No Monotheism in the Bible!

Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. Here we are on a Monday. We actually take possession of the new mobile command center tomorrow, so I figured it was best to take care of things today.

I notice we didn't check the sound here, but hopefully that's going to do it right there. Anyway, I figured it'd be better to do the program today so we aren't rushing around and doing strange stuff on the on the morrow and plenty of stuff to talk about anyways.

So we'll jump into things here. Just a reminder, we are heading to Utah in just a couple weeks and we have a debate up there on is the god of Calvinism morally reprehensible, and that'll be interesting.

That's from an LDS perspective because I specifically said, well, if you want to use that as the title, great, but we're looking at both perspectives.

Is the god of Mormonism morally reprehensible? And that will be my assertion.

And also doing a talk on do we need a Christian Constantine? May have to actually address the issue as whether Constantine was a

Christian. You can't question that in Eastern Orthodoxy, by the way.

Can't question that. Equal to the apostles, Constantine. Yeah, there's a few people that are called to be equal to the apostles in Orthodox theology, or at least some

Orthodox theology. The Orthodox like to make it sound like there's just Orthodox theology, but believe it or not,

I mean, anybody knows you get a Greek Orthodox and a Russian Orthodox and Ukrainian Orthodox in the same room and you'll discover the differences.

But anyway, so we've got those debates. And then the weekend before that,

I will be debating Shabir Ali from the New RV. He's going to be online.

He was going to be online all the time anyways. And I will be online.

And we'll be debating a fascinating topic. It's not that he hasn't debated this topic before.

He and I have touched on a lot of the same things. But who continued the teachings of Jesus?

Apostle Paul or Muhammad? Because Shabir, from the beginning,

Shabir did the same thing that the author of the

Vindication of Truth in 1864 did. The same book,

Itzhar Haq was the name. That's not the author. That's the name of the book. That's the book that so influenced

Ahmadiyyat and really launched the careers of many Islamic apologists over the years.

And so Shabir's been doing the same thing for 20 years. And so he'll be arguing that Muhammad returned people to the actual teachings of Jesus because Jesus was

Muslim. And so he'll do the standard liberal theologian stuff against Paul.

And Paul will disagree with James and this, that, and the other thing. It's your standard anti -Pauline stuff.

Using standards he'd never be allowed, he would never allow to be applied to the early followers of Muhammad or Quran or anything like that.

And what's weird is, if he does the same thing that he did with me in 2008 in London and then in 2015 with David Wood, he'll literally try to defend

Muhammad's view by numerological defense of the

Quran. Now, back when I first started listening to him, the big thing was the number 19. In 2015 with David Wood, it was the number 7.

Remember the Bible code stuff? Most people don't. That was like 1999, I think. But for a while there was this

Bible code stuff that came out. Look at this amazing confluence of numbers and all this kind of stuff.

Well, they do that with the Quran too. You can do it with Shakespeare if you want to. It just requires, shall we say, imaginative mathematics.

But there are certain scholars that he quotes and for Shabir, it's always been the same thing.

Shabir will cite a scholar. Now, he rarely gives the actual citation.

When you look it up, it's frequently a passing reference, maybe a footnote. Most often the scholar doesn't even make anything big out of it.

But Shabir has pulled it out, found the reference, and within three minutes, a single reference by a scholar who may or may not have run with this, may or may not have gotten a conclusion out of it, becomes, as we have seen, scholars have proven.

So it only takes a few minutes of verbiage and all of a sudden a simple reference becomes, well, it's already a proven fact when it's not a proven fact at all, evidently assuming that his audience will never check out what he's saying.

That's the requirement. So it's just so clear.

Paul is a contemporary, lives at the same time, lives in the same context as Christ, lives at the same time as the disciples of Christ.

That the Quran says the disciples of Christ were made preeminent over all others. But the modern

Muslim idea is that Paul just wiped them all out. Paul's teaching, he took over Christianity, came up with a whole new religion, and just the actual disciples of Jesus that were the good disciples, the

Muslim disciples of Jesus, they just rolled over and played dead. It doesn't make any sense.

It truly doesn't. But that's how it goes. And so it's really so clear though.

