Debate Review Dividing Line

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. We're back here in Phoenix, Arizona for a while anyways. We're going to be heading up to the

Salt Lake area around General Conference time, and actually the week before. And I'm trying to track down my friends in Cedar City actually, see if they'd like a little visit on the way.

I may be visiting there one way or the other, and might as well make it worthwhile. And so we've got a few weeks at home and lots to do in that time period,

I can assure you of that. Just before we jump into some debate review material, man, even the secularists are starting to pick up on the reality that transgenderism, of course, all they can call it is a mental disorder, disease, something like that.

We can identify it for what it is. It's sinful rebellion. It flows out of an ideology that grants to man the capacity and ability to be completely autonomous, to not have to live in a created world.

So you get to create your own world and demand that everybody else live in the created world you created.

It has always been sheer idiocy. The only people who've ever accepted are people who are moral pygmies.

That's the kindest way I can put it. But now we're seeing that if you're willing to destroy your own self, then you're going to be willing to destroy others.

And we are now seeing mass shootings, two in the past week, I think. I'm not sure when the Canada one was, maybe it's two weeks, but mass shootings by these individuals engaged in this sinful rebellion.

And the last one at the hockey game, if you've seen the pictures, I won't show you the picture.

You can go find them if you want them. This dude, and he was a dude,

I guess he had full surgery. Doesn't keep you from being a dude. And I mean, he's in the gym, dressed as a female.

He's huge. He's muscular. He's proud of being muscular. I mean, this guy was clearly a mess.

Killed his wife and kids, I think. And then himself there at the hockey game. We may have opportunities.

The reason I'm mentioning this just before we're going to be talking about stuff completely different. We may have opportunities right now to talk to people about this kind of stuff.

But the thing is, when we're talking to people who are secular in their understanding, we can't just simply assume a recognition on their part of objective moral reality.

In fact, the younger they are, the closer they are to Gen Z or whatever the generation before that is.

I lose track of them all. The more likely it is that on a very functional level, they are morally decrepit.

They have no foundation for even making moral decisions any longer. If they have come through the public indoctrination system, don't call it an education system.

These children are not being educated anymore. We will never be able to keep up with China, India, any place else, because we don't do education anymore.

We do indoctrination. The NEA is the greatest force that has ever been released to destroy the

United States of America. And it may be too late to undo it already, to be perfectly honest with you. We don't do education anymore.

We do indoctrination into a destructive worldview. But if that's where they've come from, then they have been deprived of the ability to even see the connection between the behavior of these individuals in their private life and the resultant destruction of life that they then bring about.

Now, thankfully, there is a point of contact. They are still made in the image of God.

And yes, the governmental indoctrination agencies have had 12, 14, 16 years to try to efface that knowledge, but it's still there.

And if you've ever seen a situation where we have to be more dependent upon the Spirit of God in a witnessing situation, in a testifying situation, this is it.

Look, this is the one thing that's really bothered me, is because people who rely upon cutesy little tricks to try to get people to agree with them because they think this person's morally neutral, they're not in rebellion against God, they're not suppressing the truth of God.

People who are coming from that perspective, you're going to have to come up with ways of tricking these people into listening to you, or tricking them into accepting what you have to say.

You can't do that. This is headline news.

Transgenders are violent people. They've been murdering people right, left, and center for quite a while now, and people are starting to get the idea.

Why? We have the answer. The world doesn't have the answer. The world can't even...

Well, it must be because we're not accepting them. We need to be more accepting of them.

We need to make sure that not only can they go into public restrooms, that they can go into your private home and your restroom too, and maybe that'll make things better.

This is how decrepit this culture is in its abject state of rebellion.

Abject state of rebellion. That's where we are. It's funny.

I've been talking to a particular AI, and because XAI is connected with Elon Musk, and Elon Musk is very big on opposing the transgender movement, the

AIs are too. It's fascinating to press them on why that would be.

At least those ones that I've talked to, they capitulate on the need for an objective, transcendental standard of truth.

Without it, it's just whatever the state says. It's whatever the most recent election says, and they realize it's not workable.

Not workable. There's a lot of AI that won't go there, but it's fascinating to press and to see what kind of objections you get, to see when the whole thing falls apart.

We have an opportunity. If we know what the

God's intention in creation, not just, well, the

Bible says you're going to hell. Maybe true, but not going to get very far with that.

If we're ready to explain God's creative purpose and to be able to say, look, you want an ultimate authority?

You see all these people arguing about this stuff. You see all these gender studies, PhDs, talk about worthless, and you say, well, but no one really knows.

Well, I'll tell you what. There was one man who said, from the beginning,

God created the male and female, and that's the same man that prophesied his own death, burial, and resurrection, and then died, was buried, and rose again the third day, left behind an empty tomb.

And therefore, his opinion on this subject is the final word. That's it.

There's nothing more to appeal to. We have that answer, and we should be looking for opportunities to present it.

Really should. All right. So last night, the debate with Dr.

Smith on the Trinity dropped. I still think it would still be nice if we could...

I'm not sure I'd want to drop this in Rich's lap or something like that, but I have a feeling we could probably rescue almost all of it.

If you saw it, what happened was someone was recording on... They're doing this.

They're doing this number. They zoomed in on my first slide, and they were doing this number. And so that's where we got the audio up to a certain point, and then it kicks into the really high -quality audio.

