading people to go out and and and die while slaughtering unbelievers in the name of god and thinking that that is the greatest thing you can do um so even if i weren't focused on you know positive apologetics in the context of evangelism i still think i should be blasting away at his teachings to show people hey look whether you're going to convert or not uh don't go killing a bunch of other people and so yeah so so that that's why i mean again if you're just saying hey if you're in the context of evangelism you're presenting a positive gospel message and you should focus on the positive message there not a lot of criticism um i i can see doing that but when you're dealing with the sort of situation we have with islam i think you've got you've got to deal with that stuff because it's it's it's it's uh it's leading to too many problems right i i i have two two questions here number one i'm just i'm just wondering whether you apply the same principle to different religions as well or is it only to islam i mean i i given you only deal with islam but would you apply say that to buddhism that if i'm dealing with a buddhist that i should basically attack i mean i'm just saying point out the weaknesses of buddha himself or even in uh for example uh you know the four the four truths of buddhism should i be engaging that first or would you suggest that i use a more positive approach with buddhism uh it would depend and that's why that's why you don't hear me say much about buddhism right i don't i don't know a lot of buddhists uh i i don't know what with with nabil so there is i believe there's a variety a variety of different approaches in the bible and so i believe that there are a variety approaches because there are all kinds of different groups in the world and you should sort of pay attention to what different groups um uh you know what what they what they respond to if you're talking to if you're talking to a woman who let's say a muslim woman if you're talking to a muslim woman who's been you know just beaten by her husband and she's in a battered woman's shelter and she's been i'm not gonna come in there guns blazing at muhammad right no i'm not gonna i'm not gonna start trying to to to to crush her gonna be gonna have a much more gentle approach if someone is out there just stumping his chest and saying oh islam will crush you all i'm taking a different approach with with with that sort of guy my approach with islam has a lot to do with just paying attention to what certain muslims respond to along the way and even within islam there are all kinds of different muslims there are muslims who you would want to take a very gentle approach with right there are other muslims that i found just aren't listening unless you you you are coming in guns blazing they don't take your seriously enough the first person i saw this from was nabio we were watching i told the story before but we were watching a debate between william lane craig and jamal badawee and william lane craig is a christian debater jamal badawee is a muslim debater craig i thought i was watching it and craig just annihilated badawee he crushed everything badawee said and badawee couldn't answer any of craig's arguments and by the end badawee was yelling and yelling and whining and so me an american i'm looking at i'm looking at that um and i'm saying look you're screaming you're whining you obviously know you're losing you're frustrated that's why you're getting angry that's why you're yelling we finished watching the debate i thought i would have scored it like 95 to five one of the most lopsided debates i've seen we finished the debate and i said so nabio what'd you think he said uh dr badawee clearly won i was like what what were you watching what what did you just see what were we watching there and it took me years to get it out of him but what he was watching was dr badawee was yelling because he was passionate because he knows the truth he's so confident confident of the truth and so knowledgeable of the truth that when he sees someone speaking falsehoods and blaspheming it comes out as a righteous anger and he starts yelling to put down the false teacher william lane craig was calm not because he knew he was winning not because he had the truth but because deep down he doesn't believe what he's saying so no i saw that i saw that and then i'm thinking wow uh i guess nabio is is kind of a weird dude right but later on i kept seeing the same thing from from muslims over and over again when we first when i first started debating and now we would have a debate on muhammad and i would i did there would be these nice little old muslim ladies in the front row i don't want to tell him about muhammad having sex with a nine-year-old girl so i but i had to get the information across because it would be something like why i'm not a muslim or something right so i would be reading these passages and i would be doing it really as gently as possible like you know i'm not trying to hurt your feelings here but you know i have to i have to look at this and we have to go through this and i was like almost like showing that i was sad about having to share this with them so i would share the information and then we would walk out of there and they'll go ha ha david is so weak ha ha what a week what a week debater and so i would i got ticked off and then the next debate i presented the exact same information except i was i was i was presenting a look at what your prophet did look at this guy how can you believe in this stuff and they walked out of there and they're going he's destroying our religion right and so i'm like that that's all you're paying attention to you're paying attention to how i'm saying it not actually the content and so it's kind of that that there are lots of muslims who when you're coming after their prophet they're they're they're they're looking more for the fearlessness they know you're going to get threatened with that they know you're getting threatened with that but you're coming anyway and they're going this guy has a lot of confidence here maybe i need to to pay attention to what i'm saying so as for a buddhist or a hindu i haven't interacted with them enough to know right like culturally what they respond to more but this sort of cultural aspect of islam goes all the way back to the foundations of islam where uh there's a passage where umar and abubakar were having an argument and umar said by the heaving of his chest i could tell that he was right so umar had all the actual quotes and facts on his side but he could tell by how angry abubakar got that he was right so they're paying attention to to this sort of thing anyway there's my i know i just talked to tan so no no problem at all yeah yeah it's interesting to hear