Cruise Details, Joe Biden, Tim Keller

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:32

Greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White. It is a Tuesday, and it is getting toward the end of the month of January, if you can believe that.

00:41

We're almost a twelfth of the way through 2020. How does that happen?

00:46

Well, it happens faster and faster as you get older and older. Speaking of getting older and older, we are going on a cruise this year at the end of September, and I guess

01:04

I'll let the experts explain to you what happens at the end of the month.

01:10

I've talked to a lot of you folks, and there are a lot of people who just go, oh man, believe me, I'd be there in a second.

01:18

I had one young fella. One young fella said, well, she said yes, we're gonna get married, but that means

01:26

I don't get to go, so I'm not sure what to do. I'm like, priorities there, son.

01:32

Anyway, so hopefully I'm going to be joined here in a moment. You have everything queued up there?

01:39

All right. So let's bring Mr. Alaska himself onto the program today.

01:49

Right now, all I have is a frozen screen. Do you have more than that? Oh, there we go.

01:55

He's just asleep? Okay. Hi, Mike. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been 28 years.

02:01

This feels like a regular confession, because I can't see you, and you can only see me, so I'm getting flashbacks here.

02:08

Well, we don't want you to have any flashbacks to such negative experiences as that. But anyways, because I have many other negative experiences

02:16

I could remind you of. Yes, we do have that on one another. We do, we do.

02:21

I mean, I notice you're up... I notice you're up on the second floor there.

02:27

I have recollections of your second floor apartment early on. Are you doing all right, young man?

02:32

Anyway, let's not... I'm not on the second floor. I'm here in the back of my house. It's a beautiful day out here in Florida.

02:39

Just got my jungle behind me here. Yes, yes, I do recall that. I do recall that.

02:44

Anyways, I called you Mr. Alaska, of course, because I think it's still the most famous commercial we've ever had.

02:54

You voiced for us, and you started off... And I can't do it, because I think you're the master of it.

03:03

You just handled it just so well when you invited everybody to Alaska. We're not going to Alaska, are we?

03:10

No, actually. And if you take a look back at the history of things that we've done with Alpha and Omega since 1999,

03:18

James. Yes, yes, yes, yes. That's when we were in another century during the worst...

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And you and I look like we were in another century. That's for sure. And I'll tell you, folks, a lot of people are asking about why is it that we're doing the cruises and so forth.

03:38

And I know that G3 has just decided to do a cruise. But what we always did and the whole purpose of why we had the cruises was to be able to put on apologetics conferences, as well to have debates.

03:49

So the first debate that James and I did was with Roberts Jenis, and then we did the

03:55

Caribbean. And then after that, we had a debate with John Sanders.

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We had debates with John Dominic Crossan, Bart Ehrman. All of those were because of what we had done on the cruise that we were able to put those on and so forth.

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But this year, James had me contact the Pope. We were going to have a debate on Marxism.

04:17

But unfortunately, apparently, his handler said that he was unable to do it, that he might...

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So his handler, Russell Moore, told me he wasn't able to do it. So he might be able to do it for me. So anyway, so the next step here is that we do have

04:35

Rome starting in... This will be in this coming September. And it's a great time to be out there that they actually have a fall.

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And if you think of Rome weather, you want to think of like mid -North Carolina, South Carolina, somewhere in there.

04:49

But we do have an opportunity to start with a small get together in Rome. And then it'll be yourself and Pastor Jeff Durbin.

04:58

Is that correct? Yes. And then as well, I believe your daughter, Summer Jaeger, will be with us as well.

05:04

Well, I haven't told you this. I really wasn't ready to announce this.

05:11

Do you want to put this on a screen or do we have to... Is he only up right now? Well, you might want to...

05:18

Can you put me in a screen or something if I'm going to mention this? Because...

05:24

Oh, OK. All right. I can't see it. Yeah, I know. So here's the problem.

05:34

Just found out that I'm expecting my fifth grandchild right in the middle of the cruise.

05:41

Wow. So, yeah, I did mention that if she still went and the child was born at sea, it could have passports to Libya, Greece, Italy.

05:53

I mean, you know, it'd be great, but that's probably still not going to happen that way. We don't want one of the white children to have

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Turkish citizenship or anything like that. That could complicate matters a bit.

06:07

That would complicate things a lot. Yeah, no question about it. So that's not looking real good on that end there.

06:14

But hey, it's a good trade -off. That's great news, James. Maybe another time.

06:21

But this time, folks, we have had... My goodness. So I'll go back to where I was before.

06:27

And I know that we have a tendency to go off on all sorts of different rabbit trails. But Rome, we're going to be going to Rome, of course.

06:33

We'll be going to Cyprus. We'll be going to Israel for three days, both Ashdod and then...

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And that's the port that actually goes into Jerusalem. So it's only about an hour and 10 minute drive. And you actually go up.

