Another Potpourri Show!

Welcome to the Dividing Line. It is a new week. Somehow, the nation has made it through. One more weekend, 64 shot, 12 killed in Chicago over the weekend. I don't know about New York or any of the others, but I do know that despite that going on, the anarchists and the Marxists were trying to tear down another Christopher Columbus statue, because that's far more important than doing anything about all the black lives being taken in Chicago by other black lives.

But that's America today. Welcome to it. And those of you outside of the United States, I guess things aren't quite as crazy. I think things have calmed down a little bit in other places. We had that stuff going on in London, even though London riots I noticed are sort of British.

I mean, I think they take time out for tea and things like that because it's London. What are you going to do? You have to have to observe some level of propriety because you're in the United Kingdom.

I can't believe I did not play this all last week. You had two programs last week and did not play this one minute video that we dropped, and I'd like to make sure it gets back out there. I don't know.

I just grabbed it off YouTube. It's on the front page of the website. Really smart people have people who think about what day of the week it is and stuff like that. We dropped this on a Friday afternoon, which is the same time the politicians drop the stories of their dirty laundry getting exposed.

In other words, the worst possible time is, of course, when we drop this. That's just how we are. I don't know. A fellow over in my ancient homeland of Scotland took some of the comments I made right here on the program.

They were not rehearsed. They were not written out. This was just a part of my normal teaching schedule. It's exactly one minute, which is interesting. That might be a commentary on the attention span of the average Western individual now, if you go past a minute.

It's even worse. I've told you, I've been on CNN. I remember when I did the thing on the Dr. Drew show on transgenderism. The producer came in and talked to us in the green room beforehand and let us know that, basically, if you go more than 12 seconds with any one individual speaking, people might change the channel.

I can think of numerous important sentences that take more than 12 seconds, but that's what the media is like. If the same person is talking for 12 seconds, the brain-addled Westerner starts looking for something else to watch.

But anyway, here is why do lives matter? This was important. This was part of, I really do think that in light of the Black Lives Matter movement, that when we speak to people, I was going to say in the wider society, but within the church, that we need to focus the attention, remembering that as distracted and as deceived as the person we're talking to might be, they are still made in the image of God.

Therefore, you can appeal to that image, and in so doing, you will be able to establish a point of contact. We'll talk about this a little bit later. There is no point of contact in the myth of neutrality.

There is no neutrality. They're not neutral, and neither are you. Neither one of you can pretend to be that way. Honestly, they may pretend to be neutral, but they are not. And so what we do is we get their attention, and we focus upon the word matters.

Black lives matter. What does matters mean? What does anything matter? This helps get past a lot of the stuff that gets in the way. So that's what I was talking about. And it's one thing with the silly-looking old Scottish fellow with the scruffy beard sitting here saying it.

It's totally, completely different when you combine music and images, and that's how you communicate with folks today, really. That's how you do it. And that's what this is about. So are you ready? All right, here we go.

Do you believe black lives matter? Focus on the word matters. What do you think the word matters means? You're saying black lives matter. What does matters mean? I believe that black lives matter because black lives are created by God, who defines what matters.

If you're saying the government can determine what lives matter, what matters comes from the government. Man, that is dangerous. That killed 150 million people just last century. Did you know that? I can say black lives matter, and Asian lives matter, and white lives matter, and Hispanic lives matter, and fill in all the other colors of the rainbow, because I have a reason for understanding the word matter.

I have a creator, and in fact, he's revealed himself in such a way that I can say lives matter because Jesus, the incarnate son of God, gave his life so they would matter. Wow. I mean, right at 60 seconds, and gets the message across so much better than I did.

And I did it, yeah. So yeah, that gives you an idea. We need about three of those a month, four of those a month would be great. Of course, that requires me to say something worthwhile at least once a week.

That's the challenge there. Because like I said, I don't know honestly that I had even thought about what I was going to say before that program. I don't think I had that laid out. There's a lot of times that what happens on this program, just it happens on the program.

