On this episode of the Evangelist Podcast, we continue talking to Jade Smith about Islam.
SPEAKER_00The Evangelist Podcast. Encouragement to speak life to a needy world. With Greg Scrivener and Andy Brinkley.
SPEAKER_02Welcome back to the Evangelist Podcast. We're going to do this series on talking to different faiths about Christ. And this time we're we're into the second half of talking to uh to Muslims with Jay Smith doing an interview. Yes. Um just to recap for us what we did last time.
SPEAKER_05So Jay Smith was talking to us uh very much about the book and the man, the book and the man, the book and the man. The book, the Quran, the man Muhammad. Compare and contrast that to the book, the Bible, and the man Christ Jesus. Um and uh yeah, and and and again, as as you unpack what it is that other people believe, the the sort of the the Pepsi Coke test really makes it seem like you know, you know, one side is coke and the other side is mud. Like honestly. Um learning about the learning about the slaveries that other people get themselves into in uh in in in these other beliefs really does make you appreciate the goodness of the good news. And uh and so he was yeah, talking to us about the Quran, talking to us about uh some of these uh findings. Um the oldest Quran is a heck of a lot too old. Um it seems to predate Muhammad. Um certainly predate the time when officially the Quran was meant to have been written down, and it that all kind of suggests what a lot of people are starting to say, which is that uh yes, there was a historical Muhammad, um, but there was an empire that was developing, he was a part of that, and as the empire gets strong, you need a unifying book. The Jews have got a book, the Christians have got a book, we don't have a book, let's have a book. And so they cobbled together this patchwork of uh stuff that's taken from old Jewish daughters, stuff that's taken from old um Greek daughters, Alexander the Great stories, and there's the stories from Gnostic Gospels, and let's just weave it together and you know and call it the final revelation from God. Um and that's that's kind of been uh a very decent working hypothesis about where the Quran has come from. But now we've we've you know we're coming up with the Sana um Quran and the one from Birmingham both date to far too young. You know, far far too old. You know, they're far too um early. Um which is interesting, you know, because you know, with with the Bible, we you know we're we're always keen to get very, very early manuscripts. Um the Muslims have got far too early to predate Muhammad. Um so it's names, so it's names from the dating of uh this uh this folio. So we talked about that, but now we're gonna sort of start talking about well, yeah, what do we say positively about Jesus? How do we positively uh reach out to Muslims and share the faith?
SPEAKER_02Have you sort of um encountered many Muslims on the door or on the streets?
SPEAKER_05Yesterday um spoke to a guy in the DIA and his friend Abdul, and uh we were getting into the whole thing, and I basically did Jade Smith's thing. I basically said, you know, I believe Jesus is God and the Bible is the word of God. Do you have an opinion? And uh yes he did, and we had we had a great conversation. And I try I try it was in a kebab shop and I I tried to pay for my coke and they wouldn't have it. They you know, no no, you have the coke, and and um and we just we must have spoken for a good half an hour. And we went back and forth, and we were incredibly forthright with one another, and smiling and laughing and lots of handshakes at the end, and I got a free Coke.
SPEAKER_02So imagine it's talking completely without spoke. No, exactly.