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People don't realize how much really the geography changes from Israel at sea to where Jerusalem is, which is at high altitude.

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And then as well, we'll be heading for one day out to the Dead Sea, to Masada, and to Qumran as well.

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After that, we'll be heading to Ephesus, which is fantastic. It's absolutely,

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I think, probably one of the best preserved ruins anywhere in the world. It'll give you a real good sense of really how advanced the culture was back, you know, even just before Christ and then in the first few centuries before Ephesus eventually became ruins.

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Then we'll head off to Athens and we'll be going up and we'll be on Mars Hill. And then to Olympia, Greece as well.

07:35

And where James will be taking an excursion and taking folks for a run. Just a short one.

07:42

Very short one. But during this time, James, what are you planning on teaching on when we're on the ship?

07:49

Well, that's a good question. Obviously, I've lost track of how many debates

07:54

I have between now and then. So it's hard to say. Obviously, when we're at a particular location, you know, the standard thing is do

08:07

John 6 in Capernaum or something about the Garden of Gethsemane when you go to Gethsemane.

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And that's what everybody's doing. And I know when I was there recently, as I was listening to other groups, when you'd be in a particular area, that seemed to be what was going on.

08:26

To be honest with you, what we did is we had a Jewish tour guide. And so we were just witnessing them, it didn't really matter where we were.

08:35

So I did all sorts of interesting topics. But the at -sea stuff, as you know, we sort of developed a tradition,

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I don't know, very, very long ago, again, 20 years ago or so, of having discussions, theological discussions, out under the stars, obviously when the weather permitted.

08:57

I don't know what the Mediterranean's like in October, to be honest with you. You have far more experience with that than I do.

09:05

But when we were in the Caribbean and stuff like that, we did all sorts of theological dialogues late into the evenings.

09:14

Yes, that was something that we started a long time ago, back when I was young. Yes. And when

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I could stay up past 10 o 'clock at night. I'm in the boat with, same boat with you, literally. We're going to have to find one of our young folks to lead the discussions.

09:31

And what we really wanted to do was to have a bit more of an open Socratic kind of discussion on theology and apologetics.

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And even with disagreements and so forth, and have it well moderated. And I think it was what we had then that maybe we're starting to miss now, is the ability to even have disagreements.

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And to be able to work through some of those just by talking and really looking through the scriptures and examining our own beliefs and being sharpened.

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That's something that in the world of Facebook and Twitter doesn't seem to exist much anymore.

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But those are things that certainly we would like to be able to look at. During this time, folks, we will be having some fairly special excursions with Dr.

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White. And making sure that we get into some areas such as in Ephesus there at the amphitheater.

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Where there was biblical history that took place there at Mars Hill.

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And if you've never been up on Mars Hill before in Athens, and you see what

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Paul was looking at. Where he could look down below him at the Agora and see all of the temples of all the gods there.

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You're able to see what he saw when he was bringing men and women closer to an understanding of God.

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The true one triune God. So these things I think are going to be an amazing experience.

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So many of the times we've been on cruises in the Caribbean or Alaska. It's beautiful, it's wonderful, and there's great teaching on board and there's fantastic fellowship.

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There's the additional part of this of where you get an opportunity to be in the place where Christ and the apostles brought the gospel.

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And there's really nothing that can compare to that, I don't think. No, not really. It's not necessarily, and I would say this, we are going to be doing a lot.

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So for the 14 days or so that we're together, that's if you come before and after.

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We'll be in Rome. We will be going to the Vatican. We'll have express entrance.

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We'll also be going to St. John the Lateran and where you can actually see the chair there.

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We'll be going up the sacred steps up to the Holy of Holies. We will. I mean, this is what we're going to do.

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We'll also go to St. Paul's as well. And St. Paul's, of course, and I think everybody historically would agree, that is where St.

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Paul was, of course. Had his last day on earth before being in the presence of the

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Lord. So these things all together are really, really exciting for everyone.

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And, you know, I think that this gives an opportunity not only for folks to get to know

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James. We have a few hundred people that have already signed up. One of the reasons we're on right now is that come

12:30

February 1st, I have to release our unsold inventory back into the cruise line.

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So if it is something that you're considering doing, I think we've got incredible pricing. We've always tried to do that.

12:42

That's why James lives in the same house that he did 30 years ago. Thanks for letting everybody know that.

12:49

But it's only been 22 years. But anyway, so the point that everybody needs to understand is that this particular point in time, it's not our choice.

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It's just simply the way the cruise industry works is that at a certain point, if you have unsold inventory, then you become accountable for it, basically.

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And so you have to release it back or it could end up costing you an arm and a leg if no one takes it or something like that.

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And so it's not that people can't come after February 1st, but it'd be more expensive to come after February 1st.

13:30

Right. In other words, you might not have any cabins left. Once we release these back into the inventory of Celebrity, these cabins will get snapped up pretty quick.