yeah i mean this this the advantage i get by just having this conversation with you and to to hear what goes on behind the scenes like i said i've i've not engaged uh i've never debated a muslim scholar uh we've done tons of uh interfaith dialogues where i come from but uh never debate i'm i'm hoping to debate shabir ali and he's aware of that uh but uh but back to the the issue of um uh the my my opening statement i just want to deal with the point on what i said in the s the spirituality how much of it do you think is a problem in terms of like when you use negative apologetics and i'm strictly speaking in the context of criticizing and mocking um do you think that there is a tendency to disregard that there is a spiritual aspect a blinding aspect that comes from you know what paul calls you know the prince of the air um no but i i don't think that's the that's the only thing involved right like uh um it i i think we have as far as spiritual blindness i think we have a ton of empirical evidence for that right not just biblical right i mean if you've ever been in a conversation where you're just sitting there going how can you not get this right how can you not understand and i've experienced it right i remember uh i read before i was a christian i read john won over and over and over again probably 30 i could not understand it right i'm like how can i how can i not understand this but this christian just understood it immediately and stuff right this is kind of kind of spiritual blindness so uh yeah i believe that and that's why i i think we do need to we do need to be quoting scripture we do need to be praying we do need to have other people praying but there is this element of people just not taking us seriously when they have this completely false confidence um in other teachings so i just i just i think that's part of it i think i think the person thinking through these things the person has right the god gave us a mind we're supposed to love god with all our minds and so we are supposed to be thinking about these things trying to reason these things reason through these things and if a person's head is filled with tons of false information right it makes it that much more difficult for the person to to even think about right because in my experience what i've realized is that what tends i mean again i'm i'm i'm slipping into pragmatism as well here right so uh what i said i won't do uh but i've noticed that when you preach the gospel making a positive case and basically telling people who jesus is i've really seen god work and and i think that that's what the whole christian because i don't see a difference between evangelism and apologetics i think apologetics is a methodology or a technique or i shouldn't use the word technique apologetics is basically a discipline uh which supports compliments evangelism and so when i do apologetics my i mean you could ask me a question on i guess uh the problem of evil i will somehow deal with the cross at the end of it and i think that what i try to do is to take every opportunity and use it to that because i believe there is a spiritual blinding but i also happen to think that and you can tell me whether you agree or disagree with this that what cures people from spiritual blindness is the gospel and that's why i think uh no matter so that's why i said when dealing with your question earlier that when we're talking about spiritual i mean total depravity i would zero in on total depravity hoping that if anything the spirit would convince this person that he is spiritually depraved and that he needs a savior and if he comes to believe in christ then later we can talk about his other beliefs you know i'm thinking so i'm always trying to get to that and i'm just wondering that yeah do you see that working in your experience um yeah i i would i would say i would say a couple things um so again i i believe there are multiple components going on right right and so obviously obviously spiritual components both positive and negative um but there's there's there's also just the person having to to to rustle through these issues and think about them but i'm thinking kind of about kind of about two passages so one is in um john four where you have the woman at the well and the woman at the well you know she goes back and tells people and so on and and the people are coming out and jesus is tells his followers so he tells the apostles um that other people labored before you you get the easy part you get the easy part of now now bringing them in so they did all this labor and you get the easy part of just preaching the gospel to them now at that time it would have just been the gospel of of the kingdom the kingdom of god is here jesus is here so believe in him rather than the full gospel of you know death resurrection and deity and so on but he's he's talking about even in samaria he's talking about people who did work before you and it's not even the gospel of the kingdom as far as jesus being here and so on but he's saying that some people did a lot of work before which is very important too and was even more difficult than what than what you're doing you're just you're saying hey now believe in him right that's what you're doing i look at that and i say okay so jesus is saying that people other people were doing other things that were along the way they're kind of working and it's making these people more risk it's keeping these people more receptive for when the truth does get here that they can see it they can see it so i'm looking at this going and you can see the situation in america you can see you know back in the day you went you know you go 30 years ago you had these billy graham crusades and billy graham shows up and he preaches to 30 000 people and thousands of people come forward to receive the gospel um you you don't see that sort of thing with muslims you don't see someone stands up preaches the gospel and then thousands of people come forward well what's the difference here well in america you had tons of people who already believed in god they already believed in the bible they believed in jesus they've just never made any sort of commitment to follow it right yeah i believe it but i'm not you know they've never actually received christ uh they've never been discipled and so on and so you get someone who just puts the message together the the groundwork's already been laid the groundwork has already been been done and they're very receptive you preach the gospel to them bam they're ready with a muslim with a muslim there's so they have so many beliefs that are diametrically opposed to ours you pointed out that they believe you know they believe jesus the messiah they believe he's born of a virgin they believe he performed miracles they