^{May 28, 2026}

The Truth About Islam Most Christians Avoid

Inside This Episode

In this episode of Maybe God, Eric Huffman sits down with Avery from GodLogic for a powerful conversation on Christian apologetics, debating Islam, the historical evidence for Christianity, the Islamic view of Jesus, criticism of Avery’s confrontational style, and why he believes Christians are unprepared to defend their faith against Muslim objections. Avery also breaks down the “Islamic Dilemma,” discusses Muhammad and the Quran, and explains why bold engagement, not silence, is needed in today’s culture.

Find GodLogic on YouTube ➜ https://www.youtube.com/@GodLogicApologetics 

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Transcript

Eric Huffman: It seems to me the temperature is rising as you become more of a threat. I worry about your guys' well-being.

Avery: I'm the friendly neighborhood apologist. GodLogic. Father is the same being. They're starting to dox us. "If you refuse to sign, I have to take you to jail." Put our phone numbers and addresses out. We're dealing not with flesh and blood, but these principalities.

Muslims want Islam to be the dominant religion. They want Sharia law. So anything that pushes Islam is what they will side with, even if it goes against Islam. I don't have to lift a finger to defend the Bible. The Quran did it for me. All we gotta do is read it. They think that Muhammad is the perfect example for mankind, so you show him that he was immoral and depraved. Cut stuff.

Eric Huffman: I think if anything I've heard people say negatively about your approach is that it's too aggressive sometimes. Does your approach reflect the heart or the way of Christ?

Avery: Jesus didn't have the same style with everyone. With the sinner and the seeker, He was very patient and loving and gentle with that person. To the prideful religious leader, He was very harsh with them. So if what I'm doing is not loving and is not Christ-like, then I guess Christ wasn't Christ-like.

You believe that Jesus is going to come back, right? Yes. Christians and our idea of Muslims, they're not really aware of how Muslims are equipped to come against us. They're brought up to contend against Christianity.

Eric Huffman: So what do Christians need to know then? What are your go-to arguments? Where do you see the weaknesses in their worldview?

Avery: Where do we start? Let me tell you something. I'll put it like this.

[00:01:29] <music>

Eric Huffman: Avery, welcome to Maybe God.

Avery: Man, thanks for having me. I'm excited.

Eric Huffman: Welcome to Houston, Texas.

Avery: Yeah, yeah. Just had some good food over here in Houston. That's the way to get me, y'all. That's some good food.

Eric Huffman: Mission accomplished. We can do that in Houston. Houston's got some good food.

Avery: Good first experience. I'll be back.

Eric Huffman: Yeah, good. I hope so. Because I am a huge fan of yours, man. And I'm so honored to be talking to you. Long before we ever asked you to be on this interview with us on Maybe God, I have been a fan of your channel, GodLogic, for years now, it feels like. How long have you been doing God Logic?

Avery: Four years now.

Eric Huffman: Four years. I don't know how early on I got into it, but something about your approach always stood out to me. I love Christian apologetics, and there's a lot of apologists that I follow. Most of them are high-minded, kind of intellectual. You know, they give good talks in forums and, you know, Oxford, places like that. And you can do that, too, but you're mostly on the streets talking to real people in real ways every day.

There's something about you and your approach that stands apart in the Christian apologetic space. I just wondered if you know what that is. What is it about your approach that has given you such... other than just God's grace, like what has given you this kind of success?

Avery: That's a good question, honestly. The feedback that I get from the audience is I'm genuinely friendly. They say, "Man, when Avery talks to someone, he talks to them like he's known them for years." And that's how it is. I talk to a person that I'm dealing with like I know them, because I love you. I care about you. I want you to know. I want you to be comfortable. I do have this gift of making people comfortable in conversations. Like we could talk. We could chop it up. You can express your disagreement. Say I'm crazy if you want, say I'm tripping, you know, because sometimes I'll be tripping, but let's have that dialogue. And that's like why I love connecting with people in person more than on the stream. In person, you can you can really reach them.

Eric Huffman: You like that even better.

Avery: Oh, yeah, man. I love connecting with the other human being, instead of the screen that's in front of me.

Eric Huffman: Sure. Sure. I know you're a YouTuber, but really you're an apologist. I mean, that's your trade. You just happen to do it on YouTube. You know, you're a preacher's kid, you're a lifelong Christian, but how did you get into the apologetic space?

Avery: Look, man, let me tell you, I was in community college, some Jehovah's Witnesses were posted up. And I always used to hear about Jehovah's Witnesses from my grandpa. He did not like them.

Eric Huffman: Really?

Avery: He was like, "Man, don't trust the Jehovah's Witnesses. Don't let them in." I'm like, "Why?" That pushed my curiosity even more. I see them in college, they post them up, I said, "Man, let me go ask them some questions. Let me go just see what they're about." And so I went, I asked them, "What do you say about Jesus?" They're like, "Oh, yeah, He's Jehovah's Son." I'm like, "Okay. Yeah, that sounds good. So you believe He's God?" They're like, "No." And I was like, "Wait, what?" They are like, "No, we don't believe He's God." I was like, "Yeah, the Bible teaches He's clearly God." They were like, "No, He's created by God. He's Jehovah's first creation."

And I said, "Can you show me that in the Bible?" And so they pulled out their New World Translation, that great Bible they walk around with. They went to Colossians 1:15 and it said, Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. Now, that shook me because I didn't know how to read in context. I didn't know how to deal with that. And so I was stuck. Like other verses didn't come up, like John 1:1, none of the verses, first and last, nothing came to my mind.

Eric Huffman: You froze.

Avery: I froze, man.

Eric Huffman: I've been there.

Avery: I was frozen. And so I was like, "Okay, yeah, I got to research this." And the dude he put his hand on my shoulder and said, "Yeah, you got to do your homework." Nice guy. That right there, I was like, "Dang, let me call my dad because I know Jesus is God. This ain't right." And he's like, "Yeah, Jesus is God," gave me John 1:1, John 8:58, John 10:30, you know, all the usual verses. And I knew these verses.

Eric Huffman: Sure.

Avery: But in the moment they I froze. I couldn't think of nothing. That's what I noticed. I'm like, man, if I'm this unequipped... and at this time I'm like a young ordained minister leading young adult ministries and Bible studies with my peers. So I'm like, "If I don't know how to answer something as simple as that, then I know my peers don't because we're on the same level. And if we don't, then that means like the average Christian, especially young adults, will not be able to defend their faith against a cult group. We can't do it. They twist us up."

Eric Huffman: Can't let that happen again.

Avery: Let that happen again. And I was like, "No, I need to get equipped and I need to help other believers get equipped." And that's when I found the genre called apologetics. And man, Pastor, when I found that, it was like finding a new flavor candy or something, man. It was right up my alley.

Eric Huffman: Hey everybody, Eric Huffman here. Just popping in to thank you for tuning in today. If you've been enjoying this interview, make sure you hit that subscribe button. That genuinely helps the channel grow and allows us to keep making more videos like this one. And if you've got any feedback or questions about today's conversation with Avery, be sure to drop a comment below. We always love hearing what you have to say and your comments help us shape our future episodes. So thank you in advance and thank you for watching. Now let's get back to my interview with Avery from GodLogic.

Do you remember what kinds of stuff you started reading or what people you...?

Avery: Absolutely. It was Living Waters, Ray Comfort. That was the first thing I saw in regards to Jesus being God and dealing directly with Jehovah's Witnesses and how to answer them. So I'm watching hours. I'm stuck on that side of YouTube. I didn't want nothing else. I started getting books now. And I don't like reading but I like reading those. I like reading Deity of Christ, New Testament. I like reading those types of books. But anything else, I don't care for reading.

Eric Huffman: Wow. So you kind of discovered a calling through that failed confrontation, I guess, with Jehovah's Witnesses.

Avery: Oh yeah. That's when I can say that GodLogic was born.

Eric Huffman: Really?

Avery: That's when GodLogic was born. Because without that it would have maybe taken another experience, but that lit that fire like, "Dang, I'm not ready. I can't defend Christ. I don't have the training or the mindset to read the next verse that tells us why He's being called the firstborn." It says, "For by Him, all things were created in heaven and on earth." So it's not firstborn in a literal sense. It's firstborn in a preeminent sense. He's supreme over creation. But I didn't know how to do that at the time.

Eric Huffman: You had never had that question asked.

Avery: Never had it asked. Never thought about it.

Eric Huffman: Didn't the Jehovah's Witnesses sort of altered that verse too in their translation somehow?

Avery: Yes. It says, "For by Him, all things were created," in their translation, it says, "For by Him all other things were created."

Eric Huffman: Oh, that's right. They inserted "other".

