Francis' Empty Hell, Brandan's Empty Bible

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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This isn't dogma, just my thought. I like to think of hell as being empty.

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I hope it is. Those are the words. I have not seen any disputation as to the accuracy of the recording of these words.

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But two days ago, that's what Pope Francis said. This isn't dogma, just my thought.

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I like to think of hell as being empty. I hope it is. Now, a couple things.

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As normal, if you wanted to Pope -splain it, and there's a whole new term now called

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Pope -splaining. You've got mansplaining, and now you have Pope -splaining. And really, Pope -splaining's been around for about 10 years, we just didn't really necessarily have a term for it.

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But when you've got Francis, you're going to be Pope -splaining pretty much every day. Especially if you're in Rome.

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Or if you're a Catholic apologist, you're going to be Pope -splaining constantly. I don't know. Well, when the next

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Pope comes along, it will probably only get worse. They may develop programs for it in the various seminaries.

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Pope -splaining 101, Pope -splaining 353. That's the really advanced Pope -splaining. I don't know.

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But if you're trying to Pope -splain, and you're trying to find a way to get around what he's saying, it wouldn't be difficult to do.

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You could just say, well, he says this isn't dogma. He has to say that because the religion that he's a part of has given him the ability to pronounce dogma.

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So he knows that. This isn't dogma, just my thought.

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Okay. He's not saying I'm teaching this for the church. Good. And then you could say,

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I like to think of hell as being empty. Well, wouldn't we all like to say that we wish that everyone would go to heaven?

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We don't wish hell on any particular individual or something like that. I suppose you could just say that in some general, vague fashion.

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But let's remember a few things. This is the same

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Pope who, early on in his pontificate, we played the video. Young boy comes up to Francis.

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His dad died as an atheist, but he had had his kids baptized, even though he was an atheist.

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And he's all worried that his dad's life could be in heaven. Now look, probably one of the places where ministers of any kind are most tempted to change their theology is in that context.

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I think some of the worst theology on the planet will be found at funerals and gravesides.

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Where everything else you teach is just out the window and everybody gets to go to heaven just because people are crying.

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And that's all you need to do to go to heaven is to have people crying. But Francis made it clear that he thought this man would be in heaven.

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He's an atheist. And a lot of people were like, well, again, that's not... well, we know that.

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We get that. But the problem is, you're getting insights into the theological life and mind of the man who can make those decisions and who can affirm changes to the

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Catechism of the Catholic Church, as on capital punishment, going against minimally hundreds of years of Roman Catholic Church tradition.

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And now, with his statement concerning fiduciary supplicants, his statement concerning giving of blessings, which he's doubling down on, which he's saying, you know, when you have to make tough decisions, sometimes you get lonely.

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This is supposed to be the head of all the faithful, but he's lonely. And why?

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Because he's charting a new course. That's why. And it's obvious to everybody. But anyway, the real issue is, when you look at the

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Catholic Catechism, and you read section 1035, if you have your own copy, or you can go online, and it's there.

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1035, the teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity.

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Immediately after death, the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, eternal fire.

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The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs.

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So, the Catholic Catechism says that you go into hell, if you die in a state of mortal sin, immediately upon death.

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Now, I disagree with that, by the way. It seems rather obvious to me that hell is the final state.

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You go to Hades, and then death and Hades are cast into the

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Lake of Fire, the Book of Revelation, at the end. But that's not a major deal, but it is important here, because I could say hell is empty, because that's still future.

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He can't say that, because from the Roman Catholic perspective, hell is where people go when they die, outside of receiving the sacramental forgiveness through the

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Roman Catholic Church. That's what the Church has taught since, let's just say since Trent. Before then, but officially, we can document it there.

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So, what does this mean? For the Pope to say,

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I like to think of hell as being empty. I hope it is. There is only one possible conclusion to that.

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The only way for hell to be empty is for Universalism to be true. The idea,

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Universalism... Now, I have said for years that the majority of the teaching magisterium of the

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Roman Catholic Church are Inclusivists. What is Inclusivism? Inclusivism is the idea...

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If you want to hear it all fleshed out, go listen to the debate that I did with John Sanders at The Grind in Tampa many years ago on the subject of Inclusivism.

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It's the idea that any kind of faith movement toward God or a

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God is considered to be a faith movement toward Jesus. Even if you don't know who

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Jesus is. It's that way people in all sorts of religions can be said to have made a movement toward God in Christ.

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Even if they don't know who he is. Deadly permissions, but anyway. So I've said for a long, long time,

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I think the majority of people in Roman Catholic teaching magisterium, the leadership of the church, are

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Inclusivists. I've certainly heard them making that kind of statement.