have they have some important common ground there but they believe there's no way he died uh he didn't die for sins he didn't rise from the dead he's definitely not lord so the the core issues of the gospel they're diametrically opposed well that's why so that that work hasn't been done in islam to sort of prepare them so i'm i'm looking at that passage and i'm going jesus regards that sort of laying the groundwork before the the preaching the gospel as important so i'm not saying do the groundwork before preaching the gospel right i'm saying yeah i'm saying someone's got to be doing that work too someone's got to be doing that hard work too well when it comes to islam i think it has a lot to do with with with getting people to some true correct beliefs rather than some false beliefs right so there's that and then with with something like act 17 talking about you know the spiritual components on um paul paul is there he's talking to the athenians he's he's reasoning with them he's pointing out that hey even even some of your own your own um your own poets have noticed this that there's there's one god and so on so he's he's he's he's drawing attention to things that they know and pointing out some of the implications and pointing out that you know god has done something something else that they need to be aware of so that they're not in ignorance anymore but paul was aware that there's a spiritual component he still believed that hey you need to know some things and i'm here to tell you some things that you need to be aware of and so it's kind of those couple passages are where i'm thinking right so and and basically dealing with that because that's exactly what i wanted to talk about as well x 70 that's the name of your paul jerry channel uh that that's been one of the passages that fascinated me the most because paul is dealing with five groups of people that he's dealing with the stoics he's dealing with the uh the the uh epicureans he's dealing with the jews he's dealing with the pagans and i know he was dealing with another kind of group i just can't get my mind around it so at least four to five different groups here but nowhere does he criticize their beliefs all he ends up doing is i don't know about that um yeah so i mean the only direct criticism i saw was the one i actually cited in my opening statement but what you find him doing here is he's making a positive case for christ um and basically with the epicurean the belief that you know that hedonism and pleasure is all there is he brings in the resurrection uh with the stoics he brings in you know account uh you know there's going to be a day of reckoning it's not just blind stoicism unaccounted and i'm just saying wouldn't that that x-17 for example fit better with this model i i know you're not opposed to my model you're just saying it's not the only model but i'm just saying wouldn't even that be an example of just why this model alone is what paul is using um in that in in that context right keep in mind he's not dealing with oppressors not dealing with much people who are oppressing him he's not dealing with uh people who are just leading massive i mean he's dealing with a group that says hey if you want to share your we'd like to hear from you right so they're open and that actually fits what i think first peter 315 is saying right someone asked you hey tell us tell us what you believe i think that's a that's a perfect example and in that in that sort of context i would i would definitely focus more on what you call positive apologetics i think he does get some some sort of gentle jabs in there when he says uh lots of translations translated is like as religious but in the context it's more along the lines of i see you're very superstitious um even even the language he uses when he says so you're you know you're groping around so that maybe you can find him talking about the true god the language he uses there is is the same as in the odyssey when uh uh odysseus blinded the the cyclops and the cyclops is is is groping around trying to find odysseus this is this is what they used in their education system they would have all caught this that he's saying you're like the blind cyclops groping around looking for something and you and you can't find it i'm i'm here i'm here to show you i'm i'm here to show you um he says you know that the times of ignorance are past so he's saying they're in a they're in a state of ignorance and then but but but mainly as far as criticizing they're saying look the true god is not idols made of water great now notice right they're not oppressors they these aren't religious hypocrites who are leading everyone else astray they are idolaters right they are idolaters so he even he he throws something in about idolatry in there right the the true god is not like something made of you know wood and stone and things like that so in that context i think that's i think that's perfect if they were in a different context where you know you know nine-year-old girls are being sold into you know some you know given off to 50-some-year-old men or something like that i don't know i i'd say something else in that context i think it was i think it was phenomenal right um how long do we have more james uh we're at 31 so it might be time to switch into the closing it's it's really hard for me to stop this because it's been a super interesting open dialogue section i honestly really enjoyed this we are going to given that it's been 31 minutes we will jump into the uh three-minute conclusion statements followed by the q and a so with that we will set it back to three minutes and david the floor is all yours all right well um i i think you know clearly in the bible clearly in the bible we have a variety of methods that kind of depend on the situation and that makes perfect sense there are you know general guidelines about how to communicate effectively with people and and generally being nice to people being gentle that that's a very good way to approach people if you're trying to if you're preaching the gospel to someone those are those are very very good principles there are other situations where someone comes along and is uh leading other people astray and uh you know it it's been said you know a sheep should be nice to a sheep a sheep should be nice to a sheep a shepherd should be nice to a sheep a sheep should be nice to a shepherd but if the shepherd is nice to a wolf then he's not being nice to the sheep right and so i think that's the general biblical principle is that if there's a wolf around whether it's an oppressor or a religious leader who's leading people astray a false prophet something like that then you kind of need um another method and i i don't think you know samuel and i are too far apart he's