Avery: They insert the word "other." But here's the interesting thing. When you go on their website, JW Library, and you go to their kingdom interlinear, so they have a Greek interlinear, you go to it, it doesn't have the word "other." It shows that they inserted the word "other" in that verse.

Eric Huffman: So even they acknowledge it.

Avery: They acknowledge it.

Eric Huffman: Interesting. They had to fit their preconception.

Avery: So Jesus can't be the One who created all things. But He could create all other things, but He Himself has to be created by Jehovah.

Eric Huffman: Interesting. I found out the other day my hairstylist of three years is Jehovah's Witness.

Avery: What?

Eric Huffman: Yeah. She hit me with it out of nowhere. After all the hours of conversations, she's like, "Jesus died on a pole, not a cross."

Avery: Oh, man.

Eric Huffman: "And if you don't believe He died on a pole, you're in trouble." And I was like, "I guess I got to find a new hairstylist."

Avery: But she does a good job.

Eric Huffman: She does an okay job.

Avery: You better get to work.

Eric Huffman: I'll keep going back. Maybe I'll get her on our team, you know?

Avery: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Eric Huffman: So I'm guessing it didn't happen overnight, that after that experience and you started diving into your studies and exploration, you didn't start your YouTube channel right away and become an outspoken apologist. When did you first realize this might be something you're called to lead the charge on and be an outspoken out-front apologist?

Avery: So it happened probably a couple of years later or maybe within the next year. Because the following year... So I'm studying, I'm looking at Ray Comfort videos and how he's evangelizing. That's when I first started seeing street evangelism. Not just street preaching on a microphone, but he's evangelizing to people, and he's doing it in a unique way where it's conversational and he's witty, and he seems like he's himself. He's not just some preacher guy. And I just loved how he evangelized and how you reached people. So I'm like, "He make this look so easy. I can do this. I'm personable. I like talking to people. I love people. I can talk to anyone. I can do this. I can do this for the Lord." And so I started, I tried it at lunch.

Eric Huffman: By yourself.

Avery: By myself. I saw a girl sitting with her headphones on, I sat down, I said, "Hey, I got a question for you." And she's like, "Yeah, sure. What's up?" Now, when she took her headphones off, that woman for me was like, "Oh, okay. Here we go." "What do you think happens after you die?" And we ended up having a whole conversation. I introduced her to Jesus, and she was like, "Yeah, I never thought about that." And then she got interested in reading the gospel after that.

Eric Huffman: Dang.

Avery: After that experience, it was over. Pastor Eric, I was talking to anybody I could find.

Eric Huffman: No going back.

Avery: No going back. I was like, "Yeah, I can do this. And this is what I want to do. I want to do this." I just kept studying, kept growing in that, perfecting the craft and learning and watching, absorbing for years until finally I was able to, okay, you know what? Okay, it's time. Let's start the channel up.

Eric Huffman: I think that's an exciting turning point for any Christian really, when you realize this isn't just a religion to digest and consume on Sunday morning. It's not just sort of a framework by which you live your life. It's a set of truth claims that really is in conflict with other sets of truth claims, and somebody is more right than others, you know? It's not sufficient to say all religions are basically the same and all of this. Like, no, they're different. The gospel of Jesus is different. In your exploration of these, of this field of apologetics, what did you discover about Christianity that was major for you in terms of how it is distinct from what other people believe?

Avery: Evidence.

Eric Huffman: Really?

Avery: The evidence for Jesus is what blew my mind. And the evidence for prophecy and the historical events in the Bible, and how people use the Bible to find lands and peoples and just stuff, it blew my mind.

Eric Huffman: Historicity.

Avery: Historicity of Christianity is what separates it for me than the others. Because the others are just claims and they say stuff, but they don't have the evidence backing it up. We have atheists talking about the crucifixion of Jesus and anti-Christians talking about the crucifixion of Jesus as a historical fact, not just something people believe. It's a fact of history. And to say otherwise, you'll be laughed out of academia. So that right there was like, I'm like, yeah, that Christianity is different. There's actually evidence backing up the God of the Bible.

Eric Huffman: Wow. Yeah, there is. It really does set it apart. It's not what I expect you to say, I guess, because there's much more we could talk about that separates Christianity. But I've never thought about that as sort of the tip of the spear. And it is, because you don't have to believe Christianity to appreciate its historicity. It's sort of an open door.

Avery: Exactly. Like, if I'm talking to an atheist, man, it's like, you know... because an atheist tries to pretend to be evidence-based and whatever, empirical. We have that for Christianity. We have empirical evidence that leads you to God. We have empirical evidence about Jesus. It's like Christianity passed all the tests when it comes to testing truth. It passed it all with flying colors. Everything else fails. Something will be inconsistent. Something lacks history. Something's out of touch with reality. Something goes against what we already know is true and how we live out our lives. But Christianity, every context, history, consistency, morality, it feels it all.

Eric Huffman: Even authorship and knowing who the authors were and their proximity to the events in question in question.

Avery: The details they give.

Eric Huffman: I mean, I was also a preacher's kid and I was raised in the church. I did have a prolonged crisis of faith where I was not a professing Christian. Long story. We won't get into it. But I remember coming back to faith and diving headfirst into apologetics and realizing just how alive it is and how much we have to talk about.

I remember a turning point for me was when I think it was William Lane Craig said in one of his lectures, "The stories of the New Testament do not bear the earmarks of legend." And I think in the back of my mind, I always wondered if it's legendary, if the whole Jesus thing is sort of mythological and that it developed over time, and He was deified centuries later, the whole narrative. And hearing him say that and the reasons why he said that, because of, again, the authors being in such close proximity timewise to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, it really brought it to life in a real way for me.

Avery: Oh, yeah. Same here. That was also something that... because you hear that a lot. Every Easter, every Christmas, you look up on Facebook or Instagram, there's some poster: "Jesus is just a mythical copy, yada, yada, yada." But no, Jesus is a historical figure who had a historical impact on the world. And there's no denying it. You cannot deny it empirically. You cannot deny it historically. You cannot deny it. So what do you do with it? I'm going to choose to follow the evidence where it leads, which leads me to the Lord Jesus. What are you going to do?

Eric Huffman: Wow. Did you also look into other religions and their alternative claims?

Avery: Yeah.

Eric Huffman: At that point in your life?

Avery: I was a diehard Christian living for the Lord but of course, I wanted to see what, what are other people saying? What's Islam saying? What's Hinduism saying, Buddhism saying? Right. And so I looked at them very briefly, but just in seeing the inconsistencies just in their truth claims. For example, with Buddhism and Hinduism, you got to like, let go of all your desires in order to reach this higher mindset or-

Eric Huffman: Enlightenment?

Avery: Yeah, enlightenment. But you have to desire that, but they want you to get rid of all your desires. So there's-

Eric Huffman: Except that one.

Avery: Except that one. That don't work. If I got to get rid of all my desires, I can't desire enlightenment. It's an internal inconsistency. And then Islam, I'm pretty sure we'll get into that later but-

Eric Huffman: Yeah, that's next.

Avery: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

Eric Huffman: I mean, what's when I first noticed you online and I don't know if it was the algorithm feeding it to me or what, but I just remember discovering your conversations, it works with Muslims and spokesmen for Islam. I don't know if they're Imams or just teachers or what they would be called. But what I noticed is, you talked with them in a way that they responded differently than the typical sort of, I don't want to say it, but kind of, milquetoast kind of polite Christians just get steamrolled by these guys. And I noticed you did not. What was it initially that drew you to or motivated you to speak directly to and with Muslims?

Avery: In my study and trying to figure out Jesus being God and what the Bible says, I came across Sam Shamoun and David Wood where they used to do a show, "Jesus or Muhammad?" They were responding to a guy named Zakir Naik, who is probably the most popular Muslim preacher of all time.

Eric Huffman: Wow.

Avery: Right. And so he'll-

Eric Huffman: Still living?

Avery: Still living. Still alive. He used to do lectures, and people would come, like thousands of people will come to his event. And he would be reciting verses off "Jesus is not God. Jesus never said, 'I am God. Worship Me.' Prophet Muhammad is the Comforter in John 14." He would be listing off verses. John 14:16, John 15:26. He just go at all. And they're just clap because they're like, "Whoa, he's on fire." They're just clapping.

Eric Huffman: "He knows his stuff."

Avery: He's looking impressive to them. And so I'm like, "Bro, what he's saying doesn't make any sense. If y'all looked at the verses that he's talking about, y'all would see how much of a fraud he is." Now, David and Sam, they're breaking this stuff down and I'm watching them have that, they're dismantling him. But I mean, they're not reaching these people. So I was like, Wow, Islam is different. Because with Jehovah's Witnesses, they're quiet. They just sit there with their stands, and they let you come to them. And if they find out you're Trinitarian, "We don't want to talk to you." Mormons are really nice. They're not loud. They're nice. They'll come to your house, have little Bible studies with you. Islam, the Muslims, they were loud. Beating the chest in front of thousands. So I was like, "Yeah, nah, I accept this challenge. They got to be stopped." I saw what wasn't working. This was at a time I started watching Muslim apologists.

