Open Phones on the Dividing Line!

Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. It's winter in Phoenix, finally. We didn't have winter in December. We didn't have winter in January. It was spring in February. Actually, it was spring in January and February.

And then Sunday, this big old cold front blew in, and I don't think there's any... I thought there might have been one. Let me see here real quick. Yeah, Monday. Monday, it might get up to 70, but it's...

Boy, we've got a 50 tomorrow, 50 on Saturday. Well, 58. It's in the 50s, but... It's Canada's fault. They sent this down here. That's what I hear. And unfortunately, I'm running the Phoenix 10K on Saturday.

I was really looking forward to... It's been so warm, then I wasn't going to have to get all bundled up at the beginning, and I don't run very fast at any time, but I certainly don't run very fast. It's going to be 36 at the start, and that's probably...

My hope was to PR my 10K, but I haven't been able to... I've been out of town. You're Mr. Freeze anyway. You should do just fine. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. My muscles do not work well below about 55 degrees.

It's ugly when you get old. So anyway, welcome to the program. A couple real quick things here, and then we're going to open the phones at 877 -753 -3341. 877 -753 -3341 is the toll-free phone number.

Media Criticism, Totalitarianism, and the Jeff Durbin Clip

Let's start off here. Yeah, let's go ahead and do this. I just saw this on Facebook. Now, I saw the hit piece on Jeff Durbin and Apollo Ghia from the British dude, Vice something, Vice... I don't know.

I don't watch that kind of stuff anyways. It doesn't matter to me. They exposed the spin and all the rest. It was pretty amazing. I've never had anyone want to do that with us. They don't want to come in and follow us around with television cameras and stuff like that.

And having watched what they did here, even though Jeff and them knew that this was probably what they were going to do, and have television avenues to respond by, still, it's just... there's just no shame.

These people just... which shouldn't surprise us. I mean, we watch CNN and MSNBC, and it's the same stuff. It's just all not only the fake news, but it used to be called yellow journalism, and it's very, very common.

Anyway, so on Tuesday night, Jeff responded to all that stuff and sort of took it apart. But they just posted a video. And yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll do what I can. Okay. All right.

Let's check out the video they just posted.

In all honesty, I think Jeff Durbin is one of three men who actually strike fear in me, as far as people who preach doctrine. The three people who strike fear in me are Jeff Durbin, Jim Jones, and David Koresh.

What are you doing? Watch buzz? Yeah. Thirsty? I guess so. Kool-Aid? Yeah, that sounds good. Good. Right on. All right. Yeah, this is actually good. It's not a lot of sugar in this one.

Next week with Jeff Durbin, the late night show with the unpopular opinion. Tuesday, only on Facebook Live.

That was really good. Oh, I can turn that off now. There we go. It worked. It worked. You're excited about that. Yeah, we've been trying, you know, the trials and tribulations of trying to get things to work right when you change everything and try to get it all to work together.

That was good. You got to admit, Jeff does comedy, you know, because he had to keep a straight face, you know, looking at him and going, thirsty, you know, and I wouldn't be able to do that. No, we're not even going to try that.

This doesn't happen. One other thing. Well, a couple of things I was just looking at. Yeah, man, it's happening, folks. LifeSite News has the story of, let's see, why don't they give his name? Anyways, a fellow up in Ontario, Ottawa, and evidently there's this Bill 163, it establishes bubble zones, all this kind of stuff, and a seven-year-old man arrested and charged under this new Bill 163.

Canada has no, well, First or Second Amendment, and as a result, you can really see what leftist totalitarianism looks like, but it won't stay north of the border. There are so many people who want the exact same thing happening here.

This is very similar, but not identical to what Tony Miano's facing, because this guy, all he was doing was wearing a sign that said, protect our charter rights. It wasn't even about abortion, and still, they don't care.

That's the whole point. It doesn't matter to them. Totalitarians will get you no matter what, and they don't care what you're actually saying, or why you're saying it, or what you're saying. Doesn't matter.

