UN’s “Equiterra” Exposed, Trent Horn Response Continued

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Greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. We are in the AO Max studio today because we are going to be toward the end of the program continuing our response to Trent Horn and Catholic Answers on church history.

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So if you're one of those church history geeks, stay tuned. We will get to it as quickly as we can here.

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But I've had this item from the UN in my

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Evernote file for a long time and I thought, you know, we've got the screen up, we can take a look at this.

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This is Equiterra. This is what your money goes to when the

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United States pours its wealth into the United Nations.

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And it's just fascinating to look at this. It's sort of like a Where's Waldo type thing where everybody's different sizes and the buildings are really small and weird stuff like that.

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But you look through this thing and it is the wokest, most, well just simply, this is the

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Marxist utopia as it now exists in, as it seeks to degrade and destroy the

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West. That's what you have here. So, for example, no, it's the tablet over there, evidently.

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It's probably going, no one loves me anymore. No one uses me anymore. Yes. Shame on you.

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Anyways. So, for example, we have Unstereotype Avenue, Violence Free Alley, Equal Pay Street, Climate Action Street, Inclusion Square, Equal Representation Avenue, Education Boulevard, and Freedom Avenue are the various streets that we have here in Equiterra.

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And if you look closely, for example, here's a woman in a wheelchair, this would have to do with ableism,

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I suppose, walking with a black woman. And the woman's saying, I felt respected and heard in that meeting today.

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And she's saying, me too. And over here, we have a item, a crane taking down, destroying workplace discrimination.

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And we've got equal work, equal pay over here at a child care center. Of course, the one thing you will not find anywhere in this picture, anywhere in this picture is a father, a mother, and their children.

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Doesn't exist. Not in Equiterra, because that's the patriarchy and that's the old way.

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And that's what we're now against. Up here in the upper left -hand corner are two women in wedding dresses, plan your wedding with us.

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Beneath that is a man taking care of two children, no mother to be found anywhere here.

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Here are two women holding hands. I would assume lesbians here. Here's two gay guys down here holding hands.

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I can't tell if these two women are holding hands or not. One saying, remember the gender pay gap?

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What a joke, lol. But then we have children playing football, as it's known around the world.

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But you have one guy, three gals, and somebody in a wheelchair.

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Now, I have seen some pretty impressive wheelchair basketball games and stuff like that, but I'm sorry.

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That's not going to work in real life. It's just not going to work. But there it is.

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Let's see, we have a renewable energy center down here. See here, right over here, we've got sustainable fashion.

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Rich wears sustainable fashion all the time. That's just because he just wears pretty much the same thing all the time.

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So it's very can't make this stuff up. Toxic masculinity recycling plant. So we've got girls are weak.

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Men don't cry. Men should be aggressive. Boys will be boys.

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And sexist jokes going in. And inclusive language, respect, equality, self -expression, no means no.

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We value all genders and express yourself is what's coming out the other side.

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Isn't that isn't that lovely? That's what we have over over there.

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And then down here at the bottom, we've got Equiterra government. The CEO of the year is a black woman.

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A stem for all, I would assume would be stem cell research, I guess. Like I said, we've got two more gay guys down here on the beach.

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Education is a right. The humanities. Oh, and then, of course, we have two women holding hands.

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We're going to be the best mums. And she's pregnant, obviously not by a man. But, you know, there you go.

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They're right next to the Reproductive Health Center. They must not have gotten down Freedom Avenue fast enough to stop that from happening.

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So, yeah, this this is your U .N. in action. And this is the utopian vision.

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Everyone just gets along and you can have and and what's the one thing you got to get rid of?

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You've got to get rid of Western values. You've got to get rid of the family. You've got to get rid of fathers and mothers and and the nuclear family.

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And you have to redefine everything. And fundamentally, when

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I saw this, the first thought across my mind was you have to have a completely different view of man.

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It's it's it's a it's disconnected from history, of course. You cannot recognize man's evil toward man.

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You cannot understand sin and power. You don't understand why there needs to be law.

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It is it is all made up fantasy that never exists.

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But the tired, worn out, but still working playbook of the leftists, of the communists, is to present the mantra, present the utopia and say, this is what we can build together.

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If you will just give up your freedoms to us because we love you so and we will take care of you, which is why we see everything happening today.

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But you see, to make this happen, you have to break up everything that made the

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West strong and allowed the West to stand against communism. You have to break all that up.

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You have to make the family up. And that's exactly what they're all about. United Nations, it is a destructive system.

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And the idea that we pour, well, I used to say the idea that we pour tax money into something like this.

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We don't. Yeah, your taxes are going to be going through the roof. All of us are.

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Inflation's on the rise. Energy prices on the rise. Clothing costs on the rise.

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Food costs on the rise. Your standard of living is going to be going down tremendously in the future.

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But you could not tax the entirety of the population of the

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United States. We don't make enough money to pay off the debt.

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We would not be able to pay off the debt that has accrued over the past year.

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One year. 25 % of the debt of the

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United States in one year. And remember, the Republicans were in charge for a lot of that too, even though now the

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Democrats are going, woohoo, trillions are fun.

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I was trying to figure out, and I didn't sit down my calculator. I was driving at the time. But it's sort of like, why not just give everybody in the

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United States a million dollars? Why not? And the sad thing is, most of the young people in our country could not answer why that is insanity.

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And right now, nobody who's in charge could answer why that's insanity either. But if you're wondering the reason why you can't just give everybody a million dollars, aside from the fact that even if that was possible to do, in one year, we'd be right back to where we are.

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The rich would be rich, the poor would be poor, and the people in the middle would be the people in the middle, and nothing would have changed.

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But the real reason is that if you gave everybody a million dollars, the inevitable result would be that a loaf of bread would cost you $50, a fill -up at the gas station would cost you $500, and any house would cost you your entire million plus.

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So it's insane, but that's what people think you can just do.

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And so you have the government right now, the next multi -trillion dollar thing is supposed to be for building bridges.

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Well, you know we do need bridges, and bridges need to be maintained. But anyone who's actually looked at the bill knows it has next to nothing to do with that.

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It's about collectivizing the entire economy of the United States. It's to do what the

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Soviets tried to do and destroy their economy. We are doing what

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Ronald Reagan only 40 years ago warned us against and mocked the

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Soviet Union for. He mocked them for it, and rightfully so. But that's what's going on in the

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United States right now. Anyway, there you go. There's Equatera, the

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Marxist utopia that cannot exist. Why? Because it does not recognize what man is.

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It fundamentally rejects biblical revelation and categories as to what man is.