Eric Huffman: Really?

Avery: I'm watching them destroy Christians in London, at Speakers' Corner. I'm watching them, I mean, stump the Christians with simple stuff. And if I was in that environment, I would have also gotten stumped. So I'm watching these absorbing and learning. "Oh, how would I answer that?" or "how would I answer that?" And I'm seeing their personalities. I'm seeing how they communicate. I'm seeing their slipperiness. I'm seeing all of that. So in watching that, I'm like, Okay, you can't talk to them like how you would talk to a Mormon. They will take advantage of your respect. They'll take advantage if you're soft-spoken, if you're really trying to be too polite. They take advantage of that.

Eric Huffman: Rhetorically just destroy you.

Avery: Absolutely. And overtalk you and dominate the conversation. So you can't be a pushover, especially with them. You cannot be a pushover because they'll see that weakness, the rest of the people will see that weakness, and they'll chop you up. So you have to have a sternness as well. You got to be Peter out there. You got to be Paul. Got to have a sternness. At the same time, have a gentleness and a love with it, a care for them, a genuine care. So what I tried to do is I tried to mix a lot of it together into one package. Like, you know, you get Sam Shamoun. Sam Shamoun, he'll go at you. David would will go at you. So I try to take this, the sternness of Sam Shamoun, but the coolness of a Jeff Durbin or Ray Comfort and put it together.

Eric Huffman: Yeah.

Avery: So if you want to go hard, we can go hard. If you want to be chill, we can be chill.

Eric Huffman: You can go either way.

Avery: Yes.

Eric Huffman: Am I hearing you right that the primary motivator in the beginning was just watching Christians lose these debates and thinking you could do better?

Avery: Well, not necessarily think I could do better, but I saw that they were destroying Christians, and they were loud about it. They needed to be challenged. So that's what it was. So it wasn't necessarily, "I think I could do better," but I just know like if I get equipped, y'all can't deal with it.

Eric Huffman: Don't sell yourself short, man. I mean, I think you felt genuinely called and equipped for such a time as that.

Avery: For sure.

Eric Huffman: Did you also have a concern about how Islam is making advancement and inroads into the culture and making converts in mass?

Avery: At that time, I wasn't aware of that too much. I wasn't aware of how much it was growing and how much it was entering the culture and how the liberal side of things is really... like to be inviting to Islam is to be woke. That's the wokeness now, you know?

Eric Huffman: It's a strange bedfellows sort of deal with secular liberals and Islam in the culture.

Avery: Yeah, it's weird. And you have Muslims that are so unlike... they're in line with that. They're on that side. It's so weird to me because you have these liberals who are secularists who are siding with Islam, but you guys don't like this side. Y'all are not on this team. You guys are against homosexuality, you're against the way they dress and the women and all that kind of stuff, but anything to get Islam pushed, they will side with it.

Eric Huffman: In the name of inclusion, you think? Or is it just about siding against Christianity?

Avery: I think it's both. They want Islam... don't get into it. Muslims want Islam to be the dominant religion. They want Sharia law, and they want it everywhere.

Eric Huffman: That's encoded in their scriptures.

Avery: Yes. So anything that pushes Islam is what they will side with, even if it goes against Islam.

Eric Huffman: Sure. Sure. Sure. I think if anything, I've heard people say negatively about your approach is that it's too aggressive sometimes or too... you know, you probably hear this sometimes: just does your approach reflect the heart or the way of Christ? What's your response to that line of criticism?

Avery: It's hilarious because I was just live on Wednesday, and one of the commenters said, "Sometimes Avery is just too dang patient. It's pissing me off."

Eric Huffman: Really?

Avery: Yes.

Eric Huffman: You're getting it from both sides.

Avery: I get it from both sides, man. Sometimes I'm too patient and nice. Sometimes I guess I'm too aggressive and non-Christlike. Right. But to answer the question, I look at Jesus Christ and how He handled different groups. Jesus didn't have the same style with everyone. For example, with the sinner and the seeker, He was very patient and loving and gentle with that person.

Eric Huffman: Sure.

Avery: To the prideful religious leader, He was very harsh with them, called them out on their stuff, He didn't hold anything back, but also taught them while He did it. He taught them at the same time while speaking harshly to them. It was all love on both sides. Both are examples of love. Don't get it twisted that just because He's harsh and calling them out that that's not loving.

Eric Huffman: That's right.

Avery: So if what I'm doing is, is not loving and is not Christlike, then I guess Christ wasn't Christlike.

Eric Huffman: He was pretty-

Avery: Man, Matthew 25, "Woe to you Pharisees, snakes, you vipers."

Eric Huffman: Whitewashed tombs.

Avery: Whitewashed tombs. Hey, "Don't give what is holy to the dogs and to the pigs." Like, He's calling them dogs and pigs, man. What do you mean? If I'm not Christlike, man, Christ ain't Christlike.

Eric Huffman: Sure.

Avery: That's crazy.

Eric Huffman: I think people that would take that line of criticism probably haven't watched you enough. Maybe they saw a clip pulled here or there. But they probably also don't know Jesus, that side of Jesus as well. A lot of people think Jesus was just this real softy. And He had some edge.

Avery: It's interesting, man, because I love to give respect. I love for the person to feel heard out because I want the same. I want that. So I've learned that if I give that, I'm most likely going to get it back, you know? And even when I don't get it, I can take the punch and let it slide off and continue. Sometimes I punch back though.

Eric Huffman: Yeah, I've noticed. You're good at punching. You're good at taking punches. I mean, I do believe you do it in love.

Avery: That's all it's about.

Eric Huffman: Out of genuine concern, not just for your debate counterpart, but for everyone listening.

Avery: That's what is important to me. Because, Pastor Eric, I know that the person I'm talking to most likely is probably not going to change their mind. However, by the grace of God, there's thousands of people watching the livestream live, and they're listening. They're learning how to, one, respond to certain objections the person's bringing up. And two, other people who have these same objections are now getting these answers. So even though this person may be hardhearted and maybe the lights are on too bright, so they won't concede because of the pressure or whatever, but there's someone else who's not online with me, who's listening where the seed is being planted. And so it's so effective. It's been so effective.

Eric Huffman: So as you've had all these conversations with Muslim spokesmen and about Islam with others, what do you think most Christians or people out there that haven't watched your content might not know or understand or appreciate about Islam?

Avery: I think that one thing about Christians and the idea of Muslims, they're not really aware of how Muslims are equipped to come against us. They're brought up to contend against Christianity.

Eric Huffman: Like Muslim apologetics 101 from kindergarten.

Avery: From day one. That's what the Quran is. The Quran is basically kind of a polemic against Christianity. It dives into Jesus not being a son and how God doesn't beget nor is He begotten. Jesus is just a messenger, just like his mother. They both ate food. So it's directly addressing our beliefs.

Eric Huffman: Interesting.

Avery: But the Bible doesn't say anything about Islam particularly. So that where they have the advantage in that Christianity is in their mind from day one, and they're geared up to contest some core beliefs. So when a Christian runs into a Muslim, they're not expecting them to have these direct, you know, rebuttals or objections to the core of their faith.

Eric Huffman: Like you with the Jehovah's Witness.

Avery: Like me with the Jehovah's Witness.

Eric Huffman: Wow. So what do Christians need to know then? What are the primary, what are your go-to arguments against Islam writ large? Where do you see the weaknesses in their worldview?

Avery: Oh man.

Eric Huffman: Where to begin?

Avery: Where do we start? Let me tell you something. I'll put it like this. There's two big arguments that you can use, and I think that have been very effective. Number one is the immorality of Muhammad and the Quran. That affects Muslims. Like it really gets them.

Eric Huffman: They haven't considered it?

Avery: They haven't considered it, or they have been taught otherwise. Stuff has been brushed over. Like Muhammad's married a child, you know.

Eric Huffman: Aisha.

Avery: Yeah, Aisha, at the age of six. She was six years old when they got married, nine years old when he slept with her. So for most Muslims, that don't sound right. Most Muslims will deny it. They're like, "No, you're lying."

Eric Huffman: Is that in the Quran?

Avery: It's in what they call the Hadith. The Hadith would be like the sayings and the behaviors of Muhammad. What he's done in his life, what he said. The Quran would to them is the verbatim speech and word of God.

Eric Huffman: But the Hadith is... I mean, it is revered. Like scripture.

