Today on the Evangelist Podcast, talking with Muslims about the identity of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02The Evangelist Podcast. Encouragement to speak life to a needy world. With Glenn Scrivener and Andy Brinkley.
SPEAKER_03Welcome back to the uh Evangelist Podcast. A new year, a new episode. A new you. It's a little bit late, isn't it? The uh we're coming to this a little bit late. It's already the 20th, but we've been very busy with uh reading between the lines.
SPEAKER_00That's taken a lot of our energies as we set that up.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, um that's the the daily video series that we do.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Started on the first of it started before there was a pre-season kind of uh intro, and we did some Christmas thoughts. Pilot episode pilot episodes before Christmas. And then but yes, we hit the ground running on January 1st, uh, and we're gonna do 366 videos over the course of the year that take you through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation from in the beginning all the way through the hallelujah. And uh we'll just read between the lines, the famous lines that the Bible has given to us.
SPEAKER_03So we have put up a page if you wanted to get this as a podcast or uh vodcast, vlogcast, yeah. Vlog or whatever.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Uh speaklife.org.uk slash a reading between the lines.
SPEAKER_00I did some calculations the other day though. I thought if if all my videos are about seven minutes, and they've all been seven minutes so far, 366 of them will add up to about 47 hours worth of uh reading between the lines. Two days, inside two days, it's done. No sweat, no problem.
SPEAKER_03And uh we've also had the four kinds of Christmas campaigns to sort of seal off for the how many books did we send off. I think it was about 40 take a backs. Yeah, and it's about 200.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Dan Rack can use them as well for his uh video outrage.
SPEAKER_03Over a hundred? Yeah, I think so. I I heard independently of two completely separate churches that had used your book in the giveaway of their character. Yeah, loads did.
SPEAKER_00And um so they they kept on reprinting, so they did 10,000 and then they had to reprint that very quickly, and then 10,000 had to reprint that, 10,000 had to reprint that, and basically they ran out by about the 8th of December. Um by that stage it was a bit too late because I th I think they could have I think they were getting printed in China, and I think they could have gotten another 10,000 in for December the 23rd, but they felt that's it was probably a bit too late. So I think it it would have sold more than 30,000, but uh very, very thrilled that uh thirty thousand went out. And but you know, you just you just pray that that seed that gets scattered gets watered by other people and that God gives the growth. That's uh 1 Corinthians 3. So that's that's been my prayer about it all.
SPEAKER_03And you got a chance to sort of go round and actually deliver the all kinds of as a sermon in the flesh, the incarnation of all kinds of Christmas.
SPEAKER_00So Yeah, and that was um, I really I really enjoyed that as a way of teaching uh Isaiah 9. Isaiah 9 is probably my favorite Christmas passage. Um it talks about the deity of Christ in the most astonishing terms, at the same time as you know, his humanity, his child that's given to us at the same time as he joins us in the Valley of the Shadow. Um so yeah, just being able to preach that around the place was a real privilege. I just have to think of something new for next year.
SPEAKER_03You probably uh I'm a bit late on thinking about next year.
SPEAKER_00Really? I mean, every every year at Christmas I kind of think, you know, we we really should be filming now for next year. Yeah. Because of course everything's Christmassy. And you don't have to stage it, but um yeah, two years in advance. Yeah, you really do.
SPEAKER_03Well, before we get into uh talking about the dialogue that you had uh with us earlier, give us a little bit of uh an idea of what what's coming up.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, university missions. So February is a massive time for university missions. Um it tends to be the time when all the universities do their missions, which um I I guess it's a kind of a bit of a lull. It's it's sort of in the in the university calendar, it's this time when you know there aren't any aren't any exams and they they're not fresh you know, straight out of holiday time, so they've got a bit of time to plan. So everyone tends to to do their missions in February. So I've got a a busy February. Uh three weeks in a row. First week in Norwich at UEA, University of East Anglia, and then in Reading, and then University of Sheffield. Um so yeah, wall-to-wall mission. I'll be a limp noodle for February.
SPEAKER_03Okay, well uh today we've got the we've actually got the audio from the dialogue that you had at Portsmouth University.
SPEAKER_00Portsmouth University.
SPEAKER_03Um they staged um a not a debate. Not a debate. Not a debate.
SPEAKER_00Kind of a debate, but not a debate. It was very much like a debate, but it wasn't a debate.