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So life doesn't work this way. There you go. There you go. So this is going to look a little strange because I need to use accordance for both this and for the next thing, and I can't put it all back together again on the fly to make it work.

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So just look at the biblical section and try to ignore the church father stuff that we'll get to a little bit later on.

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You really can't see that in that shot anyways. It just sort of whites out that section.

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It just goes bye -bye. I've noticed that particular camera does that. When you switch over to other ones, you can actually see what's there, but I'm not sure why it is about that particular one.

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But anyways, things that we I was going to yesterday get into a discussion of two of the texts that came up in the

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Josh Bice discussion, and that's Acts 2 .23 and Acts 4 .27

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.28, but didn't have the opportunity to do so. I wanted to touch on them. Before I dive into them, a few weeks ago

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I ran into this guy on Twitter who's a graduate from Truett Seminary.

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Look, every seminary could put out some bad products, but if this guy's representative of what

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Truett's putting out, oh my. So he was talking about the issue yesterday.

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One of the things that I've noticed is that the responses that have been provided to what

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I said—well, first of all, there really haven't been any, not that I've seen. Very often what people do is they will respond in private groups and things like that.

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They don't want me to see it. They don't want to engage me. They just want to do stuff over there because they know that if it gets public, it might show up on this program, and that might be a bad thing given the kinds of argumentation they're using.

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But the responses in general have been to attack individuals and completely ignore the substance of the issue as it was being—I have no idea where I'm looking.

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Where am I looking? No, I'm not. Okay, see? See, you didn't even know where I was supposed to be looking.

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That's the problem. I'm sitting here. I can see myself back there. I don't know where I'm—there's, you know,

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I have no earthy idea what's going on here. But anyway, these responses have been focused upon individuals rather than actually dealing with the substance of the issue, and that is what was

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Josh Weiss's intention. So this—I just saw—I didn't have time to bring it up, but I just saw this guy, like I said, from Truett, and he literally—well, first of all, he had said that my comments were a complete waste of his time, and I said, well,

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I'd love to see you interact with that. He says, okay, here's Calvin, and what he does is he provides a screen capture where three places

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Calvin uses the term victim of Jesus. Not victim of injustice, which of course is what

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Josh was talking about, and which of course has a modern meaning, and which of course Calvin would never have even understood that modern meaning, because it would be completely anachronistic.

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So on any theological or historical level, this is absolutely hilarious.

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But he used the term victim. Now, of course, the term victim has a very long history in the history of the church.

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It goes back to a fundamental understanding of the book of Hebrews in regards to the high priest and the one who offers the victim upon the altar.

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He is both the priest and the victim. No question about that. No one's arguing about that. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the issue.

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If this is what's coming out of Truett Seminary, and you're paying to have somebody in Truett Seminary, I would suggest you get out of Truett Seminary very quickly, because they are not being taught how to think.

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They're being taught what to think. It was embarrassing. Whoever that young man is,

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I'm not even going to mention his name, but embarrassing. Really, really bad stuff.

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But anyway, so what we didn't get into, and what I wanted to touch on, we've talked about Acts 4 .27

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-28 many times. And it's excellent in regards to dealing...

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What makes Acts 4 .27 so useful is that it specifically delineates

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Herod and Pontius Pilate and the Jews and the Romans. And so you have wildly different intentionalities on the part of these groups in their actions.

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And yet, according to what is said by the early church, they did their actions, some of which was cowardice, some of which was just nuts.

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I mean, Herod was not an overly balanced individual, shall we say. Pilate, the

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Jewish leaders, there was even differences in the Jewish leaders as to why they were doing what they were doing. Romans, indifferent.

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If you want systemic oppression, the Romans actually defined it.

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But like I said, they were systemic oppressors of white people, actually, which is interesting. But you put all that together, and the fact that they did what they did exactly as they were supposed to do it, tells you everything you need to know.

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That God's sovereign decree orders everything in time. Not the other way around.

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That's what mankind wants, but God does it. That is the faith of the early church.

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So here in Acts 2, you can see even in the preaching of the church, this strong emphasis upon the freedom and power of God.

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So men of Israel, hear these words or listen to these words.

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Jesus the Nazarene, a man, and I know my

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Muslim friends always look at stuff like that and go, see, he was a man. And we all go, yes, he was.

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That's what the incarnation is all about. The God -man, a man attested, documented, you might say, demonstrated by God to you.

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So the reality is that from God's perspective, the clarity of his revelation concerning the person of Christ is made to each individual, to you.

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Think about it. Would there be some in the audience who had only a matter of weeks earlier been saying, crucify, crucify?

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Yeah. But was everybody? No. And yet,

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God had given demonstration that this Jesus of Nazareth was a man attested to you by God with miracles, works of might and power, wonders, signs, that's a term that John likes to use, which he did, which

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God performed through him in your midst, just as you also know.

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This one, this man who was delivered by the predetermined plan, the predetermined plan, the specific plan, not the plan

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B, plan C, plan number 177 ,000 after all the freewill acts of man have forced us down to this level.

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This man was delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God.

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Foreknowledge is not God looking down. In fact, this is an active.

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So this is God being involved in doing something. We like to try to turn foreknowledge into some passive thing where God's learning something.

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No, this is something that God is doing, that God is accomplishing.

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And this is an act of power on his part. It's not some passive receipt of something from outside of himself.

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There's a predetermined plan, counsel, will, and knowledge of God.

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So this is the basis of it. He was delivered, he was given up, then by the hands of lawless ones, lawless men, crucified, nailed to a tree, and killed.

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But notice what nailed to the tree is. Now that is, without going into a lot of details, an heiress participle, and it is in the plural, nominative plural form.

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You did this. Now there is almost no chance whatsoever that in the audience were the soldiers that actually drove the nails into Jesus' hand.

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There's no reason to believe that that would even be a possibility. And notice this, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put him to death.

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Think about that. Because here we do have, if we are careful, if we sit back and consider, what is being taught here?

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In this sermon, what are the apostles communicating from the very beginning?

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Some of you remember back, I don't know, when was it that the Passion movie came out?

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I've forgotten what year that was, but mid -2000s somewhere, 2005 -ish or something like that.

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I don't remember. But you may recall that they had the scene where at the trial,

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Pilate comes out. I find out he's innocent, etc., etc. And they actually have it being done in Greek and Latin and Aramaic, but they have subtitles.

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And I think just a day or two before the film was to be released, there was such an outcry because they had quoted from Matthew, let his blood be upon us and our children, that they had to remove that from the subtitles.

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It was still said in Aramaic. If you knew enough Aramaic, you could sort of make it out, but not too many people could catch that.