13:40

So what James is correct is that it's not that you wouldn't be able to. They'll be necessarily more expensive.

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But also the issue is going to be that other people that are wanting to come on what is a very, very popular cruise will likely snap those up.

13:55

So it's called attrition. So, yeah, right. At that point in our contract, it's time to let some of those cabins go.

14:02

But we do have a few hundred folks that are on board. We have the lowest demographic of any sailing

14:08

I've ever done out there before. Really? Yes. The average age is around 34 or so.

14:13

It's average age. So, you know, I think it's balanced out by a lot of two year olds and three year olds.

14:22

I have a group coming just after you on the same cruise that is a rather large reformed ministry based in Orlando, Florida.

14:30

Yes. I think the average age is somewhere. The demographic is around 70. There you go.

14:36

There you go. So, in other words, everybody would be much, much younger than James and myself.

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Yes, yes, yes. So this is true. But please try to try to be merciful to us.

14:49

Yes, we will go. We will try to move as quickly as we can. I can still do that. I'm not sure about everybody else, but I won't mention anybody anyway.

14:57

So now one thing I want people to understand, we've sort of arranged this so that you can come along, you can do the cruise, you can go into ports and things like that.

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But the reason, you know, some people have sort of gone online and they've looked at other cruises like this and they're a whole lot more expensive.

15:20

And the reason is that the excursions that we have are something that you have to opt in or out of.

15:27

So you don't have to, there's a place that you don't necessarily want to get off.

15:33

And that's certainly been me in the past. It's not going to be me this time, but that's me in the past. I mean, you know.

15:39

That's always been you in the past. Yeah, it drives people crazy. But, you know, when we go on cruises, there's just all sorts of excursions.

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I'm just sort of like, you know, I really like this ship. It's very nice. And I'm not getting off.

15:51

And so, you know, but the way that it's working, the way we're doing it is the cost is up to you.

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You get to choose how many of those places you're getting off at and how many excursions you're going on and so on and so forth.

16:07

But there will be a cost for those. So the low number is because of that and allowing other people to go, nah,

16:15

I'm not getting off today type of situation. And one of the things to remember, too, is that when you look at, first of all, we're giving you a base cruise price.

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We're trying to allow as many people that would like to be able to come to be able to come, that it's not, you know, a hugely expensive price.

16:36

But within that price that you have in the cruise, you get your accommodations. You get all of your meals on board.

16:43

You have almost all of your drinks unless you're a Presbyterian. The thing that's not included, of course, is sodas as well.

16:51

But then also you get all of your teaching and so forth on board. This pays for our conference room.

16:57

This pays for the audiovisual and everything else as well as the speakers that are coming with you. When it comes to the excursions, yeah, you can pick and choose.

17:05

If you want to go on all of the excursions with Dr. White, you can. And to be able to be there as he does a lot of live on -the -site teaching, like we're going to be going to Migdal there in the

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Galilee region. We'll be as well going to the Mount of Beatitudes. And we have already reserved a spot there for our group.

17:28

So you're going to have opportunities to be in really amazing places. And we're talking about the actual places, like Migdal is someplace that James had really wanted us to add to the schedule.

17:40

And do you want to explain why that is, James? Yeah, sure. I mean, I even put a picture up when we were talking about it a couple weeks ago.

17:48

And that was of all the places that I saw. Now, obviously, Capernaum is super special.

17:54

John 6, the synagogue there. But the synagogue there is probably 3rd century, not necessarily 1st century.

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The Migdal location, they found it by building a hotel, which is half the time how you find stuff in Israel, as you know.

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So they've actually built the hotel over it. So you have to go under it to see this.

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But this is very clearly the 1st century synagogue.

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And the gospel is very clear. Jesus went about in all their synagogues, teaching and preaching.

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And Migdal, of course, is where Mary Magdalene, Mary of Migdal, Mary Magdalene is from.

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And so these are the stones that would have heard

18:39

Jesus teaching. And in a lot of the places that you go in Israel, it's possible, maybe.

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But of all the places I saw, this was one of the most obviously yes situations, which then obviously opens up opportunities for you to address almost anything that Jesus preached about in those synagogues and the events that took place.

19:03

And it just makes it really special. So, yeah, that's why I wanted to make sure that people got to see that.

19:09

It's not like it's huge. The whole thing about Israel for me is there's nothing huge.

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It's not big. You stand on the shore of the Sea of Galilee and you can see the other shore.

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It's a long ways off. It's a big, big lake, but it's a lake. And that was the thing that was a real takeaway for me was to realize, yeah, you could walk all this stuff.

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It might take you a little while, but you most definitely could. And that's exactly what the disciples were doing.

19:42

So we've only got a couple of days left, and if people have been sort of walking the line, they need to call

19:51

Sovereign. They need to talk to Kathy or to whoever else might be dealing with things.

19:57

Now, who's going from the staff? Do you know who's going with us? We're already kind of drawing straws on that.