Totalitarians, totalitarians, they want you to think the way they think. That's their ultimate goal, and that's their prize. It is 1984. It is that room down at the end of the hall to break you and to make you think the way you need to think before they then get rid of you, because that's how totalitarians are.

If everyone thinks like me, then I am right, and that's what makes me happy. So it's here. It's not just coming. It's here, and it's an astonishing thing to see. 877 -753 -3341. One other quick thing, then a couple things on church history will go to your calls.

One thing I forgot on the last program. I don't know how I forgot it, because I thought for certain when I played the audio from the polemics report that I had selected this quote, and maybe I got distracted, didn't whatever.

But there's this one quote where in explaining some part of his diatribe, Jordan Hall says, and of course, James White does not want to be on record disagreeing with Michael Brown. And he just kept going after that.

He didn't even stop to realize the comedic content of that comment. Because as Michael himself will say, there's only one person he's debated more often than me, and that's Rabbi Shmuley Botiak, or Botiak.

I don't know. I've heard it both ways. Anyway, so we have hours and hours of not only video debate, but audio debate on his program, on this program, where we are disagreeing, where we are debating issues.

But I don't want to be on record disagreeing with Michael Brown. I mean, what color is the sky up in Montana these days? Because it certainly ain't blue. I was just like, really? You actually said that?

I never even recognized how laughable it was. But for some reason, I completely forgot it, and I didn't get a chance to mention it. So there I have added it in. Okay, real quick, because we've already got some callers.

Renaissance Humanism, Ad Fontes, and the Roots of the Reformation

I do want to try to get through some of the factors. So because after the factors, we get into some of the important people, such as, well, we will talk about... Man, looking at this, I've got this teeny tiny little section on Erasmus.

Obviously, this was written long before I read all that stuff around on Erasmus. There's so much we could talk about that. But we've got the corruption in the church, and then we get into the Reformation itself and into Luther.

So I want to get to it. But again, background issues. We'll probably just get one in today and then go to your calls. Remember, the background issues we already covered were the Avignon papacy, the Babylonian captivity of the church, the fall of Constantinople, the invention of printing in the West, anyways, with movable type.

And the next is vitally important, and that is the Renaissance. And as I said last time, the Renaissance contained... When the Reformation utilized Renaissance learning, and especially Renaissance humanism and the phrase ad fontes, back to the sources, many would argue that the Reformation, by so doing, ingested the seed of its own destruction.

They would look at the history of Europe and the rise of secularism and now the the absolute supremacy of secularism in the European Union and things like that. And I would say it all goes back to that.

The reason I'm not really so sure of that, the freedom that the Reformation brought to Europe certainly allowed that to rise, there's no question about that. But Rome has been just as infected as liberal Protestantism has been by these things.

And so, if Rome had remained supreme in Europe and there had been no division, which most people would say just simply could not have lasted much longer one way or the other, whether the Reformation was a religious Reformation, a gospel-based Reformation, or just simply a rebellion against Roman hegemony or something like that, it's all speculation.

It's really hard to say one way or the other. But there is no question that the Renaissance was vitally important for the Reformation to, again, have its success. This period of time was truly exceptional.

It really was. I mean, Western world was changing and changing rapidly. As you know, in 1492, Columbus, and we're not allowed to, I guess, I'm not really sure if we're allowed to talk about Columbus anymore in the United States.

In 1492, Columbus discovered the New World, the medieval world was coming apart at the seams. Very importantly, nationalism was on the rise. And you may say, well, what does that have to do with Reformation?

Just one quick illustration. One of the things that people really, really, you know, in the preceding centuries, if you were a Christian in what is today called Germany, you would have viewed yourself as part of the Holy Roman Empire, part of the church.

And then you might have had some connection to a particular tribe or something like that. But by the time of the Reformation, what you have is you view yourself as a German Christian. And so there was part of what allowed the Reformation to rise in Germany was there were a lot of German Christians that were just fed up with Italians running the show.