A couple of other things before we dive into some topics. I guess I might as well do this while I've... Oh yeah, didn't see I brought him in? Oh, I'll pick him up here. So some of you will recall that at the G3 conference this year, I preached from Isaiah chapter six.

And I've got a bunch of gold glitter all over these right now because I've been working on getting the pages separated, which is a monumental task and much more so with something this big. I preached from Isaiah chapter six and what was somewhat unusual about the sermon was I preached from the text of the Greek Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament.

The reason being specifically there were a couple of interesting variants, meanings of words that were chosen in the Greek translation that's picked up on in the New Testament and things like that. And so it wasn't meant to be a trick, but especially in light of the fact that the New Testament utilizes the Greek Septuagint more often than it does the Hebrew by a long shot.

It just was something that helped to bring in some of the background. And very often, even when we bring in that background, we do it in such a way that it's like, oh, okay. Yeah. And it's not memorable.

People don't necessarily pick up on it or realize why it's important to things like that. So at G3, of course, thankfully that was just before coronavirus hit. We had a lot of folks in their booths and they were displaying stuff and that included post-Tenebrous Lux and Jeffrey Rice.

Wow, I've really gotten a lot of gold out of this. And so sometime last year, I had sent both of these to Jeffrey and can you believe it? At one point, I actually asked him if it was possible to bind them together.

Now that I look at them, that was pretty stupid. But after that sermon, I specifically decided, you know what? I left the one volume. I left this volume with him, sent this volume back. He had sent both of them.

I had sent these, gone through the mail. I don't know how many times. These are just the Hendrickson Reader's edition of the Greek Septuagint. So if you're wondering what these are, there is a two volume.

I think they have it in hardback and they also have it in a leatherette type edition. They are not, you do not have page edging. Look at the page edging. There's almost mirrored. There you go. Page edging.

That was done by post-Tenebrous Lux. But these are the two volumes and you'll notice what we did with them is we just did the two volumes, mirror images of each other. So this one has blue with the gray spine.

This has gray with the blue spine. The ribbons are likewise mirror images. So you just have the two volumes. And so Genesis is here and through the Psalms and the prophets are in this one. I mean, this is a huge volume.

How many, I don't know, how many pages is just this one? This is nearly 1800 pages on this side. And I think this one's probably about 16. Yeah, right around, just under 1600 on the other one. So you're looking at a big pile of leather there.

And so we came up with, you know, what to put on the spine and it's got the nice Cairo on the front that actually he designed off of the Cairo that I have. And so, yeah, it's, nobody has anything like that.

I could tell you some people that have commented on it, big names, big names, but I won't throw names around today. But I did send the pictures of them to some fairly well-known individuals who let's just say have large personal libraries.

And they're like, I may have to give that man some business. I said, you might. So on Sunday, on this coming Sunday, Jeff decided that we've got a lot of new folks at church right now. And I think part of that's because for a while there were only a few churches meeting in the Valley.

We never closed down and who knows that that won't become the case again in the future. There's absolutely no reason for it. The numbers are very clear about that, but everybody keeps moving the goalpost and it's not November yet.

So do not underestimate how far people of a certain political persuasion will go between now and November to guarantee a certain result in November. Just don't underestimate it. I'm sorry. Yeah, the coronavirus will be cured on November 4th.

Well, that only if one side wins. The other side wins. Right, right. Yeah, that's exactly right. Anyway, um, so it's a neat, you distracted me there. Um, so there have been so many people, new people that we decided that it'd be good to do a quick series on the doctrines of grace, just to remind people of where we stand and why we would use a, the London Baptist Confession of 1689, for example, why we have the Baptist Catechism, Keech's Catechism, that we go over in every service.

It's become known as Pastor James' mini-sermon, is when we cover the catechism in a little section called, we call Voices, where we go over, for example, the Voices section this past Sunday, since we were doing baptisms, was Jerome's commentary on Matthew 28 and go teach and baptize.

And it was interesting that even Jerome says you have to believe before baptism has any meaning, um, for you, uh, which was, uh, an intriguing, uh, commentary to, to have. But anyway, so next Sunday, uh, Jeff has done the introduction, Sovereignty of God, and then did Total Depravity on Sunday.