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And so they took it out of the film. And ever since World War II, and ever since the

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Nazi atrocities at Auschwitz and Buchenwald and Dachau and Sachsenhausen and every place like that, there has been a, especially in Europe, it's been communicated across the pond as well to us, a fundamental embarrassment at the teaching of the

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New Testament that recognizes the central role that the covenant people themselves played in the crucifixion of Jesus.

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You're supposed to be embarrassed by that. You're not allowed to say anything about that, really.

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And yet, you cannot get around this. This is addressed to men of Israel. We saw that in the preceding verse.

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Men of Israel. And then it says, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put them to death.

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So they were godless men. Those would be the Romans.

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But you nailed them that cross, which would be the

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Jewish leaders, covenantally representing the people. They were the ones who covenantally say, let his blood be upon us and upon our children.

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And yet all of this delivered up by the predetermined plan for knowledge of God. You can't escape this.

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And the problem is when you try to create a view of God that turns him into the responder to man.

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When you say, I simply, I'm not going to worship a God who exists outside of time.

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I'm not going to worship that free and sovereign God. I want a God who is as limited to the vicissitudes of time as I am.

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And therefore you put man's autonomous will in control and then

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God becomes the responder. Rather than what you have right here, very plainly.

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You have a sovereign God. You have the incarnation. It has taken place at the exact time and place that God determines.

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It's the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God functioning clearly here. And yet you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put him to death.

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Then God raised him up. Death could not hold him. But the reality of their role, this is the part of the sermon that's going to get them in a few verses when they go, man and brother, what do we do?

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Repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. So the gospel included being honest about what took place, about what happened.

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But you have here fundamental compatibilism. If you do not believe that God's sovereign decree and man's responsibility in time are compatible, what are you going to do with texts like this?

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You end up turning them on their head. Only way around it.

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Only way around it. And so yes, they were godless men. And God used godless men.

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But it was by his predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God. And the immediate response is, well then

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God cannot judge them. It's exactly what they say in Romans 9. How can you still find fault?

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For who can resist his will? Who are you a man who answers back to God? Continues to be a full refutation.

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It really is a full refutation. I disagree with the reformed men who say, God doesn't answer that question.

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Yes, he did. Who are you, oh man, to answer back to God? The thing formed will not say the one who formed it, why did you make me like this?

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That is a full response, at least for the person whose heart has been changed to recognize who

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God is and who we are. And so there is no question that Jesus is the victim by his own will and might.

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There is no question that in the old definition of victim of injustice, that what these godless men did was even, it was even unjust by their own standards.

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But he was not the victim of injustice in the modern systemic concept, where everyone is just, there's nothing they can do about it and there's no wills involved.

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No, God had a purpose that he was accomplishing. And it wasn't that, oh man,

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I was hoping Jesus was going to be a great Messiah, but man, that systemic injustice got him. And so now we got to do the best we can.

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No, that does not work, never will work. And there you go from there.

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All right. So I wanted to touch on that and we will be coming back to that in just a moment.

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Because we want to go back to Trent Horne. And you know,

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I'm seeing, the

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Roman Catholics have many of the same problems we have right now. You have, we have lots of people who call themselves

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Protestants, who, and I know, I really wish that some of the

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Roman Catholics would recognize that the vast majority of people who call themselves Protestants are not. They don't have any commitment to sola scriptura.

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They have no commitment to the gospel. They have no commitment to supernatural revelation. I would think that a real honest

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Roman Catholic apologist would look at Union Theological Seminary and not even put us in the same camp, they'd recognize.

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Now they may struggle with that a little bit because they have to look at something like Boston College. And the problem is,

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I see the vast difference that exists between a Trent Horne or Pat Madrid or somebody like that, who's consistent with historic

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Roman Catholic teaching and the wackadoodles that teach at Boston College and at so many other

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Roman Catholic institutions, who could care less what the church has ever taught in the past?

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All right, so I can see the difference there, but here's where there's a difference.

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Nobody at Union Theological Seminary would be considered to be a part, even have the possibility, outside of complete repentance for their beliefs, of being a part of my fellowship.

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It's just not possible. We believe completely different things. The problem is, with Rome's magisterium, and especially with the current

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Pope, you're stuck with those guys at Boston College. Because the fact of matter is, you know the

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Pope's actually more friendly toward them than he is toward you. That's where the issue is.

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That's why, for example, a couple months ago we responded, and I'm going to say it again.

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Everybody's saying, you need to debate Jimmy Akin. Fine, let's do it. We've got this beautiful studio. Let's do it. But you have a

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Pope who is saying and doing things that the last time, let's put it this way, the last time

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Jimmy Akin and I set eyes on each other in the flesh, I believe, I believe

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I'm correct about this, was at the headquarters of CRI.

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When Jimmy Akin and I were on for three hours in the Bible Answer Man broadcast, before the broadcast we had a,

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I think we had chicken, had a chicken lunch brought in.

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Hank Hanegraaff and Jimmy Akin and me and a few other people, there in the, you know, sort of a dining area outside the studio.

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And here's the issue. The Pope that Jimmy Akin referred to as the infallible vicar of Christ on that program did not believe the things the current

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Pope does. And so why Jimmy Akin wants to go back to Sola Scriptura?

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Now I've heard, I've been told that Jimmy Akin believes he has come up with new arguments against Sola Scriptura that no one else has ever come up with before.

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Now I'll be honest with you, I get a little bit worried about people who can look at fundamental issues that have been debated for centuries and go, nobody's ever had the insights

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I have. Because I've met those folks before. I, unfortunately, Rich gets to talk to them on the phone all the time.

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And that's why he's starting to lose it on top. And you know, the gray's coming in and he's got a little bit of a tick every once in a while and stuff like that, because they are a dime a dozen.

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I'm sorry. There are people all over the place that think they have now, so evidently no

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Jesuit, no Roman Catholic thinker, John Henry Cardinal Newman wasn't smart enough to come up with this, right?

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I don't think that, you know, even

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I've told a story about the bike ride that I did years and years ago, where halfway through it, all of a sudden the problem with the

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Roman Catholic argument about the canon of scripture and sola scriptura hit me. And I was so worried that I was going to forget it by the time

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I got home, that I turned around and got home and wrote notes to myself and then went back out and finished riding.

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Well, the reality is that the insight that I gained at that point was something that B .B.

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Warfield had said in other words, Michael Kruger has said it in his own words. I didn't come up with some new thing.

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I've been able to find it verified in the words and works of others, even if it was in a slightly different context or something like that.

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So I would invite Jimmy Akin, if you think you've come up with new stuff that no one's ever thought of before, put it out there, put it in print, make your arguments.

