Road Trip Dividing Line: Responding to Alex O'Connor

Well, greetings and welcome to the Divine Line. My name is James White, coming to you from somewhere in the road, in the state, with the roads that want to kill you.

Yes, great state of Louisiana, some of the greatest people you will ever meet, and I think the reason they are so nice and so giving is they have to rescue each other on the road every day.

Yesterday was fun, okay, not really, it was a mess, but anyway,

I was speaking this evening and then tomorrow night we've got the debate at Trey Fisher's church here in the

Calhoun area and we have a debate tomorrow evening and that will be at six o 'clock central time, so seven o 'clock eastern time.

It will be live -streamed, if you're in the area, of course, you're welcome to come on out. I believe it's exit 103, if I recall correctly, on the 20, just off the road there, and let's see here, when the wife texts you right at the beginning of the program, you still check it out, just in case, you've got to keep track of what's going on.

Anyway, debate tomorrow night with A .K. Richardson on the exegesis of Romans 9,

I can tell you right now, it's going to focus on the presuppositional starting places that you have.

I'm going to argue that if you take Paul's doctrine of God and Paul's doctrine of man, that has been laid out clearly in his writings.

Doctrine of God more outside of Romans, but it's certainly implied in Romans, but certainly what is said about the deadness of man in sin, his inability in Romans 1 and 3 and 8, and then the heights of Revelation in Romans chapter 8, the golden chain, followed by the heavenly law court,

Christ as our intercessor, interceding for the elect, this is what prompts the question of chapter 9.

So once you start there, what chapter 9 is saying is very clear, very compelling, and what we'll discover is that Mr.

Richardson will say it has nothing to do with any of that, it doesn't have to do with personal salvation. Personal salvation is a matter of free will and human autonomy, and God is free to save those who believe, but he's not free to determine who those are going to be.

And of course, if we're in Adam, Romans chapter 5, all Adam can give us is death. How do you enter into Christ?

Well, according to Romans chapter 8, if repentance and faith are things that are pleasing to God, if you're in the flesh, you cannot do that.

So just telling you ahead of time what it's going to be, I listened to two debates that Mr.

Richardson did, one with Matt Slick, that one got rather testy and wasn't as useful as a result of that, and the one with Turgeon Fan, you know,

Turgeon Fan was answering things the very same way I would, and so it was like getting to watch the debate ahead of time, but I do speak faster than Turgeon Fan does, so we might get to points a little bit quicker, but he's also much nicer than I am, so we will definitely, however, try to keep it from getting at all nasty, detracts and distracts from actually trying to accomplish it.

So 6 o 'clock tomorrow night central time, 4 o 'clock back in my neck of the woods in Arizona, and so hopefully we'll be able to get the link out fairly early on that so you can tune in.

If you're in the area, of course, you're welcome to come and join with us. And then the next night, the pastor of the church,

Trey Fisher, also known as Fishbone, I didn't know that, but Fishbone is going to be doing a debate with Eric Hernandez on Molinism, and I specifically said,

I'll tell you what, all future debate topics and questions on Molinism, I will refer to you, because I'm done with that one.

I'm done with that one, not going to review the

King James only debate. I'd like to wait until I'm headed home next week, try to get a couple programs in on the road, if at all possible, and what we'll do is we'll review both of them at the same time, so I'll hold that off till then.

Of course, it is available online, you can watch it yourself. I felt it was very useful, though there was...

It's interesting because, and I'll say this next week, this was an inappropriate use of a presuppositional form of argumentation.

It's one thing to say that the Bible is God's Word can function as a presupposition because it's

God speaking. It's another thing to make a 17th century Anglican translation of the Bible that presupposition.

That's where the real problem is. I wrote it in 1994, but you read the beginning of the

King James only controversy and I said what you need to understand is that in the

King James only mindset, it doesn't matter whether it's a Rachmanite, a Ripplingerite, a

Cloudite, a Waitian, or people who want to try to stay away from that spectrum and say we're significantly less aggressive than that.

Or even the TR onlyists. I mean, the TR onlyists, when you turn the temperature up, they end up being

King James onlyists. They really do. I was stunned last week before that debate to encounter,

I was informed that Dr. Riddle, Jeff Riddle, who now teaches for IRBS, had written in defense of the

King James rendering of Acts 530. And I'm like, well, there you go.

He says he's a TR only guy, but if you're defending, what was the phraseology used?

Something along the lines of traditional Protestant translational theory, something along those lines.

If you're going to defend the King James rendering of Acts 530, you're a

King James onlyist. Stop playing with all the other stuff and just admit it, you're a

King James onlyist. But anyway, so we'll talk about that next week and hopefully you'll find that to be a useful thing to do there.

So what I want to do in the program today is I want to, uh -oh, now, how did that happen?

I want to play, oh, great, sorry, this worked last time, but the displays thing is messed up here.

Let me see if I can, uh, use an extended display, no, mirror built -in display.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, yay, we got it. It's a live program, kids.

I want to, I thought about responding to a video that showed up about 10 days ago or so by some kids.

And I do mean kids, they're immature children. It's a thing where they use the

AI voice impersonation thing, so, you know, but it was just so badly done and it's, again, it's playground level stuff and I decided, you know what, it's not worth it.

Though I will say, you know, once they start putting, once they start doing your face in video, you know, the deepfake stuff with a level of quality, and that's not far in the future, uh, that's going to be new ground to be dealing with.

Do you sue somebody for creating a deepfake? How do you prove it? And again, it's going to be a situation where we have to follow

God's law and you have to have witnesses and stuff generated by a computer is not a witness, it doesn't qualify.

And, you know, I'm finding Grok to be extremely helpful as an assistant, as a information gathering service, uh, it can do in 90 seconds what would take me six hours, uh, to be able to track down the references and verify things and stuff like that.

So, yeah, it's definitely useful, but this generation of stuff, it's producing images, videos, stuff like that, um, yeah, uh, there, there's room for a lot of thinking to be done by Christians on, on this stuff and I'm just hoping and praying that some of these young guys coming up who,

I think it might help or may hurt to have been raised in the digital generation because I wasn't, you know,

I remember when I got my first pager, it was before the cell phones and, you know, my first computer,

I was an adult and it had two 360K floppy drives, no hard drive and 640K

RAM. So, yeah, I, I, I got to grow up and I see this stuff in my feet all the time.