And so I'm going to step in this coming Sunday, and I'm going to work on some of the key texts on the subject of compatibilism, and that is the relationship of the divine decree of God and the will of man.

And so when you think about it, the, the, the normal three, I'll probably expand upon it, but the normal three that are utilized, the three classical texts would be Genesis chapter 50 with the, um, issue of Joseph and his brothers and Joseph's recognition of the sovereignty of God in light of the evil actions of his brothers.

Then of course, Isaiah chapter 10 and God's utilization of the people, the Assyrians, to bring about his punishment of the rebellious covenant people. And then his punishment of the Assyrians on the basis of their acting upon the desires of their heart.

And then of course, Acts chapter four and the early church's prayer that recognizes that what took place, the combined activities of, of the Jewish leaders and Herod and the Romans together, Pilate, that all of them were working under the sovereign hand of God and accomplished that which he had predestined to take place.

And yet they recognize, of course, the full responsibility of all those individuals. This is compatibilism. And so what that means is I didn't bring my, I guess I could have grabbed this one. You know, we could have just grabbed the, uh, the NL, the, uh, Tyndale Greek New Testament, also another Jeffrey Rice Rebind.

We'll put that on top of that there. And, um, so I could do, I could do that. Um, yeah, you know, I, I still think the font's a little larger on the NA28. I really, I really think it's still a little bit larger.

I mean, this is very readable, but I think the, I think the large print NA28 is just a little bit, a little bit bigger. Oh, large fonts matter. That's obviously something, a comment made by an older person, uh, in the other room.

Um, large fonts matter. Um, so I'm going to walk into the pulpit next Sunday with those three volumes. Um, it doesn't have, it's a decent size pulpit, but it's not the biggest pulpit I've ever stood behind, ever stood behind is John MacArthur's in Southern California.

And I've told you before, I mean, you could, I could have all, I could have all three of these open with room left over up there. It is, it is meant to be able to spread out a tremendous amount of, of material.

Uh, but I'm gonna have a little trouble. It's, it's not gonna be, it's not that big, but I'm gonna preach from both volumes of the Septuagint and my NA28, uh, Sunday afternoon at Apologia because those three texts are in those three different volumes.

So why not? Um, it'll, it'll be great, but my thanks to Jeffrey Rice. Um, you know, I push, I push the brother. And if you're thinking the same thing, just let me warn you ahead of time that wasn't cheap.

Okay. That's a lot of work. You got those, those things are huge. Those are, those are massive. Um, and the page edging or something that big. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, just, just let you know.

I mean, he's, he's, he's good. In fact, I just, I just saw that the, uh, spines, the, uh, I forget what you call those things on the spine, but they line up perfectly, even with the Tyndale Greek New Testament between each one.

So it must use the same pattern or something like that, uh, to make that, uh, to make that work like that. That's interesting. Um, so anyway, uh, y 'all have, some of you have saw the pictures. He takes really great pictures of his work too.

Um, so some of you saw when it was posted and I posted the material. And of course other people were going, well, we know who's that is. It's like, yeah, we do. I had a friend said, you get all the nice toys and I'm like, well, all right.

I won't, I won't argue that one. I wouldn't argue that one, but, um, yeah. So I'm looking forward to Sunday when we cover those texts and getting to, uh, juggle, uh, that massive pile of, um, of leather on the, uh, on the pulpit, that'll be something else.

Speaking of Sunday, some of you saw, uh, I'll just be brief, but, uh, some of you saw some of the pictures that were posted. Uh, of course I've got videos. Um, but we had a baptismal service on Sunday and, um, oh, um, uh, where, uh, where would that be?

Um, how would I grab that real quick? Uh, there is a video. Um, and if my, for some reason I don't, there's, I guess I've just gotten so used to everything being, uh, uh, being, uh, connected, uh, and there's, there's some disconnection.

There it is. Um, I knew about this sometime. Um, it was last, it was recorded last week. And the reason I know that is, um, I'll, I'll play us here for you in a second, but, uh, the young man sitting over on the right-hand, uh, side, uh, this is, uh, John and Nicoletta Wibrew and their, their boys, Seth and Luke.

