The Dividing Line July 31, 2008

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us. Yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

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Our host is Dr. James White, Director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or contact

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Dr. James White at 1 -877 -753 -3341.

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And now with today's topic, here is James White. Good afternoon.

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Welcome to the Dividing Line on a Thursday afternoon. I'm trying to find an exploder here.

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We'll work on our phone system for some reason. Mozilla does not like our phone system. It doesn't like the printer thing either.

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At least on my end, it doesn't. But anyway, I thought I would start off today by mentioning a little something about some of the books that I'm reading these days.

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Some people actually find that interesting. And as we are recording things now and posting it on the

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Internet on YouTube, I will show you, those of you who take time to do that, this book just arrived,

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The Textual and Studies Third Series, Volume 6 from Houghton and Parker, Textual Variation, Theological and Social Tendencies, Question Mark, Papers in the

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Fifth Birmingham Colloquium on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament. My daughter almost went into seizures when

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I read her that. Some of the really interesting, I'm really looking forward to sitting down with Scribal Behavior in P66, some great little scans here and discussions of things like that.

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But I happened just a little while ago to be thumbing through, and Dirk Junkins has a article here with some rather humorous, it's not normal to find humor in textual critical papers at a symposium.

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But there are some funny looking graphics in here. And here's one marked,

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Poor Old Scribe. And these are things that might be influencing the scribe's transcription.

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Shouldn't have had the beans yesterday. I thought that Thomas gospel was quite nice.

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Have to buy sandals. Finally, my favorite part of this book, and hallelujah.

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I had never actually seen anything like that in a scholarly paper on New Testament textual criticism before.

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But yeah, that's going to be some interesting reading. And of course,

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I have two volumes here. If you buy books like this and you see

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Brill as the publisher, you know you spent at least three digits. And both of these were well over three digits, unfortunately.

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Stays in the textual criticism of the New Testament, Bart Ehrman, of course, his scholarly papers.

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And then Eldon J. F.'s Perspectives on New Testament Textual Criticism, Collected Essays 1962 to 2004.

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That one's only around 850 pages or so.

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And then we've got, this one's interesting, Scribal Habits of Codex Sinaiticus, which now is the rock star of all ancient books on the

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Internet, is Codex Sinaiticus. You didn't see all the stuff about Codex Sinaiticus going live?

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Oh, goodness, yeah. The Sinaiticus website went live last week, and for the first couple days, you couldn't get into the

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English site. So someone in channel, I think it was a Turgeon fan, had the brilliant idea to go into the

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German side, and it worked just fine. Apparently, I'm not on that mailing list. Well, it was discussed a good deal in the channel.

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Yeah, nothing to say to that one, did you? Nope, no, you got nothing to say to that one. Yeah, Skyman says he's bought some

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Brill books, and if they turn out to be okay, if they turn out to be really good resources, then you feel good.

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But if you get a Brill book, and it turns out to be a lame duck, and you look at how much you paid for it, you ain't feeling very

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Brill. No two ways about it, bad stuff.

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Anyway, as I normally do in the mornings, as I think a lot of people are doing anymore,

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I almost never bother with any type of cable news or anything else in the morning at all.

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I do my RSS feeds, and you scan the news headlines and stuff like that, and then

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I have all of my Christian ones, and my anti -Christian ones, and my Islamic ones, and so on and so forth.

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And so, I happened across Steve Ray's blog, which

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I have in the apologetic section, that is those who oppose the faith. And I learned later in the day that, of course,

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Dave Armstrong, the chihuahua of Roman Catholic apologists, who just, he just so much reminds me of one, what was that cartoon where you had the real big dog, and then you had the little yippy dog who was just bouncing along next to him.

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Hey Spike, hey Spike, remember him? I forget who that was, but the little yip, yip, yip, yip, yip dog, that's

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Dave Armstrong, because he never does anything original on his own, he always borrows from somebody else, and so when

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Steve posts this video, and it's not long before Dave Armstrong throws it up there.