I got to grow up where, you know, my parents said, be home, be home when the street lights turn on, you know, and you, you jump on your bike and you ride around the neighborhood and, and you just do all sorts of fun stuff like that and, uh, they couldn't call you, you couldn't call them.

Um, so maybe, maybe, maybe a cooperation between those of us who know what it's like to live in the non -digital world and those who've grown up in a digital world.

Um, yeah, uh, maybe, maybe we all need to get together and have some serious conversation, very, very serious conversation about how

Christians should think in a biblical fashion about the digital world,

AI, uh, proper uses, improper uses, stuff like that.

Um, yeah, that's, that time is here. Yes, Rich was saying, what's a K? 360K?

It's true. That's true. I mean, we're getting to a place where megabyte is not necessarily something that people really would think about.

Um, everything's gigs now, but my phone terabyte, terabyte of Ram on it.

Um, so yeah, 360K is 360 ,000. That's, and it was five, it was five, five and a quarter inches.

So it was three, yeah, three and a half. They came out later. Uh, but five and a quarter, they were, they were flexible and, um, man,

I don't know what their read speed was, but it wasn't much. Um, but yeah, that's, um, had a word star disc, you know, so you'd load it in and sometimes you'd load part of the program and put another disc in.

Oh, it was, it was great. Fantastic. Anyway. Um, so a, uh, it's interesting.

This fellow by the name of Alex O 'Connor, he just did a debate. I, all I've seen was David Woods part about 75 % of David Woods opening statement on whether Jesus claimed to be

God and he's called Oxford philosopher.

I don't think he teaches at Oxford. In fact, I'm, I'm not sure he's graduated from Oxford. Um, and I'll, and let me mention something for all my life.

When it was said, someone graduated from Oxford, you'd be like,

Ooh, and that attitude still exists.

It shouldn't. If, if you look at the Ivy league schools, watch what they're doing, look at their professors, look what they're teaching.

Are they teaching you how to think or what to think? They're all bastions of woke idiocy.

I'm sorry. That's just the fact that that's what it is. And especially in the future amongst

Christians, you need to recognize you prove your scholarship by what you do, not by how well you can use

AI, uh, not by where you went to school, but by how you can interact consistently and meaningfully with other ways of thought and present a coherent, uh, perspective that that's, that's how you're going to prove your scholarship in the future anyways, at least amongst rational people.

So this fellow by the name of Alex O 'Connor, he debated, uh, David Wood. I thought

David's presentation was unique and interesting that the part that I, that I heard not exactly the direction

I would have gone, but it gets to you pretty much the same point. In fact, in a sense is a little bit of a takeoff on, um,

Warfield's, uh, view of the Trinity and presentations trendy in, uh, especially in regards to the deity of Christ and son of God, Lord of glory.

Nope. The Lord is yes. The Lord of glory, paperback book. I don't think it's in print anymore, but you can sometimes track it down on eBay or something like that.

Anyhow. Um, so this fellow has, you know, you've seen him in one of those things where the guy sits there and there's this room full of people and a bunch of people come up and they challenge him for what is it?

10 minutes or something like that. I, I, and, uh, a couple of these

Mormon guys, they're just always looking for attention. Uh, they did some debates at apologia.

They did a debated apology that I moderated actually, um, a couple of years ago. I think they hopped in on that and, and stuff like that.

So he's the, sort of the face of young atheism. Now the, um, the old atheists are passing away and, uh, the new atheists are on the scene and basically they're

YouTubers, you know, they're, they've always got a camera around and that type of thing.

And okay. He's obviously very intelligent. He has a, uh, you know, good

British accent, which makes you, you know, that gives you 10, 15 IQ points right there. Maybe more. Um, but he says some really interesting things and he was on, this says the

Julian Dory podcast. Never heard of Julian Dory. Sorry. Uh, podcasts anymore are a dime a dozen.

Um, I am not taking any blame for that. I mean,

I, we were, we were webcasting before there were pods. And, uh, so yeah, we, we were a part of helping all this stuff to happen,

I suppose. But, um, still everybody's got a webcast today and which ones are worthwhile and which ones are not sort of depends on how long they last.

So he's on the Julian Dory podcast and he's talking about a bunch of stuff.

I have not listened to the whole thing. Just haven't had time to might when I'm driving back, but man, I'm just, it comes at you so fast.

You can't, you can't keep up with it. But he was talking about who

Jesus is and stuff like that. And so I wanted to respond to some of this stuff because it's not like this stuff is new.

Um, a lot of the stuff he's saying is actually old stuff.

So for example, looking at the longer ending of Mark, I don't remember when that entire book on the longer ending of Mark came out from different perspectives, but it was probably 20 years ago.

And, you know, back then smaller audience, you have to read an entire book.

There's no video. You can't put, you can't read the book at 1 .5

X, you know, that kind of thing. And so it was, it was just different, but it's like the next generation's relitigating everything that we argued about 20 years ago, 30 years ago, but without going back to do that kind of hard work of actually reading stuff and studying stuff and that kind of thing.

So it tends to end up being rather shallow. So anyway,

I wanted to, um, I wonder if I can do the, uh, Oh, see, it was right.

And then it, Oh man. Well, there's teeny tiny little me, but I thought at least on my end, when

I hit that button, it was the bigger square that we want, but that we cannot seemingly ever keep.

Um, so, Oh, well that's life. Let me, uh, let me, uh, well, where did

I go? I don't know. I guess

I can't put me over this. Uh, Oh, strange.

Yeah. Oh wait. There I am. There I am. And I suppose if I do this, yeah, that'll look even better.

Okay. So let's, um, let's listen to some of this stuff. I'll throw a cord and stuff on the screen.

Um, and we'll, we'll dive into some, uh, some Greek and we'll, uh, respond to some of the stuff that the

Oxford philosopher, who I don't think teaches at Oxford, but lives in Oxford. I'm sorry, but living in Oxford, even back in the days when, when

Oxford meant something would not really give you any credibility.