20:08

Drawing straws? Who has to go on yours? Who has to go on? I understand.

20:14

So the short straw goes. Is that what you're saying? No, we will be bringing a crew.

20:20

Most likely it'll be me. And then as well, probably

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Kathy Kiang for a good portion of it. Possibly Ryan Dick for at least half of it.

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Then Stuart Adams, who I believe that James has met Stuart before, his wife.

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And so they will be incredible.

20:44

And understand, when we do something like this, folks, James, maybe you can add in a little bit here. We really try to make sure that we take care of you.

20:51

The moment you get off of your plane to the first hotel that we're going to be at, as we transfer onto the ship, as we head through all of these different ports and all of these different countries and cities that we're going to be visiting, we want to make sure that we're really taking care of you.

21:09

You've learned a lot over the past 21 years. Well, sure. Yeah.

21:16

I'm still thinking about finding tickets in tennis bags. That was 21 years ago.

21:23

I was 29 years old. And you still had a good backhand back then, too.

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We have, obviously, an opportunity to be able to have an incredible trip, a really once -in -a -lifetime trip for so many of you.

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And James was saying about Israel, you're in Israel, and you're looking over this way. Oh, there's Jordan.

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And over this hill is Syria. That's literally, you're looking at about a very, very small space that you can drive easily in about a half of a day.

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And it feels like you're basically in Southern California through a good portion of it.

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Very well developed, very contemporary, and so forth. But this is where Jesus was.

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And as you're driving down the road and you're passing by the street signs of the exits and so forth, it's like, oh, well, that was in the

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Bible. So was that. Except a bunch of it's Old Testament.

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And so most people are like, what's that? I don't know. Who knows? Well, isn't that where David and Goliath?

22:30

Yeah, yeah. Oh, and Jericho, if you take a left, is this way as you're heading down to the

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Dead Sea. And it's just, it's incredible. And I think that if you have the opportunity to be where the

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Bible really, the center and source of our civilization, of our church, of our faith, where everything happened, where Christ's ministry was, where, of course, what

22:58

James is just referring to in the Old Testament, where all of it pretty much took place, a good portion of it at least.

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When you're there, and then as well, we head to Ephesus and we head to Athens. I mean, folks, this is an opportunity to really have things make sense, especially if you're a pastor and you're preaching, to be able to know what that looked like.

23:18

Yeah, and make sure to bring lots of rolls of film. Rolls of film? Who does that?

23:25

Oh my goodness. Don't you remember? Don't you remember? That's how we would have done it, even back in 1999, probably.

23:33

But yeah, no. In other words, bring lots of large SD cards and you'll be fine.

23:40

But now, really quickly, the only reason I asked if Ryan was going is because I think,

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I seem to remember him saying that he'd be willing to debate me on paid -a -baptism on the ship.

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So I wanted to make sure that he was going to be able to do that. I'll make sure that I get in touch with Ryan to explain to him what paid -a -baptism is.

24:00

No, just kidding. No, Ryan, you know, he's already been over.

24:08

And to his, from his standpoint, is that the Holy Land cruise meant a lot to him, that he did a few years ago with his grandfather, and that it really helped to codify a lot of things in his faith and the way that he understands things.

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I do want to say, again, we will have two days before the cruise in Rome, and that's important.

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We might do a little something there. We thought about, I was joking before about the debate. Please don't write me emails about the name

24:36

I mentioned. But we will be trying to do something there, and we'll see as that develops.

24:43

And we'll hopefully be able to have an announcement. For those of you that are in Europe, if you'd like to come and visit with us the night before, that might be something we can do as well.

24:51

So we're looking forward to doing that. Right. All right, man. So the information's at aomin .org,

24:58

or you can go to the website, which, interestingly enough, mine's coming up as Sovereign Experiences.

25:07

It's supposed to be Holy Land Cruise. Yeah, Holy Land Cruise, theholylandcruise, all one word, .com.

25:16

We'll take you over to Sovereign's website, and you can get all the information, get ahold of folks. And now's the time to do it, because like we just said, come

25:24

February 1st, can't guarantee having any availability left. So if you want to come along, now's the time to do it.

25:31

Thank you. Mike, look forward to it, and you have yourself a good day there in your jungle.

25:37

Great. Thank you, sir. All right. God bless. Bye -bye. All right. Thank you very much for joining us.

25:43

And like I said, that's the first link. And when you go to AOMIN, the banner adds at the top. You'll see the

25:49

Dome of the Rock there, and just click on that, and that will take you to where you need to go.

25:55

Some people are a little confused as to why I would want to debate Ryan on pedobaptism.

26:01

Ryan Dick is R .C. Sproul's grandson, so that was where the joke was. We love

26:06

Ryan, and we have lots of fun with Ryan, and Ryan has lots of fun with Mike, and it's just a good time.