focusing on on evangelism i'm kind of focusing on everything together because that's what you're dealing with if you're if you're dealing with a muslim population then you do have the issue of of evangelism and so but you also have the sort of paradigm case of everything that the bible every every every example of something where the bible would use mockery and criticism very very um graphic criticism every area where you see this Muhammad is sort of the paradigm case in other words there's lots of criticism of of oppressors even if it's just you know some some wealthy women who are oppressing the poor well Muhammad is sort of the ultimate oppressor Muhammad's kind of the ultimate oppressor right i mean show me someone who's oppressed more people that through history than Muhammad um as far as a religious leader who's leading other people astray show me someone who fits this more than Muhammad if you're talking about idolaters i mean who but Muhammad has convinced so many people to bow down to a giant cube and kiss a black stone right so he's sort of the paradigm case of everything of everything where the bible would say here's a place where mockery is is very very relevant and and appropriate so i would lay it down like this i could put this in the form of syllogism if it's ever appropriate to criticize and mock someone it's appropriate to criticize and mock Muhammad because Muhammad is the ideal candidate compared to everyone else we read about so premise two would be it is sometimes appropriate to criticize and mock we see this throughout the bible and therefore the conclusion would be therefore it's acceptable to criticize and mock Muhammad so i'll just say with this when you're dealing with a false ideology like this yes there are situations where you know you would want to be you know have a general approach with evangelism i just want to say i am uh i'm not here to be a spoonful of sugar that helps the gospel medicine go go down more smoothly i think some people are here to be an earthquake to shake this ideology down to its foundations until we get to what's not shakeable and what's not shakeable is going to be what helps them come to christ thanks so much for that closing statement from david wood we will now switch it over to Samuel Nassan for his closing statement as well right thank you david it was a real pleasure to be able to uh dialogue and and also discuss these things with you now clearly um at the end of it all i i hope that you've seen that we we are looking at the same text here uh we we want to be corrected by scripture we want to see what the scripture is saying but we're having two very different interpretations here um and and as far as the text that was raised by by david because as i said in the start this is a biblical issue uh and i've responded to all those texts and i believe that my argument still stands that scripture doesn't endorse doesn't encourage christians in the new testament to basically mock or criticize the fate of unbelievers yeah we do see some differences and i think towards the end i think there was more common ground in disagreements common ground in the sense that i believe that the some the times that we a christian is allowed to criticize a non uh criticize a non christians pardon me what's getting jumbled up there uh is on an issue of morality for example if i see in an eighties or a hindu uh take something that's not his i'm going to i'm going to call basically call that out right and i'm basically uh david has brought up things like oppressors and things like that um and if i see an oppressor yeah it is my responsibility to call out the sin but i will say this though um that even though we call the sins i want to bring back my three points again we need to remember first of all it is a spiritual issue we're not dealing with a carnal issue and secondly uh we need to do so in love the scripture tells us to communicate the truth in love and that means some people would say well a tough love as well but i think the scripture is not saying that communicating the truth itself is love it is saying that the method in which we do that is love i would have loved to see how for example first peter three fifteen uh deals with i mean is it only look further so but it only deals with responding to a question or is it a general principle on how we can revere crisis lord i mean the rebuttal period is up but there are two different approaches here i'm in agreement with david when on moral issues we have to sound and that's nothing to do with criticizing a religion but however i think the one place where david and i would both be in agreement is that if you're watching this and you've not come to put your faith in christ here we humans are totally depraved in our sins we need a savior and the only way we get right to god is not through our good works it is in placing fate in christ jesus we may disagree on everything else but i'm glad to say that both david and i are united in this and if you're not a christian i hope that you will take this good news to heart put your faith in christ it's been a pleasure dialoging with you thank you very much samuel we will now go into the question and answer section so thanks so much as always what we'll do is if you happen to have a super chat that also gives you a chance to make a comment so in that case the speaker would of course get a chance to respond to that comment and we just ask you be your friendly selves during those if you happen to make one we've also got a number of questions from the standard question list that we will try to read through as many as we can let's see you've got a fan david steven steen says congrats david wood on your win in his super chat he said that at the very beginning i think so he is he is known to troll so let's see uh he also it is other super chats is uh three handsome christian men that's nice of you steven uh remember so you have you have a wife and children all right scott lot thanks so much for your super chat they said david are you familiar with street epistemology um no not really i mean i've got epistemology i would use on the street but as far as the uh official street epistemology no gotcha and carmel prunk thanks for your super chat as well asked sam what scripture says christians cannot mock unbelievers i think it was earlier in the debate right i'm glad you brought it up because if you remember in my opening statement let me go back to that um i have it right here i'll read it for you again because i believe i mentioned this in the start uh yep it's right here yeah and i said here by unbelievers i'm generally referring to belief system i'm sorry there's another one yep here it is by unbiblical i said i do not mean that the bible explicitly forbids criticizing or