Um, but I, evidently it does now. So anyways, here, here we go. Arguments, logical, positivist, uh, sort of arguments of God premises, conclusions, syllogisms, all that kind of stuff.

And I used to think that the rest was basically all like bunk. And now I just, I just don't care about your stupid premises, man.

I want to read the Bible. You know, that's what I'm interested in. And it's amazing that that's happened, but I think that that's happening across the board and people are interested in the text.

And I'm constantly discovering things, especially in this debate about whether Jesus has claimed to be God or not. There are all like Christians often look at me.

Like I've said that a square has three sides when I say Jesus didn't claim to be God, because it's like this obvious fact of the gospels in biblical scholarship for the past few hundred years, it's been mainstream just to say that Jesus didn't actually historically claimed to be

God. And that's like a later development. Okay. Um, so let's, let's talk about quote unquote biblical scholarship.

There is believing biblical scholarship and there is unbelieving biblical scholarship. There are people who actually believe they're dealing with divine revelation.

And then those who don't believe they're dealing with divine revelation, those who do not believe that the scriptures are consistent with themselves.

And I've, how many times have I said in this program, when it comes to Christianity writ large, whether it's

Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, whatever, if you believe that the

If you view the scriptures, the way Jesus viewed the scriptures, the way that the apostles viewed the scriptures, then you're going to be in a small minority.

There's no question about that. Um, we've, we've said that over and over again.

It's, it doesn't mean anything. Um, because if we were in the vast majority, uh,

I'm sure lots of people would use that as some kind of evidence, but truth is not determined by vote, by any stretch of the imagination, as we see over and over again in the

United States Congress today. So, uh, but you do need to understand when you hear something like this, you know, is that evidence or is that, is that evidence for or against you?

Well, no, because so much of, well, just, just look at the debates we've done.

Look at the debate, the debates we did with John Dominic Cross. Brilliant man, IQ off the charts, but he represents the ultra left side of the spectrum.

And it was self -evident in his conversations that he, he really viewed me as a, the dodo bird.

He thought we were extinct, that we didn't exist anymore because he had no interaction with us.

And in my experience, people on the far left or almost anything on the left, they never listened to people on the right.

We read all their stuff. We interact with their stuff and, uh, but they don't read us at all.

And that was self -evident in my debates with John Dominic Cross and John Shelby Spong. Bart Ehrman could care less what any of us have to say.

He thinks he has all that figured out. So it's just, that's just sort of, sort of how it goes.

Um, yeah. Into the doctrine. Oh, they admit that. Well, admit that is a, is a strong term.

Like there are scholars who think that's the case. There are some scholars who think that's not the case. And a lot of biblical scholars are non -religious.

Um, so I think Morris Casey, for example, isn't, isn't a Christian or wasn't a Christian when he, when he wrote his,

I forget what it's called. It's called like Jewish prophet to Gentile God, I think. Um, which is kind of a proto version of the most popular biblical scholar at the moment.

It's probably Bart Ehrman, who you should have him on the show. I mean, he's fantastic. Yeah. His name's come out. He is phenomenal, man.

He's, he's, he's great. But like a lot of Christians look at him and say, yeah, you know, he's kind of cool, but he's, you know, he's actually not that great.

Cause he's, I think he's, he's made some blunders in the past and stuff like this as well. I'd love to know what those blunders are.

I mean, um, I can name some, but they're primary theological. He, he, we tried to get into debate.

I don't know. It was about six, seven years ago on the Trinity issue, because he was saying that if you believe

Jesus is Yahweh, then you're a civilianist and modalist, blah, blah, blah. It's like, no, you weren't paying attention in theology class at Moody, were you?

Phil Johnson said you, you really didn't pay attention. Um, uh, but he won $25 ,000 plus, you know, all the rest of the stuff that goes with it.

Um, so would love to do that because I don't think it would go well for him at all, but he doesn't really expose himself to that kind of stuff.

Uh, well, I will take that back. He, he did debate Jimmy Akin. Uh, and I, and from the images

I saw, I never bothered to look at it cause it would just be too painful on, on two different levels, but it looks like Jimmy Akin did the, yeah,

I, I only wear the same clothes every day, including the same cowboy hat routine with him too. So, uh, it's just so hard to take someone seriously that does that.

It really, really, really is. Um, it, but, but yeah, I, I'd be,

I'd be interested in what this guy thinks his blunders are because I've said many times before when

Bart Ehrman makes a mistake, it's in the application and conclusions. It's rarely in the factual data.

He's very sharp on that. Uh, it's in, it's in the conclusions and what you do with it.

Uh, and especially in the theology, that's just not his area. He's not a theologian though. He frequently pretends to be.

I mean, when I was talking about this West half thing, my friends were pointing me to something that I wish I could remember it to for fairness sake, but something that like Bart had written, that had a similar level of like just getting something wrong.

I think it was about the telephone game actually. Um, but anyway, like, yeah, so those are your sort of scholars who are like Jesus never claimed to be

God. Bart Ehrman's book is How Jesus Became God. It's about that kind of stuff. It's quite accessible. Um, but Brant Petrae just wrote a book called

Jesus and Divine Christology, which attempts to regain the idea that Jesus did make divine claims.

But he opens the text, this is like last year, he opens the text by saying that most scholars think

Jesus didn't claim to be God. And he describes this paradox. Most scholars think that Jesus didn't claim to be

God, but most scholars think that very early on in Christianity, people started believing that he was God. So how do you, how do you explain this paradox?

If he didn't claim to be God, why did they so immediately think he was God? Now, you know, it's interesting. I hadn't thought about this, but is, did this take, was this recorded before or after his debate with David Wood?

I mean, I don't know when that debate was. It was fairly recently, but so was this. So I, I really, not, not sure.

I don't know. And Brant Petrae's answer is to say, well, because he did actually claim to be God and he gives all of his arguments why, um, and it's interesting, but I ultimately,

I don't think Jesus claimed to be God. I think you don't know. There are, there are all kinds of arguments. That's why

I say that Christians will look at me like I've lost my mind, but I think it's important to, to understand that in biblical scholarship, this is a very mainstream opinion.

That's not an appeal to authority. I'm not saying it's therefore correct. I'm just saying it's not some like that shit, like yeah, wacky view.