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But that's different than Universalism. Inclusivism still leaves open the door for some kind of eternal punishment for those who never make that faith movement toward any kind of God.

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Who are totally self -absorbed, things like that. And so, you already had, going back a long ways,

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Vatican II demonstrated that there's a deep, left -leaning, progressivist, back then we called it liberal, element within Roman Catholicism.

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And that is not consistent with the historical views. And would have gotten most of the people promoting these things minimally kicked out, and in many centuries, burned to the stake.

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Within the Roman Catholic, where the Roman Catholic Church held sway. So it's not this stuff's new.

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But this is the Pope. This is the Pope who's already making changes.

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This is the Pope who's changing the way that his successor is going to be chosen. This is the

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Pope that is showing to anyone who wants to see it, that he is willing to turn the wheel and turn the direction of the ship as he pleases.

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And so, when you think about it, if hell is empty, then the entirety of the

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Roman Catholic sacramental system is worthless. It has no meaning. Why are you going to the priest?

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Why are you kneeling before the altars? Why are you going to mass every day?

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If atheists get to go to heaven, if the

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Muslims go to heaven... It's always been such a reality of...

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It just clinks. It clanks. When you...

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You've got statements, you know, missionary mandate, and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

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But when you read the statement of the

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Catechism... And where is it? Fully Incorporated, Separated Brethren...

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Where was that? 840? There it is, 841. I thought it was 831, 841.

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The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the

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Creator. Now that sounds like inclusivism. In the first place amongst whom are the

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Muslims. These profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us, they adore the one merciful

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God, mankind's judge in the last day. Now that... They, with us, adore the one merciful

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God. That's what the Catechism says. Anybody who knows anything about church history, theology in the past, stuff like that, knows that that's not what the

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Roman Catholic Church believed when they were calling for crusades and doing stuff like that. That was not a part of the 1592

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Catechism of the Council of Trent, I can assure you of that. So, this stuff has been there, and there's this inconsistency and this incoherence and contradiction.

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It's been there for decades and decades, but Francis is just going where the popes have not been willing to go before.

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And, to say I like to think of hell as being empty, I hope it is.

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As the head of the Roman Catholic Church. Not saying, I'm teaching this. It's to say, as the head of the

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Roman Catholic Church, I hope everything we teach about the sacraments is a bunch of baloney. That's what he just said.

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And, conservative Roman Catholics know that's what he just said.

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That's the first thing they heard when he said this. So, when

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I say there is a crisis in Roman Catholicism today, there is.

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There is. And, no matter what we do, next month, when

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I debate Trent Horn in Houston on two different topics,

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Sola Scriptura and Purgatory, Francis is relevant to both. You can't pretend that the pope didn't just say,

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I hope hell is empty. What does that say about Purgatory? What does that say about indulgences?

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What does this tell us that the current infallible vicar of Christ on earth really believes about these things?

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Because, isn't he supposed to believe the teachings of the church?

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So, to say, I hope that the teachings of the church, in broad form, have completely missed it.

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That's Liberation Theology. Yeah, that's Liberation Theology, but it's not Roman Catholicism.

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And, there have been conservative Roman Catholics saying for a long, long time, we can't keep going in this direction because it's going to lead to, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.

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Yeah, it has. It has. Yeah, so that's not good.

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And then, when he was pressured in an interview, again,

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I think this was maybe just yesterday, he doubles down and he basically says,

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Pope Francis has defended his controversial decision to let priests bless same -sex couples, but admitted that, quote, solitude is a price you have to pay, end quote, when you make difficult decisions.

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I thought that there was this whole concept of the church as a living organism. What, what, what?

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Think about it. So, the head is over there in solitude while the rest of the body is over...

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That's not generally a good situation, you know? When you think about it. He acknowledged the remarkable opposition his decision has sparked.

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Africa's bishops have united in a continent -wide refusal to implement the

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Vatican Declaration, and individual bishops in Eastern Europe, Latin America, and elsewhere have also voiced opposition.

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Thank God for Africa. I mean, I am so thankful that the Anglican bishops in Africa told the

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Archbishop of Canterbury to stick his head in a bucket of ice, which

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I guess people are doing again. It's supposed to make you feel good or something. Hot shower, nice, when it's cold.

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Yeah, no, I'm not doing that. Anyway, so they're like,

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They're like, no, we're not. This same -sex stuff doesn't fly here. And now the

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Roman Catholic bishops in Africa are doing the same thing to Francis.

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Saying, yep, not doing that. Folks, that's schism. I don't care what you... how else you want to define it.