26:12

So we wanted to get that out. That was a fair amount of time, but again, like I said, so many people said,

26:19

Oh, I want to. I just don't know. I'm not sitting here saying we're never going to do it again, but I don't know when we would be doing anything like that again, and it certainly wouldn't be for quite a long period of time.

26:35

So we'll see. Just don't know. But it is quite an itinerary, and there are places there

26:43

I haven't been to. So I've not been to Ephesus. There's a stop in Cyprus.

26:49

We didn't mention that, but I was looking at the itinerary. There's a stop in Cyprus. I didn't even know that. I've certainly never been to Cyprus. And Athens and things like that.

26:59

So it is quite the itinerary. So it will be a great, great time.

27:06

So all right, let's move away from that. Let's do something a little on the cultural side here for a moment.

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I have a tweet here. Not sure if you can see it or not. But this was

27:30

January 25th. Vice President, former Vice President Joe Biden.

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Let's be clear. Transgender equality is the civil rights issue of our time.

27:42

There is no room for compromise when it comes to basic human rights. Sometimes I just,

27:52

I wonder what has happened to my country, to my culture, to my world.

28:02

Everybody knows that, and if you're thinking

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I'm picking on Joe Biden, just realize there is no one on the left that would for a moment dispute what he said.

28:18

That would be political suicide. So Mayor Pete could have said this.

28:25

Elizabeth Warren could have said this. I don't even know who else is running anymore. Could have said the exact same thing.

28:32

Now, the one thing with Joe Biden is he's been in Washington forever. And you know that 20 years ago, he didn't even know what a transgender person was.

28:45

Let alone did he think it was a basic human right. And in fact, nobody, almost nobody 10 years ago would have even been able to understand this.

28:55

But now it is the new orthodoxy. And when a culture's cultural orthodoxy can be defined in a single decade, in direct opposition to everything that has been considered settled reality and belief up until that point in time, in that society, you have a revolution going on.

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And it is a revolution of such speed and magnitude. The worldview that lies behind this statement is a very dangerous worldview.

29:39

Basic human rights were defined in this nation on the basis of a creator.

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That mankind has certain inalienable rights, but they are mankind's inalienable rights because mankind was created by God.

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And that therefore these inalienable rights originate in what is truly good for everyone.

30:10

Once you adopt the idea that human rights find their origination, either in mankind, in some autonomous choice where I choose,

30:28

I simply decide in my mind that I am a two -spirit questioning mighty wind.

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And when the rest of the world has to go, Oh, okay, so what pronouns would you like?

30:49

Because what pronouns do you use for mighty wind? You know, I want, there are some other mighty winds we can come up with along those lines.

31:05

I mean, seriously, but the rest of us all of a sudden have to bow down because you have the autonomous right to determine.

31:17

Who you are and how all the rest of us are interacting to interact with you. That worldview either places it there in the individual, which leads to absolute anarchy.

31:29

Intersectionality leads to anarchy because you're always looking for more intersectional authority and power.

31:37

And so you're going to be constantly looking for this kind of,

31:43

I'm different than you in this way. And that leads to anarchy. So when the anarchy shuts everything down and there can no longer be a culture at peace with itself, then the totalitarian step in and they provide the rescue from the destruction of the cultural fabric that critical theory is designed to create.

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But it will not be a rescue that has liberty, freedom, that has any meaningful ground for human rights.

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Because once human rights are derived from the government, we know as Christians that the government is simply a concentration of sinners.

32:34

It's a concentration of sinners. Which is why the men who founded this country, not all of whom were

32:44

Christians by any stretch of the imagination, but many were, and those who were not, lived in a culture where Christianity was normative, divided power.

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And they divided it out so that you would not have this very kind of situation.

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I continue to, and we will continue the rest of this year, to have the constant conversation.

33:16

Because the evangelical elites have determined that they are going to demand that Christians support the idea of their own illegalization to do the right thing.

33:40

So, what you do is you abandon any type of biblical theology or understanding of nationhood, borders, law, taxation.

33:56

You reject all of that and you create a crisis.

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And what you do is you say, if you're really going to be a Christian who follows biblical teaching, then you're going to agree with the people who at least want to do something about migrants.

34:21

And what they're going to do in the process is say, and please ignore the fact that those people who talk about that, likewise, are going to demand your children from you.

34:33

They're going to demand your children from you. They are going to shut down homeschooling, and they are going to demand that your children spend the majority of their day being instructed in government schools.

34:47

And what are they going to be instructed about? Well, they're going to be instructed that there is no male or female. They're going to be instructed that there is no God, that there is no transcendent source of values, that you are a human accident, that homosexuality is the greatest thing that mankind has ever come up with, and that marriage is not between a man and a woman, but between two men, three men, ten men, forty -seven men, five dogs, and fourteen dolphins.