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Oh, and I was going to put this up, let me, for some reason, Firefox doesn't do the Control T thing anymore either, at least on most of my systems, that's because they're

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PCs, and I am starting to get unhappy with PCs, basically. But let me see here, scroll down here, yeah, here we go, he posts this video, we're going to listen to a little bit of it here in a moment,

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Bishop James White's Sola Scriptura inanities, hilarious

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YouTube montage, which as I said, had been posted before that by Jerusalem Jones, and then right after it, and it's at how far the mighty

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Bishop White has fallen, it's so pathetic, but then right below it, open forum, listen to this, open forum, please try to interact with folks with courtesy and politeness as you would do if you were face -to -face, and that's right below the other one, you just got to chuckle a lot at Dave Armstrong, he's something else, anyway, they both put up this video that someone posted on YouTube, which once again begins with,

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I don't know how they don't get this, but same thing, Dave Armstrong, blow up a big picture of me and show the top of my head or something,

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I mean, that's always real deep, brilliant, wise type of thing, and very compelling argumentation, definitely,

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I guess that's why I wear caps now, is because I don't want Dave Armstrong to do that anymore,

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I guess, anyway, and what it is, is what you do is you take little snippets, and you don't worry about context or things like that, you take a snippet, and you only take what you hope your audience of Roman Catholics will find compelling, as long as they don't understand what the debate was actually about, see, and let me just play a section for you, it's, by the way, if you want to find it on YouTube, you can search for, it's

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X -Y -L -K -E apostrophe S, whatever X -Y -L -K -E is or refers to,

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X -Y -L -K -E apostrophe S, Sola Scriptura Truth Edit, and there's more to that title than might meet the eye, yes, they had to do some truth editing on this to put it together, there's no question about it, but let's listen to a snippet of this to get us started today.

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Now, that, of course, was from the 1993 debate with Patrick Madrid, and of course, there are pictures, my picture is being edited and flipping around and doing things to keep your mind on the screen, because this is all audio, basically, with, of course, the music in the background and things like that, that sounds just wonderful, but anyways, and I would just respond as I did in the debate by pointing out to Mr.

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Madrid that to attempt to make the canon infallible on that level requires that you have an infallible church, and when we ask

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Mr. Madrid upon what basis he has an infallible church, what does he go to? Well, you know, we have this argument for the infallibility of the church and that argument for the infallibility of the church, and the point is he has to go outside of the church itself to prove his point, and so his argument isn't even consistent, it accomplishes nothing, all it does is move the question of ultimate authorities one step backwards, and as I've said many times,

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Roman Catholics, all you're doing is moving the line backwards and then using your foot to sort of smooth out the footprints, and no one can see that what you've done, and they stand there and smile as if you accomplished something epistemologically, you've accomplished nothing at all.

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That is, he wants to say, well, you need an infallible source to define the canon for you. Well, I don't say the canon's infallible,

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I say the scripture's infallible, and I base my view of canonization, which Mr. Madrid did not understand in 1993, nor was it the subject of the debate specifically, but I base my view of the canon of the scripture on the promises of God and the extension of God's power to accomplish what his purposes in scripture are.

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I do not base it upon an infallible church in any way, shape, or form. God may use means, but the means he uses do not themselves have to be infallible.

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But the very same argumentation that Mr. Madrid just used in that comment could then be turned upon his own argumentation itself.

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That is, how do you know that Rome is infallible? Well, I don't care if you use Keating's spiral argument, which isn't really a spiral, it's circular, but spiral argument or anything else, you're always going to be going to outside sources to try to establish these things.

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So on an epistemological level, it simply doesn't work, it doesn't accomplish the ends that the questioner is attempting to use in the debate.

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So the only people that'll find that kind of argumentation compelling are people that are not thinking deeply enough to understand what the issues are in the first place.

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And I think that's why these things keep popping up, is that the people listening to these debates don't get how their position was reviewed.

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They just don't understand it. They're really not following what the debate is, and so they just pick some things out of their side set, and so on and so forth.