mocking unbelievers and their views uh and i said in the same way you know for example there are a number of things that i would not consider biblical i i mentioned very clearly there's nowhere that the bible explicitly says that so that's something i conceded very early in the debate in my opening statement nowhere yeah thanks so much samuel and also general ball sock appreciate your super chat that's a real name it's the z is not the z is silent so thanks so much they said great perseverance getting this put together both excellent speakers with some great and challenging material keep it up well i have to say i couldn't agree more this has been so fun to listen to i'm honestly thrilled it was it was a it was a rough start of the day so we had to change venues i want to say thanks so much you have no idea everybody who's watching how much i appreciate your grace and patience and encouragement because it was a hard day but i really appreciate all of you so thank you so much and i have to say thanks so much to the speakers who are amazingly patient they were just very easy going and amazingly helpful i have to say david would actually helped us in the sense that this debate probably wouldn't have happened today we didn't have a location after our original venue failed and so david billed us out there so i want to say thanks so much oh yeah just notice that that there was pretty pretty decent internet here at the uh at the hotel so it's worked absolutely well and so we're thrilled it's been honestly i'm so excited about just how interesting this was it's been super fun so with that brian stevens thanks for your super uh question they said does david would have names of people he has converted by quote wrecking their profit oh tons of them um i've heard from it at least hundreds of them um at least hundreds um i don't know how many more i uh haven't heard from but uh i should qualify i should qualify this by saying not everyone who watches my videos wrecking muhammad becomes a christian some of them do become atheists because some of them don't they accept my argument against muhammad but they don't accept my arguments for christianity but um you can you can look at my videos leaving islam so just type in leaving islam volume because there are multiple volumes but i think i was posting like 10 10 testimonies per per video but there was a time this was this was several years ago probably i don't know five six seven years ago something like that when i was on facebook and i just started reading through my my comment my youtube comments in the morning and when i saw some when i saw one that was from an ex muslim i would take a screenshot of it and then i would i would post it on on facebook but just by going through my youtube comments in the morning i was able to post between one and three comments every single day from people who were leaving islam again some of them were becoming atheists some of them were saying you know david hey you know i know you're christian and stuff i don't but i thank you for exposing muhammad and what's interesting is a lot of those a lot of those messages that i got from people were saying things like uh you know i used to hate you because of what you were saying about muhammad but i thank you for saying it now i thank you because i realized you know i realized what you were what you were doing there so um yes so there's there's lots of them um but yeah but to be fair to samuel the question would not be hey how much does this work right like like you might be able to win conference by going around giving people piles of money or something like that that that's not that's not biblical it's not it's not a biblical approach it would still be the question of whether it's biblical i i believe it is but if you're you're asking whether people end up converting to christianity after i wreck their profit the answer is yeah lots thanks so much for that david and also thanks so much michelle marie if your generous super chat really appreciate the support they she has how much of the differences that you both are having do you think are based on cultural differences for example i have been to indonesia and malaysia and i noticed that apologetics is culturally appropriated to suit these cultures yes shall i shall i tackle that first or you want do you want to go first uh yeah i'd like because i'd like you to have the sort of last word on this right but yeah i have been wondering that right because you're you're from malaysia and i'm from the united states of america and in america we can say whatever we want we don't have to worry about someone you know coming and locking us up or the you know something like that uh or people beating us up usual i mean it can happen just not the same way someone would have to be concerned in a muslim majority country so just to be clear here when when when someone from saudi arabia or pakistan or something like that tells me hey david you know hey i you know i'm not going to criticize muhammad i say of course don't let let me do it right let me do it i'm online people you know i can get this message out to people around the world let people like me do it if you're in a much more dangerous area obviously you don't but i think the question is those kinds of things can have a cultural impact right since i'm from a culture where you can you can blur it out wherever you whatever you whatever you want and it's also from a culture that you know wants to wants to do away with the tyrant right look at this tyrant right here you know that that's like part of the part of the foundation of america get rid of the tyrant right um so when i see someone like muhammad it's yeah just blast away so i think that could be a sort of cultural thing here where i know i'm you know i'm free to say whatever i want whereas if you're in a completely different area where you have you would have to watch what you say more could that be affecting uh i mean in other words how could our cultures be affecting the way we're reading our scriptures and understanding our our scriptures i think that's where that's kind of going i think culture definitely does play a part um and but one thing i do believe is that the the scripture transcends cultural boundaries as well but you cannot like i said cannot you can't deny the fact that culture does play a part in it like if i was doing apologetics in europe would my approach be different yes it would and and i clearly think that apologetics done in the us uh is significantly different uh from apologetics done elsewhere but i think the ultimate question is is it biblical and that's what i was very concerned about looking at and and basically saying no i don't want to just do it based on culture sure my approach tends to work better in