This church had really good cameras. I don't know if you've seen any of the debates, but it's very high -quality stuff.

I would assume we have the video from the beginning of my comments, just without audio.

I think we could fix it. Even if we just used the audio from the handheld thing, that'd be better than nothing.

And it would look better if it was synced up with the high -quality video that the cameras provided.

And then, I mean, if we really wanted to go whole hog, I think we could reproduce the audio using

AI. But honestly, I'm not sure how much was lost, but it couldn't have been more than maybe 20 seconds at most.

I mean, it would have been more than that if we didn't have the handheld phone stuff.

But still, the important part got communicated.

And that was, I laid out right at the beginning. And I had a friend say,

I thought you used to read your opening statements. Yeah, back in the 1990s, I did. Because I'd time stuff out and stuff like that.

But I've been doing this for 30 plus years, and been a public speaker all that time.

And eventually, you just learn how to watch the clock, look at your materials, and get done with two seconds left without having to read it.

And look, the audience can tell that. The audience knows when you're just reading your presentation.

And when you're actually speaking to them. You can meet people. You can look at people.

You can see people in the audience. You can interact with what's going on. It's just a whole lot more interesting to look at.

Not everybody can do that. I'm not saying that you have to or something like that. It's just the way

I do it now. And I'm not saying that there won't be a time in the future when

I might have a very scripted opening statement. I'm not going to have scripted rebuttals and all the rest of that stuff.

Because I still find that disrespectful to the whole process. But anyway, what

I did in my opening statement is I laid out right to start.

Look, this is a relatively short debate. This is a subject that's been debated for a very, very long time.

Every text that he presents, I have an answer. And every text I present, he has an answer.

He's read my book. I've listened to his stuff. This is not something new. We're not going to say anything new today.

So why do the debate? Well, my argument was this.

The way you answer this debate is by asking the question, who is consistent in how they handle scripture?

Who is consistent in their hermeneutics? Who is consistent in their exegesis? And I gave three examples.

I said, I believe Dr. Smith and I believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

We believe in the virgin birth. And we believe that he was the promised messiah of the Old Testament scriptures. And he agreed. There is a hermeneutical process.

I think you zoomed out a little bit, Rich, now that I'm looking at it. Oh, OK.

Yeah. Did you hear? Could you hear Rich better? Oh, I'm sure they can.

It's no longer the Charlie Brown voice behind the window.

Rich decided, when I leave at home, my wife hides all my personal possessions.

And I take six weeks finding them again. She just wants to erase all evidence of my existence while I'm gone.

And when I leave here, when the cat's away, the mice will do construction. And so Rich will rearrange stuff.

And he's got little projects he wants to do. And when I hit the road, so we've had a window right here, a dual -pane window.

We close this door. It's open right now because it doesn't matter. We've got a dual -pane window here between where I am and where Rich is since we built this place in 2006.

So 20 years. And pretty early on, now, it initially was supposed to have gas in it, didn't it?

Wasn't it? No. Oh, it's a chibi thing. OK. So. Oh, OK.

All right. Well, I thought it was supposed to have gas. Anyway, you couldn't clean the insides. And I don't know how, but stuff starts building up inside these two windows and you can't see through it all that well.

I mean, you can, but there's nothing you can do about it. You can't get in there to clean anything.

So Rich decides he's going to replace this thing and he's going to have soundproof gas put between these two windows and put the frame back in and it'll be nice and you won't hear anything except through the door.

And they shipped it. They shipped it to Home Depot. The Home Depot from Tennessee.

All they did was put a label on the glass and shipped it. Not even in a box.

No padding, no box, no crate. No moss. It didn't make it.

It was damaged. And you're sort of like, is this the first time these folks have thought about shipping something to somebody?

I mean, is it all just people walking in for them? What on earth?

So we have a big old hole. And so Rich can now comment. And just like when we're in the big studio, except he's much closer.

So yeah, it's, um, how do you ship glass without even putting it in a box?

I mean, I mean, even if you just put it in a cardboard box, it would have made it. It would not have survived that.

There has to be padding. There has to be, how do you, I don't, that may have been a DEI hire right there.

That may have been a DEI hire. Pretty bad. Anyway, so back to the subject here.

Uh, sorry, I just heard something. So I just wanted to mention what's going on here. Um, so I, my whole argument, um, you know,

I didn't sit there and do what he did. He did what's called a gish gallop, where you just throw so much material out there.

No, one's ever gonna be able to respond to it. You just hope some of it stays. But it's just and I could have done that.

I could have all the positive texts on the Trinity. He's throwing all the negative texts on the Trinity out.

And we don't have nearly enough time to get into almost anything. And everybody's just left confused.

Okay. Could have done that. Um, I'm sitting here going, how, how do we make this worthwhile?

Have long -term value to it. So I'm doing something else and I'm doing, okay, who's going to be consistent?

Here's some examples. Then he does his gish gallop and then we get into cross -ex and evidently, and we're going to do this on the next time we get together.

We're actually going to look at this one. Uh, I'm just mentioning this in passing. Um, actually I'm spending more time on that.

I should. Um, but once we got into cross -ex and this time audience questions were actually helpful.

The audience questions actually did, did add to the debate. Interesting though. But, um, the, uh, the folks from TGT posted, um,

I guess on YouTube, you can see what parts of a video, a live video people watched.

And then when they bailed out, everybody watched the cross -ex and then bailed. They didn't watch the closing statements and the audience questions.