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So then we had, what did I put there? Okay, then we had,

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I've got a bunch of stuff queued up because I want to respond to a couple of these things. The Gerry Matitick's section, which of course was utilized for a long time by Phil Profosnick, who likewise put just a portion of the

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CrossEx up on the web, and see,

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James White admits that the apostles and Jesus did not follow Sola Matera, so why should we?

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And they don't give you the whole thing where you go, how during periods of inscripturation, when the

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Scriptura is being formed through the process of revelation, could you hold to Sola Scriptura because the

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Scriptura doesn't exist yet? Since the whole issue is that Scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith for the

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Church, then the question becomes, well, why would you even ask the question about unusual times of inscripturation, rather than the state of the

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Church today, when both sides admit that there is no revelation taking place?

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Once again, it is a means of getting around the issue, and anyone who thinks that's somehow a compelling argument just doesn't understand what the issues are.

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So here's how it came out in the video. Now, by the way,

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I'm glad that he's getting that stuff out there. I hope people listen to it. Maybe they'll track down the debates and listen to the whole thing.

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Man, it's awfully hard to even listen to that with that techno in the background. I guess that sort of explains people aren't listening really carefully.

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Let me play for you portions of that. I've got so much stuff queued up here that it's not even funny.

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So many things we can look at, and it looks like we've got...oh, it looks like a relevant question, but let me play this first.

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This is from the...no, that's not the one

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I want. I want this one here. Here we go. Here is at least a portion. I want to listen to at least a portion of what you won't hear

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Roman Catholics like this put to techno music, and I wouldn't want to put it to techno music anyways. If you're going to put something like this, put it to music at least you can think with, and it isn't quite as loud as the people speaking, so you have to pick things out.

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Unless it's poor production. But anyways, this is my cross -examination.

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This is what came right before that section, my cross -examination of Jerry Medetich.

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Let's see how well...isn't it interesting? Jerry Medetich, they would use him today, because Jerry Medetich isn't an

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Orthodox Roman Catholic anymore, and he used the very same kind of argumentation against them, but the

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Orthodox Catholic apologists won't debate him. I mean, ask Chris Arnson. He's tried to get them all to go on the air with Jerry Medetich, and he can't get them to do it.

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Isn't that ironic? Well, anyway, let's listen to how that really went.

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Now, just to catch you up,

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Jerry will present things, and he'll say, well look, the

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Apostles said a lot of things that are not in Scripture. Which, of course, is a given both sides would agree with that.

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And he gave as an example, an interpretation of who the one restraining is. So wouldn't it be wonderful if we knew who that was?

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And then, I mean, Paul preached for three years in Ephesus. Here's the beginning of tradition.

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These are the things that are passed down to us. Well, that's a real nice, convenient thing to say.

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But there's this little problem. And I didn't cue this one up, but as I asked Mitchell Pacwa in our debate in 1999,

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I said, Father Pacwa, is there anywhere where Rome has officially defined a single word that Christ or the

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Apostles ever said outside of the New Testament? And he honestly answered, well, no.

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So, you know, you hear these Roman Catholic apologists, well, just think of all the things that the

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Apostles said and taught, and if all you have is Sola Scriptura, then you don't know these things.

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But what is the implicit assertion in that kind of rhetoric? We do know these things, and we can tell you these things.

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But the fact of the matter is, you're going to see, they can't tell you anything about it at all. Question preached to my position that said that the, everyone denies that the restraint that St.

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Paul speaks of is this or that, let him be anathema. So, if you, so that you do not have, not studied all the

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Church Fathers, I have not studied all that the liturgy contains, so I will admit that there are many things you can't show us.

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Now, remember, he's the one who brought up these examples. He's the one who presented them, not me. I'm not coming up with something that he hadn't presented or anything else.

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He presented these as part of his attack on Sola Scriptura, and so when I say, all right, show us what these things are, now you can see he has no response.