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The Pope is saying X, and they're saying not X. Pretty straightforward.

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Now, of course, he says, Francis acknowledged in his first comment since the uproar, the resistance the decision has generated.

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He blamed it on bishops not really understanding the issue, and refusing to open a dialogue about it.

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Now, folks, again, I don't know how many of you are following this, or maybe most of you are just like, we'll just let you do it.

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You just fill us in about what's going down here. But, you just have to understand, this synod on synodality that's going on, when the meetings were taking place a few months ago, and the conservative bishops are coming out and saying, we're not getting to say anything, we have to sit there and be lectured by people about how wonderful inclusion of LGBTQ plus stuff is.

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That's the whole purpose here. That's what they're doing, that's what it's all about. So you read him talking about, and not having a dialogue about it.

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What do you mean? Tucho Fernandez is not looking for dialogue.

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I mean, the Vatican has been corrupt for a long time in many ways, but man, it has just never been this obvious.

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Well, in our lifetimes, sorry. Obviously, during the days of Luther, the

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Pope's riding through Rome in his armor, and doing stuff like that. And then, of course, the pornography in the 10th century, 9th and 10th centuries, yeah, much, much worse.

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But those were pretty much behavioral stuff, brothels and stuff like that.

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This is plain up, straightforward, we want to change the direction of the church.

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And we're in charge, so we get to do that. And it's sort of like what's happened in the United States. We have people in charge in the

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United States government that could care less about the Constitution, could care less about what made this nation what it was, and are seeking to, well, the

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President of the United States has overseen the invasion of like 8 million people into our country in just a little over two years.

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And you know that they're then going to go, well, we can't kick them all out now, so we might as well let them vote.

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And they're closing schools to house these people.

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How long before someone's going to show up at your front door with a couple people from who knows where, the whole world's coming, and saying, well, the city council has decided that there are only two of you living in this house, and you have three bedrooms, and therefore you will house these people.

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And you go, no, be careful about the no part, just be careful.

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I mean, your tax dollars are already being used to build, I mean, not far from where I live, they've built all sorts of public housing stuff, basically for the homeless.

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That whole area over there is just being overrun. And now you get to hear bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, and it's gunshots.

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And then there'll be a bunch of police presence, and they're dragging bodies away, and yellow tape, and it's, yeah, helicopters, all the time.

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And it's just the way it is. It's the way it's supposed to be, because that's how you destroy a nation from inside, because traitors are now running it.

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And that's where we are. So it happens politically, and it seems to me,

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Francis and his boys, they're looking at how this is happening politically, and they're just doing the same thing.

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They're pulling off the same stunt, but theologically. So there you go.

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What? Yeah, yeah, that's his target practice?

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Okay. All right, so I was actually thinking, I had mentioned to Rich, I said, you know, it's been a long time since we did

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Zoom calls and stuff like that. So how about we think about that? And then, across my feed, comes

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Brandon Robertson. Now, y 'all remember that last year, right about now, as I recall,

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I think it was January, February, Jeff Durbin and I, oh, and by the way, before I go into that,

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I started a new sermon series at Apologia on Sunday night,

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Sunday afternoon, I guess, technically. And it's the first time that Jeff and I have done something like this together, where we're gonna divide up the topics.

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And Jeff decided to name it the Roman Catholic Controversy. Never heard of that term before.

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And so I did the introduction sermon, and I will be preaching on the subject of the papacy this coming

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Sunday. And I don't know when it's gonna conclude or anything like that, because he travels,

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I travel. He traveled a whole lot more last January, but he just can't this January because of the twin girls.

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And, man, I just cannot imagine what that's like. You're getting toward, he's not 50 yet, but he's getting gray in the beard, that's for sure.

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And you can't blame me for that. But having twin preemie girls just, boom, dropped on you out of absolutely nowhere.

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Amazing stuff. But anyways, so I'm gonna try to do like three sermons before I leave.

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And then when I get back, we'll be addressing, obviously, justification, baptism, sacraments,

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Mary, all that kind of neat, fun stuff. So there'll be a whole, I'm sure there'll be a whole video list, playlist on YouTube once we get all that stuff put up there.

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But the first sermon's up. If you're interested in those areas, you wanna do more, be aware of what's going on there.

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And of course, the first two debates in the marathon trip coming up are on Roman Catholicism as well.

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And I'm supposed to be on the Ali -Beth

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Stuckey Show. I suppose I should let people know this, huh? On the 13th of February.

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13th of February. So, and that'll be on Roman Catholicism too.

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It may be with Trent Horn. I'm not sure who it's gonna be. But it may be Trent Horn.