countries like malaysia uh indonesia basically this approach of not criticizing people but basically making a positive case as to why you're right uh that that's basically what i'm advocating for i'm saying that when if i if i want i can either make a case as to why jesus is right or i can make a case as to why your religion is wrong i'm not interested in disproving your religion if you come to faith in christ you will naturally know that your religion is wrong and i don't have to to do that job i'm just interested in promoting christ i think uh culturally yes it does that but when i look to the scriptures i noticed that uh this is what i see happening in the scriptures as well this is what i look through the apostolic model of engagement i see that happening could it be because they were under persecution that is one factor that could have determined it yes i mean i think the apostle i mean the apostles could have been doing it that way because they were under persecution i mean x-17 is talking about paul and the aria pergas uh mass hill socrates stood in that same place and spoke and he got condemned to that would that have something to do with the way they did it yes but uh i'm just trying to see which is the more biblical approach and it seems to me it's not much of a cultural issue it's a biblical issue that uh i'm convinced that this is the way to do it and uh i know david is generous in saying that you can do it this way you can do it in a bunch of different ways but um i think that my approach has been a more biblical faithful to the biblical way and i've i've said very early on i don't think that what david is doing is sin or i don't think uh it's not when i mean it's unbiblical it doesn't match the biblical model so but culture does have a part to play i i did want to just uh read a quick passage here because uh i i think it's relevant the as far as you know approaching muslims in a different way that you might talk to buddhists or approaching an american you know in a different way than you might you know talk to a pakistani or something like that um quote uh the apostle paul here in first Corinthians when he said though i am free and belong to no one i've made myself a slave to everyone to win as many as possible to the jews i became a jew to win the jews to those under the law i became like one under the law though i myself am not under the law so as to win those under the law to those not having the law i became like one not having a law though i am not free from god's law that i'm under christ law so as to win those not having the law so the week i became weak to win the week i've become all things to all people so that by all possible means i may i might save some i do this for the sake of the gospel that i may share in its blessing so according to paul you do sort of pay attention to the uh the audience or the person you're uh you're trying to reach in other words right here if uh you know when i was friends with the bill and we were hanging out and talking and we go out to order some food i'm not going to order you know a bacon sandwich even though i don't have any problem with a bacon sandwich i'm just not going to do it i'm going to pay attention to this is something that could actually um bother my friend and it's something that's not very important in the grand scheme of things so why would i let that get in the get in the way of the gospel and so but i i do think it would follow to two people who pay attention if you come in just blasting come at them like someone who comes in blasting that's anyway that'd be my perspective thanks so much for that david and samuel as well we are going to jump to the next question and it's also a great chance for me to clarify something so damfaw thanks so much for your super chat they said david would jesus didn't mock the Pharisees just rebuked them i just wanted to quick clarify just in case i accidentally i didn't mean to in any way stack the deck against david the debate title i've kind of shortened for those of you who are seeing it on mobile i've made it as short as i could and so the the full title just to make a note of it as i know people could have been confused is that ken christians mock or criticize unbelievers or their beliefs so i just want to clarify that for those of you who come in late and so i'll read that super chat again just for david to get a chance to respond so damfaw said david would jesus didn't mock the the Pharisees just rebuked them that's completely utterly totally false um when jesus said you strain out a nap but swallow a camel right you strain out a nap but swallow a camel he's talking about their practice where the old testament law had all these different creatures that you're not allowed to eat so it had all these dietary restrictions the the smallest creature that you were not allowed to eat was a nap a little tiny bug sort of biggest was a camel right and so you have the Pharisees you have the Pharisees and they're so meticulous about following every little detail of the law that before they drank a cup of water they would strain it through a cloth they would put they would they would take a cloth and and strain the water through it when they drank it just to make sure that a nap didn't get in there and they didn't actually swallow a little tiny bug right but he says but you're swallowing a camel were they actually swallowing a camel no they weren't they weren't actually swallowing a camel talking about all this other stuff you're doing all this hypocrisy and injustice you're doing far worse things you're doing far worse things in your than your way so notice that's a rebuke if i say you're being a hypocrite that's a rebuke if i make fun of the way you're straining out your water but you're doing much worse things there i'm mocking you right he's looking at them he's looking at them saying look at you you're sitting here oh we're so we're so faithful we're so devout look at us look at us filtering our water to make sure we're faithful to god's law and he makes fun of them right he makes fun of the way they're tithing while ignoring everything else he makes fun of the way they're proselytizing while making people more making people worse than they are he goes down the list with the things they say about their offerings he goes down the list of all these things these guys are known for by the way that's that's not just there he does that elsewhere with you know the way they fast the way they pray to be seen by others he's constantly making fun that's not just rebuke if i if it's just rebuke i say hey you're doing this you need to stop at this wrong that's immoral when i start talking oh look at you straining out a nap but swallowing a camel when you're not swallowing a camel he's making fun of them