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And by the way, the Church Fathers would have taught all sorts of things about this. You can find all sorts of differing opinions on all of these kinds of things amongst the volumes and volumes of the writings of the early

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Church Fathers. There is no unanimous consent on these types of issues.

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See, Russell, are there things that are idiosyncratic, then that could be erroneous.

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And finally, of course, when there is a dispute, when later

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Catholics might quote one father and some might quote another, when it's necessary, the Church can meet in a solemn council, just as they did in Jerusalem in Acts 15, and say, this opinion is that which was passed on by the

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Apostles, this opinion is idiosyncratic. So the Church Apostles exercised a governing function in the

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Church which they passed on to successors, as we see in the pastoral epistles, yes. You said that some early Fathers might teach something that's idiosyncratic.

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Historically, for example, the majority of the early Fathers, as we've discussed before, taught that Matthew 16, 18 is not in reference to Peter as the foundation of the

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Church. Yet a later council defined that as a dogmatic belief. How can you test the statement of the

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Vatican Council that it's the ancient and historical and universal faith, the Church, on any basis whatsoever?

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How can you test what the Church says to you as a Roman Catholic, and still be faithful as a

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Roman Catholic? Now remember, given his position today, he can no longer answer as he answered that day.

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He has changed. I'm exactly where I was that day. I would argue exactly as I did that day.

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Well, you looked at, first of all, in the

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Church it says we're going to solemnly define what we have to believe about justification or baptism, what have you.

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There's always citation of Scripture. No person in this room could look at the citations at the bottom of the page and say, they were wrong.

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Obviously, if they say something like, you know, John chapter 1 alludes to this or that, and in fact you look up the reference and it has nothing to do, it says nothing about Mary or baptism or wherever it is, then any reasonable person could say, wait a minute, there's some slip of the pen here or something.

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But do I have the right as an individual priesthood -holding believer before God to look at Roman Catholic arguments and teachings based upon tradition and say their use of Scripture is wrong?

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Well, I don't know what you mean. Can I give you an example? Yeah. Matthew 16, 18 is a misuse of Jesus' words to Peter to establish the papacy.

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Am I wrong to say that, and if so, why? You are wrong to say that. I don't know what you mean by, do you have the right, you certainly have the freedom to look at things, and you have the freedom, obviously,

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And the right with God. And you have the freedom to come to an erroneous conclusion. God grants us that freedom.

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We are free to sin. How do you know it's an erroneous conclusion? Simply because, ultimately, as you say, yes, the church is the pillar and foundation of the truth.

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Sola Ecclesia. We all heard it coming. He just didn't want to say it. I mean, is that not clear?

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I'm watching people on the channel. They all saw that coming up. Here's Sola Ecclesia. The church defines what is

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Scripture, what Scripture says. The church defines what is tradition, what tradition says. Sola Ecclesia. There is no way to test what

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Rome says infallibly. That's all there is to it. That's his ultimate authority.

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And Scripture is not equal to that authority. Scripture cannot be interpreted outside of what that authority says

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Scripture says. If we can ever figure out what it says, what that infallible authority says about Scripture.

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So, anyway, very, very, very clear. He just didn't want to go there. It upholds the true teaching of the

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Word of God. And the church fathers, many times, with all due respect, sometimes say, because this church father, he would have been in oral traditions, to ask you to be able to demonstrate to me that the

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Thessalonians had delivered to them the very same doctrines that you say I must believe on the basis of tradition today.

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Of course, I can make the assertion that the Thessalonians had an obligation to pass on everything that Paul taught them because the command is right there in Scripture.

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But if you're going to ask me for a laundry list of everything that I know was specifically taught at that congregation, you're building up a strong name.

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Those things were all taught at Thessalonica or whether they were taught at Corinth or whatever. All right, Jerry, let me put it this way.

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Somewhere along the line, somebody, one of the apostles, Paul or another, taught orally to somebody in the early church that indulgences were true, right?

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The principle behind them, yes. So, then is it, no, no, no, please, no.