SPEAKER_05And and it was one of those things where as you're talking to a Muslim, you know what you're talking about is the Bible, the word of God, is Jesus God, what is the nature of God, how do you get saved? You talk about the biggest stuff. Talk about the nature of sin, and is it just a mistake or is it something deeper the Christian say it is what is forgiveness? And it's fascinating. We we spoke about what is forgiveness, and uh and they said what Muslims often say, I don't understand it's whole crossing. Why why does anybody need to die? Allah just forgives. He's almost a full he just forgives. But it was interesting, and and I've never really pushed this angle in response to that. I kind of said, well, does he really forgive? And like on judgment day, is it all forgiven or forgotten? He says, Oh no, he still punishes you for those sins. Forgiven but punished. Forgiven but punished. And and so you go to a certain level of hell in order to pay for those sins. Um but then you know the hope is that you pop out the other side and and uh get to paradise eventually. Um but yeah, so Allah is all merciful, all forgiving, and he still punishes you for everything you've ever done. And so, you know, and and he was he was just about off to pick up his kids from school, and I said, like, if you if you forgive your children, do you then give them a beating? He said, No, I would never do that. I was like, yeah. I think you're better than Allah, to be honest. I think I think you're much nicer than Allah. Now of course for my Western sensibilities. That's outrageous. How dare I say that he's better than Allah and all that kind of stuff. But I got a freak cookie for this. He doesn't mind, honestly. Honestly. Um, this forthrightness is absolutely cool. And of course you've got to judge it, and not everybody is out of that kind of conversation, but Nadir definitely was. And so I I think Jay, Jay, the spirit of Jay was he was helping me with that conversation.
SPEAKER_02Let's hear what he has to say this time, it's more sort of practical. Okay.
SPEAKER_05What often comes up in conversation, I'll say to a Muslim, you know, you you believe that Jesus is a prophet, brilliant. So do you know some of the things that he prophesied? And I I turn to somewhere like John 17, and I say, Well, look, John 17, verse 3, John 17, verse 5, Jesus says, you know, he was there before the universe began. Verse 24, he says he was there, loved by the Father before the world began. So if you trust Jesus the prophet, then surely you need to understand he's more than a prophet. I do something like that, and and then the Muslim will often say, Ah, yes, but the Bible was changed. How do you how do you handle that claim? Uh well first of all, where is it where is it coming from for for the Muslim? Why do why do they say the Bible's a claim?
SPEAKER_01So here's the best thing to do with the Muslim when they say that. So show me one verse in your Quran that says the Bible's been changed.
SPEAKER_04Mm-hmm. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Show me anywhere in the Quran that warns you about the changing of the Bible. In fact, let me tell you, the Quran says just the opposite. Yes. Look at Surah 10, Aya 94, look at Surah 21, Aya 7. And it says very clearly, if you have any, you Muslims have any question, go to the people of the book. The Jews and the Christians. Why? Because they have been given the power in the angel for you. Surah 29, ayah 46. Don't even argue with the Christians, for they have been given the Torah and the Gospels for you, the angel. Sure 4, Aya 136 says, all Muslims, go to those scriptures I Allah have given you, the Torah in the angel. And Sora 5, I 46 and 47 in verse 68 say, all Christians, go to those scriptures God has given you, for they are signs for you. So here you are just giving you five references. I've given you these references from five sewers that tell you to come back to our scriptures, so if you have any questions to go to our scriptures, that our scriptures were to be given by God for them, and that we Christians are to not only are we to go to our scriptures, they are signs for us. They're not even to argue with us about this. So where in the world did this idea of corruption come from? Not in the Quran. The Quran doesn't have one verse that says it's been corrupted.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So it's obviously to come after the Quran. And what we now know is that this whole discussion, this argument, was introduced by a man named Ibn Hazam in 1056. Okay. 1066, sorry, 11th century. About 400 years after Mohammed.
SPEAKER_05Okay. Yeah. And I suppose at that stage, I mean quite often I sort of say, well, when when was the Bible changed? And I I suppose if you know because, you know, we let's let's get in the train.
SPEAKER_01Certainly not before Muhammad. And certainly not before the Quran.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Otherwise the Quran would have warned us about it. Otherwise Muhammad would have warned us about it. Yeah. I don't believe anything about Muhammad anyhow. I don't think he's I don't think that uh we don't know much at all about him. But that's a whole nother discussion of what we now know about Muhammad historically.
SPEAKER_05Yes. And so yeah, if it if it had to have been changed after the Quran was written down, then well let's you know get in the train, let's go to the British Library, let me show you the manuscript from the book. It hasn't changed, yeah. I mean so so what has the reaction been of of of scholarly thinking radical Muslims?