It's incredibly common. I think it might even be the most common view of Chris, like scholars of Christology, but I don't know.

So don't quote me on that. Don't even paraphrase me on that. But I find it absolutely fascinating.

And Christians have their lines. They say, we've already discussed one, you know, Jesus forgives sins in Mark chapter two, and only

God can forgive sins. But I've already given an explanation as to why I don't think that's him to be God. And people, people say this. Okay.

People do present weak arguments for the deity of Christ. And when we present weak arguments and we do not present them within a full biblical context, then we're subject to this kind of reputation.

So it is true that only God can forgive sins. It was the context in which

Jesus forgave sins. That is the issue. The context of forgiving sins is his miraculously raising someone who was a cripple.

So when Jesus is doing these things in the context of working a miracle that was only, that could only be paralleled rarely by the prophets of old.

I remember the days of Jesus, the Jews had already come to the conclusion that the bath coal had ceased, that the voice of God had ceased.

Prophecy had ceased. There weren't any prophets any longer. So they're looking for the Messiah next. Fulfillment of those prophecies, stuff like that.

So it's the context and it's not just walking on water.

It's not just raising, you know, raising someone who's sick or even raising the dead. It's the things that Jesus says along with those things, with those actions that gives them their weight.

And look, lots of Christians aren't good at presenting evidence on the deity of Christ. Something that we certainly have been trying to help folks with for many, many years, but there you go.

Forgetting that in John chapter 20, Jesus gives the ability to forgive sins, the authority to forgive sins to his disciples.

But he gives that authority to disciples in commissioning them and giving to them the Holy Spirit.

And the forgiveness of sins that Jesus is talking about there is in the proclamation of the gospel.

It's in the proclamation of death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In Mark 2, Jesus has not yet gone to cross.

So this fellow does struggle a lot with context. He struggles a lot with following a biblical narrative.

He struggles a lot with even allowing the biblical authors to define those narratives for themselves.

He's not trained in this field. He's trying to act like he is or dive into it in some fashion for some reason.

But yeah, he misses stuff along the way. It's as if they just forget or they say, oh, well, that's because they can only forgive sins through Jesus.

It's like, yeah, but what did Jesus say? As the father has sent me, now I'm sending you. So if they're only doing it because Jesus gave him that authority, then

Jesus is only doing it because God gave him that authority. It's like the same thing, right? So again,

I know I'm repeating stuff that we've said since the 1980s, but always recognize when someone is assuming

Unitarianism to prove Unitarianism. And so one of the best ways to see if someone's doing that is replace the term

God with the more specific term father and see if it impacts anything.

So Jesus is the one who's sent by the father, but even the way that the son has been sent by the father is different than the way that the disciples are sent by Jesus.

The apostles are sent out by Jesus. Why? Because Jesus says, I've come down out of heaven.

I'm the one who's been sent down from heaven. He recognizes his own pre -existence,

John chapter 17, but it's also found in Mark. And of course the standard consensus opinion there,

Mark, low Christology, John, high Christology, that's bunkum. It really is. It's ridiculous. If you're honest with Mark, I mean, just read

Mark chapter 14, read the trial of Jesus where he conflates

Psalm 110 and Jeremiah 7 and the high priest tears his robes and you've heard the blasphemy.

Well, what blasphemy? Well, he's identifying himself as the one who's presented before the ancient of days, the son of man, for crying out loud.

Like, duh. So anyway, do that and you'll over and over and you'll find the

Unitarian sort of expressing their presuppositions. Replace God with father and see what that, how, if that changes anything, that's important to do.

Or they'll talk about how Jesus walked on the water. If Jesus walks on the water, you must've heard of that story.

Of course. Yeah. And he walks on the water. And in Job chapter nine, it's written that Job is speaking in it and it's written that, you know,

God alone treads upon the waves of the sea. Only God treads on the waves of the sea. Well, okay.

That's not even what Job's talking about. And I don't, what

Jesus does is miraculous. But the question is, by what power is he doing this?

And for what purpose? Again, context is everything. Peter's going to get out of the boat and he's gonna start sinking, lack of faith, but it is not simply performing miraculous deeds.

Jesus's point in even doing the miraculous deeds with the apostles is to increase their faith.

But he's not saying this is what proves that I am who I claim that I am. When he says,

I am, and he identifies himself as the I am and says, unless you believe that I am, you'll die in your sins.

That's when you start talking about actual evidence in regards to Christ.

And of course, the sources he's talking about, if he wants to pick his sources, I'd probably say the majority of unbelieving scholarship wouldn't say, wouldn't believe that Jesus ever said what's in Job.

I mean, look at the Jesus seminar for crying out loud. Yeah, I know that's 1980s.

It's 40 years out of date, but it's the same attitude, same idea. When they debated

John, what was it? Two words in John were actually said by Jesus.

Something along those lines. It's almost nothing. So there's always a way around it. There's always a way to do it if you don't want to believe it.

And so people say, yeah, so that means Jesus is calling back to this imagery. And again, they just kind of forget that Peter, Simon Peter, then gets out of the boat and walks on water as well.

And he starts sinking because he doesn't have enough faith. And Jesus sort of says like, oh, you haven't got enough faith. That's why you're sinking.

But the implication is that if Simon Peter had enough faith, he would have stayed afloat. And so how did he stay?

Oh, well, okay. But he could only walk on water because he had faith in Jesus. Okay. But then maybe Jesus could only walk on water because he had faith in God.

In other words, the stuff I was talking about with John the Baptist, all of the indications that Jesus gives of things that only

God should be able to do that he can do, forgiving sins, glorifying himself, raising the dead, judging people, all of this kind of stuff, are all things which at some point or another, he then gives to his disciples as well.

As if to say that, yes, I have this all. Jesus does not give judging the dead and being the one chosen by the

Father, Acts 17, 31, by which righteous judgments. No, that's going to be done by Christ, not by us.

There are amazing things wherein the body participates in the ministry of Christ through the body in the church, so on and so forth.

But that's why if you read the Forgotten Trinity, if you listen to the debates I've done with Jehovah's Witnesses, Unitarian, so on and so forth, that's not this kind of stuff

I present. The strongest evidence is textual evidence. It's not just, well, look at this.

