Or that he changed his faith over 6 times in the last decade or so. Awkward!
In this in-depth video, myself and Br. Abu Ayoub examine the claim that Qur’an in Surah 18:83-86 literally says the sun is “setting in a spring of muddy water.” We walk through the phenomenological statements the Bible also uses in respect to the sun rising and setting, usually known as semitisms which is a form of language behaviour or syntax in the Semitic languages. In the end, we see that the Arabic and Hebrew languages use many language devices that are not meant to be interpreted hyper-literally and which use hyperbole to express some geographical boundary.
Also, why would we take callers in the middle of such short debates? Was this your idea, or did Haifa suggest it? I see multiple problems here. First, we’re not in the studio, and I anticipate all kinds of technical difficulties arising. (We often have technical difficulties with questions in the studio, so I can’t imagine things going smoothly with everything happening somewhere else.) The more complicated the set-up, the more problems are going to slip in to derail the debates. Second, the vast majority of viewers would rather listen to us address a topic than a questioner asking us questions. It would be nice if all callers asked relevant, probing questions, but they won’t. Good questions will be only a fraction of the actual questions we get. People will call in with insults, they will start yelling and we’ll have to cut them, and most of the questions will be completely irrelevant to the topics. That’s just what happens when phone lines are opened for anyone to call in.
Here’s the problem, at the time David and Sam stopped appearing on the Trinity/ ABN Channel, David sent out numerous emails claiming that he was upset, angry and frustrated with both the ignorant and unprofessional staff at the station, as well as with the Christian viewers who supported him, calling in and insulting guests. Sam, some ten months later in an attempt to deflect the personal differences that led them to part from the Christian polemics TV station, instead blames his lack of appearances due to the “false Gospel” message that the station is now sharing, some ten months later. In other words, Sam is blaming something that happened yesterday, ten months after he was booted from the station due to personal conflicts with the staff, as the reason for why he no longer appeared on the station ten months ago. That simply does not make sense for anyone who spends more than a few seconds to contemplate the claims made.
All in all, both Sam and David had seriously negative and angry views about the station and their viewership, and found themselves no longer having an amicable relationship with the TV station’s staff. They had no public excuse at that time to mask the personal conflicts that led to their leaving of the station so they remained silent until they could use another excuse to explain their glaring absence. Today, that excuse came in the form of the Trinity Station endorsing a heretical form of Christianity with Joel Osteen at its head. Thus, the issue presents itself that the Trinity Channel is now preaching a brand of Christianity that Sam and company fundamentally view as heretical. An entire TV station converted to a heretical form of Christianity and Sam Shamoun, who views himself as a great Christian teacher and apologist, who has the Spirit of God allegedly inside him, could not convince his own Christians to remain in their faith.
The question thus begs itself, if people like Sam Shamoun, David Wood and their student Jonathan McLatchie who consider themselves educated and guided by the Holy Spirit cannot save their own Christian brothers and sisters from following what they consider to be heretical and false Gospels, then why don’t they focus on the Christian community rather than on Islam? It means to say that they cannot save their own Christians, and so they need to find some other way to keep themselves relevant, which is to deflect from the dire situation they are in within the Christian community and in so doing are using Islam as a distraction from the growing apostasies in their own Christian communities. Sam and David spent years preaching on the Trinity/ ABN Channel, only for the channel and its viewers to begin preaching what they call a false Gospel.
Clearly there is a problem with Christianity, if its “greatest” and most “popular” apologists cannot save their fellow Christians from abandoning their faith en masse.