SPEAKER_01Well here's the problem. I did a debate in Toronto last year, 2014, in September, so about a year ago, with Dr. Shabirati, the world's leading debater, Muslim debater. And he's by far the Dr. Shabiradi is by far the best they have on the Quran and the Bible. And the Q and the the debate was the Bible versus the Quran. Which is the Quran or the Bible written uh made by man or by God? I went first and I just introduced these six manuscripts and I showed all the variants and I showed the copies, the erasures, the insertions. He was not prepared for that. He had no idea how I was gonna do that. He could not answer any of the questions, and so in his um paper, he just said, Listen, I don't have to worry about the manuscript evidence, it's not important to me. I know that the Quran is from God because it has a miracle, it has the miracle of the number 19.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_01If you look at these set of verses and you add him to these set of verses, you get 19. If you look at these letters with these letters, you get number 19. He spent 19 minutes, I kiss you nothing, he spent 19 minutes on the number 19.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_01He wasted 30, 19 of us, 35 minutes wasting our time. I finally got up to him, I looked at him, I said, listen, Shapid, what are you talking about?
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Look at every one of these manuscripts I pointed. I held up the Samarkand, the Topkopi, the Husani, the Ma'il, the Petropolis, the uh Sana manuscripts. Not one of them has verses. Verses were only introduced in the 10th century. And even then there's no unity of verses. Because even today, if you look at uh any Quran you look at, you'll find that they have different verses. There's different different foundings of verses.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So what are you talking about? He finally he didn't have a response to that. So I said, what manuscript are you talking about? Where is this miracle 19? He finally had to admit by the end of the debate it was the 1924 manuscript.
SPEAKER_05Yes.
SPEAKER_01Less than 100 years old.
SPEAKER_05Yes. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Now that's if that's the best thing got. That was in September. He wrote a paper two weeks after because it was such a huge kiosk. It cost such a furority around the Muslim world. There was so much anger around the Muslim world because of that debate. But he wrote a paper. He's never done that in the six debates I've done with him. He's never written a paper to try to explain his position. And in that six uh six pages, he basically came back to the number 19. That's all he could come back. Now, since that time, we've written a paper by Doug, uh John Torres out of Toronto. He was at the debate. He went and just tore the number 19 to pieces. He looked at every one of the applications that said we did and said, Your map, your math is wrong. This is not 19. He said, You look at here, look at these are not number, you've got the wrong number. He's completed in almost every case. He didn't do his counting right. He didn't look at the words right, he didn't know his Arabic well enough. I mean, which is which is normal. But a man of his caliber can make those kind of mistakes. But who cares if if he did find the number 19? You can do that with the Bible and find the number seven all the way through. You can get entire geometric designs just with the number seven out of the Bible. But we would not take some miracle because of that. We would never have to make that kind of claim. Thank God, our Bible doesn't have to. We don't have to do stoop that low to try to defend our Bible. But what are the scholars doing? Now remember, that was done in September. A hundred and twenty thousand people have now watched that debate.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01We have people in London who have given their side to the Lord, to the Lord, because of this new material.
SPEAKER_04Wonderful.
SPEAKER_01They just left Islam and have joined have joined us, not just because the Bible is authoritative, when they finally realize the Bible says they've now seen Jesus Christ there and they just fall in love with Jesus.
SPEAKER_05Well that's wonderful to hear. Yeah. Because before you said that, I was gonna ask, does Does the the blindness of Shabad Ali in the face of all this evidence, does that just make you think, oh well, you know, uh these these arguments are not winning people over. But but as you say, there's there's there's people listening in and they are being won.