Jesus does something God does here. Well, yeah. So sometimes some angels do things or other men, things like that.

You've got to be really careful what kind of evidence you present. And it doesn't sound to me like he's really been encountering the strongest stuff, which makes me wonder if this was recorded before he debated

David Wood or after. Maybe before, I don't know. Authority that's come from God, but it's something that's been administered to me.

And in John 17, Jesus prays for his disciples and all Christian believers and prays that they'll all be one together.

Can you pull up John 17? This is one of the most instructive parts of the New Testament. Also, actually, if you just want an interesting tidbit of mistranslation before we go there, can you type in John 12, 44?

Now, here's what I want to get into. So let me do something here real quick.

So here's John 12, 44. And this is the

LSB. And Jesus cried out and said, he who believes in me does not believe in me, but in him who sent me.

So in fact, let's do this before he presents it. So as you hear him present it, you can go, oh, man, he doesn't get the context or anything here.

He's picking at gnats, but it's good to do it. We need to know our scriptures and we need to know where we are.

What's John chapter 12? See, that should be something we all know. But let me challenge you on that.

You think you know your Bible? What's John chapter 12 about? Where does it fit in the development of John's argumentation?

John chapter 12 is the end of the public ministry of Jesus. Starting in chapter 13, you have the private ministry to the disciples, culminating in the

Lord's high priestly prayer in John 17, John chapter 18, the betrayal, moving into the crucifixion narrative.

So it's important that we know that. And then that's the context then of the controversial texts that speak of God's judgment upon the people of Israel.

And so like John 12, 39, for this reason they could not believe, or Isaiah said again, and then you have the quotation from Isaiah 6 and Isaiah's temple vision where he is commissioned to be a prophet.

He has blinded their eyes, he hardened their heart, lets them see with their eyes and understand with their heart and return and I heal them.

But then remember what comes right after that? A couple years ago at G3, this was what my sermon was on, was the identification of Jesus as Yahweh from Isaiah 6, preached out of the

Greek Septuagint, remember? For those of you who saw. John 12, 41, these things Isaiah said because he saw his glory and he spoke about it.

And so, you know, you have lengthy debates with Unitarians who try to find some way around what verse 41 says.

When it says, these things

Isaiah said because he saw his glory and he spoke concerning him, the him is

Jesus. Because the next verse says, nevertheless many of the rulers believe

Esau in him, the only person the context is. And by the way, warning, the

NIV, the NIV had a translational rule that when the proper noun was too far back in the context, they would repeat the proper noun.

So in the NIV, well, I don't know what the current NIV is, I stopped using the NIV, when it went all wacky gender neutral stuff.

Anyway, I don't think I even have the modern NIV, come to think of it. But I think it was what the 1984 edition, something like that.

I think that's what I was working with when I wrote the King James only controversy. They have many believed in Jesus.

Even though you can see right here, Elton is the pronoun that's being used.

And so they tried to sort of simplify the original by repeating the proper nouns when the original assumes that you can follow a context well enough to do that.

But this is about Jesus. And tauta, these things, this is the immediate,

John chapter 12, verse 40 is the immediate preceding context. That's Isaiah six.

Who did Isaiah see? Whose glory did Isaiah see in John chapter six?

Well, it was Jehovah's. Now, Greg Stafford wrote a paper,

I remember finally tracking that down. He's sort of just, actually my son tells me he's actually doing

YouTube stuff now. No one has ever sent me anything he's done on YouTube. I don't know what happened to him because his website's completely out of date.

It hasn't been updated in years. I don't know. But Stafford tried to find a way around this.

And if you've ever read the article, he utilizes every type of leftist argument you can come up with to try to get around it.

Um, it's really bad argumentation, but this is

John saying, and as I've said many times, if you asked Isaiah, Isaiah, whose glory did you see?

Isaiah's response is going to be, I saw the glory of Yahweh. If you ask

John whose glory Isaiah saw, it's going to be

Jesus. Okay. So that's the immediate context. And so that's, so nevertheless, many, even of the rulers believe in him, but because the

Pharisees, they were not confessing him for fear that they'd be put out of the synagogue for their love, the glory of men, rather than the glory of God. So there were people who hear the words of Christ.

Um, but then notice believed in him, the PSJ son. As soon as you see that sigma alpha, you know what it is.

It's an heiress. And in the gospel of John, there is a consistent theme that you can identify no matter how people try to get around this.

When speaking of true saving faith, John defaults to the present tense, ongoing action. When speaking of faith that, well, you know, they believed in him, but they wouldn't confess him.

Heiress, point, point action, or simple expression of action, depending on context and stuff like that.

Um, so that's where you get to John. That's, that's the immediate context.

John 1244 is John 1241 and following, which identifies Jesus as Yahweh. Okay.

So, so the gospel of John starts with the affirmation.

He's actually try to, and that, and we'll finish up when we get to it, but he's going to try to deal with John one, one, and a fail miserably.

Um, the gospel is going to pretty much end with Thomas's confession. My Lord, my

God, you can stand on your head. I read a Unitarian recently. He was, he wrote a thread responding to a friend of mine on Twitter.

And, um, I mean, it is, the very definition of ice of Jesus of just,

I have a conclusion. I'm going to do the Bible, whatever I need to do the Bible to get to this, this conclusion.

And that's what you, you end up with there. So here's so John 1244,

Jesus cried out and said the one believing in me.

So hop is to own the singular masculine participle constant throughout the gospel of John.

Now I would just ask, can this fellow, can O 'Connor, has he read the gospel of John? I read the gospel of John Greek many, many times, um, preached from it many, many times from the

Greek. Uh, does he read Greek? Can he look at this and go, ah, hop is to you.

And immediately your mind start going, going back to John chapter six and John chapter five. And, and, you know, what the one believing in me and the textual variants where is there or is not there, things like that.

There's a lot of background to this stuff. If you're really going to comment on the Bible, uh, does he know this stuff?

I don't know the one believing in me now, John six, the one believing me has eternal life.

Um, who's the one believing me? The one given me by my father. There are themes in the gospel of John.

Each chapter presents to us an interweaving of these themes.