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And we'll be discussing, you know, the fundamental differences between biblical

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Christianity and Roman Catholicism. Would be my way of phrasing it, but we'll see how it's put at that particular point in time.

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And so keep that in prayer too, because I'm not even including that. That's six encounters on that trip.

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And right now, I can't give you details on this, but my friends in Louisiana are in contact with Catholic apologetics people for a debate in April.

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So we're cranking them out. I'm sorry? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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We're cranking them out. So I haven't mentioned,

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I mentioned, we've mentioned on the program before, and I didn't ask Evan.

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Let me, I'll try to remember to look over there and get you this information.

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But the last that Evan and I talked, Evan McClanahan, is the pastor at First Lutheran there in Houston.

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And is, he's trying to, he's trying to compete with Chris Arnzen and Michael Fallon as far as debate organization is concerned.

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He really is. He's behind four of the five debates on the next trip. And that means he's been doing the contacting, doing the setting up the tickets.

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It's a lot of work. So I just, I salute him and thank him for how much work he's doing.

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But last time we talked, there was still room at the Tuggy Debate, which is the last one.

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But I just asked, is the Tuggy Debate sold out? I haven't heard back. I'll try to remember to look over there and let you know.

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What that means is there's no more room. And so I was having to contact him to see if I could get certain people in, which he'll work with me to make that happen.

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But there's only so many seats. The pews are only so big.

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I mean, it's a pretty large church, but I'm not sure what it seats. Maybe 800 -ish.

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And there's a balcony up there as well. There is a other building there.

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So maybe there would be overflow for that. I don't know, but we'll let you know.

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And I did say to Evan, I do need to let you all know this, because this is not how

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I normally do debates. But because of how intense this trip is going to be, five debates, the

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Allie Beth Tuggy thing, teaching

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Baptist Church history, the Y -Calvinism conference, the debate at the

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Y -Calvinism conference with Jason Breda, doing my regular...

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And again, this has been my practice for a long, long time. And if you've only come to my debates, then you don't realize how unusual this is.

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But I meet with people after debates. I shake hands, I take selfies, I sign books, I listen to stories, because they're wonderful to hear.

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I'm not going to do that after the Trenthorne debates, either one of them. Because that is the maximum exposure time for disease.

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That's just all there is to it. Shaking hands, and some of you just don't respect personal space.

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And I'm always backing up and backing up. So for those first two debates, when the debate's over, it's goodnight.

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We'll see you all later. If Trent wants to do that, I suppose he'll be allowed to do that. I'll do it for the last two debates, because I figure if I've survived that long,

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I may get sick on the way home, but we'll live through that.

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But just to let you know, it's not because I'm trying to be... I'm just trying to get through a 35 -day road trip with five debates and lots and lots of other stuff in the process.

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There's only just one of me, and I ain't getting any younger. So as I said, we were talking maybe about doing some

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Zoom calls and stuff like that, and then Brandon Robertson pops across my feed.

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You all can go watch the... I think they called it Challenging the

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Gay Theologian or something. I forget what it was. But we did a thing last year, and just quickly, because most of you probably already know this, when

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I first heard Brandon Robertson, I forget what the context was. I know that he was part of a group that spoke with Michael Brown at the

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NRB convention. Oh, I'd probably say 2016, 2015, 2016, somewhere around there.

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I just remember where I was. That's why I keep saying this. I remember exactly where I was on bike back in those days when

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I could ride outside and not have to ride through homeless encampments. And I probably said it out loud.

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So if some person was walking by, walking their dog as I was riding through that particular neighborhood in North Phoenix, they would have heard me say, that guy's never going to stay

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Orthodox. I could just tell. He was at that time. He was very, very young.

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A moody student. He was trying to do the I'm same -sex attracted, but I'm an

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Orthodox Christian thing. And first time I heard him speak, I was like, that ain't going to last. That is not going to last.

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I don't know. I don't know how I knew. My recollection is it has something to do with how we viewed scripture.

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I said, no, ain't going to happen. Okay, so I just heard back from Evan.

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That one may still have a few, like 25. So the Dale Tuggy debate, which is the last debate, and I think probably one of the most important ones of the trip in an overarching sense.

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Most people struggle to deal with Unitarians. Y 'all don't get out like I keep saying and take these folks on.

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So yeah, there seems to still be some space at the last of the four debates in Houston, which

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I believe is the 9th of March. Yeah, it seems like a long time from now, but I literally have, what's today?

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The 16th? Yeah. So I only have two weeks from today.

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I have to have my opening statement sent off to Dale Tuggy for that debate. Okay, whatever.