And their money from indulgences and their giving of tithes and so on and so forth, leaving Germany and going to build stuff in Rome. And with the rise of nationalism, you had people who were willing to sort of step back and sort of look at the church and go, you know, it looks like certain people groups are getting favored treatment here over against others.

And this was an issue. Travel was increasing after that medieval period. And with travel came knowledge of other places, other peoples, other ways of doing things. There was also tremendous concentration, it's really, really interesting, of very dynamic, important personalities that the world has rarely seen this type of concentration.

For example, in the year 1500, Leonardo da Vinci, not Leonardo DiCaprio, which is what most millennials think we'd be talking about. Leonardo da Vinci was 45 years of age. Christopher Columbus was also 45.

Machiavelli, 31. Copernicus, 27. Desiderius Erasmus, 33. Michelangelo, 25. Raphael, 17. Luther, 17. Zwingli, 17. And Calvin would be born in 1509. What an amazing concentration of personalities that you find in 1500.

There was also a shift in economic distribution. A middle class had formed under the influence of the earlier Crusades, as well as the Black Death. Because remember, we pointed out before that conservatively, very conservatively, the Black Death killed one out of every three people in Europe.

It could have been in many places, it was above one out of two. It was above 50%. What happens is if you've got X amount of money, and now you only have a third to a half as many people, most people have more money than they did before.

Now you end up with middle class workers who are necessary to have. When there's half as many workers, you get paid more. You've got to compete with somebody else who needs to have a wall built, and so you've got to pay more to get your wall built.

This resulted in a middle class, an increase in personal wealth, and hence banking was developed in Italy in the 1300s. Now corporations were being formed as well. Once you had a middle class, this led to a need for education, and so the founding of universities, all of this type of things going on in the Renaissance.

This emphasis, there was also a humanism, and you need to understand, humanism at that time did not mean what humanism means today. This would be what you might call a Christian humanism, in a sense, but it was part of the Renaissance movement.

The great cry of the scholar of this period, as I just mentioned, was ad fontes, to the sources. Instead of studying Peter Lombard's sentences and the medieval synthesis of this stuff, you want to go back to the sources.

You want to go back to the original languages, and hence the rise of the study of Hebrew and Greek, rather than just reading it in Latin. So it emphasized study, scholarship, reading the original languages.

It was not primarily a denial of the supernatural. These humanists were, by and large, believers in theism and the supernatural. You think of Erasmus, one of the great Dutch humanists who believed that the fleas that were bothering him during the summer while he was trying to do his work were actually demons.

So they weren't humanists in the modern sense of humanists. Now, the seeds of today's humanism were certainly present, but they had not yet sprouted in the way that they would. So we will look at an early example of this next time, and that is a fascinating individual by the name of Lorenzo Valla.

Lorenzo Valla and the discovery of anachronism and forgeries and all sorts of stuff like that. So that's what we'll look at when we look at Lorenzo Valla in the next time we pursue this. So there you go.

There's some church history thrown in there. And so with that, gotta be able to hear what people are saying, I suppose. Let's look at the numbers here,.

Lutheran Baptismal Regeneration and Sacramental Theology

And let's talk to Timothy. Hi, Timothy. I listen to your show quite a bit. I guess I've heard you address other forms of baptismal regeneration, but I've never heard you address which would be... I'm sorry?

...baptism as being salvific in nature. Well,.

Yeah, when you look at how Luther held these things together, this concept of infantile faith that he presented, it's pretty hard to see how you can look at Luther's utilization of biblical standards and exegesis on other subjects and then look at this and go, oh yeah, that's what the biblical writers were referring to.

They had this concept of infantile faith. I don't see it anywhere. I don't see any meaningful effort to try to establish it utilizing the same exegetical methodology that Luther would use on other subjects.

And I've often said, if you want to detect your traditions, then what you do is, when someone's hermeneutical methodology changes from what they normally would be doing, that's normally the indicator, that's the red flag of a tradition that they're attempting to hold onto, rather than deriving this from simply the text of Scripture itself.