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I'll be interested in reading them. I'd like to see what this new set of arguments is.

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I can guarantee you it's just simply a variation on theme. I mean, this subject has been exhausted.

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Not exhausted in the sense of it's no longer worth discussing, but I cannot see that there's anything new to be discussed.

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Put it out there, but stop hiding from your own claims.

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The reality is when you convert the Roman Catholic Church, you had John Paul II.

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Francis is not John Paul II. Francis doesn't believe the same things that John Paul II did.

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There are fundamental issues that are introduced by liberation theology, which he plainly embraces.

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That you can't just simply go, well, you know, I mean, if you will not defend your ultimate claims of authority, but demand that we defend our ultimate claims of authority over and over and over again, which

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I have done over and again in numerous different contexts. But if you're going to say we won't defend ours, then you don't have any reason to be criticizing somebody else.

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I just thought I'd throw that in there. But at least folks like Patrick Madrid and Trent Horn, I can respect where they're coming from.

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I have a hard time respecting so many of these Roman Catholics today that just make it up as they go along.

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I don't have respect for the Paula Whites of the world either who make it up as they're going along as well.

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I would not expect that Trent Horn or Patrick Madrid would have respect for that kind of silliness.

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I would hope they would recognize these folks don't really care about being connected to what came before. They don't see any value in there being consistency from generation to generation, stuff like that.

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I realized that a lot of Roman Catholics who converted from Protestantism, they converted from denominations or churches that had no concern about connection to the past.

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Or they were fundamentalists whose view of church history went back exactly 10 years and really didn't care what was believed 100 years before or 500 years before or 1 ,000 years before.

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I get it. I understand that. I think that's why Reformed folks have provided the best apologetic against Rome because we are concerned about that.

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We are concerned about the early church. And in this presentation, Trent Horn had just said that back in the late 80s, early 90s, finally

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Protestants realized they needed to start getting early church fathers. Well, I think we pointed out last time, at least I hope we pointed out last time, that's just simply not the case.

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The reality was that the people that were being debated by Carl and by Patrick and eventually by Jerry Matatix, they just don't want to mention that name for understandable reasons, that the people they chose to debate had no knowledge of or interest in the early church.

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And so they never raised the issues. But let's not pretend that for the

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Lutherans, Martin Chemnitz never existed. Let's not pretend that for the

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Anglicans, George Salmon never existed. Let's not ignore the great

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Reformed works like William Whitaker, that these multi -volume works of history didn't exist.

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They may have been forgotten by pretty much everybody that the early forms of Catholic answers ran into.

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It doesn't mean they didn't exist. And I will say, I see no evidence that that early form of Catholic answers even knew that those sources were around.

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And so when I hit Jerry Matatix with materials from the early church in December of 1990, yeah, that was a new experience for them.

40:37

That was a new experience for them. But that wasn't where Protestants started getting serious about church history. We had been serious about church history for a long, long time.

40:46

It was just the people that you were choosing to engage at that particular point in time. So anyway, all right, with all of that having been said, let's get to this and let's pick up pretty much,

40:57

I think, pretty much where we left off last time in what was being said.

41:03

I'll offer you today in my presentation are four rules for reading fathers. These aren't the only rules that you should use, of course.

41:10

But these are rules that I think are helpful when dealing with Protestant claims that the church fathers weren't really

41:16

Catholic. And you can really break these four rules down. Now, let me just comment. Again, I know that my

41:26

Catholic friends will disagree with me, but I want, I'm going to make the argument that we approach the study of church history very differently.

41:35

We approach study of church history very differently. None of us are blank slates.

41:42

Okay, I get that. But I am thankful that my first exposure, it's interesting,

41:50

I actually signed up for church history class in college and I dropped it because I did not like the text that was being used.

42:01

It was way to my left and I just wasn't ready for that yet. So when

42:09

I had to take church history in seminary, thankfully, I had a tremendous church history professor that made it come alive.

42:19

He had been to Europe. I can't wait to get to the next time

42:24

I have the opportunity of doing Reformation church history. I've got so many cool pictures and stories now. Having been over to Germany so many times and seeing all these sites and things like that.

42:35

He had been over there and just brought it alive. He taught us how to do history and to do it fairly and to see our own place in it.

42:48

I've always been saddened that I've talked to many Christians who tried to study church history, took church history classes, and they were turned off to it.

42:57

They were bored by it. I've told you many times the first class I taught after I graduated from seminary at Grand Canyon College was church history.

43:07

In that very first semester that I taught, I remember

43:12

I had a number of students at the end who said, you know, we took this because it's required. We're just getting our requirements out of the way.

43:19

I figured it was going to be a snoozer. I remember toward the end of the semester

43:25

I played, it had just come out, The Radicals.

43:31

The video The Radicals. My dear friend Jeff Neal and I went and saw

43:36

The Radicals together in a theater. If you've not seen The Radicals, I highly recommend it to you.

43:45

There were tears in the eyes of these students at the end of watching this film.

43:53

What many of them said to me was, I really expected this class to be boring and just a get -it -out -of -the -way thing, and you've made it to come alive.

44:03

That's what I wanted to do from the start in teaching church history. I am so thankful that that was concurrent with my first encounters with Catholic answers.

44:20

I'm not an apologist who has had to go get some stuff out of church history to try to do stuff.

44:27

Remember, and this is another this is an advantage, I'm thankful to the Lord now as the old geezer that I am, we don't just deal with Roman Catholicism.

44:39

We've had to deal with church history issues with Jehovah's Witnesses, with Mormons. I mean, the

44:46

Mormons have a whole apologetic about theosis and exaltation to godhood and all sorts of stuff like this.

44:54

If you don't approach church history in a fair, meaningful fashion, you're going to get your head handed to you on a platter.

45:01

That's just all there is to it. I have argued, and I've not heard a meaningful refutation,

45:12

I have argued that the Roman Catholic, because of documents like status cognitum, has to find

45:24

Roman Catholicism in the early church fathers, and as a result cannot handle them fairly inaccurately.

45:35

I can do so because I recognize that I can look at Ignatius of Antioch and I can revel in his deep

45:48

Christological formulations found long before the Council of Nicaea, but I can also analyze his view of the bishop in light of New Testament scripture and can find it to be imbalanced, and I can still be so thankful for that Christian martyr.

46:08

And a lot of people, a lot of Protestants, really struggle with that. Dave Hunt could not do that.

46:15

Dave Hunt was not taught how to do church history, and so as a result, as soon as Dave Hunt would see something in someone, he had it.

46:25

This comes from fundamentalism. When fundamentalists see an errant belief, and it could be an eschatological belief for crying out loud, in someone anywhere in church history, dismiss them.