SPEAKER_03With the Islamic Society, yes, uh it was a sort of a joint uh plan thing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and so tell us sort of what happened in it so we get the context of the audio.
SPEAKER_00So the Islamic Society um president and the CU, the Christian Union president, just got talking in the library one day, and why don't we do something for something on and uh and so the Islamic Society got down Adnan Rashid, um who uh does a lot of this kind of thing and talking to people, especially on university campuses uh about Islam. And the Christian Union got me in. And uh and so, you know, we were in a lecture theater and I don't know, there were there might have been who knows. 80 hundred Muslims, eighty hundred Christians. Um I'm not sure there were too many neutrals coming to listen, although there was somebody uh reporting for the um student newspaper. Um and so we just and and it was a really good topic because it was who is Jesus according to Islam and according to Christianity.
SPEAKER_03So uh Adman went first, and he sort of gave a little talk, yep, and then you gave the talk, and this is what we're gonna hear. Exactly. And then what were the questions after that?
SPEAKER_00And then we took questions from the floor, and then at the end we were able to ask uh a question of each other at the end. So that's that's how the whole evening was sort of set up, and it was uh it was brilliant. I l I loved I loved doing it. I drove home just thinking I you know I need to get back into doing more Muslim evangelism because uh I used to do a lot of it and and haven't done a lot recently. But when you're talking to a Muslim, you're talking about who is Jesus, what is the nature of God, is the Bible the word of God, what is salvation, how do you get to paradise? You're talking about stuff that you know really matters with people who really do think that it matters. And so yeah, it was it was a an amazing time. And I just kind of spent the the whole evening really kind of I I unpacked a little bit of John chapter one, um, knowing that the Christian Union had John's Gospels to give to people at the end, and so I you know said increasingly throughout the evening, we've got these John's Gospels, you've had a taste of chapter one, why don't you keep on reading? And uh and scores of Muslims at the end personally requested John the Gospel. Um at the end so that was that was really worthwhile doing um from my point of view. And you know, it helped me to understand Islam a bit better. I think it helped I think it helped both sides to understand both sides. Yeah. Um so yeah, it was really worth doing, and I'd love to do something like that again.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Okay. Well let's uh let's take a listen then.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. Thank you so much uh for coming along. Uh I have been looking forward to this for for a very long time and looking forward to meeting Adnan and uh and the rest of you, and thank you so much to the Islamic Society uh for putting on the refreshments. We really do appreciate that. Uh you've done us proud, so thank you very much. Um we all good? Great. Okay. So what do we know about Jesus? Uh Adnan said that uh historically uh we don't know very much at all about Jesus Christ. Uh I'd like to challenge that uh quite seriously. I I would put forward the uh 27 books of the New Testament uh written in the same culture as Jesus Christ, in the same century as Jesus Christ, by people who claim to be eyewitnesses of the things uh that they spoke of. Uh you might think that they are biased, but all historical th uh historiography is in fact biased because it's all written by people from a certain perspective. So we've got these 27 different books, all of which speak of Jesus as a uh a first century Jew, as someone who claimed to be the Christ, the Son of God, as someone who uh won a great following, as someone who caused a disturbance in the temple area of Jerusalem in 30 AD, as someone who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and who, three days later, it was claimed by his followers, was seen again, alive, and the body was never found. Those are not simply the truths that are attested to in the 27 books of the New Testament. You'll find those truths throughout the ancient first century documents. We can go to figures like Thalus or Lucian of Samosota or Mara Basarapian or Phlagon or Tacitus or Pliny or Celtus, or we could go to Jewish authors like Josephus, or we could go to the Targums as well, and to the Talmud, and we could we could learn about who Jesus is from these figures who are in the first and second centuries around the time of Jesus, in the culture of Jesus. And I think we have strong reasons for believing their testimony to Jesus rather than the Quranic testimony that comes uh over half a millennium later. So we do know a very great deal about who Jesus is. And I just want to spend uh a few minutes introducing you to who Jesus is from one of the eyewitness accounts in the Gospels. And uh we'll just think about uh who is Jesus from John's Gospel. The beloved disciple of Jesus is the one who is writing, and uh certainly in the first and second centuries. No one was any in any doubt about who the authors were. It might not have been written at the top of the manuscripts as they were circulating, but everybody knew that Matthew was by Matthew, that Mark was by Mark, Luke was by Luke, and John was by John. But here is John uh beginning his biography of Jesus. I wonder where you would think to begin a biography of somebody. Usually, if we're doing a biography of somebody like Winston Churchill or something, you might begin with his parents, you might begin with his grandparents, perhaps. Where does John begin? John begins in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God, he was with God in the beginning. John says that to understand Jesus, you don't just need to understand his parents or his grandparents, you need to understand all of reality. You need to understand the beginning of the universe. And I hope you know that the Christian claim is not that Jesus founded a religion, the Christian claim is that Jesus founded the universe. And John, in order to speak to us, his biography of Jesus says, in the beginning was the word. And he's casting our minds back to Genesis. Perhaps you might know the first chapter of the Hebrew scriptures. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. How did God create the heavens and the earth in Genesis chapter 1? If you read through, you'll see, and God said, and it was so. And God said, and it was so. And God said, and it was so. How does God create? Through his word, exclusively through his word. And John speaks of Jesus being the very word of God. Well, think about that and what that means as we go on. But it is very interesting that in the Quran as well, uh, Issa is called a word from Allah. He's called that in Surah 4, 171, which has already been quoted, and also Surah 3, verse 45. Jesus is called a word from Allah. The claim is stronger in the Bible. The claim is that he is the word of God, the word of the Father. That means he is the expression of God, the communication of God, the revelation of God from the very beginning. The living God has always been an expressive, communicative, speaking, revealing God, and Jesus is that expression. He is that outgoing nature of who God is. I think every Muslim should have this understanding, the same that Christians do, there's a strong tradition in Islamic theology as well as in Christian theology about divine simplicity. Some of you might know uh some of the works of the great Muslim or Christian uh theologians who have spoke about the simplicity of God, that God does not merely possess attributes, as though he has a little bit of wisdom over here and a little bit of power over here. Um the tradition, both in Islam and in Christianity, is that God is his attributes. He does not merely possess wisdom, revelation, power, those sorts of things. He is those things. And within Islamic theology, there's a very strong doctrine that God's word possesses all the properties of God Himself, and God is never without his word, and the word is never without God. It's the same in Christianity. We don't understand that God could be thought of apart from his word. We don't believe in a mute God, and we don't believe that God's word can be considered apart from God's. It is inseparable. And so from the very beginning, Christians have always said that God has been an expressive, speaking kind of God who has always had a word, always had an outgoing communication. And that is who we think Jesus is. So this is how John begins. In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. You see, this inseparable unity between God who is about to be called the Father and the Word who is about to be called the Son. That is how John's gospel begins. It goes on. Through him all things were made, and without him nothing was made that has been made. So through God's word, the universe was made. And again, we get this sense that there is not God over here and his word over here. There is one life, there is one being, there is one effusive reality to God, who is always outgoing. And this outgoing God has said, this thing is too good to keep to ourselves. Let's spread, let's share, let's have a creation, and through the word God has created all things. Next verse says this In him, still speaking about God's word, in him was life, and that light was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. So here we've got this idea that Jesus is not simply like the word who is expressing the communication of God, he is also likened to light, who radiates out, the shining God. And again, you this is a big theme within the New Testament. You could go to somewhere like Hebrews chapter 1, which describes Jesus in verse 3 as he is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being. The radiance of God's glory, the exact representation of his being. And again, Christians are very careful to say there is not two beings. There is not a God who is light, and then a radiance who is a different being over here. I look at the lights at the back of this room, and in order to see the light that is shining, my eye is traveling up upon the light beam, and the radiance of that light is revealing to me that light itself. And the radiance and the light are inseparable. In the very same way, the Father is the glorious, shining, effusive, outgoing being, and Jesus is of one being with that Father, he is that radiant light. He is what God's life is like when it meets us. That's who Jesus is. Very important. Because I know that my Muslim friends are very careful not to multiply the beings of God. You know, nobody wants to have two different beings of God or three different beings of God. And Christians too are very careful to say, no, there is not three beings to God. There is one being who is a father ever shining the light of his son out into the world, and that's who Jesus is, according to the Bible. So if this is all true, if this is all true, that Jesus is the outgoing word of God who reveals who God is, you might have a question, uh, and the question might run something like this What about the Old Testament? Uh, what about before Christmas? What about before Jesus