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Something in the copious, if this were a debate on indulgences, as perhaps we ought to have,

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I'd be very happy. No, excuse me, ladies and gentlemen. Don't ask Mr.

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White to defend from Scripture that thing. For him to say, now, be ready at the drop of a hat,

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Mr. Matitix, without my telling you ahead of time which doctrine I'm going to bring up, you've got to give me Peter's Excitation in support of indulgences.

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Okay, all I asked, Jerry, is that it's true.

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And I'm willing to meet that challenge. Now, Jerry, was Athanasius wrong in standing against the majority of the organized church of his day?

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He was right to stand up for what the church had officially taught at the Council of Nicaea, even though bishops had apostatized from that faith, as the church has always admitted, individual bishops can and do err.

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Now, how many people in that audience recognized how dishonest that answer was?

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Probably not many, and that's one of the problems with debates. People have to go back and they have to check these things out.

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Let's remember, there were councils that met and anathematized

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Athanasius and compromised the Nicene Creed that had more bishops at them than Nicaea did.

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There were decades that passed when this was the majority view of the bishops of all the churches in all the world.

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The Roman bishop himself signed the Arianized Sirmium Creed. That's why it was

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Athanasius contra Mundum. So, did you hear what he just did?

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Well, there might be individual bishops. No, there were councils. Decades.

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And Athanasius stood against them all, if he's going to be consistent.

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Now, remember this came up on Iron Shepherds Iron when Jerry and I were on last year.

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Because now he has to take a different view. Now he has to look to Athanasius as support, because now he's in the minority.

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He's standing against his organized church. To see the people moving around from position to position.

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And what's interesting about his response is that his position today in reference to the current bishop of Rome would be apostasy.

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Right, exactly. Things they do have changed. Were there not councils after Nicaea that condemned

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Athanasius? You've not read the proceeds of any of the

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Arian councils at 381?

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Now, notice what he's doing here. Again, these folks love to play with church history, but they won't accurately handle church history.

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Because the whole idea of ecumenical council is yet well into the future at this point in time.

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And the very fact that Nicaea did not have quote -unquote ecumenical standing in the minds of people is clear from every bit of historical information available to us.

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Nicaea had to fight for acceptance. And so here you have all these other councils that meet of more bishops.

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And how do you know before Constantinople? How do you know during the Arian resurgence that Athanasius is wrong and the established church is right or vice versa?

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By modern Roman Catholic standards the person living that day could not know.

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They could not know. That came out in the debacle with Tim Staples on papal infallibility where he fell apart.

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And I pointed out that given his defenses of the various papal errors that I documented that during the lifetimes of those popes who gave those erroneous understandings and teachings no individual alive at that time could possibly know what the truth of those matters was.

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Could not. Could not. That's the problem with the system when you deny sola scriptura when you make another authority equal and in function superior to the authority of the scriptures.

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And that actually was my citation of Contra Gentiles 1 .1

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and that was the end of the first cross -examination period. Hey, you know what?

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I will submit that whole period to anybody. That was right at 11 minutes in length or so.

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10 minutes in length. And, you know, I don't think those anonymous folks on YouTube are going to be putting too much techno music to that particular cross -examination and posting that and I wonder why.

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I think it's pretty obvious. Our first caller, before we go back to some of this other stuff is right on this actual topic which is exceptionally unusual.

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So let's go ahead and talk with Paul on sola scriptura and the early creeds. Hi, Paul.

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Hey, how are you doing? Doing good. Good. The question I had is...

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Well, I've addressed this a number of times because there are a number of evangelicals who rather glibly will say something along the lines of well, of course, we accept the first seven ecumenical councils and I just want to go, have you read what each one of those seven ecumenical councils said?

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Normally what they're referring to are the symbols or the creeds in regards to Trinitarian and Christological issues that are a part of those councils not the entire council itself, the canons and decrees and things that were associated therewith.

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I don't know of anybody who actually, as a Protestant, could hold to the seventh ecumenical council for example, in regards to what it says on all sorts of things.