SPEAKER_01Um there is being one. And I think I think, Glenn, the best thing about this material is that we can sit back as Christians and realize that every one of these questions have been thrown against the Bible. Remember, we've had redactive criticism, source criticism, uh historical criticism, uh, literary criticism. That started in the 1800s, and for almost 150 years now, the Bible has been assailed, and we have found answers to every one of those criticisms. You would not have historical criticism about the Bible. Historical criticism was birthed on the Bible.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And it's come through every one of these criticisms. So I thank God for the Bible, and I thank God for the critical analysis that has been applied to the Bible. It's the only book that has withstood every criticism.
SPEAKER_05Yes.
SPEAKER_01That's why I'm so proud of it, and that's why I do not apologize for it.
SPEAKER_05Absolutely. And uh so I mean, what what part do you think these kinds of arguments play in terms of I mean, okay, so we've we've got radical Islam, we've got ISIS sweeping through Syria, um, but we've also got, you know, as you say, 1.6 billion Muslims around the world. Many of them just sort of believe in folk Islam, they'd have no idea what the the contents of the Quran sort of say. I mean, how how do these academic historical claims about the Quran, how do you see that having an impact on global Islam?
SPEAKER_01No, it won't immediately. It can't. In the same token, and what heartens me is I go back when Wellhausen started these arguments against the Bible in the late 1800s. Remember when he started applying it, that went filtered out into the seminaries, and from the seminars it filtered down into the churches, and when it got into the churches, it then hit the masses, it hit the people on the peuse, and it disillusions, had a huge amount of disillusioned. Historical criticism, along with Darwinianism, this just destroyed the church, masturbated the church. And by 1905, the church was in complete uh eradication almost and has never recovered in Europe. The church has not recovered in Europe because of Darwinianism and biblical criticism. Now, we we have attacked and we have not I wouldn't say that we destroyed Darwinianism, but biblical criticism, most of it has all been answered.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So we have learned our lesson and we've gone out and we've found out the answers. That's one of the beautiful things we put together a British uh tour of the British Museum here in London, which looks at most um almost every one of these attacks from the Dugan and the Shepherd right on down to who is Abraham and did he even exist and David and all these great things that have been thrown against the Bible. And in three hours, we show you how you can answer just by looking at the artifacts that you British stole and put in that building. So we can look at it. Thank God you stole it. Thank God it's there. And thank God we can stop and look at it and see just how all these artifacts support first and second Kings, first and second Chronicles, first and second Samuel, the book of Genesis, the book of Jeremiah, even the book of Daniel. It's amazing how these artifacts support the man people who the people that it talks about in the places they talk about, doing the things they do in the time period. The Bible is accurate in every case. That's the only book of history that is accurate when it comes to people's names, dates, and events.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_01That's the beauty of the Bible. Now, certainly, is this going to have an impact on that? Remember when it hit and it slammed, it took about fifty years to inter to finally destroy the church in Europe. We can go much faster because we have much, many better tools than what Wellhausen had.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_01And Darwin had. We have the internet, we have YouTube, we have satellites, we have radio that you're using right now. That can be beamed all over the world. How can I do how can someone do a three-hour debate in Toronto in September and that 120,000 people have watched it? A three-hour debate, except for YouTube.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01That means that we can start this disillusionment. Now, does that mean that the people on the in the pews, people in the mosque will hear it? No, they probably will not hear this because it's in English to begin with. But what I'm not, I'm not interested in those people. What I'm interested in are the makers and shakers. I'm interested in the Sauls who become Poles.
SPEAKER_03Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Saul, the intellect of his day, one of the best of the Jews, one of the best of the Pharisees, but he was a maker and shaker. He was an opinion leader. I want men like Saul to become Poles. And this kind of material attracts them.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_01The most radical Muslims. See, the radical Muslims today are like Saul. Are they not?
SPEAKER_05Yes.