came to planet Earth? How on earth could people know God before Jesus came into planet earth? And John has thought of that, and uh he finishes this prologue to his gospel by saying this. John chapter 1, verse 18, no one has ever seen God, but God the one and only, who is at the Father's side, has made him known. Anyone who has ever known God according to the Bible has known them through knowing Christ. Christ is the Word of God, and to know God we know God through Christ. Therefore, how does Adam and Eve know God? How does Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob know God? How does Moses know God? They know him through knowing Christ. And it's very interesting as we uh work our way back through the Old Testament, we see that actually the Word of God is a great figure within the Old Testament. Uh, in Genesis chapter 3, verse 8, we're in the Garden of Eden here. And it says that the voice of the Lord God was walking in the garden. Who is it who's walking with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden? We know from John chapter 1, verse 18, no one has ever seen God, but God the one and only, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known. There's always been a father revealing himself through his son, a speaker always revealing himself through his word Christ. And here we see the word of God, the pre-incarnate Christ in the garden. Genesis chapter 15. How does Abraham know God? Genesis 15, verses 1 to 6, we meet this figure called the Word of the Lord appeared to Abraham. The word of the Lord actually takes Abraham outside and takes him stargazing and promises him things. And Abraham trusts in this figure called the Word of the Lord, who is also called the Lord. He is of the Lord and he is the Lord, and his title is the word. Abraham trusts in this figure and he is credited with righteousness. It's a wonderful moment in scripture, and the rest of the Bible points back to this moment and says, fantastic. This is what Christians are always about: trusting in the word. The one who is of the Lord and who is the Lord, and when you trust in him, you are counted righteous. In the very next chapter of Genesis, we meet the same person under a new title, the title of the messenger of God. The Malach Elohim or the Malach Yahweh, the messenger of the Lord, sometimes known as the angel of the Lord. But it's very obvious as you read through every instance of the angel of the Lord in the scriptures that we are not dealing with a creature. Because this messenger of the Lord, this revelation of God, is someone who speaks in such exalted tones about himself, and the scripture speaks in such exalted tones about this Malach Yahweh, this messenger of God. So in Genesis chapter 16, the angel of the Lord, the Malach Yahweh, the messenger of God, meets with Hagar, and she calls him, You are the God of seeing. I have now seen the God who sees me. And this one who is of the Lord is also called the Lord in Genesis 16. He's of the Lord, and he is the Lord, and he's called the Malach, which literally means the sent one, the one who is sent from God. And yet he is given divine titles. In Genesis 32, perhaps do you know the story of Genesis wrestling with Jacob? It's an odd story, isn't it? Of um Jacob wrestling with God. How much time have I got?
unknownEight minutes. Eight minutes.
SPEAKER_00I've got eight minutes left. Ah, plenty of time. Okay. So Jacob wrestling with God. Have you ever read that story? That's really odd, isn't it? Especially because of John chapter 1, verse 18. In John chapter 1, verse 18, it says, No one has ever seen God. But the one and only God who is at the Father's side. He has always made him known. So who is Jacob wrestling with? Actually, Hosea knew all about this. In Hosea chapter 12, he refers back to this incident and he says, Jacob wrestled with the angel. The angel. Now in the Bible, there are lots of creatures called angels, lots of creacherly angels, but there is one who is the angel, the messenger, the one sent from God. Who is, if you like, God from God, light from light, very God from very God. It's the language of the creeds of the fourth century AD, but it's all throughout the scriptures BC as well. Exodus chapter 3, we're at the burning bush. Who is in the burning bush? The burning bush is very important in the Quran, isn't it? It's mentioned a nine times, is the figure coming to me. I could be corrected later, but it's it's mentioned a lot the burning bush and the relationship. Between uh Moses and seeing some kind of apparition of the Lord somehow, and off he goes and and uh and and redeems Israel. Who is in the burning bush? No one has ever seen God at any time. Who is who is in the burning bush? And actually, he introduced he is introduced in Exodus chapter 3, verse 2 as the messenger of the Lord, the Malach Yahweh, the one sent from the Lord. And he is also described as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and he is the Lord, and he calls himself I am who I am. Here we've got the Lord from Lord, God from God, light from light. This is a thoroughly Hebrew doctrine. In Exodus chapter 23, we even learn about how this messenger of the Lord goes with the Israelites and leads them out of Egypt and through the wilderness to the promised land. And the Lord says, Don't rebel against the messenger of the Lord, because my name is in me, and if you rebel against him, he will not forgive your sins. Who can forgive sins but God alone? And yet there is this understanding, even within the Old Testament, that there is the one sent from the Lord, in whom is the name of the Lord, and to reject him is to reject forgiveness. It's a thoroughly Hebrew doctrine of God. Judges