46:44

No, you can't do that. You can't do that. So when we look at these rules that Trent, notice how he's placing it in dealing with Protestants.

46:57

When I teach church history, I'm just simply saying this is how you do church history, and then we'll make application as needed when you're dealing with the claims of whoever, whether it's atheists, or Muslims, or Jehovah's Witnesses, or Mormons, or Eastern Orthodox, or whatever.

47:13

Just deal with it as it needs to be dealt with. Into two subsets. The first two deal with the idea that the fathers didn't believe this

47:22

Catholic doctrine. So there'll be arguments saying that the early church fathers, the Apostolic Fathers, did not believe

47:28

Catholic doctrine. There's no evidence they believed then what the Catholic Church believes now. Now, before that fades out completely, we have the ghost of Trent up there on the screen now.

47:46

There's the ghost of Trent. So here's rules one, rules two.

47:51

Let me just comment briefly. Check your sources. You better believe it.

47:59

And I have a decent church history section.

48:07

There's new stuff coming out all the time. New stuff being published.

48:13

Most people don't even realize that a large portion of what we still have in other languages has not been translated into English.

48:21

Origen had a scribe following him around 24 -7, writing down everything he said, which I think was a complete waste of their time and his as well.

48:28

But so much of Origen doesn't even appear in English as yet. And that is true for other fathers as well.

48:38

So yes, check your sources. And that's one of the criticisms that I have had of Catholic Answers in the past.

48:51

For years, maybe they don't anymore. I haven't looked at their online stuff for a while.

48:58

But for years, when we would have debates and they would have a book table, they would have—I think it's called

49:15

The Faith of the Early Fathers by Juergens—three volumes set, red, green, and blue, three different volumes, paperback.

49:21

I'm sure it's available hardback, but they were selling the paperback normally. And for most people, even a quote book like that, because that's what it is.

49:34

It's a quote book. It's here's quotations from this father on this subject and this father on that subject.

49:43

Well, we caught it many times spinning stuff. And so, you know, when you say check your sources,

49:56

Rome has a long, long, long history of the utilization of bad sources.

50:06

And it was only 10 years ago I did a debate against a Roman Catholic attorney in New York, who threw a quotation of Augustine at me in a debate on the

50:17

Immaculate Conception that was a fake. He didn't know that, but they're out there.

50:23

They're still out there, that kind of fraudulent material. So check your sources.

50:29

Well, yeah, that's true for anybody, but it needs to be directed both directions.

50:36

And then rule two, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. Now, you got to be really careful with that, because on a strict logical ground, yeah.

50:51

However, if you're going to say that something was the belief of the early church in general, but you cannot provide a single early church father ever mentioning it, preaching it, teaching on it, that's actually really good evidence of its absence.

51:16

Rome, because she has defined so much on the basis of later tradition, has to say what

51:26

Trent is saying, because she reads so much anachronistically back into the early church. And so that's where this is coming from.

51:36

And so I just remind you of one of my favorite instances, should have grabbed this, but one of my favorite instances in all of my debates, in one of those very early debates with Jerry on Long Island.

51:54

In fact, it was the first of the debates with Jerry on Long Island. And hence it had that epic introduction by Chris Arntzen.

52:07

That was the one where he was talking about all the resistance and pushback he had gotten for doing this debate.

52:14

And he says, let me give you an example. And he starts reading this, just all this going on and on about how you troglodytes,

52:21

I hope you vanish from the face of the earth and go back into the caves you came out from and all this stuff.

52:27

And everybody's just going, wow, man, this was in the 90s. I mean, this was 30 years ago.

52:37

And then at the end, oh, PS, get some bread and milk on the way home. Love your wife.

52:43

And the whole place just... Because Chris Arntzen has always had impeccable comedic timing.

52:51

I've often said he missed his calling. He could have gone on the road. And I don't think

52:58

Jerry got any of it. Jerry Matitix has zero sense of humor. In fact, he would tell the same jokes in different debates and they would bomb every single time but he kept telling them because he didn't get that they had bombed.

53:14

So it was sort of hilarious. But anyway, in that debate with Jerry, we were doing the bodily assumption at that point.

53:27

And I was just going through early church fathers centuries. Anybody in the second century?

53:33

And he just gets frustrated. You don't have to have everybody talking about this.

53:40

And everybody in the audience is feeling as frustrated as I am. And so finally, I just say,

53:46

Jerry, I'll take just one. And the place erupted because everybody heard it.

53:53

They got it. They understood that he wasn't giving what he claimed to be able to give because the information just wasn't there.

54:01

The citations weren't there. And so that was, look that one up. I think we have that one posted separately, if I recall correctly.

54:10

Sadly, this was early on. And so the sound quality, it was being recorded off the room and the room sound and stuff like that.

54:19

We learned our lessons over the years eventually. But check that one out because it's sort of important.

54:28

Hello. What the Catholic Church believes now. The other two can be summarized in the phrase, the fathers believe the opposite.

54:38

So not merely that there's an absence of evidence that the fathers didn't believe this, but that if you read them, they actually believe the opposite of what the

54:47

Catholic Church. Now, I don't understand, to be honest with you, the slides didn't really follow here because rules three and four don't really have anything to do with that.

55:01

But I'll just comment on them because they will come up and sort of go by quickly in the future. Scriptural sufficiency does not equal solo scriptura.

55:09

Well, that depends on how you define solo scriptura. If scripture is sufficient for the man of God to do what the man of God is called to do in the church, then you do have solo scriptura, if you understand solo scriptura correctly.

55:23

And then provisional lists do not equal solemn canons. Well, this is a challenge for both

55:30

Protestants and Roman Catholics because of the fact that you will not find the early church holding to the actual final dogmatic definition of Rome in regards to the

55:44

Old Testament. The New Testament really isn't much of an issue. But the dogmatic canonical position of Rome in regards to the canon does not come into existence until April of 1546.

56:01

That's way down the road, and there are differences.

56:08

You can point to popes that did not believe what Trent defined.

56:15

And so they have to make everything that comes before that provisional list, even though those are actually the best historical witnesses to the understanding of the canon as it developed.

56:29

But we have other things to get to here, so let's press on. If you read any of my books, you'll know

56:43

I love doing this. You should check your sources. My favorite thing to do in my books are the end notes.

56:49

I pack them full of stuff because there's just geeky details that would bog down the reader in the text.

56:56

Okay, we've got to admit, that's what I do. Some of the most important theological insights are in the end notes of my books.

57:10

I wish they were footnotes. Publishers do not like footnotes. They don't like the way that it makes the page look.