And Seth is on the right-hand side and he actually has a, he actually says something in the video very clearly. He's a precocious young man. Like I was, let's put it that way. And, um, so I had gone over and talked with him right after they recorded this.

Um, and on Sunday night, I got to baptize Seth and, uh, two of my granddaughters, uh, Cadence and Clementine. And of course, uh, Clementine being the drama queen that she is, uh, thought the water was rather cold.

And so there's a rather classic picture of her with her mouth wide open going, um, when we got into the baptistry, but, uh, that was of course a, a tremendous, uh, uh, honor as well. Some people knew about that.

I didn't talk about beforehand, just, you know, there's weird people who watch this program, unfortunately. So it was best not to, but, um, uh, Nicoletta is my, uh, chiropractor. And I've said many, many times before, she's the best chiropractor I've ever been to.

I've been to many. I have many to compare with, uh, from around the United States and outside the United States. And, uh, most of you know that I'm extremely physically active. Um, currently on track, thanks to the coronavirus, um, currently on track for 9 ,000 miles on bike this year, uh, with about 425 ,000 feet of climbing.

That's a lot of time. Uh, but I'm also rowing and I'm running and my I'm I'll be 58 in December, rushing towards 60 quickly, beat your body up. Couldn't do it. Uh, if Nicoletta did not every once in a while, um, put everything back where it's supposed to be, especially my neck, which I can tell right now is out.

Uh, so I need to be going and visiting the family again sometime in the very near future. Um, so, uh, but she's been my chiropractor for 10 years. And so I was, I've known the kids since the time they were born, even before they were born for that matter.

And, um, so their story has been very, very well known to me. The Wybrews are now part of, uh, apology at church as well. And in fact, uh, were brought forward, uh, with the new members, um, Sunday night too.

It was a long service. I think I got out of there a little before seven. We started at four. So that gives you the idea. Uh, but you got a lot to cram in there and that's what we did. So, uh, they put together this great video.

Well, uh, Marcus Pittman did the video. Um, but, uh, a couple of, uh, folks from the church are going to be doing videos because we have a number of children in the congregation that have special needs.

And these days, very often those special needs are discernible in the womb and hence automatically, uh, the issue of abortion comes up. So here is the Wybrews story. I thought I'd share that with you.

Uh, and also, uh, the reality that young man on the right, um, was one of the folks I got to baptize, uh, Sunday night. So here's, here's their story. This is a Luke Elijah. Uh, he has hydrocephalus. We chose not to murder our son and chose life.

So we found out that we were pregnant with Luke when Seth was two and we were so excited. We did an ultrasound and we found out that his cranial cavity, it just appeared empty. So what's wrong with Luke is that he, he doesn't have a, the normal tube in the spinal cord that drains the fluid that's inside the brain.

So the brain kept swelling and swelling and swelling. And so his head kept getting larger and larger. And, uh, when he was a baby, it was the size of an adult head. I remember seeing the ultrasound. I remember like looking at it and just seeing black where you should normally see brain.

Uh, and I remember that we got transferred to a perinatologist and the perinatologist said that the likelihood of him surviving this pregnancy, uh, was low. We were told that we were still within our rights to have an abortion at his gestational age.

You know, just cause our baby's sick doesn't mean that we're going to have an abortion. We knew that it was going to be a hard road ahead. And I read statistics that one out of every 19 babies with Luke's diagnosis is murdered.

I was just so sad that they wouldn't even give him a chance for life. Well, the fact that they were just ready to, to immediately offer that as the only option. We were already so strong in our faith that the road, uh, to the Lord and our, on our knees was already paved.

And so when we came across this calamity, we were already set that we're obviously not going to terminate the life of our child and, uh, kill them. We were strong in our faith and we were trusting the Lord.

But I remember the first thing that when we had a private moment to talk, John said something special that I don't think I'll ever forget. Yeah, that's insane. We were, it was at our other house. We were in the bedroom together, just kind of taking in the news.