You have a contemporary author clearly in contact with the apostles.

That's who Paul is. He's over against an individual who cannot read

Greek or Hebrew, may not be able to read any language at all, that lives 700 miles away and has no historical connection whatsoever to the historical

Jesus, does not know the content of the New Testament, and yet gives you citations, gives you exact quotations of Jesus.

And so Shabir will question what Mark says Jesus said, but he will accept what the

Quran 600 years later, says Jesus said, without a scintilla of documentary evidence over that 600 years.

I mean, that's indefensible. It's utterly indefensible. But that's what he's stuck with.

So that'll be interesting. I hope all the tech works great. I hope we have a good connection while I'm up there. I cannot remember what the connection was like last time

I was there, but I haven't been in Utah in over two years, about two and a half years,

I think. It's been quite a while. We had our second RV when

I was up there last. So we had the last one about two years. So it's been about two and a half years since I've been up there.

So, you know, the internet situation could have changed radically in that time period.

So we'll see. It should be very interesting. I'll be preaching at Apologia Church. I'll be preaching at Christ Presbyterian out in, well,

I think I'll be in Magna. I think I'm in Magna and Provo. I mean,

I think I'm in Magna, Provo and Ogden at some point. The debate will be in Ogden.

So we'll be doing some driving around. Let's hope that diesel isn't $10 a gallon by then, because that could get pricey.

So there we go. All right. There's a fellow on X asked me a question.

Specifically, oh, by the way, we're going to go back to the

CrossX with Joe Heschmeier and Jacob Hansen.

And during the CrossX, Joe Heschmeier again referred to First Clement as an early testimony to papal supremacy.

And as I said, there's nothing in the book that even comes close. And so I thought, you know what?

How about we, how about I invite Joe Heschmeier to have a discussion with me?

We can do it remotely. I think we probably need to get a

Streambox account because I use Streambox to do, I did a whole seminar on Roman Catholicism for Keith Foskey's church in Florida, Friday night and Saturday morning.

And from here, sitting right here. And it went really well. We had no breakups.

We had no issues at all. There was a muting issue once, but that was probably on my end.

But as far as the platform, I was able to share my screen real nicely. It was very straightforward.

And so maybe we'll go that direction or whatever. But I invited

Joe Heschmeier. Let's have a discussion about your claim that First Clement, the epistle of Clement, it's really the epistle of the

Church of Rome, the Church of Corinth, dated late first century, early second century.

There's arguments about that. But let's have a discussion about your claim that this, in any way, shape or form, constitutes a testimony to early papal authority.

And specifically, and let's do it based upon the original language text.

Let's do it based upon the Greek text. Because, for example,

Clement does what Paul does. Presbyter, presbyteros, and episkopos are used interchangeably.

The big thing that Rome is writing to Corinth about is that the Corinthians had kicked out their presbyteroi, their elders, not their singular bishop.

There is no reference to a singular bishop. There is a generic reference to the bishop as an office, but there is no use of a singular pronoun in reference to a bishop or the use of the word bishop.

The author is anonymous. The name's never given. Plural pronouns are always used.

We exhort you as fellow Christians. There is never a bishop that says, by my authority, as the infallible vicar of Christ.

It's not there. And the ecclesiology of the letter is the

New Testament ecclesiology, plurality of elders. And at this point in time, that's what existed in Rome, too.

There was no one bishop. So, it would have been the elders at Rome writing to the now elderless church in Corinth that had kicked their elders out.

So, being able to go into that and go, show me a singular pronoun.

Show me where the bishop, show me where Clement not only identifies himself as the bishop of Rome when there is no singular bishop of Rome at the time.

And again, I know what the response is. Well, but later, you know, Irenaeus said there was, you know.

Irenaeus is writing 80 years later, and he's defending the claims of his orthodox branch against the

Gnostics. And just think for a second. If someone in 19, if someone today made comment about who is in charge at a church in 1946, what's the chances that they would have first -hand knowledge of it?

None. It's all secondhand. There's almost nobody that old that's going to be able to give clear testimony of something like that.

So, what the discussion would do would be to allow us to document anachronism.