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So the value of any creedal statement, historical or modern, is directly related to the accuracy of what it says biblically in regards to whatever it is it's addressing.

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So the Nicene symbol has authority because what it says is exactly what the scriptures teach.

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The only way you can accept what Nicaea teaches is if you have the highest view of scripture and you actually believe you have to believe both

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Sola Scriptura and Tota Scriptura, all the scripture, and scripture alone. If you reject either one of those you really don't have any reason outside of tradition to be holding to those particular things.

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And the Chalcedonian definition of the person of Christ, again, the issues are biblical, they are exegetical in nature.

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The farther down the road you get, the more politics became involved in some of the choices of terminology.

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And so one has to examine the roles. You know, you look at a Cyril of Alexandria. I mean, this is not a nice man.

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This is a man very clearly motivated by all sorts of external factors outside of the exegesis of scripture.

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And so you have to keep those things in mind in looking at the context of the days and things like that.

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But I've defended the Chalcedonian definition, but I do so on the basis of scripture, not on the basis of some sort of authority to be assigned to a particular gathering of people in a particular city at a particular time.

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And so you have to, it's really, as we just saw, the issue of asking the question, what is the nature of ultimate authority from God?

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If scripture is theanoustos, if it is God breathed, is there anything else that is theanoustos?

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You can call the church to pillar and ground the truth all you want. That passage is talking about the local church, not the

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Bishop of Rome. You have to twist it out of its context to come up with things like that. And what is a pillar and foundation but something that holds something else up?

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And that's what the church does in the proclamation of the message that has been entrusted to her, which she finds in the voice of her

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Lord, which is found in scripture. She does not substitute her own speaking for that of her

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Lord. And so it is a matter of categories and recognizing that the category of scripture, that the category of God's speaking, that's why

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I spend so much time emphasizing, Jesus taught this. He said, Have you not read what God spoke to you, saying?

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Paul taught this, 2 Timothy 3. Peter taught this. Men spoke from God as they were carried along by the

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Holy Spirit. This is the view of the apostles. This is the view of the prophets. This is the view of all of those whose writings have come down to us and to attempt to subjugate their own perspectives on scripture to some external authority, whether it be a council or anything else, is to go against their own intentions.

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So anyway, they are historically relevant. They are extremely important along those lines because they do document for us the struggles of the early church against incipient

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Gnosticism or all the various Trinitarian heresies. But when

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I debate a modalist or when I debate an Arian, I am not debating them on the basis of an authoritarian creed.

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I am debating them on the basis of what God has said in His Word. And as a creed or a symbol, its value is directly related to its consistency to what

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God has spoken in His Word. Yep. Is that helpful? Yeah, without a doubt.

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Thank you very much. All right. Well, thank you very much. Thanks for calling. Take care. All right. God bless. Very relevant to what we were saying there.

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So let's go ahead and... I wanted to get this one today. If we've got time, we'll come back to Jerry's crosshairs.

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But I wanted to get to something else today. I wanted to get to Steve Ray, Jerusalem Jones.

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And, you know, other than... Isn't it funny? People like Dave Armstrong and Steve Ray, the ones who will post these kinds of videos and make those kind of remarks, the ones who will promote all sorts of lies and slander and attack people's families and things like that, they are the very same men who will never stand up in public and defend what they say against me face to face.

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They won't do it. They won't do it because they know they can't do it. Steve Ray knows that his arguments would collapse like a house of cards under cross -examination.

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Dave Armstrong knows the same thing. And so this is the only way they can get around it, is to hide behind their keyboards and do this kind of stuff.

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And so Steve Ray received a phone call on, I believe, Catholic Answers Live over the past couple of months on the subject of Mary.

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And I wanted to play it and then demonstrate once again these people, they get their standard answers and then that's pretty much it.

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Aside from just a few Roman Catholic apologists, very few, I see no evidence that these people care at all about what people say in response to them.