35:10

It does not matter as long as you call it marriage. And they are going to be told all of those things each day, every day, by the government, which will then shut down anyone who protests, shut down any church that would say

35:30

Jesus is Lord rather than Caesar is Lord, but you've got to vote for these people. You've got to vote for that worldview because of the poor that Jesus said will always be with you, and that the church is supposed to be dealing with, not socialism, but you still have to do it to be a good

35:45

Christian. And that's what you're going to hear, and you're going to hear it over and over and over again.

35:51

It's going to be a drumbeat, and I don't know how to look someone in the eye more plainly and simply say,

36:03

Would you please wake up? Can you not see what you're doing? I know that we live in a fallen world, and I know that there is no such thing as a perfect candidate, and I wish that there were wonderful choices.

36:26

I didn't feel I had a choice last time. This time around, we are dealing with open, plain socialists who have made it clear that one of the first things they'll do is they will pass that Equality Act, which will simply shut down almost all of us who are seeking to promote godliness in this culture.

36:55

And every single one of you sitting there going, Well, but, you know, it can't be a one -issue voter. This is not a one -issue voting situation.

37:03

This is a socialist, anti -Christian worldview versus something else.

37:10

At least it's something else. I'm not saying it's great. I'm not saying the

37:16

Apostle Paul's running for office. He's not. But if you can't see, if listening to Joe Biden, Creepy Joe, Look, when he was vice president,

37:33

I thought it was so weird back then how he touched females constantly.

37:40

But nobody said a word about it back then. It was before the Me Too. So I guess nobody cared. But you and I both know that Joe Biden in the 1980s didn't even know what a transgender person was.

37:56

And now it is the civil rights issue of our time. I really wonder, my black brothers and sisters who are sitting here going,

38:06

Yeah, we've got to vote for these people. Civil rights issue, transgenderism, drag queens.

38:18

This is the civil rights issue of our time. What worldview is behind that?

38:23

How do you even begin to defend that? How can you not see the radical natures?

38:31

I don't know. But please notice his words. There is no room for compromise.

38:40

On transgenderism. On transgenderism.

38:47

The greatest example of moral and ethical insanity that I have ever encountered in my adult life.

38:56

And according to one of the primary and every single other socialist candidate would agree with him on this.

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No compromise. There's no room. If you do not agree with this, there is no room for you in this nation any longer.

39:15

Vote him in! Hey! That's the right thing to do. Okay. At times

39:25

I'm just left going, How obvious does it have to become? I mean, once we're both sitting in the same gulag, maybe you'll go,

39:34

You know, you might have had a point back then. But by then it'll be a little late.

39:40

It'll be just a little bit late. Yeah, folks, I'm going to tell you. Now, don't get me wrong.

39:46

I've said it before. That worldview cannot last. That worldview cannot create a culture.

39:54

That's why it collapses. And when it collapses, the totalitarians take over. The totalitarians, we all know what they did in the

40:02

Soviet Union. We know what they're doing in China. We know what they're doing in North Korea. And those nations eventually fall.

40:11

But it can be slow and bring a tremendous amount of death in the process.

40:20

But they can't create anything that's going to last. By the way, I mentioned on Facebook this morning,

40:29

I'll just be very brief. God is not surprised by coronavirus.

40:36

Coronavirus is not new. Keep something in mind. The communist government does not have any foundation in its worldview to honor or care about the weak.

40:52

Once you reach an age in their perspective where you are now no longer able to contribute to the society up to a certain level, they don't want you around anymore.

41:11

Because the state is all. Individuals mean nothing. From what

41:17

I'm reading, I'm not an expert on this. But from what I'm reading, this coronavirus is survivable by anyone.

41:27

It basically gives you pneumonia. And with proper nutrition and so on and so forth, a healthy person, this is not the dystopian, flesh -eating viruses that we find in all of our movies anymore.

41:51

But you see, it actually seems to work pretty well for the communists because it gets rid of the people they want to get rid of anyways in the long run.

42:01

And so let's not do the panic thing. I mean, that's what media is for, is for the creation of panic.

42:12

But God knew about this. And God has a purpose. And God has a plan.

42:19

And wash your hands. And be Scottish. Amen. That's right.

42:29

And what I mean by that, of course, laddies, is keep your distance.

42:35

Those of you, and I've talked about it before, if you want to get so close in talking to me that I can feel your breath, let alone smell it, you are too close.

42:46

And with coronavirus, even more than too close.

42:52

Okay? This becomes assault in that situation. That's right. That's right.

42:58

You stay. You've got your space, and I've got my space. And let's just leave it that way.

43:04

So just wash your hands. And rev that immune system.

43:11

And be Scottish. So, yeah, God's in control. And I did mention, this world has survived.

43:22

God has brought his judgments to bear in the past. And I gave some numbers on Facebook.

43:29

The 1918 Spanish flu. 675 ,000 in the United States. You run the numbers on that, and given the increase in population, 2 .1

43:40

million would be the equivalent today. 2 .1 million people. And yet, barely 100 years later, if you and I walked down a street and asked anybody what happened in 1918, they have no earthy idea.