So they're really not getting a fair view doing it that way. But that's what they wanted to see for some reason was the cross -examination stuff, which did go very well.

Um, it really did. And you'll get to see that it's already posted. Just look up, um, you know, just look up the gospel truth and it'll be one of the first ones posted in their video section.

And, um, I would suggest if you're gonna, gonna do it, watch it before we go over it.

We'll go over a few things. I'd like to look at 1 Corinthians 8 as a good example of where Dr.

Smith gives clear evidence of the fact that his Unitarianism does not flow from the text, but is enforced on the text.

Um, that, that would be, that would be a good thing to look at. So we'll, we'll see when we do that on the next, uh, next program.

So, um, but there are a couple other, uh, debates that were done.

And, um, I'm not going to go back over Eli's, uh, debate. He's already done some programs on that and examined that material.

And so, uh, I'm not going to go over that again. I thought Eli Ayala did a tremendous job.

Um, I don't know if either Eli or Jeremiah have made any public statements about this, but I would like to think, since I know that both of them,

I think both of them have watched pretty much all my debates. And they've said in the past that I had a huge influence on them.

Um, both of them were absolutely dogged in CrossX. I mean, they, they went for it.

In CrossX, they stayed focused. They were prepared for it. I would like to think just a little bit that I had something to do with that, um, over the years, maybe, uh, because it was really enjoyable to watch, uh, for both of them.

It really was. Um, but since I, I did get to comment on the return trip on the, um,

Ayala -Barker debate. And so what I didn't get to comment on, and it came out on Friday, was the

Jeremiah Nortier Leighton Flowers debate. And the, the part that I've focused on was the cross -examination because, um, now

I'm sure, and he did actually sort of make this kind of statement, Leighton's like, well,

AK told me, and that's AK Richardson, the guy debated, the Church of Christ guy debated in, uh, last year, or I think it was earlier last year, um, in Louisiana.

We did, um, Romans 9, as I recall, or was it Golden Chain? Either one. Anyway, uh, he said,

AK Richardson said, you're going to go after some obscure point and really press it. And there were a number of times during the cross -examination that Leighton Flowers said,

I don't know. I'll have to study that. I don't know. I'll have to study that. And Jeremiah kept pressing, yeah, but this is to your position.

And Leighton's like, well, no, I don't, I don't see how it is. Well, but, and so Jeremiah did a really good job in keeping the topic when he had the opportunity to do so on the

Golden Chain redemption and his positive presentation of unconditional election from the Golden Chain.

Of course, Flowers did what everybody knew Flowers would do. And he has his own, he has one topic.

Remember he gave me the one string banjo type thing. He has a one string banjo. And so once again, we hear him going, so did

God decree my unbelief in Calvinism? And the big thing, everything else is subsidiary to one thing for Leighton Flowers.

His God cannot be sovereign over all human events. He will not worship a God that's so sovereign over all human events.

He absolutely rejects the idea that, that God could be, that God could have a decree.

He'll let him have a decree over some big stuff, like he'll win at the end. I don't think you can have it over the big stuff.

It's not over the small stuff, but yeah, he'll allow that. But what he detests and what it all comes back down to is a detestation of God's sovereignty and God's decree.

And of course, that's what he ended up going back to once he had the opportunity of asking questions. That's what it all ends up devolving back down to, is that kind of stuff from Leighton.

So nothing new there from him at all. But what

I want to look at for your edification, I want to talk to people who want to be able to evaluate argumentation.

I never took a class on debate, because nowhere that I went was that even offered.

I went to a small high school. It was a brand new high school, that's why it was so small. It's not overly small now, but back then it was.

There weren't any debate classes or anything like that. Grand Canyon didn't really have,

I don't think they had a debate team when I was there. I wouldn't have been involved with that anyways. I couldn't have been, I was already working.

Got married between my freshman and sophomore years. But it just seems to me that one of the skills that certainly is not being taught in any

NEA -controlled indoctrination center, is the ability to analyze arguments either quickly or over time.

And when you do debate, that's something you have to be able to do not only fast, on the fly, but you've got to be able to do it while doing multiple other things at the same time.

That's why there are really, really, really great scholars out there who should never debate, because that's not in their wheelhouse, that's something they can do.

The fact that I can do it doesn't make me smarter than somebody else, it just means I'm wired differently. That's really all there is to it.

And so, when I hear arguments,

I can almost literally see what the argument looks like, and hence, graphically, and see where the inconsistencies, where the things don't meet, where it's going to fall apart.

And that's something that you have to do in a debate.

It's just necessary. So, when

I'm listening to the Crossex during this, something really caught me. 33 minutes.

I downloaded it and I used a program I have to create a transcript. At 33 minutes,

Leighton says, but notice that verse 20 is in present tense, and 29 and following shifts to past tense.

That's because the Occam's razor tells you the most basic reading of the text, the simplest understanding, is he's now shifting to talk about people in the past, those formerly known, and I show how the word for known is used in other texts to simply refer to those known in the past.

I encourage you to go read my works on that. Okay, this is

Leighton Flowers. He's talking about the original language in Romans chapter 8, and he's talking about what the simplest understanding of the original language is, and he claims to have done work.

I encourage you to go read my works on that. He said, so you should understand it fully before you disagree with it.

Now, read my works.