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So just wanted to let you know that that was the case. I will respond to that.

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Okay. Brandon Robertson. Is now quote -unquote pastoring.

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We had tried to get a debate with him and he said he was moving to Dublin to work on a

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PhD. He ended up not doing that. He was going to go to Trinity. I think there's something appropriate about that.

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Trinity College in Dublin. Incredibly beautiful place. Not exactly Orthodox any longer, but anyway.

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And what he is doing now is he's getting a PhD in unbelief.

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In heresy. He has, you know, once the tether breaks, there's nothing to stop you.

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He's all the way out there. So why in the world respond to a video from him?

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The reason why I respond to a video from him is because what he's saying,

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I keep trying to tell our audience, I keep trying to communicate to our audience, because you're the folks that are going to be talking to these people.

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You're the folks that, you're serious about your faith, but you want to take it outside of Facebook forums.

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You want to actually be able to give a reason with hopes within you. You have to recognize that if you believe that this is the inspired, consistent revelation from God, that Genesis is supposed to have the connection it has to Revelation, that this is a supernatural work from God, the way

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Jesus viewed it, which is, as we're going to see here in a moment, is ironic, given what

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Brandon says. If you believe that, you are in the minority in the quote -unquote

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Christian academy today. And the things that Brandon are going to say are what you're going to hear at almost, well, you're going to hear it at pretty much every state university, at any type of public education.

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Yeah, this is what you're going to get. But you're going to get it in a large portion of the rest of stuff, too.

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In religious institutions, in Bible colleges, in seminaries, and stuff like that. And so, if you went to a school like that and you didn't get this, be thankful.

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Be thankful. Because this is what's out there. So, I only have a certain amount of time because we need to wrap up on time today.

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I may go a little bit over. But, I may let more go past than I normally would.

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Because there's so much to be refuted. But I want you to hear the answer to this question that is given to him.

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And that's the whole point of doing this, this time, is to edify you and to make sure you know this is the stuff that's coming.

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Here you can see it being used in a clearly, obviously, heretical fashion, destructive of the church, and Christian morality, faith, ethics, the whole nine yards.

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But there's a foundation to it. And his foundation here, basically, is to say there is a gospel according to Jesus and there is a gospel according to Paul.

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And they contradict each other. And this is how you tear the

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Bible apart. So, it cannot speak with any type of consistency to anything.

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Because, remember, when we took him on, he has his excuses for Leviticus and his excuses for Sodom and Gomorrah and his excuses for Romans 1.

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But they're all broken apart. There's no putting them together. Because from the progressivist perspective, they are isolated texts and how they relate to one another is irrelevant.

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It doesn't matter. There's no one source behind them. So you can, you know, separate them, pick them off.

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That's how you do it. Which is why Christians have never come to these conclusions because they honored the

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Word of God and didn't treat it that way. These people dishonor the Word of God horribly and, therefore, they can sit as judges over any individual passage.

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Because it doesn't have to be consistent with or harmonized with anything else. So let's take a listen to this.

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And I will stop and start at some places, but not every place that I could. Okay? Oh!

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I thought I'd put it back, but I think I had to listen to it myself, so we did test it, make sure this is going to work.

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And this is a question submitted online. This one was submitted online. What do we know about Jesus and the actual teachings of Christ?

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And how do we divorce this from the usually hypocritical, Paul -centered, Paul -centric teachings of a typical church?

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Well, this is one of my favorite questions. Because if you grew up in conservative evangelicalism, you probably grew up in Pauline Christianity, where Paul is more quoted and more followed than Jesus.

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And this is something I've been studying a lot recently, actually, because it is perplexing to me how, even in all of my theology degrees, it was all centered on Paul, and figuring out how to teach the church about Paul's theology to the detriment of what

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Jesus said. And I actually don't know if you know this, but if you read the New Testament, you find that Paul and Jesus often come into contradiction with each other.

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Okay, so hopefully you're hearing what's being said here. There's lots of things that I could have stopped there. But there is an overarching, fundamental assertion that Paul and Jesus are at loggerheads, that they are contradicting one another, it's two different kinds of Christianity.

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And unfortunately, again, this is extremely common, and one of the reasons that I want to make sure you're aware of this, and we have done entire programs in the past, on the consistency, the beautiful harmony of Paul's epistles with the

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Gospels, they have different purposes, they're addressing different issues, that's where the, you know, this, so much of the apostate, unbelieving theology of today, is actually simplistic.

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It's childish. It's like when I hear people with confidence saying, well, we know that Paul didn't write the pastoral epistles, he didn't write 1st, 2nd

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Timothy and Titus, because the vocabulary is so different than the books that we know that he wrote.