And I remember just putting my head on, on my wife's abdomen and just saying to Luke, you know, you have a home here. You know, that was precious to my heart to hear my husband say that. He learned to hold up his head at 10 months.

He learned to crawl at 22 months. And then he learned to walk at, uh, he's only been walking for a month now. And, uh, that's he's a three years, six months. So the Lord has obviously been favorable to us.

This is our son, Luke Elijah, and he was born with hydrocephalus. And when given the option to murder our son, we chose life.

You're my brother. We can't do abortion because abortion really is murder because God said so.

So there you go. Uh, I'm getting up. I'm going to tell you, um, Luke's, uh, Luke's smile will absolutely light up a room. Uh, everyone who's met him says the same thing. And, uh, it was just about a month ago that all of a sudden I walk in and he's just standing there.

And he's cause up till then he was, he would go on his knees just all over the place. Uh, but now he stands up and is walking around and we'll talk to you. And, um, yeah, he's obviously defied a lot of the odds and, uh, uh, but is a wonderful young child.

So, um, that was, uh, that was pretty neat Sunday night, uh, for that to happen as well. I guess I might as well transition from that, uh, into, uh, one of the stories that, um, I just happened to see, um, right before.

Oh, great. As soon as I do that, uh, it, it, for some reason updates the, uh, the screen, but, um, right before the program started, it was talking, there was a article that has now of course disappeared.

That's how social media works is you have something queued up and then you take a breath and everything disappears. But Planned Parenthood is removing of New York is removing the name of Margaret Sanger, uh, from their buildings, uh, because of her connection to eugenics.

Uh, yes, yes. And there it is, man. That was 34 minutes ago. Planned Parenthood, New York chapter announces founder Margaret Sanger over racist eugenics. Now it is obviously a wonderful thing when Planned Parenthood is willing to admit what Margaret Sanger really was, but if you're still doing what Margaret Sanger designed you to be doing to accomplish the same ends, that's not repentance.

Okay. That's not a change. That's not taking a name off while still doing what your founder wanted you to do in murdering black babies who she, she thought were subhuman, who she thought, you know, her whole idea was to stop black breeding.

That was her, that was her shtick. That was her thing. That's why Planned Parenthood clinics focus on minority neighborhoods and especially black neighborhoods. That's the reality. That's, that's the fact.

That's not, that's not even debatable. It's just the re that's the truth. Sad that we live in a day where so many people don't even think there is such a thing as truth, but anyway, that's, that's the case.

So they're still there and they're still murdering the black babies. So take the name of the eugenicist off the building, but still kill the babies means something. If you want the very definition of the emptiness of virtue signaling, that's what it is.

That's, that's the emptiness of virtue signaling. We're going to keep doing what the eugenicist told us to do because we make money doing it, but we'll take her name off of the building to try to look like we're virtuous.

You know, the sad thing is virtue is a beautiful word, but virtue assumes the existence of a standard giver. You don't get to decide what virtues you are going to display and what you're not. I mean, this is, this is a great example of Planned Parenthood wanting to have the virtue credit of going along with a current cultural moment.

You know, they've been promoting the Black Lives Matter stuff all over the place, Planned Parenthood. And every time they do it, there are 10 ,000 pushback tweets going, you people are a bunch of hypocrites.

Well, you can't be a hypocrite if there is no objective morality, because if there is no objective morality, you just get to choose what rules you follow anyways. What does it matter? And so they get to get the virtue credit of doing something, doesn't matter whether it accomplishes anything, it's just doing something today, you know, just tear down that statue.

What does that really accomplish? Nothing, but it, that's, that's how virtue is done today. But then they stay open in the black neighborhoods and continue killing the black babies. Oh, okay. Yeah. I see how that works.

Great. So yeah, Planned Parenthood's New York chapter announces founder Margaret Sanger over racist eugenics, but they don't close their doors. That would be the only meaningful response to a recognition that, hey, you know what?

Our whole purpose is really racist eugenics. So maybe we should stop murdering black babies. Maybe you should just stop murdering all babies. Maybe that would be the first step of repentance. Yeah. That would be the first, first step of repentance.