And so I've always seen that insertion of this concept of infantile faith so that, on the one hand, you say, well, it's all of God, but it's still the mechanism whereby this takes place. But then you try to fit that together with the concept of election that's enunciated in the bondage of the will, and this is where it's plainly evident to me that John Calvin was a systematic theologian and Luther was a theologian of the heart, and he didn't mind these contradictions and these stresses and strains in his system.

That comes out as early as the Marburg Colloquy, when it's pretty obvious that in the actual encounter with Zwingli, Zwingli has the upper hand exegetically. When you're just simply pointing to the word SD on a tabletop, whether it was the wooden tabletop or the cloth or however it was, whether it was carved in, written in chalk, whatever the story about all that was, when you have to take that perspective rather than dealing with the objections that Zwingli brings against your position, that's just sort of how Luther was.

And as far as I can you then take that, where there wasn't a consistency, and then you filter that through the later formulations of Philip Melanchthon, who had differences with Luther in emphasis and things like that, and there's your problem.

So there's all sorts of different views. I've talked to some Lutherans who de-emphasize that concept with a strong emphasis on sola fide, and then others who go, no, no, this is the mechanism, and baptism is all God's action, but how do you actually say that baptism is all God's action, and is that really when regeneration takes place?

And I have addressed it in the past, and I've said I don't want to, there's this one Lutheran that just wants to debate baptism all the time, and I'm like, I'm not interested in it, because I've talked to numerous different Lutherans who have different views, and I don't think there's one view of Luther himself that can be absolutely just nailed down where you can go, here it is, and this is consistent with this, this, and this.

I don't think it's consistent with so much of the rest of what he said, but he didn't mind that. He saw that as an acceptable thing, and that's what makes it, you know, I've said to people before, when you get into conversations with Lutherans on, especially on the subject of predestination election, eventually what they're going to say to you is mystery, mystery, mystery.

It's mystery. And you can't debate when someone's willing to go, well, it's mystery, it's mystery, it's mystery. So that's why I don't really get.

Into it that much. I guess point two is, you brought up Luther himself a lot, and I'm sure you know, we, in the same way you hold to certain Reformed confessions, we hold to the Book of Concord, and that would be more of the, I guess, articulation of the belief, and yeah, I mean, I can see what you're saying with the contradictory.

I think the way Pieper's Dogmatic series points it out is it, and draws it out a little more and explains it a little more eloquently than I am, but more along the lines of paradoxical, and that's not necessarily in, it's holding attention, I guess you could say, rather than actually negating each other.

Yeah, that's the way, you know, you say it's attention, it's mystery, but what it means is it's really not something that is subject to meaningful debate, because you can't nail it down. If you start pushing on one side, then they shift the emphasis over the other side, and then you push on that side, it goes back to the other side, and it, I've just never seen anything accomplished by it, to be honest with you, which is one of the primary reasons we've just avoided getting into that particular mess, and have just simply said, look, when you look back at what originated all of this, it was fundamentally on Luther's part, I believe, an attempt to, I think his sacralism was central to the development of this concept.

If there had been a break with the state church, and there was a period of time in those early years when Luther recognized that without a free church, you'd never have a holy church, because if everybody who's baptized in a particular area is a part of the church, then you're just always going to have to have that element of people in the church that have no real interest in Christ.

You're going to have a mixed church in that way. And, but especially after the Peasants' Revolt in 1525, I mean, the door is completely closed on any thought of that at all. And so you end up with sacralism, and I, obviously, I think I've made this argument against my Presbyterian friends.

I think when you look, the Reformation was magisterial. It was a state church Reformation. So whether it was Luther, or whether it was Zwingli, or whether it's a second-generation Reformer in Calvin, these were state church actions.

And I believe, especially when you come to the doctrine of baptism and infant baptism, that that's central to an understanding of the development of the theology of all of these individuals. So you can look at Zwingli coming to the conclusion that, yeah, you know, I guess if I was consistent, I wouldn't be baptizing babies, but we have to, because that is, and so he's searching for a way to make that work.