It's beautiful. It really is. But he says, the one believing in me is not believing in me, but in the one who sent me now, does that distinguish between the father and the son, just like everything else in the gospel of John does

John chapter 17 father glorify me with the glory, which

I have with you before the world in your presence before the world was, you know, this is one divine person speaking to another divine person.

Um, it's right there. It's inescapable in the text. Um, so there is a distinction between the one who is sent and the one who sends, but the point here, notice that's not the whole sentence.

Um, well, at least not in the Greek side, uh, the LSB breaks it up and the one seeing again, straight out of John six, we're repeating the same themes here.

Um, the one seeing me is now notice there's, there's no negative.

It doesn't say is not seeing me, but it's seeing the one who sent me.

The one seeing me is seeing the one who sent me now, you know, a modalist, a

Jesus only person might try to use something like this, but Jesus distinction between himself and the father is inarguable.

However, what did the prologue tell us? What does John one 18 tell us? No one has seen

God anytime. The unique God who was in the bosom of the father.

He has exegeted him. He has explained him. He has made him known. Here's a fulfillment of that theme.

It comes to the surface. Again, the one seeing me is seeing the one who sent me.

Now there is a textual variant there. Um, but there's, it's only that's a super minor one.

I'm really surprised they include, well, P 66. So that's why they include it when seeing me is seeing the one who sent me.

So it's the unity, same thing we saw in John chapter five, distinction between father and son, and yet the unity onto the one or the other, uh, et cetera, et cetera.

It's, it is, it's repetitious, but it's repetitious in the sense of being taught in different ways and in different manners all the way through the gospel of John.

Um, it's, it's beautiful. So there's, there's John chapter 12.

And so that's what you could go into here. Uh, now that we've gone through it, let's listen to what he does to it actually just in a new tap because I want to go to a slightly different website.

John 1244 I think is the verse. Yeah. Check this out.

So scroll down, go to Bible hub, scroll down that one Bible hub. So this is John 1244, right?

So in the NIV, which is the most popular translation at the top of that, then Jesus cried out, whoever believes in me does not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me.

So he's saying like, he's basically saying that I've come from the father. Like if you believe in me, you don't just believe in me. You believe in the father too.

So he's sort of claiming to be, to be God here. Right. However, look underneath, look at all of the other translations.

Jesus shouted to the crowds. If you trust me, you are trusting not only me, but also God who sent me. Take a look at the

English standard version. And Jesus cried out and said, whoever believes in me, believes not in me, but in him who sent me.

Do you notice a difference? He's separating the two. Do you notice a difference in the ESV there and the NIV? It's the word only.

Yeah. So in one of them, it says, whoever believes in me does not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me. In others, it just says, whoever believes in me does not believe in me, but believes in the one who sent me.

Now, here's a question for you. But all of these have been translated from the same Greek manuscripts.

Which one do you think the Greek aligns with? Do you think the word only is in the Greek? Sorry, hold on.

The answer is no, it's not. So how did it end up in the English? Because of translation philosophies.

There are literalist translations. Translation philosophies. Yeah, because there are different ways to translate a phrase.

Are you trying to translate? So now what he's going to do is he's going to explain to his audience, the audience here, again, stuff that should be fundamental to Christians.

Formal, dynamic, formal equivalency, dynamic equivalency, what is paraphrase, so on and so forth.

And you can make somewhat of an argument that you could, when it says, is not believing in me, but in the one who sent me, you'd say, well, he's not, he's not saying they're not believing in him because that's a constant theme in John.

So we can add only or alone for clarity. Okay, I'd rather do that in the pulpit.

I prefer the LSB. But again, it's a, it's simple reading comprehension to understand.

The Jesus isn't saying you're not really believing in me. He is making that connection.

And he has said, he has commended belief in him. He says in John chapter eight, unless you believe in me, you're going to die in your sins.

But all he's saying here is, and belief in me is not something separate from this. This is a continuation of fulfillment of theme in John chapter five.

Son does nothing of himself. I'm not a separate deity out here trying to get people to follow me rather than following somebody else.

You know, people worshiping different deities, different gods, things like that. The words like word for word, or are you trying to translate the phrase?

So for example, in the Old Testament, there's a verse about slavery where God says, he says of slaves, he says, they are their silver,

I think he says, like that slave is your silver. Now, what that means is that the slave is your money, because silver is like a euphemism for money.

Now, as a translator into English, you look at the Hebrew and decide, are you going to translate it word for word and say the slave is his silver?

Or are you going to translate the idea for an English reader and say the slave is his property? Yeah, I prefer the example from Luke, let these words sink deeply into your ears.

Versus the more dynamic translation, they'll listen carefully to what I'm about to tell you. I think that's a better illustration of it.

But similar stuff. Yeah. So depending on what you're going for, it's going to do a different thing.

So the NIV, the most popular translation to Bible is a so called like phrase for phrase translation. So tries to get at what the

Bible means. Whereas if you read something like the NRSV, which is my favorite version, the new revised standard edition, the new revised standard version, updated edition, so NRSV UE, this is an attempt to accurately translate the

Greek terms, which I find most helpful, because that's what I'm interested in. But if you're just trying to read for the stories, you might prefer the

NIV. But you've got to, you've got, I get the feeling of what you just said, he does not read

Greek. That's my guess. You know, it may, if I listened to the, his part of the debate with Dave Wood, haven't had a chance to,

I've got to debate myself tomorrow night. Stuff to do. I just don't get the feeling he does. You realize when you're reading an

English translation, that you are reading through the lens of an interpreter. Yes. So in this instance, this is the most obvious case, bear in mind that I'm debating whether Jesus claimed to be

God. If he's, if you read the ESV there, and imagine I'm, I'm up and I'm at the podium and I'm doing my debate.

And I say, Jesus didn't claim to be God because look, he said, whoever believes in me does not believe in me, but believes in the one who sent me.

So he's separating himself from God. But now imagine my opponent gets up. Okay. But that would be something really stupid to do because that's not consistent with the rest of the gospel of John and the regular use of Jesus, where belief in him and belief in the father are both commended.

His whole point in John 12, 44 is the perfection of his revelation of the father.

It's not some kind of, Oh, that's all I need to understand. No, I'm not, I'm not saying you need to believe in me.