Because Roman Catholics are told, hey, satus cognitum says this has been the ancient faith of the church. It's what's always been believed.

It's just simply not true. But Roman Catholics have to believe it, and so they function in light of what they've been told to see in history.

You would never get the Roman Catholic system of ecclesiology, authority, justification by faith, since that's in there too, section 32 of the epistle, very clearly.

You'd never get that. You'd never get that stuff out of the original language text.

And so, we'll see if it happens. I just put the invitation out there, and he seemed willing to think about it.

And so, we'll see. But what was

I looking for there? Oh, Lego Joseph.

Remember him? The LDS guy? He had posted, the

Father fully possesses the divine nature, the Son fully possesses the divine nature, the Spirit fully possesses the divine nature, basically being derived from the

Athanasian Creed. Therefore, there are three instances of divinity, three gods. And I responded, it's the divine nature, not a divine nature.

There's only one being of God, not three, not ten, not an unlimited number. Is there any other

God? I know not any. Quoting from Isaiah, of course. So, he linked me to this video, and good old

Dan McClellan. Dan McClellan, here's how Dan McClellan works. And I don't know exactly where he is and everything.

I think we responded on this program to some wacky stuff he said about the

New Testament homosexuality. He's one of these guys, honestly, that thinks he's the only one that really gets it.

And look, when N .T. Wright does that, when that Eastern Orthodox guy does that, at least they've written massive tomes with 47 billion footnotes and stuff like that.

At least they can point to something. This guy can't point to almost anything like that. What he does, he sits down and he says,

I'm a Bible scholar, believe me. And then he just throws out all sorts of disjointed, wacky, crazy stuff.

And it's just like, believe me, because I'm a Bible scholar. And most of us who've been teaching longer than he's been alive, don't just roll over and go, yes sir, okay.

But a lot of other people do, unfortunately. And so, he has this video, he's wearing a

Venom shirt, that's great. That always raises things. But he says, there's no monotheism in the

Bible. Now, just so that you are up to speed,

I remember years ago when Richard Mau. Richard Mau was the past president of Fuller Theological Seminary.

And you may remember that Mau got involved with all this ecumenical stuff with Mormons, and they had this ecumenical meeting up there.

It was a mess. And this was back during the America Online days, when

America Online just launched. And he did this online

Q &A thing. And I managed to get in the queue. And when

I asked him about Isaiah 4310, before me there is no God for him, there should be none after me.

He gave the standard response that you would expect from your regular progressivist

Protestant. They don't believe that the

Old Testament has any cohesion at all. Unfortunately, the large majority, and this is why

I have criticized the people who do the, well, the majority of scholars believe this.

The majority of scholars, you know, the Habermasian thing on the resurrection, the majority of, you know, the minimalist argument for the resurrection.

I've just never bought into any of that. The quote -unquote scholarly consensus changes fairly regularly.

And so what you have in Old Testament studies today is a consensus, not based upon having done a lot of debate on the subject.

It's just what has become accepted for bad reasons.

So like the documentary hypothesis, the Wellhausen hypothesis, J -E -D -P, if you're not familiar with it, the

Yaoist, Eloist, Deuteronomic, and Priestly sources, it's the redaction hypothesis that the

Mosaic material is this badly edited, cobbled together mess of contradictory material that was put together, you know, long, long, long after the days of Moses, and in fact, they don't believe

Moses ever existed. Moses is a fictional character. So Moses is fictional.

The Pentateuch is a redacted, cobbled together mess. There is no consistency to it.

There is no cohesion. They do not hold Jesus's view of Scripture. Let's just put it that way, okay? And this is the majority view, and it's not just the

Mosaic material, but everything else. From their perspective, you can believe anything, you can come up with anything.

So this actually came up, interestingly enough, I was going to mention this. Wait, we're just wandering all over the place today.

Dan Barker threw something out at Eli Ayala in their debate a few weeks ago in Dallas.

I hadn't mentioned this. He threw out the El Elyon argument. Now, what's the

El Elyon argument? I've told the story. I remember the

Motel 6 hotel room, exactly which direction it faced the

Hawaiian Yards. It was the year that I took my son with me up to Salt Lake City to pass out tracks during general conference.