43:59

I don't think... What do you guess? Would 4 % even know about World War I?

44:09

Let alone the flu epidemic that took millions around the world? No.

44:15

How many people in this audience could tell you when the

44:21

Black Plague struck? What years? What years? And how many people?

44:29

What percentages? I think I ran the numbers. What did it say? 373 million in Europe. Using today's numbers.

44:37

Is what would be the equivalent of... 374? Of what actually took place at that time.

44:47

Yeah. There have been things like this in the past. Far worse than anything we're seeing here. Far worse.

44:57

And most Christians are afraid to deal with the theological reality from our perspective.

45:08

That God was not only caught by surprise. But isn't it interesting? Even our synergistic friends who are constantly emphasizing free will, free will, free will.

45:16

How do you deal with something like this? Because they'll say, well, when it comes to earthquakes, tsunamis...

45:22

How about plague? Is God sovereign over that? Had God intended to bring the plague in the middle of the 14th century?

45:34

1347 -1350. Major. I mean, it kept coming back. But that's when you had the...

45:40

Half of Europe dies. Did that catch

45:47

God by surprise? Are you an open theist? I think a lot of Christians are.

45:53

When it comes to practically making application of their theology.

45:59

Because they don't want to deal with the fact that this... That realm comes from God. God's in control of these things.

46:08

And I think a lot of people are extremely, extremely uncomfortable about that particular aspect of things.

46:16

So, thought I'd mention that in passing. Next, we are covering all sorts of interesting topics today.

46:24

I'd go longer today, but I'm teaching church history tonight.

46:29

And we're starting in to Ignatius. And there's just so much to get to in Ignatius. But there was yet another tweet that popped up over the course of the past couple of days.

46:45

The day after Joe Biden, on January 26th, we have this tweet from Timothy Keller.

46:53

And Timothy Keller writes, If you see Jesus losing the infinite love of the

47:00

Father out of his infinite love for you, it will infinitely melt your hardness.

47:15

I don't know if there has been a polling of this tweet, an explanation of this tweet.

47:24

Some people say, well, he's not the only one that posts there. His son posts there.

47:31

It's got your name on it. Then you're going to be held responsible for what it says.

47:37

But as soon as I saw this, my response was, other than, huh?

47:46

Was to go, okay, the only thing I can connect this to is the text in the

47:58

Gospels where Jesus quotes from the 22nd Psalm, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthi, my

48:03

God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And so I, my assumption from the start was that this is the old father turns his back on the son at the son's moment of greatest obedience to the father idea, which many, many, many men have preached and taught.

48:30

I get it. It's, it makes for a powerful sermon. And on Facebook, I posted the footnote in the

48:40

Forgotten Trinity where I address this issue and a link to a video where we pulled the particular portion out of a debate from South Africa with a

48:56

Muslim, Ayub Karim, where I dealt with the alleged abandonment because Muslims go, there is clear evidence that the deity of Christ is not true, that the

49:13

Bible doesn't make any sense. And you have to be prepared to deal with that particular subject.

49:20

It's, it's just an absolute necessity. And so I posted these on Facebook.

49:27

If anyone has access to that, should have posted it at the blog.

49:33

I'll try to remember to do that in the future. But I, what, everything is wrong about this tweet.

49:46

Okay, it's just wrong on every level. Your hardness is taken away by the work of the

49:55

Holy Spirit in regeneration. First of all, the heart of stone is taken out, the heart of flesh is given by the Holy Spirit. You'll never understand the love of both the

50:06

Father and the Son for you in the Atonement, outside of regeneration. But what really is, other than the fact that nowhere in the

50:17

Gospels do we have anything about the Father ever ceasing to love the Son. I mean, that is huge.

50:25

That is a massive statement that is based completely upon speculation.

50:35

Completely upon speculation. Even if you do the

50:41

Father turns his back upon the Son, abandons Him thing, to then take that to the next level and say the

50:48

Father ceases to love the Son? I mean, we've got people jumping up and down and getting ready to start putting up stakes and gathering branches and wood about the doctrine of the

51:09

Trinity in regards to the eternal subordination of the Son and things like that. Wow, where are those folks with something like this?

51:17

This is much worse than that. I mean, this is a fundamental disruption in the

51:22

Godhead. And so, you've got

51:27

Jesus losing the infinite love of the Father out of His infinite love for you. Which introduces...

51:34

This is the very kind of idea that Reformed people have to fight all the time.

51:43

That somehow, the Father is this mean, nasty guy, and the

51:52

Son comes along and sort of calms Him down and makes Him a little nicer by dying in our place.

52:00

The testimony of all of Scripture is the perfect unity and harmony of the

52:10

Father and the Son in bringing about the redemption of God's people. Ephesians 1, the whole point is that all the spiritual blessings we have in Jesus Christ flow from what source?