Avery: Yes. Basically, you can't deny Hadith, especially, because they'll have weak and strong grading for certain Hadith, how authentic it is. So the authentic Hadith, you can't deny them at all, right? Muslims believe that Jesus is coming back to judge and stuff like that, but that's not in the Quran, that's in their Hadith. So they have Revelation in their Hadith, you understand? In their Hadith, in their most authentic source, in every single authentic Hadith they have, Muhammad slept with Aisha when she was six years... I'm sorry, married Aisha when she was six years old, slept with her when she was nine years old.

Eric Huffman: And he already had wives.

Avery: Yeah, he already had wives. Muhammad was pulling them all in. So arguments like this, bringing this to the light with Muslims, is very effective, you know, because they think that Muhammad is the perfect example for mankind. They think he's at the top of the world, as far as exemplary influences.

Eric Huffman: He's the greatest man that ever lived.

Avery: Ever lived. He is that guy. So you show him that he was immoral and depraved, that cuts. That cuts them. So it's very effective. Another argument, which is my favorite, is what we call the Islamic dilemma. And this deals with what the Quran has to say about the Bible. The Quran speaks so well of the Bible it does all the work for us. I'm telling you right now, Pastor Eric, I don't have to lift a finger to defend the Bible. The Quran did it for me, all we gotta do is read it.

Eric Huffman: That's interesting, because you just said that the Quran is basically a polemic against Christianity. Is it because some earlier parts of the Quran were friendlier with Christianity, and then as it developed, it became more-

Avery: You got it absolutely right. Early on, Muhammad wanted followers. He wanted the Jews and Christians to believe in him as a prophet. He didn't have influence at the time, he didn't have power. Moved to Medina, grew in influence and power. That's when you start seeing a lot of the denial of core doctrines. That's when you can see him fight the disbelievers, fight whoever disbelieves in Allah, make them pay the jizya. That's when you start seeing those verses after he gained influence and got some guys behind him.

Eric Huffman: But before that, the Quran spoke well of the Bible.

Avery: Yeah. But even then though... there's a lot to this. Muhammad was an illiterate man, uneducated, didn't know scripture. He didn't know anything. All he did was hear things. That's all he could rely on. He's literally called the ear in the Quran. They call him the ear because he hears things and then just repeats them. So he's hearing traditions, he's hearing stories of the prophets, he's hearing fables, and he doesn't know which is which. So he understands that, okay, Jews and Christians, it's the Torah and the gospel and the Psalms and the writings of the prophets. That's the word of God revealed that. But people strayed, Jews and Christians strayed from the revelation of God.

Eric Huffman: But the word itself is from God.

Avery: But the word itself is from God.

Eric Huffman: Go back to the Islamic dilemma.

Avery: So this is what the Islamic dilemma is, is that these scriptures are from God. The Quran says in chapter two, verse 41, it says... it's talking to the Jews. It's saying, believe in what we have sent down, meaning the Quran, believe in the Quran and what we have sent down, confirming that which is already with you. So the Quran is confirming the scriptures that they have in the time of Muhammad, right? Chapter five, verse 47, let the people of the gospel judge by what Allah has revealed in it. And whoever does not judge by what Allah has revealed, you're a wrongdoer.

I want to be a good Christian, Pastor Eric. I don't want to be a wrongdoer. So I'm going to judge my gospel. But, and here's the other side of the dilemma, if I judge by my gospel, I see Jesus was crucified. I see Jesus rose again on the third day. I see that God is my heavenly Father. I see that God exists as a plurality of persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I see that the Son incarnated, took on flesh. So this is what the gospel says. So if I'm judging by the gospel-

Eric Huffman: Like the Quran tells you to.

Avery: Like the Quran tells me to, then I gotta judge the Quran as false. Because it says Jesus is not the Son of God. It says that He wasn't crucified, but it was made to appear so. It says that Allah has no sons, no daughters. It says that there's none in the heavens or the earth that can come to Allah except as a slave. So he eliminates any sense in which he can be a father to any of us, while our heavenly Father is intentional, is relational, adopts us as His children. It's diametrically opposed to the message of the gospel and the Torah.

Eric Huffman: How do Muslim leaders you've spoken to respond to that? I know most of them don't have a response. Most of them talk around it, but what are the best responses you've heard from Muslim leaders?

Avery: Best, bro? Come on, man. Come on.

Eric Huffman: Do they have anything?

Avery: They have responses. They're not good. I'll give you the popular one right now. The popular one is that Muhammad was making, or the Quran doesn't confirm the whole Bible. It confirms it in parts. It's a general confirmation, not a wholesale confirmation. Where we see contradictions with the Quran and the Bible, those are the parts that Muhammad is actually consciously editing, he's consciously correcting these parts because those would be the corrupted parts, right? So that's what they're saying.

Eric Huffman: That's the part that always got me. As I'm not as dialed into this as you are, but I've listened enough to hear that the Quran is clear that no word of God can be corrupted and that the Torah and the Gospels and the Psalms, the Prophets were the word of God, but those were corrupted. I've always wanted you, or maybe I've just missed those clips where I want you and David Wood and Sam and those guys to go after that more, because that seems to be patently problematic or a contradiction.

Avery: That none of Allah's words can be changed, yet you guys claim that Allah's words were changed. So how do you deal with that, right?

Eric Huffman: Yeah.

Avery: Absolutely. And it's funny that you say that because when you go into early Islam, the early Islamic scholars were split on this. There were some that believed that the Bible was textually corrupted. There was another side that believed it was perfectly preserved, but just people misinterpreted the scripture and distorted it with their tongues and interpretation. So you have that side, right? That sound like us.

Now, notice the argument they use. They use chapter six, verse 115 in the Quran, where it says, "None can change the words of Allah." So there's no way that the scriptures can be corrupted since they are the words of Allah. These are Muslims making this argument, right?

They also use a Hadith. It's Sunan Abu Dawud 4449. This one is good. So some Jews come to Muhammad for a judgment, one of them committed adultery, but they didn't want to go with what the Torah said. So they hope to get a different ruling from Muhammad. So they go to Muhammad, they're like, "Hey, can you give us a judgment? You know, this happened." And so Muhammad says, "Bring the Torah. So they bring the Torah to him." And so what he does is... so he's sitting in like a kind of a chair, a judgment seat. And so he gets up, he takes the Torah and he puts the Torah in the judgment seat. And he says, "I believe in you and the one who revealed you. So do what the Torah says."

Eric Huffman: Wow.

Avery: Yes. And so their argument is, Muhammad would not have done this if the Torah was corrupted.

Eric Huffman: Sure.

Avery: These are early Muslims who are making this argument. So they're using the same thing. They have the same reason in Pastor Eric that you just had. That no one can corrupt Allah's words and Muhammad would not have believed in them if they were corrupted.

Eric Huffman: So do modern Muslim Imams and teachers claim that it was corrupted after Muhammad's life?

Avery: They'll say before.

Eric Huffman: Before.

Avery: Yeah, they say before.

Eric Huffman: And yet that Muhammad, as you just said, put the Torah on the judgment.

Avery: It's so much evidence against this. This is why we say Muslims hate the Quran and they hate Muhammad because they go against exactly what he's... notice this. Here's one of my favorite verses. Chapter 10 in the Quran, verse 94, it says, this is Allah speaking to Muhammad. If you are in doubt about that, which we have revealed to you, then go and ask those who've been reading the scripture before you. The truth has come to you from your Lord, so be not of those who doubt.

So wait a second, hold on. Let's park. Hold on a second. You mean to tell me that if the prophet, the one who's receiving the Quran and the revelation, if he's doubting what the Quran is saying to get certainty and to clear up his doubts, Allah tells him to come to us. Come to us to clear up your doubts because we got the Bible. We got the scriptures.

Eric Huffman: Jews and Christians.

Avery: Jews and Christians. Go ask those who've been reading the book before you. The Quran points to our scripture as the standard of truth. If you're uncertain about what the Quran is saying, you can come to the previous scripture and see that the Quran is in line with it. That's the assumption. So that means that if the Quran's not in line with what we have, then Muhammad's doubts would be verified and he'd be like, Yeah, this ain't true. This isn't coming from God.

Eric Huffman: So the Jewish and Christian scriptures are the filter.

Avery: Yes, they're the filter. That's the standard of truth. This is what's insane about this. For Muslims to come to us and say, yeah, it was corrupted by the time Muhammad came, then why in the world is Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, sending Muhammad to corrupted books to clear up doubts he would have about the Quran, which is supposed to be the perfect book. Why would he send him to corrupted, fabricated, tampered books to get truth about what he's doubting in the Quran?

Eric Huffman: Doesn't make sense.

Avery: That makes no sense at all. And there's multiple verses. There's like two other verses that says just like that. It says in chapter 16, verse 43, if you do not know, go to the people, go ask the people of the reminder. It calls the Bible the reminder.