so no question he's definitely mocking them there can i can i can i respond to what david said i'm okay with if he is are you okay with that yeah sure now i completely agree with david that that including by my definition jesus would have been mocking the practices of the Pharisees i think no dispute at all however i think it just didn't respond to my point my point was not that jesus did not mock the Pharisees or that paul did not mock the cretins in titus chapter one was 12 to 14 my point was that it was in the context of believers to believers uh it's permissible i just wanted to add that point because i'm in total agreement with you that jesus did mock them so in case that didn't come up clearly enough thank you so much and we just had another super chat lucas mmv thanks for your super chat they said this is definitely it was for sure interesting they said revealing that if you was more interested in the passion of the speaker rather than the content of the argument was very insightful um well no i can't say it like that nabil at the end of the day was willing to pursue the truth um wherever it went right and even if he had these sort of uh these sort of things holding him back like his his faithfulness to his his family and so on um i was talking about certain muslims who are mainly listening to the passion of of the speaker right that that uh just to give you an example um in in my debate with muhammad hijab i said as a criticism of tauhid that muslims pray for muhammad it's exactly what i said i said it repeatedly muslims pray i mean no i said in the in the in the video allah prays for muhammad right allah prays for muhammad and that's what i said and muslims are giving me these dirty looks like i don't know what i'm talking about muhammad hijab got back got up there and he said ha david i i have to give you a free arabic lesson you don't know what you're talking about it's not two muhammad it's four muhammad and the muslims burst into cheers right now notice he said exactly the same thing i said right he said allah prays for muhammad according to the quran he said exactly what i said when i said it it's oh look at this look at this kaffir he doesn't know what he's talking about when hijab says that he says it completely confidently and he says it like he's rebuking me for saying something wrong even though he said exactly what i did and the muslims burst into applause cheering him for the great refutation when all he said was exactly what i said i am completely convinced that he could have said anything right there and as long as he says it like it's a put down they will cheer right you get the same thing with lots of popular muslim speakers like zacher and i zacher and i can say something that is completely ridiculous and idiotic and the muslim crowd will cheer because they many of them have been trained to simply cheer for anything that's that's that's being said what i recognized about nabil is that there's this extra component right because i you know i can't say it's just the the passion right nabil and i are people who sat down for eight ten twelve hours at a time pouring through evidence what i mean was there was some extra factor where i where westerners would see it exactly the opposite right when i see someone speaking calmly and someone else yelling in here here in america most of us would say the calm guys probably the one who's making a better case he's calm he's being he's being calm and rational whereas muslims are looking for this extra component of you know passion and fearlessness and the calmness can actually be a down a downside right why aren't you pat why aren't you more passionate about this you believe jesus died on the cross for sins and you believe you've got the truth and this other guy's lying and leading people astray why aren't you more passionate about that right so it's not it's not that uh that it's just passion and who cares what the evidence is we're both concerned with the evidence just as muslims are concerned with the evidence but um we have other we have other components of what sorts of things we respond to and again this goes in islam this goes back to the time of muhammad himself right this goes back to the time of muhammad there's a passage in in ibn asaq where there were two brothers and one of them converted to islam uh and the other was still a pagan and the one who converted to islam ran out and started slaughtering jews right and so he killed a jew that was a friend of the family and his brother who's still a pagan so what are you doing what are you doing you just killed someone who's a friend of our family and his brother who just converted to islam said if muhammad ordered me to kill you i kill you too and then his brother looking at this goes wow anything that can drive you to this must be the truth and his brother converted to so the point is culturally they're in a context where wow this just made you get off your butt and stop eating doritos and actually get up and go on a killing spree this must be the truth anything that can make you this fired up right so you have passages like that in the muslim sources where it shows something that gets you fired up something gets you really passionate even passionate enough to kill they take that is like some additional evidence that what you're saying is true and so the only point here of all of this is you have to be aware of it if you're talking to someone if you're talking to someone you're trying to share the truth with them and that person if you're talking to a person who listens more if you're nice and calm in your approach or you're talking to a person who uh is paying attention to how how how passionate and fearless you are you got to pay you got to pay attention to those things and i think that goes along with what he's talking about a little differently but i mean think he's saying hey if i'm talking to a pagan you know i modify things you know to get stumbling blocks out of the way from talking to a jew like you know i do the same thing i come at him as a jew would and so on and so uh yeah but but uh certainly certainly important to to to keep in mind and uh yeah nabil ended up talking about that matter of fact i remember me and nabil sat down with william lang craig and nabil explained that to william lang craig said hey you know when i was a muslim i was actually favoring jamal batoe because you guys are giving all your arguments but he's actually yelling and excited i actually took that as a positive and thought he thought he won because of that so nabil told us that hey you need to pay attention that if you're in front of a muslim audience you need to be paying attention that they're looking at things differently from from the way you are wow that's really interesting