All right, so here's my works, at least the written portion, and if I've said to somebody, read my works.

So here's a 320 -some -odd -page book on justification, lots of Greek and Hebrew in here, starting a certain chapter.

I think it's chapter eight or nine. Anyway, so for example, there's a 30 -some -odd -plus -page chapter in here on James chapter 2.

I still think it's one of the most important things I've put together, honestly.

I've never had anyone try to refute the exegesis that I offered of James 2, 14 through 20, well, 14 to 24, in that book.

No one's even tried. I'm sure some people have tried to do so without recording it, but I've never had anyone do it.

So I can point you to works.

I can point you to the stuff that I've done, and if you look at that, you can go, well, do you actually have any level of ability in the original languages?

And I can point you to fully -accredited institutions of higher learning that I've taught those languages at, and students who've gone on to do their

PhDs. So yeah, there would be a reason to go, okay, someone has done work with the original text here.

When Leighton Flowers says, go look at my works on this, and he's talking about the original languages, why should we believe him?

The reason I say that is because during the cross -examination, there were numerous times when, and in his book, which he put out the same time we did our debate of the

Potter's Promise, riffing off my own book, Potter's Freedom, he addresses

Romans chapter 8. His fundamental argument is the golden chain of redemption, since it uses the aorist, which is normally a past tense, that all it's talking about is people from the past.

It's not talking about the Romans in their day to whom this letter was being addressed.

It's an extreme minority position, but that's what he argues.

There were so many instances during the cross -examination where I had to go, I don't know. I've never looked at that.

I'll have to study that. I don't know. It was repeated over and over again, and it eventually got almost repetitive.

So I want to play a few minutes of this. I'll stop and start it, but we might go a couple minutes before I stop it.

But this will give you an example of, again, how dogged the apologetic dog, that's

Jeremiah, that's his name, by the way, the apologetic dog, how dogged he was in pursuing these issues, and how frustrated

Leighton became as he goes along. But let's check this out. Now I'll point you to a few things as we go along.

...me at Romans 8, 29. In your book, you talk about prototokos, right?

Because Jesus is the firstborn among many brethren. You say that firstborn speaks of Christ's preexistence, and that he is the firstborn

Savior that is to come. My question is, in Paul's theology, does Christ being the firstborn entail anything else along with his preexistence and coming as Savior?

I'm relating that down to verse 20, actually verse 30.

Well, excuse me, verse 29. He's predestined to become conformed to the image of the Son so that he would be the firstborn among many brethren.

And the use of the grammar there is talking about him becoming the firstborn of many brethren, which seems to indicate, once again, that he's speaking of the past tense, of the past of Jesus becoming the firstborn.

I read your book, but that didn't answer my question. I said, does Jesus being the firstborn in the context of Romans 8, does that entail anything else along with what you're arguing, his preexistence as creator and the coming

Savior? I would have to look at that more closely, but I don't have a problem with saying there's other aspects of his preexistence.

Any idea of what other attributes of what that would mean, that Jesus is firstborn? I mean, the firstfruits are often used in reference...

But firstborn, does Paul anywhere else in his theology refer to Jesus as the firstborn of more things than just the coming

Savior and eternal creator? Again, I'd have to study... Okay, tell me if this rings a bell.

What about Jesus being firstborn from the dead? Why don't you just go ahead and keep going.

But I want to test your knowledge on this subject, because you keep saying we're not talking about unconditional election. My whole case...

Okay, so what he's doing here is firstborn from the dead has to do with resurrection.

And if everything in the golden chain is already past tense and has nothing to do with present or future realities, is the resurrection already past tense?

Which obviously it's not. In fact, the resurrection would be future tense for the people to whom Paul's writing.

So he's trying to get Leighton to see that his interpretation of the text doesn't flow from the text, it's enforced upon the text.

Now, he took 90 seconds to get there, because Leighton wasn't following where he's going, but that's where he's going.

Not really. I know you think that, but I'm trying to show you how we're looking at the context of Romans chapter 8.

The thing that I'm pressing you on your understanding, is Jesus firstborn from the dead?

I'm not sure what you mean by firstborn from the dead. I mean what Colossians 1 .18 says when

Paul said it. What do you think he means? I don't have a problem with saying exactly what Colossians says or exactly what we read in the text.

Can I get an answer to that, please? Not a deflection? I honestly have to study what you're referring to, because what

I feel like is you're setting up. Okay, look, he can sit there and argue, look, this is supposed to be on election conditional, unconditional.

But honestly, given his position as a professor, don't you think it's sort of fair to ask something as basic as, what does firstborn from the dead mean?

Something along those lines? Maybe he's just trying not to get trapped in something, and so he's being overly cautious.

But I think most of us should be able to explain, well, firstborn from the dead, his resurrection is our resurrection.

He's the one that rises first, and we come after him because of his accomplishment.

He could come up with something, don't you think? Well, traps of, hey, if he says this, then I'm going to, oh, I'm going to jump on him with this.

I am. These are trap questions, because you do not understand Romans 8. And so my question with this is, look, when Jesus was first born from the dead, does that mean that there will be more to be raised from the dead like him?

I would, yeah. I mean, obviously, we're raised. That's the point that Paul's talking about in Romans 8, right? I wouldn't disagree with that.

Has that happened yet? Was Old Testament saints? Not fully, no. Correct. But is absent from the body present with God?