SPEAKER_01The radical Muslims, they love scripture like Saul loves scripture. They read scripture like Saul lets scripture. They apply it into every day and they apply it literistically, like Saul applied it literatically. But when God met him on the way to Damascus and later from Saul in the pole, look and see what changed. He still renewed his scripture, and that's why he could go into Eraphetus and he could argue with the Epicureans and the Stoics and argue them on their own level. And he could define who that statue is that has no name. He could give him the name. But more than that, he could debate with the best. Remember when he was there in Ephesus and they threw him on well, he left the synagogue after three months. It says in chapter 19 of Acts, he then went down to the lecture hall at Tyrannus. And for two years, he argued. That's my Paul. So that the entire land heard the gospel because he argued, he debated in the lecture hall, which is a debating chamber, a secular debating chamber. Now we need to be like that. We need to do that. Take this kind of material. But see, he argued with the best of the brightest, and he was able to take them down, and that's why there's been no man like Paul. We have so much to be thankful for. Because a man of his intellect is going to argue the best arguments, that have the best arguments. And the best arguments he used was scripture and the person of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_04Yes.
SPEAKER_01Did we not start talking about that at the beginning of this interview?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, no, absolutely. Scripture and Jesus.
SPEAKER_01Um let's The Book and the Man.
SPEAKER_05So let me let me just finish with a couple of questions. Um if you're wanting to have an uh an ongoing relationship with a Muslim friend or neighbor, I mean what what kind of advice can you give for um you know it's it's one thing to win an argument, uh, it's another thing to build a relationship. What would you what would you recommend in in terms of um ongoing relationships with Muslims?
SPEAKER_01I would say I'd stop and ask you and see most Muslims are not British.
SPEAKER_04Mm-hmm. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well I mean by that, they don't come from a British background.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Even the ones that are that have been born here and grew up here, they come from Pakistani families, they come from Indian families, they come from Member British families primarily. Whereas a smaller group amount, like 90% of them are but the vast majority, 70% of them are from Indian economics. And when you look at their background, when you look at their background, they love to debate. We don't like to debate. And that's a very Western comment you made. I can win the argument, but I love to lose the person. You rarely lose the person when you are winning, even when you win argue or even when you argue. That's a very European comment. It's a very Western European, it's not even American. Americans love to argue. It's Europeans that hate to argue. And I think what it is is we have taken the gospel and we have Europeanized it here in Europe. We've made Jesus into a European. And we always like to make sure that he smiles and never raises his voice and never argues. And so we come up with a real beast you can win the match, you can only argue the matter but lose the match. Since when do you find a Muslim that you lose if once you've argued? In fact, I would suggest that most Muslims are turned off by the fact that we don't argue. Yeah. Stop and ask to come down to Speaker's Corner and see who dominates the corner in the afternoons.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_01Not English. No. There's hardly any English there.
SPEAKER_04No.
SPEAKER_01They're all Muslims.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01The Muslims are ten to one.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01When I was first started there in 1992, there were maybe ten Muslim speakers on ladders, little kitchen ladders. And if you go down today, if you go down next Sunday, you can see how many Muslim speakers there are on ladders. Not one. There's not any Muslim speakers left. We've taken them all down. And that's just because of the too. It's gotten better and better and better and better. And what has been by far the most devastating for the Muslims has been this historical material. They do not know how to deal with this historical material. We're destroying them historically. I don't even begin to tell you what we now know about Muhammad historically. That's a whole nother talk.
SPEAKER_03Wow.
SPEAKER_01But just this material you heard tonight from on the historic through the problem with the management, they have no comeback to these manuscripts. They don't know what to do. Because this destroys, see, here's the problem with any radical, and this is the problem. With any radical, they are absolutely dependent on the Quran, being eternal.
SPEAKER_05Yes.
SPEAKER_01And being complete and perfect and unchanged. And absolutely dependent that it must have come to a man named Muhammad.
SPEAKER_05Yes.