52:27

From the Father, through the Son, by means of the Son. If you want to talk about the love of God, you've got to locate it in the

52:39

Father. That's where it is. That's where it's found.

52:46

So, presenting this idea about this, you know, Jesus out of His infinite love for you loses the infinite love of the

52:54

Father creates a distinction that is nowhere to be found in the New Testament. This is just...

52:59

If this was turned into me in a theology class that I'm teaching, it's getting marked, and I'm having a conversation with the student afterwards.

53:11

That's how bad this is. That's why I get the feeling it came from someone other than Tim Keller, I hope.

53:22

I hope, I hope, I hope. Because I just cannot conceive of a Reformed person coming up with this, letting this out.

53:30

I don't get it. I do not understand it.

53:37

So, real quickly here, the continuing saga of whitewashing everyone with the same brush from certain folks continues on.

54:02

Now there's a Facebook. So now, not only... We all know that, you know, the first person to get the

54:13

Doug Wilson derangement syndrome paint was my daughter,

54:19

Summer. And then, of course, Jeff and Luke at Apologia.

54:25

But now, I'm looking at a tweet, and now we've got Tom Askell, who

54:31

I've always suspected was Federal Vision. I mean, it's just as absurd to accuse me of it, but again.

54:42

And now, G3, Josh Bice. So, anybody...

54:48

Why isn't Phil Johnson on this list? He took the picture of me and Doug at G3. So why...

54:55

But he's not in the picture. Maybe that's why he did it that way. I don't know. But he took the picture. So it's the associationalism.

55:02

This is the stuff we've talked about before. This is the fundamentalist mindset where anybody... You know, hey, you went to the same hotel as that man did, therefore, there you go.

55:14

You all believe the same things. It's the same type of thinking that certain people...

55:20

And when reformed people bite onto this type of stuff, well, it gets super, super ugly very, very, very quickly.

55:29

But I wanted to read you... Now, if you haven't seen it, it's interesting. There's an article,

55:35

The Truth About Federal Vision, on Facebook. The sources given are Scott Clark, Brandon Adams, and various, and monergism.

55:46

Well, most of it came from R. Scott Clark. Let's just put it that way. And we know that R.

55:52

Scott Clark... I think I'm being very, very fair to say that R. Scott Clark is grossly imbalanced when it comes to Doug Wilson.

55:58

He cannot even try to be fair. Just can't even try. And so anybody who just goes,

56:04

Yes, whatever you say, Dr. Clark, won't even try to be fair, won't even try to listen. I mean, there is a clear derangement syndrome out there.

56:13

Here's an example of it. So, 2019, December, James White of AltaMega begins participating with federal visionist

56:21

Doug Wilson. You just love how the spin is. I mean, these folks watch MSNBC and go,

56:26

I see how that works. Let's do it ourselves. Doug Wilson, in a series of videos called The Sweater Vest Dialogues, in the first video in the series,

56:33

White asks Doug Wilson a series of questions on Sola Fide, i .e.,

56:40

justification by faith alone, through grace alone, and Christ alone. And ready? And Wilson responds to these questions by using classic federal vision language.

56:55

I don't even know what to say. I don't even know what to... You go through the specific statements point by point by point by point by point, and these people cannot hear it.

57:06

They live in a world where it just becomes and it's like, I have my conclusion.

57:13

Don't confuse me with the facts. That's where we are now.

57:20

That's where we are now. So, there you go. So, I wonder who will be next to be added to the great, grand, and growing conspiracy list.

57:31

I don't know. But it is truly sad to observe. But it's out there, folks.

57:38

It is out there. So, like I said, I'm teaching on Ignatius of Antioch this evening. I don't know that I can get through all of Ignatius in one shot, but I'm going to be doing that.

57:48

But should have... I'm hoping to have some debate announcements.

57:57

And especially for one brother that keeps waiting for me to get back to. I'm hoping that finally...

58:04

There's sort of a logjam in regards to dates between now and the end of May. And once this one thing gets fixed, the logjam breaks,

58:14

I can go, okay, this, this, this, this. So, I'm almost there. I'm almost there. I'm trying. But we're talking...

58:21

One, two, three, four, five. We're talking five, six debates this spring on completely different topics.

58:30

Completely different topics. Massively so. Big challenge. I hope to be able to give you some information about the first of those by Thursday.

58:44

Because if that one gets put into the calendar, then the rest of them we can just go, and we can sort of line up the rest of the spring into the summer.

58:57

The fall is already pretty much fixed. And it's all outside the United States. Really weird. Pretty much spring in the

59:04

US with one exception maybe, possibly. And then starting August, yeah, late

59:12

August. Multiple trips. Heathrow, all over the place. So, yeah, there you go.

59:20

But hopefully I'll have something for you. And I think a lot of people would really like to hear the debates we're talking about.

59:27

And hopefully I'll be able to give you something on Thursday about that. Thank you for watching the program today.