And we were staying at that fancy Motel 6. Every time I drive by those

Motel 6s now up there in Salt Lake City, I am astonished at the price signs.

Because when we went up there, it was like $19 .99 per night,

I'd say. Now it's $69 .99, $79 .99 per night to stay in the same flea -bitten, uncomfortable beds that we stayed in before.

Oh, and we squeezed lots of people in there. People sleeping on the floors, everything. We did.

And I just remember, I don't know why this... It's amazing the things that you remember in comparison to the things you forget.

But I remember which brown... It's probably still in the other room. I don't throw stuff out.

Yeah, Rich just said, yeah. It's because I take care of my stuff. I don't have to throw it out. It was a brown, fake leather book bag.

And I'm cramming all my resources into it. Because this is before an iPad or anything like that. You can't go electronic.

I mean, my son who went with me was like 11. And he's two months from turning 40.

40 years old. Okay, so this is a while back. And I remember

I stood there with this. And this was stolen. I had a truck stolen out of the

Phoenix College parking lot years and years and years ago. They found it stripped and they had pulled all my books out of it.

And I had this nice, red, leather -bound, Bibliohebraico Stuttgartensium.

And I was arguing to myself, do I need to bring this?

Because I was going to be doing four hours on the air, live call -in in Salt Lake City on Mormonism.

And here's my Hebrew text. And I crammed it in. I could just barely even carry the bag.

I went ahead and took it. The last half hour of the program, the last half hour of the program, this guy calls him.

And he identified himself as Bill.

It was actually William Hamblin of Brigham Young University, one of the primary people at the time of the apologetics group they had at BYU.

He was one of the leading people in farms, Foundation for Ancient Research in Mormon Studies. Doesn't exist anymore,

I don't think. It's been taken over by others. Anyway, he calls in and he throws out this very same argument based on Deuteronomy chapter 32.

So when I heard Dan Barker throwing it out, I'm like, wow, heard this before.

And it's actually based on a textual variant. And so I was able to look it up.

I had stuffed that Bibliohebraico Stuttgartensium into the bag. And so I was able to look it up while Bill was talking on the air.

My eyes were still good enough back then to read that small print Hebrew. And I found the variant.

And I was able to respond to his use of the text and his use of the variant because I had my

Hebrew text with me. That's one of the illustrations that I used when I, the next year I believe, I taught

Hebrew for Golden Gate. And that was one of the illustrations

I used. Why should you bother to learn this language? Well, here's one example where it came in handy. And so the whole idea is that, well, see, this verse says that El Elyon is the highest

God. And El Elyon has divided the earth up and given

Israel to a lesser God named Yahweh or Jehovah. And how can you come up with something like that?

The only way you can come up with that is to say we will interpret this one verse with a textual variant in it in complete contradiction to dozens, if not hundreds, of other verses in the

Old Testament text. And the reason that they don't hesitate to do that is because that's what they believe the

Old Testament text is. It's a cobbled together mess of contradictory gobbledygook.

And that's what they publish. That's what they put in their commentaries. So that's how they get away with it.

That's not Jesus' view of the Old Testament. And Dan McClellan does not hold Jesus' view of the

Old Testament either. So like I said, my recollection is we respond to some stuff he did on homosexuality.

Did we? Oh, yes.

Yeah, we did record that. And we recorded all those KTKK radio programs from long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long ago.

And they're on the Sermon Audio page. So if I recall correctly, we responded to what this guy said about homosexuality in the

New Testament too. And went, yeah, not quite.

So he goes on with some other stuff. And again, he just sits there and he just drones with this condescending, you all are so lucky that I'm even talking to you.

I am so brilliant. And no one knows what I know type of an attitude.

Just listen to it. Yeah. But let's listen to this. There's no monotheism.

Let's listen to this first part and then respond to it. There is no monotheism in the

Bible. Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan, a scholar of the Bible and religion, increasing public access to the academic study of the

Bible and religion and combating the spread of misinformation about the same. Now, there are two points to make here.