SPEAKER_01See, without that man, without that book, Islam falls. Without our book and our man, we fall. Well that's why we're so similar to them. And that's why we can understand them. And that's why when historical criticism just uh decimated the church, and it did decimate the church. 1900s, early 1900s.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_01It should have. Because those questions, you cannot have a book if it's full of errors. You cannot have a book that if it's full of errors, it would be trusted by anybody, concerning who Jesus Christ is.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well, now you can put it on the other foot. Can you then understand why all around the Muslim world, the two things you're not permitted to criticize, it's a capital offense in Pakistan and in Saudi Arabia, is you may not criticize the Quran and you may not criticize Muhammad. Why do you think those two have become capital offences?
SPEAKER_05Mm-hmm. Because it's the foundation. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01They're foundational for every radical Muslim, and even not only liberal, but to a lesser extent, but certainly for a radical Muslim. And we are confronting them at their foundations.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_01We are confronting the Ab-Baghadis, Abakah Al-Baghadi of ISIS. We're confronting the Al-Qaeda and Abashabah, uh, uh Al-Sabab and Boko Haram because they are absolutely dependent on that book that it has to be from God, that it is an eternal revelation, that this is the best model for all of mankind everywhere in every place.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I understand why this material is so dangerous. It's gonna take a while. You're right. It's not gonna, it's not gonna have a lot of effect for people in next door, your next door neighbor. What's gonna have the most effect is the radicals.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01They are the where they have the most to lose by this material.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_01That's why we need to zero in on this. And I'm not asking you to do this, I'm not asking anybody else to. This is highly polemical. And the polemics need to belong to those who know how to use it. Please, anybody that's listening, this is not material for you to use. This is for you to be encouraged by. All I ask Christians to do, this is what I ask you to do, Glenn, and I ask all those who are listening. All you need to do is defend Jesus Christ and your Bible.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01That's called apologetics.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01That's all you need to do. Make sure you know your Bible. Make sure you know how to answer these questions when they're applied to you. What about our manuscript variants? What about the fact that there have been hundreds of thousands that have been now accrued over the over the centuries? How do you answer that? That's simple. What are you? Because we know that they're written by men.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Inspired by God, but written by men.
SPEAKER_04Yes.
SPEAKER_01There's the difference.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01There's inspired and written by God. Cannot be written back. There cannot be even one letter that's different.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01That's why it's such an easy argument. Now that's going to start to filter down using all this internet. It's already filtering down. It's going to get into the seminaries, the matharasas, it's going to get into the s uh the mosques. Once it starts to hit in the mosques, we're going to see a huge attrition and a huge disillusionment. I can't wait for that day to come. But I want it to happen while I'm still alive, and I've got gray hair. I'm not going to go on much longer.
SPEAKER_05So that's so that leads me to the quick. So that leads me to my final question. How do we as churches uh prepare ourselves uh for for those Muslims who will be questioning these kinds of things? How do how do we need to change as churches to be ready to to evangelize Muslims and to to disciple ex-Muslims?