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Well, I'm not sure how you know he wrote any of them in the way you're using that term, but guess what,

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Einstein? The vocabulary that I use in writing, okay,

41:10

Tom Buck and I exchanged some text messages yesterday, because I couldn't,

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I couldn't resist saying something about the cowboys. What was that?

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Hitting a man when he's down. Didn't you used to be a Redskins fan? Still am, but there are no

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Redskins. That's correct. They're what?

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Oh, okay, whatever. Anyway, I can't hear you. Anyway, I said some stuff about the cowboys.

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I tried to be a little less nasty than some of the other people, but so we started exchanging some tweets.

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We ended up on the phone, but the point is this. If I wrote a letter to Apology at Church, let's say

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I wanted to put something in the bulletin, something really important. I wanted to tell them about something that's coming up and just really want to make sure people had this.

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If you're to compare the vocabulary in what I write to a church for multiple people who are reading it with the vocabulary and the word choices and stuff that I used in text messages to Tom Buck after the cowboys choked up lost again.

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Did you know Green Bay has won everything in that stadium? They're just like, it's theirs.

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It's astonishing. Anyway, and what was it? 1996 was the last time they won the

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Super Bowl. That was last century. It's a sad thing, and I feel for Tom.

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Anyway, if you compared the vocabulary of the text messages with the letter, you would conclude the two different people wrote those things, but it's the difference in context, audience, occasion, and everything else.

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When I went to Fuller Seminary, I had to learn this stuff. I had to listen to people saying that Paul didn't write this stuff and all the rest of that stuff.

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Very early on, I started going, these folks aren't consistent. This is the easy way out.

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They never allow for harmonization at all because they describe that as the simplistic way.

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And believe me, some fundamentalists do harmonization in a very simplistic fashion. That's true. But this is the issue.

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This stuff that you're getting, instead of seeing the beautiful harmony, instead of recognizing that Paul was called to a specific thing, you get this kind of, oh, we can take the

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Bible apart. And a couple things about Paul that should be said. Paul never met

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Jesus. Never heard Jesus preach. Paul only knows Jesus through secondhand knowledge.

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So I guess, obviously, Paul's own conversion story is actually a lie.

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And any of the other encounters that he has or any revelation, we can just dismiss all of that.

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So as we're reading the writings of the Apostle Paul, we need to know who he is. We need to know his context. He's removed from Jesus himself.

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And Paul and Jesus are preaching two different Gospels. Both are important to Christianity, but one is the

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Gospel that we live by, and one is the Apostle Paul's unique mission. Paul's mission was to tell...

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Yeah, there's nothing in Paul's teaching about how we're to live at all.

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Nothing there. No. The story of Jesus around the world. That was his goal. And so when

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Paul talks about his Gospel, and if you actually read Paul's writing, he refers to it as my Gospel, not the

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Gospel. His Gospel is the story of Jesus. His goal is to go into the parts of the world that nobody's ever heard about, this guy named

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Jesus who lived in first century Palestine, and tell them the story. And Paul sums up his Gospel by saying,

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Christ crucified, died, and risen. That's important. We need to know the story of Jesus.

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But the Gospel, according to Jesus, is in Mark chapter 1. It says

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Jesus was going throughout the Galilee, preaching the Gospel and saying, the Kingdom of God is at hand.

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Repent and believe in this good news. The message of Jesus was quite simple. God is doing a new thing in the world.

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Are you sitting there going, yeah, but Jesus hadn't died. You know,

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I mean, what are you going to do with that message once Christ has ascended into glory and has sent the church out with his authority?

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Authority that over all things, doesn't there need to be some explication there?

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And the answer is obviously yes. But remember, these churches, men like Brandon Robertson, they're not under the authority of Scripture.

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He would recoil if he even used terminology being under the authority of Scripture.

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No way. God is calling us to a new way of living in the world. And Jesus' Gospel is primarily social and ethical.

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It was about a new way of living, a new standard of justice. And that's why Jesus is always getting into these controversies with the scribes and Pharisees, because it was just social and ethical.

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And so that's why they're arguing about how did Abraham see your day and stuff like that.

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It was just social and ethical. How do we live in a more just and generous world? How do we create a better world that benefits everyone?

47:12

Yeah, you know, does that sound a little bit like the Bible according to Klaus Schwab?

47:18

Yeah, it does. That's what it sounds like, doesn't it? It's the W -E -F version, okay?

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It has nothing to do with this, because they don't care about this. It's, yeah, he's wanting to be sound.

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This is how you sound like the current social issues. It's great, and it's wonderful.