And, you know, you can always find a way, as long as you're looking for a way, but that's a fundamental violation of the idea that these dogmatic teachings need to be, first and foremost, be apostolic in their origination.

And that's what raises the problem. You get to baptism, and the problem is you can go back to the early church and find all sorts of different views on the subject of baptism, and when it's supposed to be administered, and whether you should do it immediately, or whether you should delay it to the end of your life, and slow development of infant baptism.

It all depends on who you want to emphasize as to what you're going to come up with in the first and second centuries. It's a grab bag. There's no question, well, not just first and second, even into third and fourth, where you've got competing perspectives existing side by side.

And so, you know, if you want to go find somebody to substantiate your position, great, but when we look at the Reformation, we normally go, hey, here was the emphasis upon exegesis and consistency in the languages and all the rest of this stuff, and they didn't always consistently make that application.

And that's what's important about semper reformanda. There is a tension, to use that term, between saying I'm confessional, on the one hand. The problem is the Reformed confessions point us to semper reformanda, always reforming.

So I've met lots of folks, Reformed, Lutheran, whatever it is, that want to almost canonize the confessions and immediately break out in hives if there is any question whatsoever about the emphasis, the proper understanding of the framers, whatever it might be.

It's like, from their perspective, okay, that was it. That's the end. We don't change from there. Then the other side is semper reformanda, you know, that's the route that all the liberals take, and they can overthrow everything in the confessions because, well, we're always reforming.

The problem was semper reformanda was always reforming based upon the unchanging standards of the Word of God, assuming that we can grow in our understanding and that didn't freeze in place in the 16th century.

And so there's that tension, and it's seen, really, to this day, in Reformed circles, in conservative Lutheran circles. You'll find that stuff all along. So anyway, so there you go. There's a few thoughts on that, and so there you go.

Okay, Timothy? Okay.

All right. Thank you so much. I appreciate the time. All right, thank you. Have a good day.

Jesus, the Hour, and the Meaning of “Know” in Mark 13 and Matthew 24

All right, let's see here. Let's go up to Bryson. Hi, Bryson.

I know my original question was framed on Augustinian stuff, but I won't switch it. I know in a lot of your debates with Muslims, they like to bring up verses like Mark 13, 32, Matthew 24, 36, try to say that Jesus can't be God because he, quote-unquote, didn't know the hour.

But I wanted to know if you thought that Augustine's reply to that was suitable, where he says that no is not meant in the way of, you know, one plus one is two, so to speak, but no in more of an intimate fashion.

Are you familiar with that interpretation or not? I know that other verses are used in a way like that, instead of just an intellectual knowledge. I just wanted to know if you thought that that was an appropriate interpretation, or if Augustine is way off.

I'd want to read specifics to make a comment on specifically what you're referring to in Augustine. There are various ways that that text has been understood in the sense of viewing this as simply a statement that it is the Father's prerogative to set that date, and hence to know it in the sense of establishing it, that it was not the Son or the angels or any man, but the Father sets that particular date, and to use the term know in that sense.

You know, I get that. It's definitely true that it is the Father's prerogative to set that particular date and the decree of what's going to happen in time and how he's going to work these things out in the same way that it was the Father's prerogative to give a certain people unto the Son in John chapter 6, for example.

They were the Father's, he gives them to the Son, so they're taking different roles, and so I think that's an appropriate way of understanding it, but it didn't say set or appoint. He said no. So that's why I've always explained that text in the context of the functional incarnation of the Son, that is, the Son laid aside certain aspects of his divine prerogatives so that he could function as the Messiah, as the suffering servant, as the sacrifice for sin.

And so he laid aside his preincarnate glory, he doesn't walk down the road glowing at night with the glory of God, etc., etc., because if he did, he would not be able to function as intended as the Messiah, as the one who did the things that Jesus did.

So the knowledge of that particular hour is one of those things that would not be required for the Messiah to do the things the Messiah needed to do and therefore is voluntarily laid aside, which allows you to affirm that prior to the incarnation, this would obviously have been knowledge that the Son was intimately aware of and would be fully aware of now, in the same way that the Son was glorious prior to the incarnation and is glorious now in his exalted state.