The first that the Bible acknowledges the existence of other gods from beginning to end. They are repeatedly recognized as deities in the

Hebrew Bible, in Greco -Roman period Jewish literature, in the New Testament, in early Christian literature.

Now, sometimes those recognitions occur alongside pieces of rhetoric that say things like I am and there is no other.

There is none like me. This is the rhetoric of incomparability. And we find this in ancient

Egyptian literature, in ancient Mesopotamian literature. We find it in a number of different places.

And it is not a philosophical rejection of the existence of other gods. It is a rhetorical denigration of them, similar to how

I, as a Broncos fan in 1998, would quip that the Raiders are not a real football team.

It is not a philosophical rejection of their existence. It is just rhetoric.

And that's okay. Just rhetoric. It's just rhetoric. It's like being a

Broncos fan and saying that the Raiders aren't a real football team. It's just rhetoric. They're actually acknowledging these other gods exist, but they're denigrating.

Does that sound familiar? Let's see if anybody in the audience, and of course there's only one person in the audience

I can see, so this really isn't going to help me very much, but I would be really interested. Because I'm sitting here thinking about another time you heard exactly this.

If you've listened to our interactions with Mormons fairly extensively, you have heard probably, and my gut feeling is, when

I heard this, it wasn't the first time, but when I heard this about what was it?

It was probably seven or eight years ago now that I'm thinking about it.

Remember on Apology Radio, me and Jeff and Kwaku, the young Mormon fellow, he's still out there.

I'm a little surprised. I think the last I heard he was still at least nominally

Mormon. I haven't heard much of him.

I don't see him doing almost anything anymore. He really melted down badly after all that stuff.

But this was his argument, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if he got directly from Dan McClellan, or if it's the same source.

They're both drawing from, I don't know. But this is the idea. When you read, there is no

God besides me in scripture. You can go ahead and take it down. We're done. When you read, there is no

God aside from me. It's just rhetorical. That was a common claim in Mesopotamian religion.

It really isn't a philosophical claim. It's like if you're a

Broncos fan, then the Raiders aren't a real football team. That's what you have here.

Let's sort of, I don't know, think about that for a second and maybe compare that to not just have a guy sitting there in a

Venom shirt saying, trust me, I'm the scholar. I know all.

I have a degree. Not impressed.

Not impressed. You do the same thing. No. The difference is

I go to the text and let the text speak. I don't say it's because I'm somebody special.

Because what the text says, it said long before I was born, will say the same thing long after I'm gone, and I'm irrelevant.

So I have a very different view of where I'm coming from than Dan McClellan clearly has of himself.

Let's look at a text here. I may have a hard time getting back to the other stuff. When I get into the text here, it tends to take up a lot of the time, but that's okay.

Um, Jeremiah chapter 10. Jeremiah chapter 10. And look,

I'm not just pulling this out of the hat. I have a whole discussion on this in Is the

More of My Brother, which was published in the 90s, been out there for a long time.

Here the word which Yahweh speaks to you, O house of Israel. Thus says Yahweh, do not learn the way of the nations, do not be terrified by the signs of the heavens, although the nations are terrified by them.

That would be astrology, by the way. For the statutes of the peoples are vanity, because it is wood cut from the forest, the works of the hands of a craftsman with a cutting tool.

So he's talking, where is, where is, um, where is Israel right now? Israel's in captivity.

And the Babylonians are making claims to them about their gods.

Hey, our gods defeated your gods. So why don't you listen to us?

Um, for the statutes of the peoples are vanity, because it is wood cut from the forest, the work, the hands of a craftsman with a cutting tool.

They make it beautiful with silver and with gold. They strengthen it with nails and with hammers so it will not totter. Like a scarecrow in a cucumber field are they, and they cannot speak.

They must be carried because they cannot take a step. Do not fear them. They can do no harm, nor could they can, can they do any good?

Does it, does it sound like Jeremiah is going, oh yeah, there are other gods.

Um, this is just a rhetorical denigration of them, but, but they're real gods. No, they're idols.

Um, they cannot speak. They must be carried because they cannot take a step.