so thank you david for that and then we do have a let's see a question first last thanks for your question asked question for samuel you said we can mock or ridicule false brethren and you're okay with it so why not islam which preaches a false jesus why the inconsistency right again i don't think it's inconsistent and then that's been the whole point of this debate but i guess what he's he's getting at is there seems to be some sort of a double standard here why is okay with christians and why it's not okay with non christians um the reason is simply this i i'm looking at a biblical model as i said from the start i'm not looking for popular consent i'm not looking for pragmatism what does the scriptures say and when i look at the biblical model i see that the apostles tend to react harshly towards believers who are on the verge of you know leaving the faith or going into some sort of a heretical movement because these people already know the truth and it seems to be that you can hold someone accountable if they already have some level of understanding of the truth you ought to have done better you knew this we see that time and time again in the scriptures as well you know zachariah you know when he's for example you know this is the view i think i know many people have a different take on this zachariah when he kind of you know doubts whether the uh you know the angel is telling him you know you're going to have a son in old age there is a precedence in the bible where you see abraham in old age having a son zachariah ought to have known better he's this guy is a priest and he gets disciplined you know as a result you know he was struck dumb that instant you see that those who have the truth are held to a higher standard and i think that's why the scriptures for example you see paul being very hard in his attack against the galatians i think david was absolutely spot on when he said that paul was mocking the galatians and i wanted to add that earlier because i don't disagree with him that there is mocking in scripture i'm completely in agreement with david on that but what i'm saying is that you see the apostles doing it to the believers and at the end of galatians you see how paul switches stone and say you know my children you know there seems to be this sort of a fatherly rebuke for those who have the truth you ought to have known better but when you deal with those who don't have that and this is where it comes to the entire discussion i was having with david on spiritual blindness these guys are spiritually blind and what do you need to do in order to you know to basically help in order for light to basically be shone in you preach the gospel because the gospel contains the power of god does that mean that god will act no it doesn't but god is free to act you preach the gospel what we are commanded to do is to preach the gospel and i just don't see a difference between apologetics and evangelism it seems to be hand in hand following with one another preach the gospel and you see that god sometimes sheds his light and paul solves conversion experience a good example of that and brings them to faith in christ but when these people have faith in christ they're held to a higher standard we are not a good example of this just look up first Corinthians chapter five you would see that paul says things like i'm sorry paul says things like you know who we should not be judging the world i can't remember the exact words it's around 512 first Corinthians 512 uh you know we're not to judge those outside but you must judge those inside god will judge those outside you must judge those within the church if any man calls himself a brother this is verse 11 and does these things you know he's a slanderer creates strife don't even eat with such people but he's not telling you to leave if there's a worldly person someone who is not a christian who is a slanderer it doesn't tell you to break fellowship from such people it there seems to be a higher standard in scripture set for those who know the truth and i think that that was simply all i was emphasizing so it's i don't think it's a it seems to be a double standard but i'm just trying to stay faithful with the scripture thanks so much samuel and want to let you know folks we've got just a few minutes left so i do want to just while we have this opportunity it's a special opportunity we want to let you know first that each of the speaker's links i've put in the description highly encourage you to check those out if you heard what you liked and want to hear more or maybe you strongly disagree and you want to tell them off well those links are down there waiting for you and given that those links are there for you you can ask questions at each of their youtube channels you'll have that opportunity for sure in the future we we do want to just give a quick chance if either of you have questions for right each of each other i do want to give you a quick chance because this is the last handle we'll have you together uh so with the last couple of minutes we have do you have any any questions no no questions just really appreciate the discussion i think we we started out and i think towards the end i think what was really helpful i think for me at least in this discussion is to just get to understand why you're doing what you're doing and basically um yeah i think that we ended up with a lot of i mean as far as i'm concerned at least uh ended up really seeing why you do what you do and that was really helpful yeah awesome thank you very much so as i mentioned if you have any questions and they didn't get asked i'm sorry we do have like a good number of them here so just want to encourage you those links are waiting below and i'm confident that they have live streams i've seen david's and samuel if you happen to have one in the near future also i will see in case that's not the case because i know that you're busy right now transitioning you've just moved the states in the event that you might all ask samuel if i can give his email we'll see you know maybe but so thanks so much folks you can always email us uh at explain apolit explain apologetics at gmail.com um yep that that's not a problem you bet and yeah as last time i checked david's email is at his youtube channel as well on the about page so hopefully you can ask them whether it be at their live streams or their emails and so i can put those in the description as well if that sounds good to you guys yep sounds good thanks so much just sprung that on him so thanks so much for being with us folks and keep zipping out the reasonable from the unreasonable we will see you tomorrow with david wood and matt dillahunty live at three p.m central daytime so have a great night you gotta get up sir i do thank you