So is it possible that the word no there has a little bit of a wider semantic domain, I suppose it's possible, but it's not really, from my perspective, useful in an explanatory fashion in debate, because the word just simply, I think you're stretching it too far.

To get there. Yeah, so I want to try to use an example, like Genesis 22, 12, where the angel of the Lord says to Abraham, now I know that you fear God, and Augustine says that it's possible to interpret these words of the angel to mean that Abraham's fear of God has been made known, and I think that that type of way balances, because there's verses where Peter says that.

So I think when you say that Jesus is not making the hour known, not that necessarily he doesn't know it as if he's ignorant, but that he's not revealing it, I felt like that would be something that's acceptable based on examples like Genesis 22, 12, or maybe even like 1 Corinthians 2, 2, where Paul says that he decides to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

I don't think that he was necessarily saying that he doesn't know anything literally except that, but it's just that way that he's trying to say, I'm revealing this type of information, so to speak. I don't know, like I said, it's open for interpretation, but I just kind of wanted to run that by you to see what your thoughts were on it.

Yeah, well, you know, both of those are interesting examples, and certainly the use of now I know in regards to the offering of Isaac would, you know, fit into that parameter, but normally in a debate, the other side isn't going to be interested in allowing for anything like that at all, so maybe it's just one of those difficult things along those lines, but that is an interesting perspective.

Okay, thank you for your time. All right, thanks. All right, bye-bye. Excuse me. Let's press on here and talk to Andy. Hi, Andy. How are you? Doing good.

Grieving, Evangelism, and Speaking of the Gospel to Family Members

First of all, thank you for the King James Only Controversy. It is a very good book, very good addition to my library, and your screen caller did a good job of tasking me with making this from an apologetic standpoint, so I think he deserves a raise.

Well, he's in charge of that stuff anyways, so I'm not sure how that's going to work.

Yeah, so I haven't changed my question, but I've merely adjusted it from a pastoral to an apologetic question. Sudden death can cause perspective to come into play, and so in my encounters with non-Christian family members, a lot of times they'll come from the perspective of, you know, if God was sovereign, therefore this is their equation.

So my question is, do I just stick to the preaching of the Gospel and reject that need that comes inside all of us to want to try to convince them, or do you see any avenue where you might could focus on a.

Particular part of the faith that might help them in that area? Well, the problem, as I see it, when you're dealing with family members in a death situation is you're dealing with individuals who are in grief, and Christians and non-Christians, everyone grieves.

Anyone who's old enough to love can grieve, but the difference in grieving for a Christian is that we are not those who grieve without hope. That issue of hope, a firm conviction of God's promises as they relate to the future that give purpose and meaning to life, the non-believer either does not have a hope or creates a false hope, but fundamentally without the resurrection of Christ, cannot grieve in hope.

And so we grieve differently, and as a result, people who are in the state of grief are really difficult to address and to work with. Grief can be a huge barrier to the presentation of the Gospel because grief is so irrational and it so exalts human emotion that obviously there are many people who will reject the biblical demands to repent and believe because their ultimate authority has become their own emotional experience, their own pain, their own grief process.

And so they are willing to dismiss the factual data of the Gospel message and its demands upon them in light of their emotional experience at that particular point in time. So it can be really hard to address those vital issues in the family.

That's really where we have to try to be addressing them before eternity comes knocking rather than afterwards, because in my experience, very often individuals grief will harden them in a rejection of the Gospel and things like that.

I'm not saying that you don't talk about the Gospel to someone who's in grief. I just simply am saying that if there had been a rejection of it beforehand, there may well be an even stronger rejection of it now, unless, you know, obviously we're dependent upon the work of the Holy Spirit of God.

And so, you know, if someone's blaming God, then obviously the only biblical response is to introduce them to the true God who actually does ordain all things and calls for our submission to Him and our faith in Him and our faith in His goodness.