57:16

They're all concerned about people picking up the book and reading the book and things like that. It took me quite some time to ever get any footnotes.

57:27

In fact, I'm not sure I have footnotes. I was thinking about one book. I put a lot of stuff in end notes as well.

57:35

Publishers don't like that. I think it's because publishers don't read books for the sake of reading books.

57:43

Publishers read books for the sake of selling books, which sort of gives you a warped view, to be perfectly honest with you. I want to share it, so I pack it away in the end notes and I make sure to cite what

57:52

I'm talking about. I have declined, actually, to endorse books on apologetics for the sheer reason they had no footnotes.

58:01

Someone gave me a book once, asked for an endorsement. I politely declined because there were no footnotes. If you're going to make an argument, you need to source your material.

58:09

Let me give you some examples about checking your sources. This comes from the late Norm Geisler, who passed away recently.

58:16

Okay. Here's the one we're going to be able to get to today. This is what

58:24

I found useful about this. If you will take the time to interact with what's being said, then you can shed further light on the subject as it is being presented.

58:43

Now, some people might say that's not fair. He only had probably 47, 48 minutes.

58:52

Everybody knows what it is to be limited. When I speak at G3, there's this big old clock down front and it starts counting down.

59:02

Most people who know me know that my daughter and I were sitting somewhere recently.

59:09

I forget where it was. I made some comment about the fact that I had gotten there early. She's like, yeah, that's my life.

59:18

I know where it came from, but she's early for everything. Where did that come from? Well, yeah, it came from me.

59:28

I'm on time. In fact, if a conference I'm in gets behind time, I will shorten my presentation to try to get it back on time as best

59:37

I possibly can. I get that part. This did provide some cool examples of being able to flesh out some of these things.

59:52

Obviously, I sat at the Christian Booksellers Association meeting in 1995 with Ralph McKenzie, who's since passed away, as has

01:00:02

Norman Geisler. We talked about their book and I criticized it.

01:00:10

I went after their position because I was already debating Roman Catholics. I had some experience in it.

01:00:19

Ralph thought I was a bit of a hardhead, but he had to admit that at least

01:00:27

I knew what the issues were and didn't agree with where I was coming down on them, but things like that.

01:00:33

I thought that given that Geisler got his PhD from a

01:00:38

Jesuit institution, that he was compromised in a number of ways in regards to Roman Catholicism and that that book represented that.

01:00:50

But that really doesn't have much to do with this particular singular example that Trenthorne uses.

01:00:56

In Ralph McKenzie's book, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals, Agreements and Differences. This is what he says about the

01:01:01

Mass. The description of the Mass as a sacrifice is found as early as Gregory the

01:01:06

Great, who lived in the 6th century. And then he says the notion of the

01:01:12

Mass eventually became standard doctrine of the Western Church. Now, as they say in the old

01:01:17

Connect Four commercial, pretty sneaky, sis. Okay, that would be a

01:01:26

Trenthorne joke that goes over about as well as a geromatics joke, because I have no idea what in the world he was referring to.

01:01:35

And unless I'm missing some real goof -offs, didn't seem anybody else did either. So, you know, there you go.

01:01:43

This is true in a sense. I wanted to say it's a whopper, but the way it's phrased, yes, the description of the

01:01:51

Mass as a sacrifice is found as early as Gregory the Great. The problem is when you read that, it makes it sound like that's as early.

01:01:59

It is found as early as that, but it's also found earlier. So it's not false, it's just highly misleading.

01:02:06

Okay, so what would be the point of Geisser and McKenzie? Their point would be that there has been sufficient time and development in Roman Catholic theology, if they would use the term

01:02:25

Roman Catholic theology, Catholic theology, to identify

01:02:30

Gregory's understanding of the Eucharist in a propitiatory or sacrificial way.

01:02:41

Now, I'm not sure that's true. I'm going to give you a quote later on, but they're not saying that earlier centuries did not utilize sacrificial language.

01:02:55

What they're saying is that the utilization of sacrificial language does not mean what it came to mean in developed

01:03:04

Catholic theology regarding Eucharistic theology and Eucharistic sacrifice, and especially the massive changes that take place with the rise of Aristotelian theology in the church becoming popular and becoming definitional, and hence the concept of transubstantiation.

01:03:24

All of that is at the turn of the millennium, which is still 400 years in the future at the time of Gregory.

01:03:35

So there's probably that context that needs to be allowed to speak.

01:03:41

Go back much further than Gregory the Great. You can go to Saint Justin Martyr, for example. In his dialogue with Trifo the rabbi, he talks about how the mass that Catholics celebrate, and read

01:03:52

Justin Martyr, First Apology on the Mass, a point -for -point correspondence to how we celebrate the mass today.

01:03:57

It's truly striking. He talks about how the... Okay, now, that was just thrown out there for the fun of it.

01:04:05

Okay, bring that down. Someone says, go read what

01:04:11

Justin said, and I have this idea of going ahead and doing that, and so here is that material.

01:04:25

I don't know how to, in this type of a window...

01:04:30

Well, wait a minute. Actually, I can. All right, that's as big as I'm going to be able to get it.

01:04:39

Here is the section he's referring to, and it is interesting.

01:04:47

This is his First Apology. So you won't be confused.

01:04:53

The main point he's going to address is a quotation from Justin's dialogue with Trifo the

01:05:00

Jew, but then he just, in passing, said you should read his...

01:05:07

And it sounded like he was saying his First Apology of the Eucharist. It was just his

01:05:12

First Apology, and then in the First Apology are all these different chapters, and toward the very end...

01:05:20

This is third chapter from the end, actually. A brief section on the

01:05:27

Eucharist, the Eucharistia. So notice he says, this food is called among us

01:05:33

Eucharistia. That is a beautiful biblical term of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing which that is for the remission of sins and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined.

01:05:58

So there is a limitation as to who can partake of the

01:06:05

Eucharist. It is not, as in many liberal churches today, simply actually used as a evangelistic tool.

01:06:14

I remember getting into an argument with a professor from Fuller, probably one of the very last classes that I took at Fuller, because he was presenting the idea that it was actually sinful for...

01:06:42

I just watched it happen.

01:06:50

Anyway, the professor was arguing that it is sinful to restrict anyone from coming to the

01:06:59

Lord's table. Of course, I had just become a Reformed Baptist at that time, and we guarded the table, and so he and I had an in -class debate.

01:07:12

You could still do that back then at Fuller. I don't think you'd get away with it anymore, but you could back then.

01:07:18

Anyway, but you also see his understanding of baptism. Justin has a regenerational understanding of baptism.

01:07:25

That's not even a question. For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these.