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That's one of the reasons they don't do well in debates, is because they don't listen to what the other side is saying. I mean, honestly, does the other side sit around and do what

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I do? Do they take my materials and play entire debates and review them and provide interaction?

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I mean, if Catholic Answers Live had me on, I'd be on. If these guys want to have, they want to come on the dividing line and interact with me,

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I'll have them on and they know it. So one side here is very straightforward and upfront.

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One side isn't. That's just all there is to it. So here's a caller on the subject of Mariology and I wanted to just again demonstrate that Steve Ray is going to run into the arc of the

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New Covenant stuff. And I want to play him making that statement and then go back to the very first great debate on Long Island in 1996,

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I believe. In fact, are you DVDing that? Or are you

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DVDing and digi -videoing it? Digi -video? You're in the process of digitizing all of them, starting with that one.

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Yep. Yep. Isn't it gone gone? Isn't Blu -ray the new standard or something like that? Blu -ray is going to be the new

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HD standard. So we're going to have to get some new machine, huh?

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It looks pretty incredible. I've seen it in the stores. Alright, what can

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I say? So here's the call and then we'll have a little clip right after this.

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Hi, I had a couple questions. Although I can't find where Jesus states.

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I'll answer that one. Do you have another one, too? Yes. The Immaculate Conception.

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It never comes right out and says that. But we understand in Scripture See, she's a picture of the

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Ark of the Covenant, too. And there's so much involved in this whole thing. The Ark of the Covenant was pure.

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It was gold within and gold without. And it was the center of Jewish worship. They didn't worship the

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Ark of the Covenant, but they worshipped the Shekinah glory of God above the Ark of the Covenant. And Mary, that's a picture of Mary because the

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Word of God was in the Ark of the Covenant, the Word of God on stone, and then Mary is the Word of God in flesh.

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And when Jesus, when the angel, I should say, came, that's one whole aspect. I have a whole writing on my website about Mary, the

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Ark of the Covenant, which really shows it's an amazing thing. Yeah, it's really an amazing thing there, Steve.

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And what is amazing is that Roman Catholic apologists just keep repeating stuff like that without ever really taking the time to find out what has been said about it.

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Here is a rebuttal period from the very first debate with Jerry Magix.

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Now this was a this wasn't the first debate with Jerry Magix. This was the first great debate on Long Island on the subject of the

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Marian dogmas. And we crammed way too much into it. It was moving really fast.

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We threw a lot of stuff out there. We did the best we could. But here is a section where I address this very issue on the subject of Mary.

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... ... ... ...

48:18

... ... ...

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... ...

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... ... So that was,

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I believe I only had like three minutes to make that rebuttal. It wasn't really long enough to do it. But there is a rather brief address of the claims that Jerry makes.

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And what these people do is they tend to just quote each other. And if it played well with one audience, then go ahead and use it.

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Has it been challenged? We don't know, we don't care. That seems to be the attitude is we don't know we don't care and I just I don't understand that I just I don't get it but that's just sort of the way things are so anyways we have a call we need to go to let's let's talk with once again with Frank hi

49:29

Frank hello Frank yes sir how are you doing doing all right the 19

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Creed could be considered could be well that certainly would be a utilization of the term far beyond that of Scripture the

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Apostle Paul when he uses that term in in no way makes reference to any kind of interpretation as being the honest us it is

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Scripture which is down his thoughts because that refers to its origin and so you would have to in essence have a doctrine that allows you to have revelation after Scripture or some other kind of revelation but if it's going to be the honest us then you cannot have a canon you're going to have to have a 28th book of the

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New Testament the 29th book of the New Testament you're going to have to keep expanding that canon and of course there are people who have suggested that the

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Montanans certainly did in the ancient church and the Mormons do today but I generally have found that those who are suggesting expanding the canon are always doing so because they want to add things to the canon that actually completely overthrow the consistent testimony of what's already there so the idea of the authority you know look at look at the terminology in the