Oh, in a different book? Yes. No, is absent from the body present with God? Yes or no? Yes, it is. Is that what he's talking about here in Romans 8?

It could be a reference to... Let me tell you this, it's not. What? Because you just agreed to me that Jesus is the

Protodocus, firstborn from the dead, and so that has not happened yet. You are so right. Were Old Testament saints looking forward to the coming

Savior as being firstborn from the dead? So if you want to take glorified, and if you want to teach me and help press me like I've had other scholars do on particular points, and say that I am answering your question.

That's why I'm going to hopefully nicely interrupt you to say I'm asking a very particular question. And I'm answering...

Is the Old Testament saints, when they were looking forward to the coming Savior, would that also include him being firstborn from the dead?

Yes, they're looking forward to him becoming the firstborn. Would you say that Old Testament saints and Christians today are both looking forward to that reality?

You see what that... That hurts your view though, right? You see the point. Right. You're attacking the specific point of the foreseeing him being the firstborn, whereas I still see him as the firstborn is already one who's been resurrected.

And you're saying there's another aspect of the firstborn. It's more than that. It's more than that. I'm fine conceding that point.

Okay, so just... We'll move on. Thank you for... I wanted you to at least understand what

I was getting at. No, I get you. Okay, so did God's counsel exist before the creation of the world?

Okay, so now he's shifting, and there's something else I want to play. I'm going to go ahead and go through this, but my assumption is that what

Jeremiah wants to do later on is to make application here, to show the inconsistency, the incoherence of trying to dismiss the golden chain as merely about people in the past, because it doesn't.

Contextually, it does not flow from the text at all, and that was a good way of demonstrating it.

I would say it depends on what you mean by his counsel, but I have no problem saying that the counsel of God...

In some sense, God had a counsel before the foundation of the world. I have no problem saying that. Okay, in your book on page... I have no problem saying that.

I'm not... Okay, but, I mean, the counsel of his will is standard

Pauline theology. I'm not sure why you'd be scared to agree with that.

36, you said, the attribute of God's sovereignty, his power, authority, is not an eternal attribute.

Was God sovereign over his counsel before the foundation of the world? Okay, so let me explain this one.

Layton makes this idea that sovereignty requires creation to be sovereign over, and so what

Jeremiah is saying, is pointing out, is that God is sovereign over his counsel.

In other words, he gets to be free in what he chooses to do, so that sovereignty is an eternal attribute and does not require physical creation to exist.

It becomes self -evident once creation exists, but he's asking, is he sovereign over his own counsel?

So, is he internally sovereign as well, and eternally? Well, what

I was getting at there is to be sovereign... The application over history. I'm saying... To be sovereign over something he's created.

Like his counsel? Well, to say that he's sovereign over himself, his own counsel... Yes, and the decisions of what he's going to create.

Was he sovereign over that? If you want to nitpick it that way, that's fine, but what I'm saying is to be sovereign over creation, there has to be creation in order to be sovereign over it.

Would you agree that in some sense, God's sovereignty is an eternal attribute? I think his attribute is that of omnipotence and omniscience.

I understand what you're saying here. Those are attributes. When you're talking about sovereignty, you're typically talking about his rule over...

Sovereign means king or lord. Right, over his counsel. Was that over his counsel? And he's the lord or the king over...

Was it over his counsel? Again, I don't say... Does a king who's in a kingdom say,

I'm sovereign over my own counsel? Turn with me real quick to Romans chapter 9 verse 21.

Do you believe that the clay is a reference to Israel or all humanity fallen in Adam?

I believe it's more in reference to Israel. So in verse 20, what is the vocative noun? I have no idea.

Okay, it would be... Okay, there's what I want to get to. Okay, I don't know.

That actually looks like a UBS Greek text to me. I can't tell from this angle.

I don't know. But what Jeremiah just did is he just asked him, what is the vocative noun?

And Layton's response was, I have no idea. Now, look, you can have valid theological perspectives without being able to instantly parse...

Look at a line of Greek and parse everything instantly and go, ah, there's the vocative.

Okay, what is a vocative? A vocative is a case of direct address.

And I was taught 8 -case Greek. I eventually taught 5 -case

Greek. But the vocative is, if you're saying, who are you?

Oh, man. So you're directly addressing the man.

And that's what he's talking about. And it's singular. And besides that, the vocative was passing away during the

Koine period. So there are instances in the New Testament, for example, where the nominative functions as a vocative.

So it's going to have a different form. It's going to have the nominative form rather than the vocative form. So it's not some big, huge deal.

But what it does mean is it allows us for a second to think about what it means when

Layton says, look at my work on this subject that I read to you earlier.

What level of work can he do? So when you address a particular topic in the

New Testament or the Old Testament, there are different levels that you can do that at, all depending upon the proficiency of the studies that you've done to prepare, to go into depth.

And so in the olden days, it was assumed, in olden days, you know, the

Puritans, stuff like that. It was assumed that to be able to do in -depth work or to be able to evaluate someone else's work would require of you a knowledge of the original languages.

Not just a strong, exhaustive concordance level, but an actual knowledge, reading knowledge, sight -reading knowledge of Latin, Greek, Hebrew.

Latin's not nearly as much emphasized anymore, but was in the past. And so you can do, you know, a

New Testament scholar can do in -depth work on a text because they've learned the languages, and then they've studied the historical context, and then they have mastered the body of scholarly literature.