01:07:35

So in other words, it's not like just going down to the ancient equivalent of McDonald's and picking up some fish and chips or something.

01:07:44

For not as common bread and common drink to receive these, but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Savior, having been made flesh by the

01:07:51

Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation. So likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of his

01:07:59

Word, notice it's food, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, that is by digestion, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh.

01:08:13

For the apostles and the memoirs composed by them, which are called gospels, by the way this is important because Justin's middle, he's 150 -ish, so smack down the middle of the second century, so notice he knows that there are multiple gospels, have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them that Jesus took bread and when he had given thanks said this do ye in remembrance of me, this is my body, and that after the same manner having taken the cup and given thanks he said this is my blood and gave it to them, which the wicked devils have imitated in the mysteries of Mithras, commanding the same thing to be done.

01:08:48

For that bread and a cup of water are placed with certain incantations in the mystic rites of one who is being initiated, you either know or can learn.

01:08:57

There's the whole thing, so everybody looks at that and they go, well you need to talk about this section here about transmutation, and it's interesting because in the note that is found in the

01:09:14

Shaft series, where there are a number of people that did the editing, there is a quotation of Galatius, now

01:09:22

Galatius was bishop of Rome at AD 490, so he is what, 50 years earlier as far as bishop of Rome than when we were just discussing a moment ago,

01:09:37

Gregory, but notice what Galatius wrote in 490, by the sacraments we are made partakers, you won't be able to see this, it's in the footnote at the bottom, but by the sacraments we are made partakers of the divine nature, and yet the substance and nature of bread and wine do not cease to be in them.

01:10:00

This is Galatius writing 440 years after Paul, let's put it, if we want to have a time frame there to look at, so that is of course an important thing to look at, what is he referring to here, but let's back up a second, because just like when we debate

01:10:24

Jehovah's Witnesses, the Jehovah's Witnesses often get to determine for us what in a text we're going to argue about.

01:10:33

We're always on the back foot defending, and I've said for years and years and years, you need to require of them to give the same level of response to any text that they're asking of you.

01:10:48

What's missing here, because Trent told us this is just, this is exactly what we do in the math, really?

01:10:59

Where's the priest? Where is there a sacramental priesthood here?

01:11:06

Because see, a lot of Roman Catholic historians and theologians will admit that the concept of a sacramental, sacerdotal priesthood developed over time, not in a uniform fashion, it is not a

01:11:28

New Testament concept by any stretch of the imagination, and that would be a good debate.

01:11:37

Mitch Paco and I did the priesthood back in the late 90s, around there, early 2000s,

01:11:45

I forget exactly when it was, we did the priesthood, but that was a good friendly debate, that'd be a good debate to have. Does the

01:11:50

New Testament teach a sacramental priesthood? I'd be willing to go on that real fast, if Trent would like to do something, test out our facilities.

01:12:03

Let's do something on the subject of priesthood, that'd be good. But there's no priest here. So how can you have the modern concept of the mass with transubstantiation, if you do not have a priest to bring about the miracle of transubstantiation?

01:12:21

And why is it that we know historically, because this is where looking at the whole range of is so helpful.

01:12:30

Why is it that at this period of history, you do not have the reservation of consecrated hosts?

01:12:37

Now Protestants go, the what? They had reservations back then?

01:12:42

No, no. In modern Roman Catholicism, and those of you who are former

01:12:48

Roman Catholics already know all this stuff, but if you were never Roman Catholic, some of this stuff is just really esoteric to you.

01:12:58

But I remember the first time that I visited a Roman Catholic church, I think as a kid, maybe

01:13:06

I've been in Washington DC, went into one of the Catholic churches there just to see it.

01:13:12

And that was the first time I saw someone come in and do the holy water and genuflect. They're bowing, they're crossing themselves.

01:13:19

And of course I was raised as a fundamentalist, so that's like, what? There's nothing in the

01:13:25

Bible about that. And I had no idea why they were doing it. Well, most people don't.

01:13:32

The reason they're doing that, now, of course, in the middle of the mass, that's a little bit different, but if there's no service going on, they are acknowledging the presence of God in the consecrated host that's in the monstrance, ciborium, tabernacle, there's all these different terms that are used, whether it can be carried and where it's at.

01:13:54

And there's normally a light kept on in front of it. And that's so that the faithful can come and adore

01:14:00

Christ because he's physically present with his people because of the doctrine of transubstantiation.

01:14:07

In the primitive church at this time, the elements would be taken to the sick.

01:14:16

So the sick who could not come and partake the supper, the elements would be taken to them, but they were not taken in procession.

01:14:28

They were not worshipped. And once delivered, if there was extra, it was not considered to be anything other than bread or wine.

01:14:40

There were no monstrances, there's no ciboriums, no picks, no tabernacles. Why not?

01:14:46

Because that's a later doctrinal development. So this isn't what you do.

01:14:56

And just simply saying, well, it looks like it, sorry, but I've been to a number of Roman Catholic masses when

01:15:05

I was studying Roman Catholicism, especially, there was always a priest up there. And you know that in the ordination of the priest, when he is called an alter

01:15:17

Christus, the idea that there is a special charism placed upon his soul, which allows him to do what?

01:15:24

To work the miracle of transubstantiation so that you can have the mass.

01:15:30

That's why it's so important. There's nothing here. Nothing here like that. You have to read that into it.

01:15:38

There is nothing here like that at all. So hey, he invited us to look, so we looked.

01:15:47

Let's get one more section of this done, and we'll call it good. Gotta have the volume, because my thing's dead.

01:15:57

In Malachi 111, the prophet says, and in every place incense is offered to my name, a pure offering for my name is great among the nations.

01:16:05

And so that is what Justin Martyr says, that this prophecy was fulfilled in the Eucharist, which is a sacrifice.

01:16:12

So Protestants will say, yeah, they believe in... Okay, so let me take it back to the quote there.

01:16:24

Can't find it, but you had... I'm going as slow as I can, but it won't come up.

01:16:34

Okay, so that's fine. I will take that down, and I have the quotation here.

01:16:40

It is in Dialogue of Justin with Trifle the Jew in 41, and thankfully

01:16:47

I still can read my Roman numerals. So here is the chapter in Justin's Dialogue with Trifle the

01:16:56

Jew. The oblation of fine flour was a figure of the

01:17:08

Eucharist. And the offering of fine flour, sirs, I said, which was prescribed and presented on behalf of those purified from leprosy, was a type of the bread of the

01:17:18

Eucharist, the celebration of which our Lord Jesus Christ prescribed in remembrance of the suffering which he endured on behalf of those who are purified in soul from all iniquity.