And it seems to me that many modern men and women don't believe that they have to submit in faith, that they have to recognize that they're the creature and God is God in faith. And sadly, because of the evangelism of many churches, since people have been presented with that idea, they've been presented, God's lucky to have you, it's all up to you whether you come to believe in God.

That submission element of saving faith is not a part of many people's experience, and that's why so many people are willing to judge God's Word and to judge the Gospel, and I don't like that aspect of it, so I'm not going to believe that.

And it becomes a mess, and it becomes even more of a mess when you're trying to deal with someone in the grieving process. But fundamentally, you can't avoid what the Gospel says. If they're saying, well, I'm not going to believe in God because He didn't keep this from happening, you have to speak to issues of justice and God's, the fact that God is God and you are not, and that can be extremely difficult for someone who is in that particular position.

But the Spirit can do anything and make application to anyone, and many times in history, God has used grieving as a mechanism of breaking someone of their pride and their rebellion, they get to see their own mortality.

That's what bugs most people about the grieving process, is they don't want to admit it because it's very selfish, but what really, really bothers them about it is it has brought into sharp focus the fact that they are not going to be living forever, and in fact, death is waiting for them right around the corner, and that's a very uncomfortable thing for a lot of people to deal with who have not the promises of the Gospel that they've already embraced.

So, just some thoughts there, I'm not sure if any of that was.

Even relevant to what you're asking. Yes, sir, and what you said last there was right there on point about the perspective, because it sounds like the prescription you're aiming towards is, you know, you rejoice for those who rejoice, weep for those who weep, and as God moves, if the opportunity is there, you can present those things to a non-Christian family member, but in times of grief, they may not be at a point to move yourself out of the way and move as God moves.

Well, yeah, and you gotta also remember that the grieving process is much longer than most people assume that it is. The grieving process doesn't even start for most people until after the time period that a lot of us Americans, even American Christians, think.

It can be at its deepest and darkest six months down the road, and, you know, we think give somebody two weeks off from work, and they're going to be fine. They haven't even started grieving yet. So, there's a lot of massive misunderstanding of the grieving process that I tried to sort of address briefly in my.

Book on that subject, and no one knows I wrote. Okay, well, I appreciate it, brother. God bless you.

Thank you, you too. Bye-bye. All right, 877 -753 -3341. I'm not sure this is a topic down my lane or not, but let's talk with Clayton. Hi, Clayton. Well, the topic.

Worries me, but let's see what you got. I have a friend that I got saved like two years ago, and this kid, he was my friend before I got saved. Then I got saved, and I found out that his family has now left the church that I'm going to now and teaching, they call it Mid-Acts Distanciation Week.

Yeah. And I recently, I've been trying to study up on this stuff, but I couldn't find a lot of resources online, and I just met with the guy's dad, and we had a little debate. I was wondering, have you ever encountered this stuff, and how would you tackle it?

I found some proof texts, but they're not concrete enough to where, is there anything that.

You could think of that would be good? Yeah, it's a popular, well, popular, I mean, it's rather small movement, obviously. It is not something that I've gotten into. I'm sure there are resources out there.

I'm sorry, I can't direct you to them. It's just, it's so, the individuals who embrace this cannot have any concern whatsoever about the history of the church, because it is so unknown until modern times.

No one had come up with this idea. It utterly destroys the consistency and unity of New Testament scripture. Yeah. There's certainly nothing that is even suggested that I've ever seen that even, it is just so far removed from any of the great theologians of the past, of any stripe at all.

I mean, you can throw all the Catholics and the Orthodox and the Protestants and everybody into a big old pile, and they'll all look at this and go, what? You know, it is just so off the wall that you really have to be utterly disconnected from the history of the church and from, well, from the Reformation and everything else.

You just sort of have to think the church started about 50 years ago to come up with this kind of stuff. And it is, it's interesting how many people I find that have some really serious theological gospel issues, and they'll embrace this because it really opens the door, because you sort of get to pick and choose what is and what is not binding scripture anymore.