What a day here in Dublin! Got a great night’s sleep after the UCD debate, got my presentation for this evening done, and then met Adnan Rashid for lunch in downtown Dublin. Had a great time getting to know each other better and making some hopefully exciting plans for future encounters. I am glad to get the opportunity to really sit down and talk heart to heart with some of my Muslim debate opponents. I think that led to a great debate this evening at Trinity College, one of the premier universities in the western world.
The topic this evening was, well, from a Christian perspective, a “slam dunk.” Did Muhammad teach the same message as Jesus? Obviously not. But, of course, I knew exactly where Adnan would be going. His approach was to undercut the biblical text and basically leave us with nothing but…the Qur’an, of course! Now, using liberal Western scholarship to undercut confidence in the words of the first century gospels so that you can replace them with the utterly unsubstantiated, a-historical words of Jesus from the Qur’an, a seventh century document, which not a single one of those liberal Western scholars would ever consider to be even slightly relevant to reconstructing the teachings of Jesus, is an amazing leap, but hey—that’s what you need to do!
I spent the evening pointing out the double standards and getting a good opportunity to clarify the Christian message at the same time. These two debates have been a little unusual in that the audience participation has actually been far more valuable than normal. I had the opportunity to explain the Trinity, the cross, redemption—many key issues. I truly hope the Lord will make my words come alive in the hearts and minds of the Muslims who heard, for the first time, a clear presentation of the gospel of Jesus the Messiah.
I head home tomorrow, and have quite the busy schedule over the next number of months. Also, if the trip doesn’t leave me bleary eyed and mind-numbed, I will try to sneak a DL in on Friday, but I can’t make any promises. I’ve had some pretty rough trips back across the pond, as they say!
Below is the mp3 of the debate from my LiveScribe pen. The folks from Arann Reformed Baptist Church video taped again, so the video may be up as quickly as it was yesterday. However, I won’t be able to blog anything for a long while, so I hope maybe some others on the blog team may be able to get the videos posted if they show up on YouTube.