You, you think this is a rhetorical statement that, well, but for Israel, we only have the one

God. Yeah, for Israel, we only have the one God. That's true. But why? Because the gods, the peoples are idols.

Psalm 965. They're idols. They don't have real existence. Well, but then the

Greco -Roman, oh, you're talking about the intertestamental stuff about, about the unseen realm stuff that Heiser was all big into and all that.

Is that what you're talking about? Probably. I'd assume so. But his stuff never stood up to examination against the entire canon of scripture either.

That's the problem. I mean, it sounds really cool and we can really make ourselves look neat.

I almost never have to take drinks, but I mentioned this during the conference. I was drinking a lot.

Um, have you seen the dew point recently? It's like below zero. It is so dry right now that it is,

I mean, what? I just want to warn your critics.

I think it's not fair game, uh, to use that as a clip. I was drinking a lot.

It doesn't matter. They'll use it anyways. They'll use it anyways because they don't care what the dew point in Phoenix is.

Look, most people just don't realize how dry March is. You can desiccate anything.

Just leave it outdoors. It'll be gone. All right. Anyway, um, Jeremiah 10 .6,

let's get back to this here. There is none like you, O Yahweh. There is none like you. Oh yeah, there's, there's no team like the

Denver Broncos. Actually, there are lots of teams like Denver Broncos. There's a whole football league of teams like the

Denver Broncos. Um, and there is none like you,

O Yahweh. You are great and great is your name and might. Who would not fear you, O king of the nations?

Indeed, it is your due. For among all the wise men of the nations and in all their kingdoms, there is none like you. But they are altogether senseless and foolish.

They are in a discipline of vanities. It is mere wood. Beaten silver is brought from Tarshish and gold from Uphaz.

The work of a craftsman out of the hands of a goldsmith. Blue and purple are their clothing. These are all the work of wise craftsmen.

So they have all been made by man. They come forth from the creation. But Yahweh is the true

God, Elohim Emeth, the true God. Okay, so if Yahweh, Jeremiah 10 .10,

right here, right there, Yahweh Elohim Emeth.

Now, this also, by the way, helps you to see the foolishness of Joseph Smith.

Because we are reading the Sermon on the Grove. I've got it right there. Not sure we're going to get back to it today.

Doesn't look like it will. But Yahweh Elohim Emeth. If Elohim is always plural, how do you even begin to translate this?

See, Smith didn't know Hebrew. He claimed to. But how would you translate this?

Yahweh is the true gods? Even in LDS theology,

Yahweh is a singular individual. I mean, whether Smith held the later definition of the first presidency or not, now that's a debatable point.

But still, Yahweh is just one God, even in Mormonism. So Yahweh is the true gods?

I mean, this is absurd. Makes no sense. Yahweh is the true God. Singular.

Who? Elohim. Chayim. Chayim. L 'chayim, l 'chayim, to life.

Yep. Yeah, I know. No one's seen Fiddler on the Roof. Did you ever see?

You've seen. Okay. Hope so. Yes, right there. Uh -oh.

That's Jewish. Oh, no. Oh, no. And they've got me singing it, too.

I've watched Fiddler on the Roof. I'm going to be on NXR next week, because clearly

I'm being paid by Mossad. Oh, see?

High Priest of Judeo -Christianity. Anyway, okay.

He is the true God. Not the true gods. He is the living

God. Okay. What's the opposite of true? False.

What's the opposite of living? Uh, dead. So what are these other gods?

But it's just a rhetorical point about the Broncos. No. No.

There is a necessary meaning here, if you're going to allow the text to have any meaning at all.

He is the living God and the Melech Olam, Everlasting King.

At his wrath, earthquakes and nations cannot endure his indignation. Then something fascinating happens here.

And I know we've gone over this before, but we always have new listeners, thankfully.

This verse right here is not in Hebrew. It looks like it is.

Well, yes, it's definitely a Semitic tongue. But it's in Aramaic.

And you'll notice there is a note, yeah, it popped up in the upper right hand corner there.

This verse is in Aramaic. That's in the LSB. Thus you shall say to them, the gods that did not make the heavens and the earth will perish from the earth and from under the heavens.