Eric Huffman: Wow. When I hear you talk about it and break it down like this, my first thought is a simple-minded just how is this thing growing? How has Islam grown? You said birth rates?

Avery: Birth rates, yeah.

Eric Huffman: That's the main driver.

Avery: That's the main driver. They're having many wives and many children, many kids.

Eric Huffman: I talked to Hatun Tash and I've talked to others as well on this show about Islam, former Muslims or Christian apologists that talk with Muslims, and they seem to feel like a big part of it is also the, I hate to use the word ignorance, but I mean that in the most respectful sense I can, because the Quran must be read properly in Arabic and not all Muslims read Arabic or some don't read at all. And so they're just told what parts of it says and they memorize it, but don't really know what it's saying. I can't help but wonder if that's also a part of it because if they had their own copy at home that they were reading and diving into, it would be so easy to expose the things you're talking about.

Avery: On top of that, they really hold their Imams, their sheikhs like they're... for us would be pastors and stuff. They really hold them so high. They're not even learning the Quran themselves with critical thinking. They're learning it through the lens of their Imams and their sheikhs. So whatever their sheikhs and Imams are telling them, even if they read it on their own, they're reading it with the interpretation of their Imams and sheikhs. So a scripture that says, believe in the Quran, which confirms what you have, they'll say, yeah... they'll interpret that differently instead of what it says. Instead of what it says, they'll interpret it as saying something the opposite.

Eric Huffman: What's the back of your hoodie say? Earlier you were in a hoodie, and I saw it.

Avery: We just read.

Eric Huffman: We just read. Is that what you mean? It's like, just get to the text. Cut to the chase, let's stop talking around it.

Avery: Get to the text. We don't have to interpret nothing. We don't have to add. We don't have to subtract. We just read. And according to what the verse says, that's what we take. We take the context, we take the verse, that's it. I don't need your scholar to interpret this for me. I don't need you to interpret this or add nothing to this. I don't need you to go on telling me a story. Let's read the verse. Does Allah confirm our scriptures, yes or no? According to what it just said.

Eric Huffman: Sure. Boy, sometimes it's even painful. Even though I'm on your side, it's painful to watch your debates with these guys.

Avery: I just feel sorry for them.

Eric Huffman: I do encourage everybody watching Maybe God to subscribe and watch GodLogic. Even if you're a solid Christian, your faith will be grown and challenged by watching Avery defend the faith with folks from other religions.

I want to talk about some of the other faiths you go toe-to-toe with in a minute, but first let's just put a bow on the Islam conversation. Because I remember I had a Jehovah's Witness moment where I was frozen one time in the Holy land where this Muslim guy pulled me aside. He knew I was a Christian pastor. He pulled me aside. We were in a settlement, in Palestinian territory kind of settlement from the old days, which still is there. It was awful circumstances. But we were just there to learn the situation on the ground. And this guy pulled me aside and he said, "I will never..." First he told me, "You people are the reason for all of our problems." I was like a young man. And I was like, "What have I done?" But he meant like white American Christians that are pro-Israel by and large.

He said, "You're the source of all my problems." And when I looked at him with the deer in the headlights, he said, "I just don't understand why Christians in America aren't siding with us Muslims, because at least we believe in the same Jesus because the Jewish people don't accept Jesus and don't revere Jesus. At least we Muslims do." So we should be more lock in arms. I confess, I was not informed enough at the time to push back at all. And I was frozen. I had one of those moments where you're just like, "Oh, what do I say?" And I also wanted to get out of there alive, probably. I'm sorry.

But I think a lot of people might fall prey to that same kind of line of argumentation, like the Muslim people revere Jesus, they look up to Jesus, they talk about him in many of the same terms that Christians do. So talk to us about the similarities and differences in how Muslims view Jesus.

Avery: Sure. Just speaking on them thinking that they revere Jesus, it's something like this. Let's say you are introducing your mother and you say, "Yeah, this is a good woman that I know. She's a great friend, a lovely person, helps the poor a lot, has nurtured me, but she's not my mother." Would that be respectful and loving to your mom?

Eric Huffman: I don't think she would take it very well.

Avery: She wouldn't take it well, right? But you said a lot of good things about her though. You said some great things. Those are good qualities. But she wouldn't take that well, would she?

Eric Huffman: No.

Avery: Because you're denying who she is. And that's how it is with Muslims. With Muslims, they say a lot of good things about Jesus. He's the Messiah, He's a prophet, He's a messenger, he performed miracles, He's born of a virgin, but He's not the Son of God. He didn't die for your sins. He didn't come and save the world. So they're denying who Jesus is, which is an ultimate disrespect to Him. So all that's lip service is just fluff. That's all it is, is lip service.

Eric Huffman: We believe everything about Jesus, except the most important things.

Avery: Except the most important things. I'm touching on this. They'll use, like you said, Christianese it a little bit. He's the Messiah, he was born of a virgin.

Eric Huffman: He's coming back.

Avery: He's coming back to judge and stuff and to set things right and defeat the Antichrist. Sounds good, don't it? But they don't mean it in how we do. He's not coming back as Lord. He's not coming back as God and the judge of heaven and earth who decides who's going to heaven and hell to establish His kingdom, the kingdom of God. No, that's not what they mean. When they call Jesus the Messiah, they don't know what that means. They don't. I asked them. This is what I talked to Sheikh Uthman about, which got him stumped. I asked him, what does it mean for Jesus to be the Messiah? What does that mean? What does that word mean? He doesn't know.

Eric Huffman: Just rhetorical.

Avery: Just rhetorical. Well, the Quran calls him Messiah. Yeah, but why? Why Him? Why not Moses or Abraham or even Muhammad? Why Him? Why is He identified as the Messiah? Because that doesn't go for every prophet. So what makes that unique?

Eric Huffman: For Christians, I mean, it's His death and resurrection.

Avery: Exactly, the stuff he fulfilled. We have a... what do you call it? We have a standard. We have the Old Testament. We have the Tanakh that told us what to expect. So when Jesus comes walking in those things that the Bible told us about, the Torah told us about, we know, yeah, that's him. That's the prophet that they spoke about. That's the Messiah. We have somewhere to point back to. But for Muslims, our book is corrupted. So then where are you getting this stuff from? It's like an atheist who denies God's existence, but holds to morality.

Eric Huffman: Sure.

Avery: You deny God's existence, but you're stealing from God at the same time.

Eric Huffman: Richard Dawkins and the cultural Christianity stuff blew my mind.

Avery: Exactly, it's the same thing with Muslims. They deny the revelation of God, the Bible, they deny it, but steal from it to support them.

Eric Huffman: Wow. I mean, I guess everyday Muslims probably don't even see that.

Avery: No, they don't, man. It's crazy. Talking to the everyday Muslim versus an online Muslim is totally different.

Eric Huffman: That is something I would love to talk to you about for like three hours. I know we don't have time for it, but that's been on my mind lately. What's the difference between talking to an everyday, you know, good-hearted Muslim person that has genuine questions versus talking to one of these spokesmen who has to sort of posture and flex.

Avery: It's night and day. We don't have time for it, but I'll encourage you, watch my most recent live stream. Because you saw, I had a debate with Mohammed Hijab and all that kind of stuff. So what I did is I invited Muslims to come tell me how Mohammed Hijab cooked me. Tell me what points he made, what you agreed with, whatever. So I bring them on. My first three guests, they're the normal average guy. They come, they're respectful. They're listening. They're considering things. I'm able to get to a point with them, but when I wasn't able to get to a point with Hijab, like they're admitting stuff. He wasn't able to admit stuff. So they were completely different in character, in reason than the spokesperson. So the person with the platform, they have the pride. They are puffed up. These guys were not. They weren't prideful. They weren't puffed up. They conceded things, they considered things and it was good. Totally different, night and day.

Eric Huffman: Have you seen a bunch of Muslims, maybe off camera, tell you that you've led them to reconsider their faith or to come to Christ in some real way? Have you seen a lot of that conversion?

Avery: Yeah, a bunch of stuff. So if it's not live, because we get conversions live on the show, but in my comment section, I'm getting emails. I'm getting comments where, "I've been watching for a while now and now I'm ready to let go of Islam officially. Jesus is the truth." We get so many of those comments. DMs on Instagram and TikTok. It's so special because it's those things that help. It re-energizes you.

Eric Huffman: Oh, I bet.

Avery: After you get like the thousand of stubborn hardheads, but then you get these, "Hey man, I'm coming to Christ. Yeah, I'm reconsidering. I just left Islam. Now I'm looking into Christianity." You get those comments, it's like God vindicates what you're doing.