No, he's, he's set by time again, John chapter 12 is the end of Jesus' public ministry.

How many times did he say that positively about belief in himself in the public ministry all the time?

So how could you come to the, he doesn't, he's not reading John chapter 12 as it functions in the gospel of John, as it is a place where various themes from previous chapters are brought together in a new way.

They weren't brought together before. He's not reading it like that. Unfortunately, most Christians don't really like that either.

He's saying Jesus did claim to be God. And he just quotes the other translations of Jesus claim to God because he says, whoever believes in me, he doesn't just believe in me, but believes in the one who sent me.

So I must have this connection. So that translation, that one word is crucial to understanding the nature of Jesus and what he was claiming to be.

And that is an interesting example of how I think they've taken too much, but you can understand the NIV translators.

They've already assumed that Jesus did claim to be God. So when they come across the Greek or they read the rest of the gospel of John and just, yeah.

And, and did not isolate John 1244 from John 1241, where Jesus has just been identified as Yahweh.

Does this guy even have a clue that that's in verse 41? I doubt it. I doubt it.

That's like. They're like, well, what did Jesus mean here? What was it? What idea was he trying to get across and how can we convey that to an

English reader? And when he said that they don't believe in me, but the one who sent me, what he means is like, they don't just believe in me.

So they translated it that way. But if you've got a different interpretation, that's not how it reads. So if you are ever reading the

Bible and either something jumps out at you, you think it's important or interesting, or definitely if it's confusing, the first thing that you should always do look on Bible Hub, scroll up to the top here and see where it says

Greek up a bit. Uh, yeah, that should no, no up a bit.

Sorry. Yeah. Just click on that. Anytime what you have is a breakdown of the original Greek text next to the words that's been translated.

So if you scroll down a tiny little bit, whoever believing the one believing in me, not believes in me, but in the one who sent me.

So you can, you can investigate it for yourself brackets there too. Yeah. So the Brad, the brackets are kind of, because you know, it's not like a perfect translation into English.

Like there are like Greek uses the definitive article. So it says the equivalent of like the God a lot of the time, which that itself becomes really interesting.

When you look at John chapter one, like there's so much like when, when John in John chapter one, it says, okay, here we go.

This is what I want to get to. And we're getting toward the top of the hour. So this is going to work out. This is what I want to get to because here we go again.

Um, how many times we've been over this one? I don't know, but it's our duty to keep going over it.

As long as there is confusion and error. The, uh, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was

God. And later it says the word became flesh. So the word is Jesus. So it's the word was with God and the word was

God. In fact, yeah, let's just do it. Just put, can you pull it up? Can you go to John one? Um, it's like in John one

Greek and then yeah, click that into linear Bible. That'll do. Okay.

So check this out. So you can see the orange text there in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. Right?

I'm going to try something here. Hold on. Hey, that's going to work.

So instead of the silly interlinear simple stuff over there, we have the

Nestle on 28th edition over there. So we will be able to see it much larger print and, um, go from there.

Here we go. Notice that where it says, and the word was with God. Yep. It says with ton

Theon, which in Greek sort of crucially is something like, so there's a dash there because the word that we don't do that in English, we don't say it was the

God, but in group. Okay. Anybody remember this? Anyone, anyone heard this before?

Um, yeah. Uh, anyone remember a certain debate with Joe ventilation

Tom, John one, one, here we go again. Um, just go watch the debate.

Uh, well, I'll, I'll tell you what's going on here. So in Greek, you have this definitive art or you have this, you have this Tom, which kind of crudely in English would mean something like the

God, but notice how it says the word was with Tom, Theon, the

God. And then it says, and the word was whole logos. Sorry. The, the, and God was the word.

So you've got whole logos, the word you've got Tom, Theon, the God, but it says the word was with Tom, Theon, but the logos was with Theos.

There's no Tom, there's no definitive article. So in other words, it basically reads as the word was with the

God and the word was God. So some people look at this and say that, yeah.

So the, so the, the, the difference between God and the God in this instance is the difference between something like God as like a being and like God is like a, as like meaning just like divinity or the same thing as God.

So Jehovah's witnesses are huge on this, for example, you know, so they translate this, I think in their

Bible as the word was with God and the word was a God or something like that, you know? And so some people look at this and say, well, we should translate this as in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was divine or something that means something similar, right?

If you look at the Greek, at the very least, it's interesting that in one of these instances, it's Tom, Theon. In the other instance, in the next usage, it's not, it's just Theos.

There's no definitive article. And does that make a difference? Well, who knows? I'll freeze it right there.

Well, who knows? There you go. Well, who knows?

Well, um, how about we just scroll down here.

Verse six. Again, it's on Anthropos, Apostel, Apostel Menos Paratheou, Anima Alto Ioannes.

Well, here's God, no article. So with a

God, with divinity, with a divine quality. Okay.

Um, if you have ever worked through Dan Wallace's section on articles, uh, as he points out, there is, there's nothing less well understood by most

Greek exegetes than the Greek article. There is nothing less like the

English article than the Greek article. Um, using the accusative article

Prostantheon in with the, um, term Prost there, very normative.

What he clearly doesn't understand is what an anarthorist predicate nominative is.

And what he should be able to explain, if he wants to handle this accurately, is that if it said chi ha

Theos ein ha Logos, then Logos and Theos are interchangeable. They become the same thing.

The, the, the copulative verb becomes an equal sign. So God is the word.

The word is God. They're interchangeable. And that's not what John's saying. He's just, he's just distinguished even in the first two, uh, phrases of John one, one between the

Logos who is eternally existent and being Prostantheon in face to face with in one, one

B. So in one, one C, he's not going to say, he's not gonna put the article there, but you see

English speakers don't understand that. They just think the article is for the versus indefinite.

And that's not how the Greek article functions. And nobody who reads

Greek regularly, if you can stand with a Greek text and read it in English.

So in other words, live translate, then you know how you have to handle articles and they're not going to be throwing you around, but most people can't do that.

And so they don't know. And so they make commentaries and stuff like this that just don't make any sense.

It doesn't follow. Now, I think you, you make a strong argument that, um, what you have in one, one

C is the assertion by using the antithesis predicate, placing it before the copy of the verb that there is an emphasis upon the nature of the

Logos as being deity. So you, you, but how do you, how do you, how do you translate that in English?