SPEAKER_01Well, the ex-Muslims um are are some of the best to use. Uh they're the best, I find I'll answer that question first, and I'll do it first. But the ex-Muslims, normal Muslims, we call them CMBs, Christians from a Muslim background. They they prefer that name rather than MMBs. They don't like to have Muslims there first. CMBs, Christians from a Muslim background, they already have relationships, they understand the languages, they come out of the environment, they know how best to go back into it, like Paul, Saul who became Paul. They can be your Paul's better than anybody else because they already are way beyond us when it comes to nominally reading the material. So we can help them by just giving them and making sure that we support them, that we give them financial support, that we house them, and we welcome them with open arms, and then listen to them. Listen to what they're saying. Look and see where they say are the best arguments. They will tell you that the best arguments are polemical. Almost every one of my CMB friends, they all say, You've got to you've got to take down the book of the man, the book of the man, the book of the man. Now I will say in response to my CMBs, well, that's not our job, that's really your job. You are the ones best equipped to do that because you understand the language. You already have the you understand the cultural nuances and you already have the red relationships. They need our help to train them up in how to do that. Uh, they also need our help to also help to know how to defend the Bible and the person of Jesus Christ. Because they're new into this thing. Let them take on the Quran and the Muhammad. And that's why I'm doing a lot of training, a lot of the CMBs, because we are polemicists. That's our that's my job. I'm a polemist.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Because I'm an apologist. But you're not to be a polemist, and you bring you the people listening. You be apologists. Now, to answer the first part of your question, what can Christians do? Learn your Bible and learn how to defend Jesus. That means you're gonna have to be able to defend the Trinity. You're gonna have to defend Jesus' divinity, you're gonna have to defend the authority of Scripture, you're gonna have to be able to defend the whether Paul or Jesus uh started Christianity. You're gonna have to defend specifically the crucifixion, not the resurrection.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Muslims don't care dilly spot about the resurrection, it's the crucifixion you're gonna have to defend.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_01You're gonna have to dovetail and find out where who your Muslims are that you're getting to know. And find out the Muslims in your area, in your neighborhood, in your schools, in your job. Find out who they are. They're all around us. Listen. Almost a million of them live in London alone.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And almost every major city has large enclaves of Muslims. So find out where the Muslims are and just go right up to them and tell them that you believe Jesus is God and the Bible is the word of God. And then you've got a friend. Engage with them. Please don't feel timid. And here's what's interesting. When I ask Muslims, I do this all the time, I say, what's your impression of Christians here in Britain? You know what they tell me?
SPEAKER_04What's that?
SPEAKER_01Christians are timid, they're shy, they don't know what they believe, and they cannot defend what little they know. That's the way we come across. Because we're so fearful that we're gonna hurt their sensibilities without realizing the more timid we are, the more that they distrust us, the more they think that we don't even know what we talk about, and that we have nothing to offer.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Have you ever seen them timid?
SPEAKER_04No.
SPEAKER_01Do you ever see a Muslim who's timid or shy or doesn't know what they believe? Well, not at speakers kuna, no. Oh, all over. I find that on university campuses, I find that on the streets, I go to Edgewood Road, we're sitting there, I'm talking, and somebody some somebody comes up to me, we go into a conversation, they say, What do you do? I say, I'll tell you what I do. I confront Islam and we get into it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And they buy they they usually pay for the tea. They love it when you when they because for the first time they say this to me. You're the first Christian I've ever met. Now that's not true. What they're saying is you're the first Christian that looks like a Christian or acts like a Christian. Because you're acting like me, a Muslim. You're defending your faith, you're just supporting what you know. You actually like to talk about theology, you like to talk about religion. And they say to me, no, no Englishman likes to talk about religion.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01They spend all their time talking about everything but religion. And that's our problem. We've got to start acting like them. Yeah. We need to contextualize it better.
SPEAKER_05So i if there are some people listening in and and some people actually want to be polemicists or or or or feel that in them, what what's what's the next step for them to to um to engage on this level with with Islam?
SPEAKER_01Well, what they can do, if they want to, they can learn. We're now we've now got a course where we're teaching this, and what we're doing is we're teaching it every Wednesday night here in London. But because so many people want to learn it, we have a uh a 42 lecture course. It's for four um 42 lectures of two hours each, that's 80 um 84 hours of lectures that start in sec uh 16th of September and go all the way till July. Now, here's the problem: not everybody can come to London and learn that. So, what we've done is we're skyping it now to all over the world.
SPEAKER_03Wow.