And of course, today, that's such a huge amount of information. It's one of the reasons why scholarship becomes more and more focused on minutia.

That's why there aren't any Renaissance men anymore, people who have this massive, wide knowledge.

Well, I suppose you could say that. Scholarship in the

West tends to become very myopic. But that's what a

New Testament scholar is going to do. Then you have people who will read widely in commentaries.

And so they can do work on a level to where they are very familiar with what the conversation has been about this type of subject.

But if you don't know the original languages, you cannot interact meaningfully with commentaries.

If you don't know the original language, then you're stuck with what they have to say.

And I've told a story before about what this ends up meaning.

I've told you a story about the guy that asked me to evaluate for him a perspective taken by a guy who is commenting on a text in Matthew's article.

And I analyzed it, and I was like, man, no one's ever come up with this before. It doesn't really follow from what he's saying. I'm informed of that.

He ignored me and went ahead and preached it anyway. And when I didn't confront him but ran into him, he said, hey,

I know. It just preaches so good. That's the problem, is if you don't know the original languages, then you get to pick and choose what commentator you want to give the most weight to.

It preaches good. It sounds like what I've always believed. But the fact is, commentators will go off on a tangent.

And even people that you really, really like, that you find generally very, very reliable, will still at times do weird things.

And if you can't hold them to the fire, you can't interact with them in a meaningful fashion.

And so there's different levels. And once you get up to, or down,

I guess, to a third level, where all you can really do, because you don't have the languages and you haven't done wide, balanced reading in the field, is just repeat what the commentators say that you've chosen to listen to, and that your favorite theologians make reference to.

That's not really work on the text anymore. And that really isn't even work on the scholarly field around the text.

All it is, is sort of mining your own personal perspectives and coming up with something.

That's where Layton is, okay? He's going to listen to whatever

David Allen says, and he's not going to be able to, he cannot interact with criticism of David Allen because he lacks the depth to be able to do so.

So when he says, go look at my work on this, this is tertiary, third level.

It's not work on the text. It's not even work on the scholarship. It's work on his chosen commentators.

And look, there's everything normal about this. Most people are not in a situation to do anything more than Layton does.

But he's put himself in the position of claiming expertise.

If you don't go out and do debates, if you don't write books where you riff off somebody else's title and try to respond to them, then fine, no one's going to expect anything more of you.

But what this debate demonstrated is, here's what's evocative? What's evocative down here?

I have no idea. What percentage of today's seminary graduates would be able to look at that text?

And if I recall correctly, without having to rewind and do all the rest of the stuff, if I recall correctly,

I think he said 920. So, man, that's small print.

Yeah. Anthropa ends with an epsilon.

If you know the nominative, then it immediately strikes you evocative.

Oh, man. And especially with the whole right in front of it. It sort of stands out.

Should he know that? Well, seminary was a long time ago.

What percentage of seminary graduates today could just look at that text and go, there's evocative?

This could be depressing, but 5 % maybe, honestly?

There's been such a massive diminishment in emphasis upon biblical languages that maybe 5%.

Again, it depends on the seminary. Southern Baptist seminaries,

I can tell you some stories. Yes, sir, you raised the microphone.

So we have a Greek scholar in our YouTube channel. Really? And the Greek scholar is telling us that,

I'll read this verbatim, Jeremiah isn't either, talking about scholar, he literally said that Anthropos was evocative.

It's not. It's nominative, singular, masculine, second declension, and James will not address that, but he knows.

Could you fix the thing? Yes, sorry. Okay, so, and who is it, where is this

Greek scholar teaching? I don't know. His handle is Simple Man Guitars 1973, but he has been insisting for a while, even though Jeremiah's in the channel, and I don't think he knows that Jeremiah's in the channel, but he's been insisting that Jeremiah got this way wrong and that it's not evocative, and he's actually, in other places, said that Omicron Sigma is always nominative.

But that's on Omicron Sigma, it's an epsilon. So here, I tried to make this full size.

There you go, there you go. Yeah, see right there? Okay, over on the right -hand side, you have Accordance's parsing, so he doesn't have to believe me.

What does it say? Anthropy, from Anthropos, which is a nominative singular.

Noun, masculine singular, evocative, man, human. So you have somebody in your channel that doesn't know what they're babbling about,

I guess. Well, I have a lot of them. You have a lot, you get a lot, you did a lot? Okay, all right. Mostly, you usually think about that.

Yeah, yeah, well, you know, it's small up there in the corner, the parsing, everybody, and if I move the thing there, it'll go away.

But you can see the parsing in the upper right -hand corner. Noun, masculine singular, evocative, man, human.

So it's not really an issue. And the

O, right beforehand, almost always appears before evocative.

O man, who are you who answers back to God? Shall the thing formed say to the one who formed it, why did you make me like this?

And so it is singular, and it is a direct address to the man.

So our Greek expert shouldn't be teaching if he is.

There you go. Um, so anyways, whole point being that, uh, there are different levels of work on a text.

And we're entering into a day where honestly, AI is going to create an entire cadre of experts like our fellow in YouTube, or wherever it is.

It is YouTube, right? Okay, YouTube. Um, and people will just, whatever

Grok says, or chat GPT says, or Gemini says, or whatever comes up, um, that's going to be taken as the final word.

And we need to recognize, um, that can never be the final word. I can't tell you how many times

I appreciate Grok. I appreciate, um, the assistance and tracking things down.