chapter 2. The angel of the Lord stands up and he says, I save you from out of Egypt. And he and he claims divine prerogatives of his own. Perhaps you might know uh C. S. Lewis, um that Christian apologist of last century, and he had a great argument for the divinity of Christ. He said, When you look through the Gospels, you see Jesus making incredible claims about himself. He says things like, you know, I am the one bread of life without which you go hungry, I am the one light of the world without which you are lost in the darkness. I'm the one way to God, I am the one truth about reality, I am the one life that is really life. I and the Father are one, I am older than the universe, I will judge the world. He makes these incredible claims. And C.S. Noah said, there's only three options when you look at him making those claims. Either this guy is mad, or he's bad, or he's God. He's either insane for saying these things about himself. I've met many people, in fact, I've met three people, let's not say many, three people who have claimed to be the Son of God in my life. You won't be surprised to learn that all three of them were on the mental health wing of hospitals. When people make these kinds of claims, we generally think that they are not in a good place when they make those claims. Jesus made those claims embarrassingly often. So what is he? Is he mad? Or is he bad? Is he trying to deceive us all? And if he's not mad, then he's not bad. I don't know any other option than that maybe he's telling the truth. And if he's telling the truth, then he does this word from the Father, this radiance of God's glory, this light from light, this God from God. Let's think about Christmas. We'll skip over God from actually God from God. If you want to go to my um my blog, you can see I've just put up a post of 24 um scriptures from the Old Testament that are really simple to see, in which you've got more than one person called the Lord working in the same passage. Um, and you cannot read them in Unitarian ways. It is impossible to read them in Unitarian ways. What's that? Three minutes left. Um those are just a few. But let's let's move on to Christmas. Uh tomorrow I'm I'm speaking on this great passage, Isaiah chapter 9. It's a wonderful Christmas passage. Um, those who are walking in darkness have seen the great lights, on those living in the land of the shadow of death, a light has dawned. For Isaiah 9, verse 6 says, To us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be upon his shoulders, and he shall be called wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting father, prince of peace. It is this messianic expectation that the child who is going to be born into this world is called mighty God. He is called mighty God. And there's this comfortability within the Jewish thought world that yes, the Messiah is God from God. Micah chapter 5, verse 2, another great Christmas passage. But you, Bethlehem Efrica, talking to the town, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times. Again, the understanding that the Messiah will not just be a figure from within history, but will have his origins from eternity. This is the understanding of the Messiah. And when you read the Second Temple Judaism, when you read the literature from those times, you see people who have absolutely exalted views of the Christ, the Son of God, who is the Word of the Father, who is the high priest of all creation, who many people say in uh in times in the first and second centuries BC is the Juteros Theos. Now that the second God. Now those are terms that actually Christians will kind of stand out because we don't think that there are two different gods. But many, many Jews, just reading this literature, just say there seems to be a Lord who sends his light, his word, his truth, who himself is filled with the name of the Lord and has the divine properties of the Lord. There just seems to be that doctrine. So that when Jesus comes and he claims to be the son of the Father, people start picking up stones. Now, isn't that interesting? Even the enemies of Jesus know that when he claims to be the son of the Father, he's claiming to be equal to God. That's an interesting doctrine of God, isn't it? Read in John chapter 5. Jesus says, I am the Son of the Father, and everyone doesn't say, oh, that means you're less than the Father. Everyone says, You're claiming to be equal with the Father. Let's kill you. In Mark chapter 14, Jesus signs his own death warrant by saying, Yes, I am the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One. And to simply say that is to cre it is to be a blasphemer, because if he's not that, then he is claiming to be God. But the Jewish understanding of God is not the Unitarian understanding of God at all. Christmas, let's finish with this. John chapter 1, verse 14. The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. You might think, how could God ever become a man? But of course, if we believe that God can do anything, he could become a man, right? I mean, he could. The big question is, why would God become a man? And the answer really is love. It really is love. One of my favorite verses from the scriptures, 1 John chapter 4, verse 8, God is love. He has always been a father, loving his son in the joy of the Holy Spirit, and to express his deity. Down comes the Son, to be one with us, to be our brother, to stoop, serve, suffer, bleed, and even die, yes, die, for us. That does not obscure his divine glory, that expresses his divine glory. Because God's glory is the God of love. Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_03So what was your uh strategy then, Glenn, in in sort of opening like that?