Eric Huffman: As you talk, I'm trying to get myself in your head because it's gotta be... the challenge of what you do is you have to be two places at once. On the one hand, you have to be present with the person you're debating on camera and getting all the points right and winning the debate. But on the other hand, you have to do it in a way that speaks to the people out there and in a way that's compelling. And those are two different things, man. You can win a debate and lose the crowd.

Avery: Exactly, yeah.

Eric Huffman: This is my first time sort of thinking this through. You've got to be able to maneuver both of those situations. And I would imagine, now you can tell me if I'm wrong. I would imagine that's how you gauge a true win in a debate isn't in the moment with the opponent, but the fallout.

Avery: Exactly. That's exactly it. It's the people. Like whenever you're debating, it's the people who decide. You want to reach and convince the people watching, the listeners. It's not for the person that you're talking to because they have their position and they're not changing. They'll lose too much if they change their mind, if they conceded to your points. They lose too much, right? So it's always for the people listening.

Eric Huffman: You got to be a secret genius to pull that off. I mean it genuinely, like in a social sense, just really keeping that in mind while you're engaged in a heated debate. By the way, these debates keep getting more and more heated.

Avery: Oh yeah, man.

Eric Huffman: You feel that?

Avery: Oh listen, well it kind of feels the same to me. They're the same. It depends on who you're talking to.

Eric Huffman: You don't feel like the temperature's rising?

Avery: No, not as far as I know.

Eric Huffman: I do as an observer. But maybe I'm just worried about you. Because I care for you, I love you as a brother, and you and David Wood and others that we've had on the show, it's like I worry about your guys and your well-being. It seems to me that temperature's rising as you become more of a threat.

Avery: Ah, okay, yeah.

Eric Huffman: You know what I mean?

Avery: Oh yeah So not just debate-wise, but just in this space. Yeah, temperatures are definitely rising because as you see they're starting to dox us, put our phone numbers and addresses out.

Eric Huffman: Going after your wives.

Avery: Yeah, going after our wives, slandering our wives, making up lies and rumors, and our family members or sisters. There's people, man, that have gone to my mother's Facebook and taken pictures of her and put it as their profile picture to troll me.

Eric Huffman: You're kidding.

Avery: That's the spirit behind it. We're dealing not with flesh and blood, but these principalities. And so it's that spirit that is running this that's behind them. And we recognize, I recognize that my family, my household, we recognize who the enemy is.

Eric Huffman: Yeah, amen, amen. I hear that, and I respect the courage. I hope everybody watching gets behind you 100%. I'm behind you 100%. But at the same time, I do wonder if you're a married man now, you've got a wife and folks that depend on you. I saw the recent video where the guy, I don't know if he put hands on your wife, but he got close.

Avery: Yeah, he bumped her shoulder, trying to cover the camera.

Eric Huffman: That was uncomfortable. Do you think it's a matter of time before there's some incident? Do you sort of keep that in the back of your mind? Have you ever gotten shook to the point where you're like, maybe I just should do this from my studio more? How does that work in your mind? Does your wife ask you to be more careful?

Avery: Absolutely. All right, so I'll answer the... do I ever think that I should probably just do this from my own studio? Never.

Eric Huffman: I didn't think you did.

Avery: Not in the slightest. I want to be out there more. But yeah, my wife is like... when I was going to Dearborn, Michigan, she just was like, "You got security, right? Who's going to be with you? Just make sure you're paying attention." She was really on that, and just really happy that, and thankful to God that I made it home safe without a scratch. But yeah, I'm definitely aware. I'm not naive to this. I'm not arrogant to where I don't think that somebody can come after me, and somebody might try me. They'll try. I'm always looking. I'm on the watch. I got people with me. But there's never been a time just yet when someone has actually tried to physically attack.

Eric Huffman: I'm almost surprised to hear it. Just watching the videos, I feel the tension. Maybe I'm hypersensitive to that sort of thing but-

Avery: It's interesting, because the videos... are you talking about the videos in person and stuff?

Eric Huffman: Yeah, when you're out on the streets or in front of a mosque or something.

Avery: I guess it looks worse than what it really is.

Eric Huffman: That's good to hear. I'm glad to hear that.

Avery: When we were at the mosque in Dearborn, and we had a lot of them come out, you had a chunk of them that were emotional and angry that we were there and disrespectful and stuff like that. You also had others that was offering us water, giving us water bottles, cold water bottles, chilling with us, talking, and some calming the other guys down. It wasn't as bad as it looked. There was tension, but nobody was going to do anything.

Eric Huffman: That's good.

Avery: We were never in any danger.

Eric Huffman: Good, good. I'll continue to pray for you and your safety.

Avery: Keep praying for us, please, yeah.

Eric Huffman: One interesting sort of theological issue that always comes up whenever it's time for them to question you as a Christian is the Trinity. Whether you're talking to Muslims or whether you're talking to Mormons or Jehovah's Witness, they always go after the Trinity first. And I'm guessing there's people watching right now, even Christians, that if asked, could not properly define or explain the Trinity. Talk to us about how you talk through the Trinity with people in a way that's digestible.

Avery: Sure, absolutely. So, one, just an easy explanation of what the Trinity is is the concept that God exists as one being, one divine being, who exists as three distinct persons. So there's one God, three persons. One what, three who's, right? In talking with Muslims, it's interesting, actually, because they obviously like, yeah, no, God is absolutely one in every way. But yeah, Allah talks throughout the Quran, as "we" and "us" and "our", you know? He's always using these plural pronouns and they'll say, oh, it's just the plural of majesty.

That's interesting to me because if it's the plural of majesty, it seems like it's more majestic to be plural than singular. Why is he pretending? But our God doesn't have to pretend. He says we, us, and our because He is majestic. He is plural within His unity. Talking with Muslims, it's interesting. They deny that Jesus ever associated Himself with being God in any way. Even in the Bible, they don't recognize it. So with Islam, they have a concept called shirk, which is associating a partner with Allah.

Eric Huffman: And it's a heresy, right?

Avery: Yeah, it's one of the unforgivable sins, depending on which verse of the Quran you read. So shirk, associating partners with Allah. You can't do that. You can't say anybody else is God or has his attributes or whatever. So I ask them, "Okay, would you ever say that I'm going to go perform prayer or perform salat or perform jihad in the name of Allah, Jabril, and Muhammad? Could you ever say that?" They say, "No, of course not." I say, "Why?" Because that'll be associating partners with Allah, the only one God. I say, "Okay, yeah, I agree with you. That would be blasphemy because they're not God." So I'll read them Matthew 28, 19. Jesus says, "Go out and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." I ask, "Did Jesus here just commit shirk?" They said, "Yes, that would be shirk, yes."

Eric Huffman: But that's part of the Bible that's corrupted.

Avery: Yeah, that's corrupted though. That's corrupted. But they see that, yeah, we see Jesus as associating Himself and the Spirit with the Father under one name. So we see that Jesus here is teaching the Trinity in just one place. I could show you others, but I could show you multiple places.

No one questions the Father as being God. Usually, it's always in the red seat is Jesus. He's in the red seat and then Holy Spirit don't really get no attention. So lately I've been targeting Jehovah's Witnesses in dealing with the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit needs to be... people need to know who the Holy Spirit is and His role in our life and how He strengthens believers, guides believers, inspires believers.

Eric Huffman: Absolutely.

Avery: You need to know who's on your side and who you're the temple of, because he's living in you.

Eric Huffman: That's right.

Avery: So talking with Jehovah's Witnesses, they'll say that the Holy Spirit is just an active force, kind of like in Star Wars, you know, just a force of Jehovah's power and energy. And I'm like, Huh, but the Holy Spirit speaks. The Holy Spirit can be grieved. The Holy Spirit commands. "No, but this is figurative. This is metaphoric." Wisdom also speaks in Proverbs and is given emotions and stuff. But the difference is, is that that's obviously personification in poetry literature. But the Holy Spirit is speaking and interacting with other persons in real time.

Here's one example, Acts chapter 13:2. It says that while they were praising and worshiping the Lord and praying, it says, "The Holy Spirit said, 'Set apart for me Saul and Barnabas for the work to which I have called them.'" So notice here, the Holy Spirit is speaking. The Holy Spirit calls out Saul and Barnabas. So he's choosing. He has a mind to make decisions.

And He says, "Do it for me. I set them apart for Me." So the Holy Spirit is self-aware. The Holy Spirit's a person. He's not just some power that you're hoping to use, some energy. He's a person of the Godhead. So you have the Holy Spirit who is personable, but is also said to create. He's also called the eternal spirit. He's also called God in Acts 5.