01:17:29

Notice nothing said here about offerings for people in purgatory or anything like that at all, because none of that has yet developed.

01:17:39

It's just not even there. In order that we may at the same time thank God for having created the world with all things therein for the sake of man and for delivering us from the evil in which we were and from utterly overthrowing principalities and powers by him who suffered according to his will.

01:17:58

Hence God speaks by the mouth of Malachi, one of the twelve prophets, as I said before, about the sacrifices at that time presented by you.

01:18:06

I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord. I will not accept your sacrifices, your hands from the rising of the sun and under the going down the same.

01:18:13

My name has been glorified among the Gentiles and every place incense is offered to my name and a pure offering for my name is great among the

01:18:19

Gentiles, saith the Lord, but ye profane it. So Justin's argument, remember who is he debating with?

01:18:26

Trifo, the Jew, who is arguing that Jesus was not the

01:18:31

Messiah, all right? And so he's arguing from Malachi that this offering of sacrifices around the world is fulfilled in what the

01:18:42

Christians are doing now in regards to Jesus. Now he connects it to the flower offering and stuff like that, which

01:18:50

I'm not sure is overly compelling, but so he then speaks of those Gentiles, namely us, who in every place offer sacrifices to him, that is the bread of the

01:18:59

Eucharist and also the cup of the Eucharist, affirming both that we glorify his name and that you profane it. The command of circumcision, again bidding them always circumcise the children on the eighth day, was a type of the true circumcision by which we are circumcised from deceit and iniquity through him who rose from the dead on the first day after the

01:19:16

Sabbath, namely through our Lord Jesus Christ. For the first day after the Sabbath remaining the first of all days is called, however, the eighth according to the number of all the days of the cycle and yet remains the first.

01:19:27

That's actually an interesting argument about the eighth day, since they meet on Sunday, that's the eighth day.

01:19:35

Notice he does not connect that circumcision to baptism. Would have been an easy thing to do, it will eventually be done, but he doesn't do it at this particular point in time.

01:19:45

Now, if we were going to really analyze these citations in the way that I do when

01:19:52

I'm teaching church history and stuff like that, we would start off with a discussion of the conversion of Justin Martyr and the deep influence of,

01:20:04

I mean, he wore the philosopher's cloak his entire life.

01:20:10

He was a philosopher and that's just how that works with him.

01:20:19

And so we want to talk about his background, his history, his conversion. We'd also want to talk about what he had as far as the canon of scripture is concerned, that kind of stuff.

01:20:30

That would be really, really, really important. You're sort of freaking me out here now because, am I still on? Okay. All I see is, there we go.

01:20:40

Rich still has new toys and he's playing with the toys and I'm just doing what I can to survive the experience.

01:20:48

Sort of like being on a roller coaster. Was I still on? Okay, good.

01:20:55

All right. That's good. We're fine here. We're all fine here. Good. All right. You've got about as many controls to be playing with back there now as the

01:21:03

Stormtroopers did. So it's a similar thing. The Millennium Falcon? Okay.

01:21:09

Yeah. Okay. Just trying to get it working. So anyways, we would look at all that stuff in regards to Justin Martyr, especially what of the canon he had and what he didn't, because there's some serious questions about that.

01:21:24

And I just keep reminding everybody, how would your theology be if you didn't have your entire

01:21:29

New Testament, let alone the history of the church? Real, real, real easy to get very, very, very persnickety about people near the church when you don't know where they were and what they were experiencing.

01:21:43

But point is, there is the argumentation is being used. And in defense of Geisler and McKenzie, the late

01:21:54

Geisler and McKenzie, both, they are talking about sacrifice in a more advanced understanding of Eucharistic theology than anything that was cited from Justin would in any way substantiate.

01:22:17

So yes, Malachi is used early, especially why? Because they're arguing with the

01:22:23

Jews. And so they want to see fulfilled texts that are fulfilled in the church. Sacrifice of praise.

01:22:30

You can go back to, I think Ignatius used it or maybe Clement, maybe both. I'd have to look specifically. But yeah, you're going to find that type of thing.

01:22:38

The problem is that the Roman Catholic wants to read back into those early texts, a developed theology that came much, much, much later.

01:22:49

And I would say to you, especially with Justin, there is no evidence of a sacerdotal priesthood in those texts.

01:22:58

And therefore, to connect that with the concept of Eucharistic sacrifice is going way beyond anything that the text would allow.

01:23:08

So I would say, if you check your sources, the sources might not be backing up what you're saying.

01:23:17

And that's one of the things that Trent Horne himself was arguing. So there you go. We will continue with this presentation.

01:23:25

It's not overly long, but we still have a lot of ground to cover. And of course, we have the luxury of putting the text up on the screen.

01:23:37

I recognize that that's different. I get it. That's fine.

01:23:42

But we're taking the opportunity to do these things. All right. Well, thank you for joining us on the program today.

01:23:49

I hope that has been useful to you and that you have some interest in looking into the early church.

01:23:57

I remember I heard of someone called Rich a couple weeks ago and was asking about books to read as far as church history is concerned, things like that.

01:24:06

I want to remind you once again of the minimally four,

01:24:14

I think maybe five, because there was one added to it. Nick Needham's 2000

01:24:20

Years of Christ's Power is where I would start. Unless you're looking just for a single volume type thing.

01:24:27

I struggle with the single volume works. Single volumes about a particular era in church history.

01:24:38

Okay. Owen Chadwick on the early church. Owen Chadwick on the Reformation. Those are useful.

01:24:44

You know, you can do a single volume on Luther. You can do a single volume on Athanasius or something like that. Okay. But single volume for church history just ends up being so fast and so surface level that I have a hard time recommending any of them.

01:25:04

In seminary, I read Lauderette's two volumes, but if you've ever looked at Lauderette, each volume should be two volumes itself, to be honest with you.

01:25:15

And Lauderette was as exciting as chewing on aluminum foil, really was. Needham is much more enjoyable to read.

01:25:24

And then that can lead you into the deeper, big, huge volumes on the Reformation or the early councils or whatever else it might be.

01:25:34

That can get you into that kind of stuff. And Schaff, of course, remains extremely important.

01:25:41

More than useful to have either electronically, especially with the ability to index and stuff like that.

01:25:50

And that's frequently very inexpensive. And it's online. You can get it at ccl .org.

01:25:56

You can get Schaff there. There's a lot of stuff that's available online. You don't have to if you are not in a financial situation, but you want to study this thing.

01:26:05

You can. You just have to be willing to sometimes deal with some clunky interfaces and things like that, but it still can be done.

01:26:13

It still can be done. So take a look at those things. Thanks for listening to the program today. We'll see you next time. God bless.