SPEAKER_00Well, I th I think I I I've seen loads and loads of online debates uh between Christians and Muslims. And and one thing I think uh as a common denominator, whenever you're able to say from the Old Testament, here is Christ, and you know, there is this divine person who is from God and he is God. Whenever you're able to say that from the Old Testament and then say, Oh yeah, and Jesus is that guy, um you are like really onto a winner. Whenever you're not able to say that, I think you're really onto a loser. I think I you know in so many Muslim Christian debates, at times I've seen Christians, sometimes explicitly but mostly implicitly, basically say um, you know, uh that Moses and the prophets essentially had an Islamic doctrine of God, and then comes Jesus in the New Testament, and we have to tweak it a bit, and we've got this Trinity thing going on on top of this Unitarian doctrine of God. And if if you go with that, if you think Moses and the prophets were basically proto-Muslim, um you've lost. I really think you've lost. Um that is not the case at all. Moses and the prophets are Trinitarian or, you know, at worst proto-Trinitarian. And, you know, they s you know, Moses stands with the Christian understanding of God. He doesn't, you know, stand with the Unitarian understanding of God. So once you've established that, I think it's a hop, skip, and a jump to be able to say, well, Jesus is that one. He is the messenger of the Lord, the word of the Lord, the God from God, light from light, true God from true God, who has always been there. Because I think one thing that Muslims don't really get is um you know, why why do we think that coming along halfway through human history Jesus comes and claims to be God? That sounds like the sort of thing a prophet might do. Doesn't sound like the sort of thing God would do. Um so just going back to the beginning and saying God has always been like that, he's always had a word, an image, uh a messenger, his glory, in whom his name dwells. Um if you're speaking of those kinds of terms, then the Christian doctrine of God is utterly plain and you know it it all makes sense. So that's that's what I was trying to do with that. So I I I really do you know think Christ in the Old Testament is really key in Muslim evangelism. And I found that over the course of the evening, as people kept on asking questions, having that foundation just helped me to be able to explain things simply and plainly um in a way that I wouldn't be able to if I just if I just sort of assumed a kind of a Unitarian Old Testament God and Jesus is this complication. Uh I d you know, I d I don't think Unitarianism is original to who God is. Um I don't think it's how the Old Testament presents God. I don't think it's a very simple doctrine of God, as Muslims are always trying to say. It's I don't think it's really simple, there's just one God. I think actually it's an incredibly complicated thing to imagine that there's just this one God. I don't think it actually makes sense. So I just want to challenge all those assumptions and um and really and the other big conviction uh that was shaping my uh introduction was let's get people into John's gospel and excited about John so that then we can put it into their hands and they can go on and read it for themselves.
SPEAKER_03And many Muslims sort of took Yeah scores, score, score.
SPEAKER_00They they they brought a box with AD and I think I think they emptied it. Really? So yeah. Um amazing. It was an amazing evening.
SPEAKER_03Um if folks wanted to sort of listen to the whole thing from start to finish, including as uh introduction, then uh they can just go to your blog and we'll put a link on the show notes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Which if you go to uh speaklife.org.uk slash TEP123213. We've got a while to go.
SPEAKER_00We've got a while to go.
SPEAKER_03So we'll have a link on the user page, which is uh um speaklife.org.uk slash tep, and it will be the top episode available there. And you can listen to the whole two hours. Nearly nearly three hours.
SPEAKER_00It's under two hours.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so uh next week we're going to talk about angry evangelism.
SPEAKER_00Angry evangelism. And and how not to do it. Right. Yeah. I'm not advocating it. I think uh how do we how do we address it? Because there is such a thing as angry evangelism, and and uh yeah. What's going on in a person's understanding of the gospel in in your own understanding of the gospel? If you get angry in your evangelism, um it's that's no good. Um so what's going on theologically, what's going on emotionally in you, and how can we shape our evangelism a bit better so that it's uh a lot more winsome.
SPEAKER_03Okay, well stay tuned, subscribe so you can get uh get that for for next time.
SPEAKER_00And subscribe to Reading Between the Lines.
SPEAKER_03Yes, yeah, pick that up as well. Okay, that's it for now. See you next time. Ciao.