Um, but you don't translate as a God because that, that's just as definite as God is.

You explain this, you explain this when you teach it, you explain to people that John is being very careful in how he crafts this opening section of his gospel because he's, he wants that to function as the lens through which you read the rest of the gospel.

And John one, one is the book ends with John one, 18, one 18 ends the prologue.

And I just wrote an article for the, for Ezra Institute on this, but verse 18, say on who dice,

Hey, Oh, rock 10, the notice, no article they on is an

Arthur's. No one has seen God at any time. It's not, no one has seen a

God. You do not need to have an article for God to be definite. No one has seen

God at any time. Now this is a textual variant. That's what the whole article was about.

Discussed it. I didn't spend a lot of time discussing the difference between hominogeny, and just monogamy.

That's the difference between the four earliest witnesses to the gospel of John.

There is a difference whether they have the article or not, all of which has, they ask of the son, but, but I'm going to stay off the unique God.

Hot on ice, Tom, call upon to Patras, the one who is at the father's side in the father's bosom at a place of, of intimate relationship.

I kind of asked that one X, a gay Sata. He has revealed, he has explained, and there are some, uh, variants that, uh, him or something along those lines.

But this is the, this is the, this is the book ends. And so what you have in 1 .1

is the Logos is eternal. Logos is in relationship with the father. Logos is as to his nature.

God, he is deity. 1 .18, no one has seen God, the father at any time.

Father is specifically identified. There are two patrols. No one has seen the father at any time.

The unique God, the one, the, the, the only God, the one, the only God, who is the son, however you want to translate monogamy, say awesome, who is in the bosom, the father.

That's the repetition of phrase B. With the, with, with God in 1 .1,

he has made him known. He has revealed him. And once you say that revelation is taking place, that explanation is taking place, the rest of the gospel is how he did that, how he did that.

So in each one of these instances, what you get are people who focus in and they miss, they miss the forest for the trees.

They're, they're looking at one branch on one tree and they don't see how that is related to everything around. That's the problem.

And that's the problem that we have with this kind of discussion going on by Mr.

O 'Connor in this particular podcast. And there's big me again.

You didn't, you didn't need to see me. I, we don't, we don't care about that ugly

Scotsman. So it doesn't seem that Mr.

O 'Connor is really up to speed to be talking about the things that people are looking to him as an expert on.

And that's problematic. And so most of us aren't going to have the opportunity of correcting him.

But at least you can be one of those people that helps to correct the people who have been influenced by him.

And that's what we're trying to do. So there you go. So tomorrow night, a debate on Romans nine with AK Richardson, and then

I'll be speaking in Houghton, the

Baptist church there with Skip Rainbolt on Saturday night and then Sunday morning,

I believe is what it is. I need to double check all that stuff. It's hard to keep track of everything. And then we head home and I'm quickly get into Oklahoma and Texas where the roads are different.

Yeah. And start making the journey back. And it's going to be a little while till I'm back on the road again.

Rest of April. I'm not out and well, no, no. Very next weekend is

ReformCon. You can still get your tickets down there in Tucson, Arizona. Looking forward to all the folks that are coming. I'm going to be speaking on the necessity of the work of the spirit of God to fulfill the promises of Psalm 2 and Psalm 110 and Isaiah 40.

I'm going to be speaking on the necessity of what Stephen Wolfe calls revivalism. It's not revivalism.

It is the spirit of God fulfilling promises to draw people to Jesus Christ.

So, yeah, I'll be speaking on that subject at ReformCon in Tucson the weekend after I get back.

So we're not actually I'm going to park this thing and I'm not going to empty it. We're going to keep it running, keep the refrigerator cold.

And I'll just, you know, swap out some clothes and put in other clothes and then head to Tucson and see you all down there for ReformCon.

Then we're going to we've got some you always have repair work to be done.

And then Parker in the shade. And I don't think I'll be pulling her out again till right at the end of June.

And that's when I'll be heading back to seminary and we're going to be teaching apologetics the second weekend in July and then heading to Colorado.

Not sure how many more years I'm going to be able to get to go to Colorado, be honest with you. I really don't.

I really don't know. If you heard what they're doing up there, they're becoming

California, becoming Illinois, they're becoming New York state. If you misgender your children, state can take them away from you.

I mean, the leftists have taken over the state. It's such a shame. Such a shame.

And so, yeah. So if you appreciate the debate last week, you saw it.

Appreciate the debate tomorrow night. Ministry being done as we're traveling around. Travel fund is how we do it.

And the travel fund will be paying for a few things that have happened on this trip, like the tonneau cover on my truck disappearing.

No, it wasn't stolen. It blew off. So we got to replace that.

And we did have a leak during a major, major, major, major rainstorm. And so thankful for a young man in the church in Livingston, who's a certified

RV tech, came out and he was crawling around the whole roof on his hands and knees, looking for even pinprick holes and stuff like that.

And passed a few areas that were suspicious, maybe, and did some stuff along the side.

And who knows, maybe he got it. We'll find out. We may have to replace that membrane up there eventually.

We'll see. But all of that, you make it possible for me to be here in northern

Louisiana to do this debate. Travelfund .aomin .org is how that works. So go there and keep us on the road as I pull into sometimes nice spots and sometimes not so nice spots.

And that green stuff called diesel, it's actually gone down a little bit on this trip.

I'm thankful for that. But it's still still more expensive than what you put in your in your vroom vroom car.

That's for sure. So help us with that. And we will very much appreciate it. All right.

I think that's pretty much it. And looks like the stream was pretty strong.

I never saw any caching or anything like that. I hope Rich saw that I started. I actually started because Rich worked hard to put that camera mount over there.

And I'm not sure if this isn't the first time that I've used it. I'm not sure.

But there you go. So I just wanted Rich to feel loved and fulfilled and stuff like that.

By putting that over there. You can also see Jeremiah Nortier's apologetic dog t shirt that I'm wearing.

And that will make him happy as well. So there you go. So yeah.

All right. So with all of that, we are ready to get out of here.

Thank you for watching the program. I'll get the outro going and we will see you next time.