This is true. So that raises another issue. Over the weekend, representative John Lewis passed away and we are definitely seeing part of the impact of the woke movement, even within the church. In our society today, a man's consistent support of the murder of the unborn is now considered to be a virtuous thing.

Even if that runs directly 1000 contrary to in his earlier life, seeking in a nonviolent fashion to bring about civil rights, which I remind you, this is the amazing thing. When the civil rights laws were passed, they were passed by Republicans over democratic objections.

And yet he died as a Democrat. And you might say, well, things have changed. What specifically? I mean, things have changed in the sense of what you need to do to get and maintain power politically. But sadly, what that has translated into is whatever gets votes, do it.

It doesn't matter whether you have principles at all. The issue of principle is really what is to be brought out here. And amongst Christians, amongst Christian leaders today, there is great eulogizing of the man's civil rights works, but many of them will not even mention his consistent support of the very eugenics movement that Margaret Sanger was the leader of in destruction of black babies, which is self-destruction in that context.

Not allowed to talk about those types of things. You're not allowed to allow that to be a part of the analysis of the man's life. But what's interesting is the reverse of that when you talk about historical figures.

So today, you have someone pass away and their support two months ago, being a part of blocking passages of bills, anti-infanticide bills and things like that, put that away. Because years ago, he did this good thing.

And so you put that away. But when we talk about historical figures, George Washington's got to go because of his owning slaves. So where's the balance point there? Because if you're going to say, well, he was a man of his time today.

Why can't you say someone was a man of their time back then? And is there not a huge difference in the level of knowledge and understanding today than there was in the past in the commensurate issues?

I mean, there is no question biologically, scientifically, philosophically, logically, there is no question of the humanity of the pre-born child. We know more. The womb is now transparent. The womb is transparent.

Up until only a brief number of decades ago, the child developed almost completely in darkness, other than spontaneous abortions, miscarriages, things like that, where you could see the results. Child development was not well known to us.

But now we have more knowledge than ever. And all of the stupid theories about go through a fish stage and then a reptile stage, all the rest of that stuff, we all know that's a bunch of hooey now. It's completely false.

We recognize what's going on in the womb now. So there's absolutely no defense to be offered. That's why when you hear the debates taking place in our society now, you don't hear debates from, you don't hear reasoning from the abortion side.

You hear slogans, you hear deflections. Let's change the subject. Let's talk about women's rights. In almost anything that you read, there will be nothing about the child at all. And because they know that's a non-winner, that they know, especially since ultrasounds started appearing on refrigerator doors, that that is a non-winning direction to go.

You've got to distract the mind from the actual action that's taking place. You've got to. There's no other way to do it. No other way to do it. So yeah, that has shown, I think, shown a bright light on what's going on in the church in regards to what we can and cannot talk about and what will be said about people as well.

Now, switching topics here, this is really interesting. Let me see if I can get back to it here. Yeah, here we go. In years past, and I, okay, in decades past, and in fact, back in the olden days, when on Saturday afternoons, a group of us would get in our cars, or I remember a number of times, get on our motorcycles and ride out to a, oh, I will forget this.

Hold on a second. I did say I would reprise a story I've told, and I will forget if I don't do so, and I apologize. But J .I. Packer went to be with the Lord this past weekend, and at the age of 93 years of age, and I don't have any J .I. Packer stories.

The only contact I had with Dr. Packer was he was probably the most prolific book endorser, endorsement writer of all time. I wonder if he doesn't hold the record for the number of what we call blurbs that he wrote for books, but he did it differently.

In 19, it'd be late 94, early 95 would be the time frame, I think. I had finished the King James only controversy. I've told the story before that back then Bethany House Publishers was just Bethany House.

It wasn't owned by some big conglomerate at that time, like it's owned now by Baker, and the King James only controversy has a fair amount of Greek in it, textual critical symbols, and so what happened is for the first edition, Bethany House purchased for me a laser printer, the Laser Master 1000, and I typeset the first edition.