But man, I cannot tell you how many times, uh, it messes up. And it has to admit to me, you know, you're right.

I, I blew it. I was, I was wrong about that. And, you know, garbage in, garbage out.

If you're trained on all the internet, um, you know, this guy may have written something that ends up messing up the

AI too. Um, it is going to have to be a fixed conviction on our part that AI can never be an authority.

It can only be a tool. Um, now what?

Okay, so here's, uh, here's what he's arguing. It's, it's what, it's what Jeremiah said.

He said that Jeremiah said Antipas, and therefore, it's not provocative.

That's the lexical form. And you know, the thing is, I don't know anything. And I know this.

It's just a lexical form. That's what you learn. And that's exactly what I'm like, okay, uh, but lexical form.

And then you have the. And people are arguing this. And sir, sir, look me in the eye. You don't know what you're talking about.

Okay. Either you don't understand the language or you're just being absolutely obtuse, completely obtuse.

All right. Just dude, chill, get, get a clue. All right.

Okay. Um, not going to waste any more time on that. Well, and it's 1256.

Drat. Um, I should have known I was going to spend a whole lot more time on that. I've got stuff

I gotta do this afternoon. Um, uh, but that's as far as I want to get on that.

Okay. So let me just tell you what we're going to do next time, whenever that is. Um, I'm not,

I'm not thinking there's going to be anything between now and Thursday is going to mess us up as far as you and I having to go do things and look at things and stuff like that.

I don't think anything's going to be moving quite that fast. Um, but, uh, we're, we're, we're talking about travel stuff.

Um, and issues that I mentioned to you before, um, we are switching

RVs and, um, um, there's a lot of work that goes into all that stuff really is.

And we're trying to do it as efficiently as possible because of the debate that I have coming up and the debate, have we gotten a graphic on that?

We, we did. Okay. It is up on, uh, at AOMN .org now.

Okay. I should have checked that. Um, yeah, I think we used, um, Jason's graphics on that.

Yes. Okay. Uh, it is. Yes. Yeah. Jason and AI is a, is a dangerous, a dangerous combination of James White versus Jacob Hanson debate thesis is the

God of Calvinism, morally reprehensible Friday, April 3rd, 7 PM. Berean Presbyterian church in Ogden, Utah.

Yes. The Ogden, Utah. Um, and that's why we need to get the travel stuff taken care of, uh, as quick as possible.

Um, so Jacob Hanson, um,

I've moderated a debate that he did at Apologia a number of years ago. Um, so we've met, but, so I started doing some,

I need to learn a little bit more, you know, while I'm writing or something like that, have stuff to listen to be more familiar with what the argumentation is going to look like.

And so I found out that last December he debated

Joe Heshmeyer. Now you want to, you want to know how you can know you've been around for a long time when you're watching all these debates and you've either debated them or, or moderated the debate they've done with somebody else.

Um, so I was like, well, this is interesting.

Joe Heshmeyer debated Jacob Hanson in Salt Lake at a

Catholic church on the great apostasy, which is an LDS doctrine.

And so I'm like, I want to, I want to listen to this. And so I fired it up and I'll tell you.

And so we'll, we're going to listen to some of the cross -examination next time. So we'll do this first.

Then we can get into some of the stuff from my debate. Um, it's interesting stuff. So hopefully you won't mind.

Anyway, I'll just tell you right now, that was a surreal experience.

Um, I know both the people, I have met both the people. I wouldn't say that I know Joe Heshmeyer or, uh, or Jacob Hanson for that matter.

Um, but it was so weird because I'm agreeing with both sides on a bunch of stuff.

And you don't expect that. It's, you know, um, so I'm agreeing with Joe Heshmeyer that the

LDS doctrine of the great apostasy, and I, and, and Joe, if you, if you see this, um, you know,

Joe's one of the better people they've got. There's no question about that. Um, he's very clear. He's always well prepared.

Um, you know, I don't think we ended up actually dealing with some of the key theological issues in our debate, but that's either here or there.

Um, Joe, you should have gone after the priesthood topic. That did not figure prominently in your criticism of the

LDS position, and that's its weak point. Um, of course, I think you've got a weak point when it comes to priesthood stuff too, but even more so is the

LDS claim of the Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthoods and all the rest of that kind of stuff. Um, because the great apostasy can't really even be defined without talking about a loss of priesthood authority.

So, um, but I'm agreeing with much of what Joe is saying about the perpetuity of the church.

I'm not agreeing with what that means as to what the church is, organizationally, fellowship wise, stuff like, you know, obviously

I disagree with both Roman Catholicism and Mormonism as to the nature of the ecclesia itself.

Um, so I'm agreeing with Joe that the LDS doctrine is wrong.

It didn't happen. There's plain biblical teaching that, you know, as Paul said, throughout all ages,

God the Father will be glorified throughout all ages, uh, in the church. So if the church ceases to exist, and of course,

Jacob Hansen's as well, you know, we're talking about externally or internally, or were there faithful people?

Yes, but that has to do with priesthood authority. That, at least that's how Mormonism has presented in the past, whether,

I'm getting the feeling that Jacob Hansen's buying into a lot of the new Mormonism, um, you know, he, looking at some of his videos, like Blake Ostler and stuff like that, um, may be willing to, he ain't no

Bruce R. McConkie fan. Let's just put it that way. So, so I'm agreeing with Heschmeier.