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New Testament uses of the preacher he is described as an ambassador he is described as one who proclaims an authoritative message now an ambassador when he appears in the name of a king in the court of another kingdom speaks with the authority of the one who sent him but his authority is strictly limited to repeating the message that has been entrusted to him he is not made a second king his authority is directly related to the consistency of the message that he delivers if he varies from the message that has been entrusted to him by his king his authority disappears and so the authority of the

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Christian preacher standing before the people of God is the very authority of the

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God -breathed scriptures and it is in direct proportion to the consistency of the message to that which was originally given which is why the ambassador the preacher the proclaimer is supposed to be protected by the people of God from all the distractions that would keep him from being a student of those words he is not meant to be the

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CEO of a corporation he was not meant to be the one taking out the trash he is not meant to be the one doing all the financial things and feeding the poor and everything else the person who's entrusted with that duty is entrusted with handling the very speech of God and it is to be their passionate focus of their lives to deliver that message to the people of God within the church of God and that tells me that that ambassador idea that being the authoritative representative is not the authoritative representative in the sense of coming up with something new but it's the authoritative representative in handling that word in the very same way that you would want your children to show respect to your words to interpret them in their original context with their original intent and not to use those words in such a way as to twist them or change them or import any other meaning into them other than that which you yourself intended them to bear is that helpful okay okay thanks a lot

53:36

Frank all right that sort of takes me right back to the rest of this right here

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I wanted to go back to you know sometimes these numbers I get enough of these things queued up these numbers are difficult to look at let's see

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I believe it's this one right here let's listen to all of what Jerry Maddick said and in the cross -examination not going to get all of it in here but we'll at least get started and listen to some of the cross -examination here you know this reminds me of I have found this to be the kind of argumentation of desperation that is used by a number of religious groups

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Muslims will constantly repeat over and over again there is no verse where Jesus says

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I am God worship me as if those are the only words in that order that could possibly demonstrate the deity of Christ and the propriety of the worship of Christ there are

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Mormons who will argue the Bible doesn't tell you the book of Mormon isn't the

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Word of God does it well that's obviously anachronistic but that's the kind of mindset that people have and when it comes to sola scriptura it doesn't matter how many times that you point out the absolutely unique nature of scripture that it is absolutely unique it is that which

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God has spoken it has as its origin God's breath it is his speaking and you can say if you're going to say that there's anything else on that level then you must show us the pedigree the authority how do you know that this source that you're putting forward is itself equal with scripture and all they have to say well

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I don't have to do that I you just have to show me where the Bible says it that's it it alone so it can say it alone is the honest it is it says scripture is the honest off every writer shows clear recognition of its absolute unique nature but if those specific words don't appear that oh well then there might be something else so solos guitar isn't true that that's the kind of argumentation that people actually find compelling enough to then buy into the

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Marian dogmas because that's what you get once you knock down the wall of sola scriptura you get the

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Marian dogmas you get the papal infallibility you get the purgatory you get the indulgences you get st.

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Peter being built with the money from indulgences that's where it all comes from right there in front of you so that's exactly what

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I said to Patrick Madrid and you won't hear them playing this portion in their little debate thingies with their techno music either which again causes you to really really either come to the conclusion that these types of people are grossly dishonest or they don't understand the issues they just don't get it and that is

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I asked Patrick Madrid in light of what Paul said that the man of God is thoroughly completely equipped for every good work as the man of God in the church correcting and training and so on so forth then and I'm waiting for music here and but then what you do what you what you're surfing on the web there rich come on no no no no no you know that's not the case anyway then how does scripture how does scripture equip

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Patrick Madrid to teach papal infallibility it doesn't no one could possibly stretch themselves to think that it does or any of the

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Marian dogmas which if they are dogma would have to be part of the ministry of teaching and exhortation the church it just doesn't work so those of you who want to put together some you know little techno grooves on YouTube let me add that challenge for you try doing it truthfully try presenting both sides maybe try listening to both sides sometime you're not gonna get that kind of example following Dave Armstrong and Jerusalem Jones but I'd call you to a higher standard thanks for listening we'll see you next week