So you have the Holy Spirit, you have Jesus, who's the divine Son, created all things and was the tool by which the Father created all things. Jesus says some crazy stuff. And so if He wasn't God, that man was an absolute blasphemer. This man said, "All the things that the Father has are mine." That includes you. That includes me. That includes the temple. That includes the prophets. What man in their right mind, if He's a good prophet, a good Muslim prophet or just a good messenger, a good son of Jehovah, would make the claim that everything that God owns I own. That's blasphemous.

Eric Huffman: That's above his pay grade.

Avery: Exactly. Nobody would dare to say that or they'll be crushed. You have Jesus saying that the sheep hear My voice in John chapter 10, and I know them and they follow Me. I give them eternal life and none can snatch them out of My hand. Then He goes on to say, He says, "My Father who has given them to Me, He's greater than all, and none can snatch them out of My Father's hand. I and My Father are one."

Now, what is this? What is Jesus saying here? Is He just saying one on purpose like He does with the disciples in chapter 17 of John? No, because here, notice what He claimed. John 10:30, "I and the Father one," that's like the little cherry on top. People miss this, bro. That's the cherry on top. The verses prior sets that statement up in what He means by this. He said that the sheep hear My voice. I know them, they follow Me. They are in My hand, none can snatch them out of My hand. I give them eternal life.

What do we find this? In Psalm 95, you look at verses six to eight, it says that we are the sheep of Yahweh's hand and it's Yahweh's voice that we hear. Today, if you hear His voice, we are the sheep of His pasture, the sheep of His hand. Jesus is applying the attributes and qualities of Yahweh to Himself. He's saying that's Me.

In Deuteronomy 32 and 33, it says that God, that Yahweh is the one who gives life and He causes death. And He says, "None can deliver out of My hand." The same thing Jesus said. So Jesus is applying the attributes and qualities of Yahweh, of Jehovah, to Himself. That's why when He says, I am the Father, am one, the Jews tried to stone Him for that because they knew what He was saying.

Eric Huffman: And He's either right or wrong.

Avery: He's either right or wrong.

Eric Huffman: Liar, lunatic or Lord kind of thing. And you can't water Him down if you claim to have any respect for the New Testament at all, the Old for that matter.

Avery: No, for real.

Eric Huffman: When I hear you talk about Trinitarian concepts, it makes more sense to me than pretty much any explanation I've ever heard.

Avery: Praise God.

Eric Huffman: Because it's not so heady that I can't wrap my mind around it. And you have a way of unpacking a concept like that, which is everyone's first question about Christianity. And alongside of that question is one that I hear you asked... they ask you a lot, which is the nature of the Father and the Son. How can Jesus be God if he didn't know God's plans? I don't have the chapter and verse-

Avery: If he didn't know the hour.

Eric Huffman: If he didn't know the hour. Only the Father knows the hour, not even the Son. I hear you being questioned about that a lot. Just talk us through your explanation of that seeming contradiction.

Avery: Yeah, absolutely. It's in Mark 13:32, and in Matthew 24:36 where Jesus, in talking about the destruction of the temple that's going to come, the judgment of Israel and some of the end times that's going to happen, then He gets asked, "When is this going to happen?" And He says, "No man knows, nor the angels, nor the Son, but the Father only." And they're like, "Whoa, Jesus can't be God, He doesn't know something. See, He doesn't know."

Eric Huffman: God is all-knowing. Jesus doesn't know this. Jesus can't be God.

Avery: "God is all-knowing. Boom, boom, Christianity is cooked. It's over. Say your Shahada. That's it. Bear witness, Allah is one."

Eric Huffman: I like your impersonations by the way.

Avery: That's the guy I'm telling you about. I'll tell you, but it's funny because they all have the hand movements. It's so fun.

Eric Huffman: You have one too, by the way. Chef logic.

Avery: Listen, listen, listen, it gets there. "So Jesus can't be God, doesn't know the hour." Now here's what's interesting. Number one, Jesus is talking about His coming. Here's the interesting thing about this is that in Matthew 22, just a few chapters before He brings this up in Matthew 24, the hour, in Matthew 22, He gives a parable about the kingdom of God, about His coming. And He says that it's like a wedding that a king gives for his son.

With Jesus being a Jew, according to tradition in a Jewish wedding, it's the father who announces the wedding day. It's not the son or the bride. The bride waits and the son waits for the father to say, Go get your bride. Right? But it doesn't mean He doesn't know His own wedding day. They got to prepare. They got to set up the food, invite the guests. He knows His own wedding day, but the respect is for the Father. That's His role. That's His job. That's His authority to announce it, to declare it.

So this is what this is, is that Jesus isn't talking about His own cognitive knowledge, but He's talking about declarative knowledge, meaning it's not for anyone, not man, not Himself or the angels to make known or declare the hour, but that's the Father only, that's His job.

Eric Huffman: Boy.

Avery: Now, how do we know this though? Because you can't just come up with that and have no Bible references. Number one, in context, right after He gives a parable, He says, "It's like a master who goes away on a long journey and leaves his servants in charge of his house." He leaves the servants to work. And so the servants are to be alert because they don't know, they don't know when the master is coming back. In this parable, Jesus is the master. Now, I mean, if I'm tripping, a master knows when he's coming back to his own house.

Eric Huffman: Sure.

Avery: Absolutely. Jesus compares Himself to this master in the parable, who's going to come back to his house one day. He knows when He's coming back. It's the servants who need to be alert because they don't know. They don't have cognitive knowledge of when the master is coming back. So it's not cognitive for Jesus, but it's declarative knowledge.

Eric Huffman: It's the Father's role to declare.

Avery: It's the Father's role to declare. Now here's the beautiful thing, that whenever the Father is ready to declare something, whenever He's ready to make known something, He always does it through the Son. Always. And so what's this means? We see this in John 1:18. It says that no one has seen God at any time, but the only God who was at the Father's side, He has declared Him. So whenever the Father is made known, it's Jesus who's the one making Him know. You'll see this in the Old Testament. You'll see this with Abraham. When he comes to know God, it's through the Word. It says that the Word came to Abraham in a vision and showed him the covenant and the promises that God was going to give him. This is how he came to know the Father. It was through Christ. It's through the Word. So you'll see this all the time.

Eric Huffman: Avery, that's such a good example of why I get value from your content. I know this is not a commercial for GodLogic, but truly I go and I learn, not just about other religions and how to argue with people from other faiths. I learned about Christianity, about my faith.

Avery: Praise God.

Eric Huffman: You teach me these things, like setting that in context helps me get through some of my own confusion about, you know, the father knows, the Son doesn't always. It's like, no, it's pretty clear what's going on there contextually, but you have to be able to understand the Bible contextually.

Avery: Absolutely.

Eric Huffman: I'm so grateful for that, and many, many other examples I could point to, to the same effect.

Avery: Praise God.

Eric Huffman: In recent months, I've seen you talking more with people of the Mormon religion. I'm just curious. We've had a couple of based conversations on Maybe God lately. I found them fascinating. I find Mormonism conceptually easy to dismantle, but hard to argue for some reason. And I just wonder what similarities you found between arguing with people or debating people of the Muslim faith and debating people like Jacob Hansen, who you had a conversation with recently. We had him on the show recently too. And you did a great job in that debate, by the way.

Avery: Thank you.

Eric Huffman: What are the similarities in sort of their lines of attack and the ways you break through and get through to them?

Avery: It's funny, with Mormons, they really hold to interpretation, just kind of like the Muslims do.

Eric Huffman: Yeah, there's a lot of similarities.

Avery: They hold to interpretation of the scholars. Mormons hold to interpretation of their prophets that they have in their system. So just like dealing with Muslims, you got to show them what their sources say. You got to show them what Muhammad say. You got to show them what the Hadith says. You guys do the same with Mormons. You gotta show them what Joseph Smith said. Show them what their prophets have said.

Eric Huffman: Brigham Young.

Avery: Brigham Young. Show them what they said. Quote their sources, because they heavily back... They can't deny that stuff. They can't get away from that. Unless you're talking to somebody who's a little bit different like Jacob. Jacob's different. He's a different Mormon. He doesn't quite hold to-

Eric Huffman: He's a good debater.

Avery: Yeah, he is. He knows what he's doing. He knows what he's doing. He's a smart guy. Nice too. One of the nicest people I've met. It was fun debating him. It was fun. But all in all, you know, he doesn't, doesn't have the truth. He doesn't have the truth.

Eric Huffman: Are you as motivated to debate Mormons and others as you are to debate Muslims?

Avery: Jehovah's Witnesses, not really Mormons. Not yet.

Eric Huffman: Really?

Avery: It always comes with a trigger. The past few weeks or maybe a month ago, I would say, I saw these Jehovah's Witnesses on TikTok. Now, remember I told you, Jehovah's Witnesses, they're quiet. They don't go into the public. You'll never really see a Jehovah's Witness do a public debate. You won't really see that. And rep like, yeah, I'm Jehovah's Witness, the Kingdom Hall defending Jehovah's, you won't see that.