Then, when Jacob Hansen starts, there were two debates.

I don't know why I'm doing this right now, but just to get you to tune in next time, there were two debates, and that they rarely actually intersected during this debate.

So Heschmeier is just going after the great apostasy, and he's going to say afterwards, hey, that's what the debate was supposed to be about.

I think Jacob Hansen was sort of dodging his responsibilities. Hansen's whole theory is, um, he's attacking the

Roman Catholic doctrine of the papacy, and saying, hey, if the papacy is definitional of the

Roman Catholic Church, and there is no papacy in the early century, which there wasn't, not in the modern definition of the papacy, that's why

John Henry Cardinal Newman has become a doctor of the church. It's development over time.

He's throwing out stuff that I've thrown out in my debates on Roman Catholicism. I don't, I don't know if he'd admit to ever having listened to any of my debates on Roman Catholicism.

Maybe he might, I don't know. But he's throwing out the same stuff about the development of the monarchical episcopate, and, you know, all the rest of this stuff, and how the stuff of Vatican I is certainly not what you have in the ancient church, and bodily assumption

Mary is a dogma now, but it was unknown to the early Christians, and he's throwing out a lot of good stuff.

Um, does that actually defend the Mormon doctrine?

He'll even say, hey, Mormonism could be wrong, but you guys aren't it. Well, that wasn't really what the debate was about.

It's an interesting tactic. It would have worked very well if the thesis had been the

Roman Catholic Church. The continued existence of the Roman Catholic Church from the times of the apostles demonstrates that the

LDS doctrine of the great apostasy is wrong. Okay, that would have brought more in, I suppose. Um, but it was a, it was a surreal experience.

So, I want to play some of the cross -acts from that, too, um, on the next program.

And so, you can hear this. It's really interesting to have to sit there and go, well, yeah, he's right about that.

He's a polytheist, but he's very right about that. Um, yeah, it's interesting.

So, look it up, uh, Heshmeyer, Hansen, uh, great apostasy. It'll pop up almost immediately.

It's fairly popular. So, um, check that out, and we'll do that on the next program.

And yes, there is a interesting graphic on our website right now. John Calvin versus Joseph Smith, a debate.

And it's got Calvin with, uh, doing a chokehold on, on Joseph Smith, um, in some,

I don't know. Yeah, it's a headlock. Well, headlock chokehold. He's got hold of his hair.

Calvin's definitely winning. Yeah, Calvin's definitely winning. There's no choice, no choice about that.

So, again, that's Friday, April 3rd, 7 p .m. Berean Presbyterian Church, uh, 780

East 24th Street in Ogden, Utah. So, uh, that'll be coming up.

And, uh, Jason and I will be doing an interesting conversation up there too. Yeah, here we go. On the next evening, also at Berean Presbyterian Church, I'll be doing a lot of driving up to Ogden.

Um, uh, James White and Jason Wallace discussing the Christian nationalism movement. Should Christians want a new

Constantine? And that's not going to be boring because Jason and I do not necessarily agree 100 % on sacralism.

He's a Presbyterian. So, there are going to be some differences. And I think if we're honest, we will use those to illustrate things.

Um, but yeah, that'll be the next night up there in Ogden. And part of this, of course, is

Berean Presbyterian Church, church plant from, uh, the church in Magna.

And they just got their new building. And so, you know, if we can let people know where they are.

And yes, Reformed Baptists can be very ecumenical and want people to know where a

Presbyterian church is. There are Presbyterians who won't have anything to do with me. There are

Baptists who won't have anything to do with them. Um, those of us in the middle that cooperate together get shot at by both sides pretty regularly.

Um, and you know what? I'm going to be the one in heaven going, yeah,

I helped you and you helped me and I helped you. You didn't help me and you didn't help me either.

So, let's sort of let that take care of itself when it takes place. So, anyways. All right. We went long, as often takes place.

But, um, I'm assuming a fairly normal time on Thursday.

I had some stuff today. But hey, if you got the app, follow me on, uh, follow

AOMN and me on X. That's the way to know what in the world is going on and to catch us when we fire these things up.

And especially, um, when we're on the road, you never know when we're going to pop in.

And I'll make one last statement. Um, we are putting out a substantial amount of money to, um, it's not upgrade, but change our

RV situation. And one thing that that is going to allow us to do, um,

I will be able to go live with a dividing line or a mini dividing line, um, whatever far more easily than I could before.

The setup time will be extremely minimal. And that means I'm going to be interested in doing that more often.

And so get the app because my gut feeling is going to be, I'm going to need to get information from Rich and from our, our tech people on how

I can send out something and say, Hey, 10 minutes from now, something happened today.

I want to comment on it. I'm going to go live. Here's how we're going to do it. And with the new setup, um, that will be easy to do.

When Rich first walked into this thing and saw this office that it literally had, the back end of the fifth wheel is an office, um, with a really nice desk.

And, uh, these folks know how to build stuff. Uh, we'll be able to have wiring in there and everything that we need to have.

Um, I'll just be able to go in there, sit down, hook the cameras up, go, uh, and I'll do it a whole lot more often because of that, because I won't have to be doing all the other stuff that, that I then have to tear back down afterwards.

So yeah, that's going to be really, really neat. And if you want to help with that, um, aleman .org

travel fund, uh, there you go. All right. We'll see you next time. Thanks for listening today. God bless.