Why would it switch languages? Well, because what language are the

Babylonians speaking to the Jews? Aramaic. And so in the language that they are to use and give their apologetic response, as the people of Israel are being tempted to go after these other gods, now that they have been subjugated, judgment has come upon them,

God gives to his people, in the language they need to respond to the people, inviting them to idolatry, he gives the very words that they are to say.

In the language, they're to say it. And what are they to say? The gods that did not make the heavens and the earth will perish from the earth and from under the heavens.

Every single god Dan McClellan is talking about, where there's no monotheism, is described in Jeremiah 10, 11.

Every single one. They all derived from the creation. They were not the ex nihilo creator, he goes into that later on.

He's big and, oh no, ex nihilo, oh no, no, no. So wise, so brilliant.

How come the people of Israel were given an answer that assumes that God is the creator of all things?

Not the organizer, not moving pre -existing matter around.

The gods that did not make the heavens and the earth will perish from the earth and from under the heavens.

If your god did not create the heavens and the earth, it's not

God. And he'll perish away. That's the exact apologetic given by God to his people, in the language of the people who are inviting them to idolatry.

It is he who made the earth by his power. Note, as throughout

Isaiah, the claim of monotheism walks hand in hand with the claim of creatorship.

You cannot separate the two. Read the trial of the false gods.

Watch Dan McClellan saying, there's no monotheism in the Bible, and then you go read Isaiah 40 to chapter 48.

Just sit there, read it for yourself, and go, your much learning hath made thee mad,

Dan, because it has. It is he who made the earth by his power, who established the world by his wisdom, and by his understanding he has stretched out the heavens.

That sounds like creation of all things by God, by power, wisdom, and understanding.

Not by the use of pre -existing materials, huh? Nowhere to be found. It's right there.

So, you've got Dan McClellan, there's no monotheism in the Bible. You've got the Bible, it's right here.

Your much learning hath made thee mad. Okay, you can take that down.

Thank you. All right, so, yeah, let's go ahead.

Oh, really? Hey, you want to do something live?

This just popped up 26 seconds ago. 26 seconds ago.

You don't get too much more up -to -date than less than one minute.

Huh. All right, so, according to Hilaire Nereus, there is a clip here from Joel Webben.

It says, it has definitely been an odd extension of his podcast, and it's all very personal. First swipe at Conceptual James, so James Lindsay, and the second one is

Hos Elyothroi, that's me. Which, by the way, my nickname,

Nick there, whatever you call it, ID on X, means As Free Men.

It's from 2 Peter, As Free Men. The third is just to show what some people are willing to sit through for an hour and 10 minutes and still call it preaching.

I got to find out what this is. I got to find out what this is. All right, let's see what the swipes are.

You got the audio up? All right, let's see what we got here. In other words, in God's providence, in his kindness, it's often a good litmus test, right?

If you find yourself, you're a Christian pastor, and James Lindsay likes you, then you suck.

You're a bad Christian pastor. He hates

God, but he really likes you. There's your sign.

Let me just stop here for a second. Y 'all may remember, what is that?

What's the muscle -bound pimp guy that's so popular?

Yeah, he got arrested for, he brags about how many women he's had sex with and all the rest that kind of stuff.

Pimps, women, and whatever. I've already forgotten what his name was. Actually, I have it.

I should have it right here. Andrew Tate. Andrew Tate, yeah. In fact, this is exactly what

I was, he put something about how he wins.

And I wrote, I actually have it right here. If by win you mean die alone, degraded, empty, a symbol of a wasted, ruined life, that is up to you.

Shortly after you close your eyes in death, which may come upon you at any moment, especially given the number of people you've abused and used for your own pleasure in your life, you will stand before the

Holy God. He has already warned you and given you more than sufficient time. And I quoted from Acts 17, 30 -31.

I said, the empty tomb in Jerusalem is the proof God the Father has given to all that the day of judgment is coming. The judge will be the risen and enthroned son,

Jesus the Messiah, and he will judge in righteousness. By your own confession, you have no righteousness. You have rejected, because remember, he became a

Muslim, Andrew Tate did. You have rejected God's law, dishonored your own body, and abused others, thousands by your own testimony.