I literally typeset the first edition myself. Nobody else did it. I had to format it. I had to get, I was using, did I use Ventura Publisher for that? I think I used Ventura Publisher for that, and so I had to print out the initial drafts for people to read, to send to people, and one of the people, I don't remember who had the connection, somebody at Bethany House did, I don't know, but one of the people that the manuscript was sent to was J .I. Packer, and when I got a response from Dr. Packer, it included a couple of pages of typographical or formatting errors to be fixed, or just editorial changes as far as a grammar issue or a citation issue.

Now, you don't, there's almost nobody who reads something that you're sent that closely. I've caught a couple things, but when people ask me to read books, I almost always have to say the only way I can get to it at all is if I can get an electronic version, and I'll listen to it, and even then, I may hear something while I'm out on the bike and go, that didn't sound quite right, but I'm listening to a file.

It's not like I can go back and find that very easily. I've caught a few things, and I've suggested a few things, but nothing like the way J .I. Packer went through, and I've talked to some other people who likewise published a work, and J .I. Packer read it and provided corrections, and you knew that when he wrote what he wrote, that he knew what the book was about.

There are a lot of blurb writers that read a few sentences on one page, another page, and straight on through, and then write something up, and that's what you expect, but not J .I. Packer, no, and so that was the only interaction that I had with him was long, long, long ago, because I'm not a big conference goer.

I'm not a big conference. The big, big, big, big, big conferences other than G3 are just scared to death of me, so I think G3 might be scared of death of me too, but I've got a track record, so I'm good.

So anyway, the only other story is a story that I've told before, and it's actually an R .C. J .I. Packer story, and it comes to the same time period. It's Denver 1995, summer 1995. I think it was July, I think.

There used to be a big, big, big thing called the Christian Booksellers Convention, CBC, Christian Booksellers Convention, and some people called it the Jesus Junk Convention, because this was before all the online stuff started.

This was before Amazon. If you wanted books back then, you went... CBD was around. Christian Book Distributors was around, but Christian Book Stores were still a thing. They're really not a thing anymore at all.

Are there any in the Valley at all? I don't even know where they are. Yeah, I don't even know where they are. I've lost track of completely... Used to have Berean Christian Book Stores, and there was one down on 7th Avenue and...

Yeah, South of Indians. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't remember what it was either now. That's right. What was that? Jesus Chapel? That was called Jesus Chapel. Yeah, yeah. Oh man, see? That has been so long since any of those stores even existed.

It was a different world. It was sort of fun going to those places. It's just totally different than just click and it shows up in Postman. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, what was I talking about? You'd have these conventions, and that's when...

It wasn't just the books. It was all the trinkets and other stuff that those stores would sell. The King James Only Controversy had come out, and of course, it was extremely controversial, and was doing fairly well.

It made quite a splash. A lot of Christian bookstores were really interested in it because they had King James Only people coming in all the time, and they wanted to be able to go, ah, just read that book type of situation.

Bethany wanted me there in case there were people coming up. They didn't want to have to answer any of the questions, so they flew me up to Denver. Guess who else was there? R .C. Sproul was there. John MacArthur was there.

I remember the book on Sola Scriptura. This one here had come out too, and there was a book signing with those. It just so happened that me and a group of a couple of other younger guys caught R .C. in one of those big...

You know how convention centers have these big, huge hallways? You're supposed to be moving lots of people in and out. We caught R .C., and this was around the time of the Evangelicals and Catholics Together.

That was 94. You may recall that ECT, they had the big thing where they got everybody together, and MacArthur, and Sproul, and D. James Kennedy, and all that kind of stuff. So that was on everybody's mind, and I was already involved in doing ministry to Roman Catholics and had started doing debates.

We were about five years in at that point, so I already had at least a few Roman Catholic debates under my belt at that point. Well, we ran to R .C. Sproul, and so we stopped him, and we said, Dr. Sproul, Dr. Sproul, we've just got to ask you.

We know you really like J .I. Packer, and we really like his stuff, too. Of course, probably the single most read presentation, and one of the most powerful presentations of particular redemption, limited atonement, is Packer's introduction to Owen's book, The Death of Death and Death of Christ.