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It's disgusting. Paul's Gospel was primarily theological. Who was Jesus? Why was he important?

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Both are necessary again. And no application, right? No application. Which is what 1

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Corinthians 6 is, which excludes him from the Kingdom of Heaven.

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You think that might enter into why he's wanting to try to create these distinctions and stuff that are just obviously laughable to anyone who's actually read it?

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Yeah, it might have something to do with it. But at Mission Gathering, we really center,

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I try to center all of my teaching on the four Gospels, what Jesus actually said, what he actually did.

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And we use Paul as a support for that message.

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But if Paul and Jesus ever come into contradiction, we're going to side with Jesus every time.

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And also in the New Testament, I want to encourage. And of course, we get to decide when that is.

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And so, you know, when Paul says that Arsinokoitai and Malakoi, and he's visually representing both in this presentation, will not inherit the

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Kingdom of Heaven, well, that's contradictory to Jesus, and so we don't have to worry about it. Everybody who's watched the formerly mainline denominations collapse, shrivel up, and die, knows exactly how this works.

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I've seen it over and over again. I want you to look at this too. Paul often debated with a lot of the early apostles.

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Paul and Peter disagreed with each other, and you read about their nasty fights throughout the New Testament. Throughout the

49:24

New Testament, huh? Well, no. We have the encounter in Antioch, and now there's some fascinating discussion.

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Excuse me. There's fascinating discussion as to the timing of the

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Antioch encounter and Acts 15. That's, you know, read F .F. Bruce's discussion of that in his commentary.

49:57

It's fascinating stuff. But this idea that they're just constantly disagreeing with one another, no.

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And in fact, Paul was right. From these people's perspective, there is no right to begin with.

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So you can side with either side, doesn't matter. And Paul really didn't like James, who was the brother of Jesus.

50:20

Really? Where do you get that from? Well, you get that from misunderstanding James 2. But again, you just need to understand, it's not just this one homosexual pretend minister.

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He's getting this from all sorts of folks who aren't homosexuals.

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It is common, it has been around forever to say that Paul and James, that James is literally writing against Paul.

50:49

That's why, again, I would recommend to you the chapter on James 2,

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In the God Who Justifies, I put a lot of work, a lot of effort.

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I think it's a 32 -page chapter. It's not the easiest read, but I would highly recommend it to you because that is a common argument.

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That is a common, common argument. Peter and James were the people who knew Jesus best, who spent the most time with Jesus.

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And if you read the writings of Peter and then you read the book of James, you find a message that's very, that mirrors exactly what

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Jesus said. Really, you know, when I've read Peter, of course, I doubt that he, in fact, if I recall, didn't something come up in that debate last year where he didn't believe that Peter had actually written?

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Or was it Paul in 2 Timothy? But again, the sources that he's using would say that Peter didn't write what's found in 1 and 2

52:08

Peter. So how do you even know? Again, the inconsistency, it's incoherent.

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You get to pick and choose, put together as you wish. It's Plato, form it into whatever you want. That's progressivist, biblical manhandling.

52:25

He says, for instance, faith is good works. Paul comes along and says, that's not true.

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If Paul is contradicting James, who spent his life with Jesus, is the brother of Jesus, grew up with Jesus, knew what

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Jesus taught, I would encourage us to side with James. Okay, so that's simplistic, childish misrepresentation of both

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James and Paul. It's not serious exegesis. This man can't do serious exegesis.

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He's demonstrated that for a long time. That's childishness.

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But, you have to know why. That means I would encourage everybody take the time to find out what

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James was saying in James 2 and the perfect harmony that exists between that and Ephesians 2, which he doesn't believe

53:16

Paul wrote either, come to think of it. Again, you cannot come up with any consistency from their side, because they can just take this and tear pages out and throw them out and you don't have anything left.

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So, you're the one that has to do the hard work of putting these things together and holding these things together, doing adult reading of the

53:40

Bible. Now, this is a different way of engaging Scripture. Ya think?

53:47

Ya think? See, he knows. He knows. He went to Moody. He's not stupid.

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So, he knows that what he's doing is hey, I'm to get pick and choose whatever

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I want to believe. It's fun. And people listen to me and pay my salary.

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That's what people are that are writing and speaking in the Bible. And as we engage with that contextual lens, the

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Bible actually becomes a much more interesting book. And a lot easier to understand in one regard, because you're not trying to make

54:25

Paul and Jesus and James and Peter say the same thing, because they don't. Catch that?

54:31

Did you catch that? He said it right there at the end. A whole lot easier to understand. We don't have to have it consistent.

54:39

We can just let it be a mass of self -contradiction, and that's so much easier.