But you have this group of Jehovah's Witnesses that starting to come out and they're on TikTok and challenging and whatnot. So I hopped on their panel. It's a group of them. They muted me, kicked me out and yada, yada, yada. That sparked something in me. That woke me up. I'm like, "Oh, okay."

Eric Huffman: You're a competitor, man. I can tell. You got competitive edge. It's God-given.

Avery: Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. And I watch Kobe a lot.

Eric Huffman: Oh, Kobe.

Avery: I'm telling you, man. So that happened. I'm like, "Oh, so you want to talk about Mormons now. And ever since I just started targeting Jehovah's Witnesses and dealing with their beliefs. And when I started doing it immediately, my first live, doing it on YouTube, because I did it on TikTok, but then I was like, Yeah, I'm carrying this to YouTube. Did on YouTube, immediately, a Jehovah's Witness, he came two streams in a row and the first conversation was so long cause we were just breaking stuff down and he was listening and it was clicking for him. And he was like, "Okay, I gotta come back. I gotta come." I was like, "Yeah, I'll do this again for you. I'm gonna do this again Wednesday. Come back Wednesday."

He came back, and we're going through things again, and then I show them what the Watchtower teaches and how they claim to be prophets, but they have false prophecies. And that was the straw that broke the camel's back for him. He left the organization.

Eric Huffman: Really?

Avery: Lived and outed them. And that was the first time I ever got a Jehovah's Witness, through the grace of God, to change their mind through the conversations. It's the first time that ever happened. The immediate fruit that bore from targeting Jehovah's Witness, I say, yeah, this is where we're at right now. This is where we're at. And the comments, people are like, yeah, finally. God, there's so many ex-Jehovah's Witnesses that watch the channel I didn't even realize. And they've been waiting for me to start addressing Jehovah's Witnesses. And so they're like, "Man, this is the answer to prayer," and da-da-da-da-da. So I'm like, yeah, looks like God is pushing us in this direction to target Jehovah's Witnesses at this moment.

Eric Huffman: Wow, man. I just think it's such a cool time to be alive as a Christian. I know there's a lot of wrong with the world, but I just see God working and using the world's own avenues to spread the gospel in new ways. And I think there was a time maybe 10, 15, 20 years ago where you wouldn't be considered a minister unless you had a church or whatever on the wall, degrees or something. And we're in a whole different age now where anyone who feels called and motivated to do their homework and step into the fray can become an active minister and an effective minister, reaching more people than most churches and preachers do.

Avery: Yeah, praise God.

Eric Huffman: Is that how you see yourself? Is this a calling and a ministry of yours long-term?

Avery: Absolutely.

Eric Huffman: You're going to keep growing this.

Avery: Man, I ain't never... As long as God puts breath in my body, I will continue to minister and labor in the kingdom in this way, unless He says something otherwise. Unless He says something otherwise, this is what He has clearly commissioned me to do, and I ain't doing nothing else but what God tells me to do.

Look, I see how effective it has been. It's still hard to believe sometimes. I'm still kinda in that bliss type of thing, like, I can't believe this. I'm on a podcast with Pastor Eric. I'm like, it's crazy.

Eric Huffman: You finally made it.

Avery: I finally made it. We made it, Julie. But seriously it's God putting me in places for Him to shine through me and for people to be put on to this side of Christianity.

Eric Huffman: You see the fruit of it. It's unbelievable.

Avery: I'm grateful, Pastor. I'm so grateful to the Lord. And I don't ever want to get puffed up. I don't ever want to lose the plot. I don't ever want to do that, man. I want to stay humble. It's all God. He's doing all of this. Just a vessel. He could pick up a stick and make a stick do this. I'm happy I was chosen for this.

Eric Huffman: Amen.

Avery: And you have a wife now, you have no problem staying humble.

Avery: Hey, look.

Eric Huffman: She'll make sure of that.

Avery: Listen here, man.

Eric Huffman: Sounds like you married up like I did.

Avery: Yeah, I sure did.

Eric Huffman: That's good.

Avery: Sure did.

Eric Huffman: We're almost out of time and I hate that we are, but you gotta fly home. What would you say to somebody who's a Christian, maybe they're a new Christian or a long-time Christian that just has always felt a little bit gun-shy about getting involved in conversations with non-believers or people of other faiths, but they're interested in it. They feel like they should, they just don't know how. What would you say to them about sort of first steps to get more equipped and involved in?

Avery: Study your religion. Study the Bible. When you learn the gospel, you study who Jesus is, you study Him to a core, to the T. Learn who Jesus is and learn the gospel. You can talk with anyone. You don't have to know everything about someone else's religion or position. You learn Christianity, you'll be able to talk to anyone and just share the gospel. You won't necessarily be like, Oh, the Quran says this. You don't have to. "This is what the Bible says. What do you consider about this? What are your thoughts on this?" You could start there. That's how I started. I started not knowing all the ins and outs of Islam and atheism and Jehovah's Witnesses, but I learned my religion. And in the practice of sharing my religion, I also began to pick up things about other religions.

Eric Huffman: A lot earlier, when I asked you what really stood out to you about Christianity, when you started exploring apologetics, it was the historicity and just the veracity of it, of the claims we make. But I also know in your heart, just from watching your videos, that it's really, you just said it, the gospel that is the distinguishing factor of Christianity.

Avery: 100%.

Eric Huffman: There's nothing in this world like the gospel. So, before we close again, not to put you on the spot, you do pretty well when I put you on the spot, so I'm not worried, but people that might not know it or might not be aware of it, they think they might know what the gospel is, but they don't. What is the gospel?

Avery: The gospel is that, is that we as people, as human beings, deserve God's judgment. We are sinners. We have broken God's law. We're criminals in the eyes of God. In His courtroom, we're guilty and we need help. We need immediate help. And matter fact, we need so much help because even if He were to let us go, we'd do it again and again and commit another crime and invent new ways to commit crime. We're sick with crime, with sin. And so we need a cure. We need a doctor.

And the gospel is, is that God is so loving and just that He has a way in which He's able to deal with sin, punish sin where His justice is appeased, but also show mercy to where His love is appeased and shown and grace is given at the same time. And that's in the person of Christ. Christ comes, takes on humanity, leaves His throne, sets His glorious side, and takes on humanity, the likeness of sinful flesh, lives the life that we should have lived, walks the walk that we couldn't walk, and does it perfectly because we weren't perfect.

And He then represents mankind. He's our representative now. And then He takes on the punishment that we deserve. He takes on the judgment that we deserve, the humiliation that we deserve so that we wouldn't have to. And because of His work, what He did, He destroys sin, destroys the power of sin to which now if we confess our faith in Him and accept the work and trust in the work that He's done for us, then we are accepting the cure for the disease that we had in sin and we are purified through His purity, not our own. And so we are saved through the work of Christ, through the life-giving spirit, and the promise of the Father who loved us so much to do this. Loved us so much.

Eric Huffman: It's a beautiful thing. Again, it's a unique thing. You'll never see this. We have in the gospel, every other religion I've ever looked at is about human beings fighting and scratching and clawing and giving and sacrificing to go find God. We have a God who fought and scratched and clawed and died to come find us.

Avery: Just a little nugget here, Pastor Eric.

Eric Huffman: Yeah, please.

Avery: In the Quran, it says that Allah loves those who love Him. And the Bible says we love because God first loved us. In Romans 5, it says that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, that this is how God shows His love. So He loved us before we even knew of Him, before we even contacted Him. He loved us while we were criminals, while we were in rebellion. He loved us first. That's the difference.

Eric Huffman: Amen. And if you're watching and you're unsure of where you're at with God, I just hope you heed Avery's words about the gospel. It's not about getting your life right right away. It's not about coming clean before you come to God, seeing that God has already come to you. And all there is to do is say yes to grace. That's it. That's it. So yes to grace and you're in.

Avery: You're in. That's it.

Eric Huffman: Praise God.

Avery: That's that easy.

Eric Huffman: Praise God for grace and for the gospel.

Avery: Amen.

Eric Huffman: I praise God for you, Avery.

Avery: Thank you for having me, man. This is so fun.

Eric Huffman: It flew by, man, I'll tell you what. We must be having fun because I feel like I blinked and an hour plus went by.

Avery: I know. I was like, "Man, we got more to talk about."

Eric Huffman: I know. That's how I feel. We'll have you back, though, to Houston and maybe speak live even here in Houston.

Avery: Amen. Yeah, I'll be here.

Eric Huffman: God bless you. Keep going. Stay safe. We'll be praying.

Avery: Thanks, Eric. Thank you.

Eric Huffman: Thank you.