SPEAKER_01So we have people in we have people all over America, we have people in different countries in Europe, even coming out of Africa, and here in Britain, in different cities in Britain, who are all starting and will be skyping in with us this course of 14 weeks, and then a second set of 14 weeks, then a second set of 14 weeks. We have chosen to teach it on Wednesday nights from s from six to eight every Wednesday night.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_01And then a half an hour question and answer afterwards. And you Skype it in, that means you can do it for the comfort of your own home. You don't have to even leave your home. Just go into your home and put the Skype on. It's called web web link or something like that.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_01But anyways, if you sign up for it, yeah, uh, and then you can actually do it. Uh it c we we charge 50 pounds for the 13 lectures. That means once you sign up, then and you get the lecture, you get the PowerPoint the week beforehand, plus you get the outline. So you can actually follow the slides that the person is teaching on the front. You can find follow it on your screen while you're watching the teacher live. Brilliant. Or if you can't do it on that time, you just couldn't record it. And once you have registered, then you can go and look at it during the week anytime you want to. Bring that lect that lecture down.
SPEAKER_05That sounds fantastic.
SPEAKER_01We'll have to help people to get up and running.
SPEAKER_05Yes.
SPEAKER_01The first fourteen weeks are mostly Islam 101. In other words, what is Islam? What do they believe? Where are they coming from? What's going on with ISIS? Who are these people? Uh, all that kind of stuff. Just introduce Islam. Then the second 14 weeks, which go the first 14 weeks go from September to December, the second 14 weeks go from January to April. Those are apologetics, straight apologetics, but it's Islamic apologetics. How to deal with all their questions, how to deal with the Trinity, how to deal with the authority scripture, what do you do with the person of Jesus Christ? What do you do with these verses that they keep on throwing at you? It seems to show that Jesus is inferior to God the Father, these kind of things. So those 14 uh weeks are just on apologetics. And then the last 14 weeks, which go from April to July of next year, those then are much more specific and much more advanced. How do you then get into polemics? That's more polemical.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_01So it's 14 weeks, 14 weeks, and 14 weeks. If you're interested, you can um what I can do is I can give you our my my email.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And you can just email or just email courses, C-O-U-R-S-E-S at fander.uk. And the way to spell fander is p-f-a-n-d-e-r.uk.
SPEAKER_05Fantastic. And we'll put all that on the show notes. Yeah. Courses at fander.uk.
SPEAKER_01O-U-R-S-E-S at fander.uk. That's just uh email that and we we can get you started by September 16th.
SPEAKER_05That's fantastic.
SPEAKER_01We'll definitely be anywhere in the world and except of course in Asia because you'll be fast asleep at six o'clock. Probably six o'clock in British time.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Okay. That's sensational. And uh we'll definitely put uh links to that on the show notes as well as uh a link to that Toronto debate as well. Um and uh and anything else you can think of, Jay, you can you can let me know and we'll put that on the show notes for people to um to take a bite of afterwards. Um because yes, you wedded our appetite brilliantly. Thank you so much, Jay.
SPEAKER_01It's been a pleasure, Glenn. Thank you.
SPEAKER_05Anytime, anytime. Well, um thank you so much, Jay. And uh if we have other questions, I'm sure we we might we might be in touch again. But uh this has been uh a fantastic uh time of of learning and uh I've I've learned hate. So thank you so much. Bye-bye.
SPEAKER_02So that's uh Jay Smith uh talking to you then about um sort of more the more uh how-to of uh of speaking development.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, absolutely. And if anyone wants to get better at that, either at understanding Islam or at reaching out to Islam, uh his course uh via Skype is gonna be uh incredible for us. So uh do go into turn out and we'll put some links uh to that. But I I think if you couldn't learn Islamical projects from a better person of Justin. So get involved.
SPEAKER_02So then just uh just to leave you with the web address go to speedcraft.org.uk slash PEP. And uh this episode should be uh listed among all of the uh the podcasts there. If you want to leave us a writing review, you can also click the link there. That's uh very helpful for us to help us to be seen by more people because it's just up the right rankings. Uh there'll be a link there also to start off for us to be off by link. What are we going to talk about next? We've we've done uh then uh stand to reason.
SPEAKER_05Uh so I spoke to him. He was in Toronto when I spoke to him, and uh he'll be helping us to uh again understand what it is that JW and how it is with JetF.
SPEAKER_02Okay, let's go to five.