54:46

There it is. There it is. That's the cheap, childish, easy way out.

54:54

You don't have to... You see, the problem is he wants to pretend like he's following Jesus, but he doesn't follow

55:04

Jesus' understanding and view of Scripture. And he never will.

55:13

Because Jesus said the Scriptures cannot be broken. Jesus affirmed

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Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. And that the Holy Spirit was involved in the production of the

55:25

Tanakh. And that means Leviticus 18 and 20 is still relevant.

55:32

That means the language of Leviticus 20 is what's behind Ars Inquieta in 1

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Corinthians 6. And 1 Timothy 1 where Paul is going down the

55:47

Ten Commandments and expands the sexual immorality commandment to include homosexuality.

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He's never going to accept that because he is as gay as they come. And so he wants to be a

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Christian gay guy. And this doesn't allow that.

56:09

So what do you gotta do? Shred it. And that's why he sits there at the end and goes, you know, this may not be...

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Yeah, because it doesn't make a lick of sense. And he cannot defend the

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Christian faith against any attacks at all. What so ever.

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Because he has no revelation from God. He cannot say, oh that interpretation is wrong.

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That assumes a objective revelation that contains and defines truth.

56:48

He doesn't have that. He doesn't have that. So there you go. That's how it works.

56:58

So but aside from that one example of, okay, we know

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Brandon Robertson, he's the one that did the Jesus was a racist thing, and he just flies off into NaNa land all the time.

57:15

This is how progressivist biblical how progressivist attacks upon biblical foundations gets used to mute the testimony of the church.

57:29

Because, hey, people outside the faith, they look at something like that, and well here's a guy he seems so reasonable and so nice, and just, you know, and he's sitting there with his legs crossed, and he's doing his thing, and you know, and that's what the society likes now, and that's what's good in society.

57:52

And he's just saying, we can do anything we want with the Bible. And he just sounds like he really knows.

57:57

I mean, he has all these degrees and things like that. And they go, and the guy over here is saying, actually scripture is very consistent here.

58:07

Scripture is consistent? Well, Brandon Robertson says it's not consistent. See, that's how it all works.

58:14

That's why, whenever you have congressional hearings and stuff like that, where people are seeking to testify to the truth of scripture, in will come the lesbian

58:31

ELCA woman priest, priestics, whatever, priestrics, with her rainbow stole to assure everyone that they don't have to worry about anything that that Bible -believing

58:43

Christian just said. That's, it's a plague upon our nation, it's a cancer, and it's part of God's judgment.

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It truly is. It truly is. So, there you go. So, anyway, wanted to run through that.

59:01

I am sure, to be honest with you, by next week, we'll probably have more

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Francis stuff to talk about. It's, you know, or maybe by Thursday, we'll have more

59:15

Francis stuff to talk about. I don't know. But, we appreciate you listening to the program, tuning us in today.

59:25

Oh, by the way, one last thing. Um, I didn't get a chance to download it, but Tim Bushong has finished the new

59:38

Radio Free Geneva theme, the new video opening for the, for Radio Free Geneva.

59:47

Um, wait a minute, that's not it. Well, he said to look at it in my email.

59:56

Oh, maybe it's down here. Oh, yeah, it's, I hate when it does that. Oh, here's the outro.

01:00:04

Well, I thought he said he was finished. Anyway, um, so, we're just gonna have to sit around and hope that maybe

01:00:14

Leighton Flowers will say something worthy of Radio Free Geneva. Oh, he just did! Oh, he did it again!

01:00:20

Oh, there's another one! I told, I told

01:00:25

Tim, I said, oh, great. Now I'm gonna have to wait 2 .34 microseconds for Leighton Flowers to say something worthy of doing a

01:00:33

Radio Free Geneva. Once you get this thing done. Don't worry, I'll let you know.

01:00:38

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, we will have, we've gotta let everybody know, watch the app.

01:00:45

We'll put it out there when we decide to do a Radio Free Geneva. Maybe we'll have something by Thursday. I don't know.

01:00:51

Um, but, um, I'm looking forward to seeing a video version of A Mighty Fortress.

01:00:58

This should be pretty epic. Um, and so he says it's done, and he said he had sent it to me, but I don't see it in my email box, so um, that says 2 .40

01:01:11

PM, so eh. Oh, there's the intro. Okay, good.

01:01:18

Alright, wow, look at all this stuff. Cool. Alright, so maybe we'll just have to dig something up for Radio Free Geneva just simply because now we've told you it's out there.

01:01:30

Just cause. Yeah, I mean believe me, there's plenty out there. Alright, thanks for watching the program today.