You are guilty of every form of rebellion before your maker, and you have no excuses. Islam offers you nothing. The only hope you can ever have, the only hope anyone can ever have, is in repentance, turning from your evil and rebellion, and turning to Jesus, the powerful

Savior. He can take out the heart of stone you now rejoice in, and give you a heart of flesh. He can teach you, despite how scarred and torn your manhood is, to be a true man, a true servant.

He could even show you how to love, but not until you turn from your rebellion. You want to know what winning is? I've been married to the same beautiful woman for almost 43 years, almost 44 now.

My daughter is pregnant with grandchild number six. He's born and named Kuyper. My oldest granddaughter, if she marries and has a child around the same age as my wife and I did, will give me the chance to hold a great grandchild.

That, Mr. Tate, is winning. Guess who liked that? James Lindsay.

James Lindsay liked that. Now, why would James Lindsay like that when James Lindsay isn't a Christian? It's called common grace.

There are actually people in this world that can go, yeah, it's pretty obvious that, you know, that's a much greater life to live than the one of debauchery and dissipation.

You don't have to be a Christian to recognize that. Muslims recognize that. Buddhists recognize that.

James Lindsay specifically commented on that response and said, yeah, listen to this.

This is important. That was it. By God's grace, and nothing to boast into myself, but by God's grace and his grace alone,

I have passed that test sufficiently. I am thoroughly hated by James Lindsay.

All right. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Why? Is he seriously suggesting that because James Lindsay finds

Joel Webben's new NXR wackiness and white nationalism and Hitler apologetics and Nick Fuentes' friendship, and that's the same thing as unbelievers hating the gospel?

That's the same thing? Oh. All right. That's enough. Okay. Continuing.

So I've written this in your notes. A mute demon -oppressed man is brought to Jesus, symbolizing another picture of spiritual helplessness and bondage.

Jesus cast out the demon without need of any spiritual ritual or struggle. Notice it's not just that Jesus exercises the demon, but he does it.

The manner in which he does it is with a word. It demonstrates absolute authority.

Now the crowds, not just the individual who has now experienced relief from his prior demonic oppression, but all the surrounding crowds are marveling, acknowledging not only the degree that Jesus has such high authority, and then last, the worst position...

Okay. Now wait a minute. I think his clothes changed. Let me...

Yeah. This is different service. Yeah.

The color of the shirt changes, too. So I'm not sure what's going on there, but hey, we've only got less than a minute left in it.

Let's see what the second thing was. And then last, the worst position is be right about some things, but also be wrong about other things, and don't change anything at all, because you're afraid it'll make you look bad.

Whoever that guy is, I don't have anybody in mind, but don't be that guy.

And America's history was predominantly white, but it wasn't exclusively white. And I do think that we need to not shy away from what

I just said. We also shouldn't avoid what I'm about to say, which is America is unique. America is not

Great Britain. We're just... We're not. All right? America, like, we're the country that likes to make fun of Great Britain, and rightfully so.

Every 4th of July, we stick it to our cousins across the pond. And I think that's a good instinct.

Okay, so I didn't have anybody in mind. Maybe he does like to do the,

I've grown, I've changed. Look, I remember I was in Texas.

I was preaching at Jeff Neal's church on my way back from wherever I had been in Texas.

And I called Joel, and we had a lengthy conversation. It was the last time we ever talked.

And I warned him about the audience he was trying to court at that time.

And he talked about, well, we need to get these young men in, and I'm just trying to meet them where they are, try to bring them to a better place.

The problem is, they brought him to a worse place. He didn't bring them to a better place.

He's chasing them, and so that's why he's moved so much. And I warned him. And he knows this.

He knows that I warned him. He's well aware of it. And I warned him against chasing after these clicks, chasing after these, this, the support, the popularity, and that's what he's doing.

And so this is his way of explaining all the changes. I mean, he's made theological changes.

The whole reason I was on his webcast the first time, we ended up talking about filmism.

And he's like, oh, that's, oh, yeah, he now holds that position. Do you think he did a bunch of studying of Thomas Aquinas' writings?

No. He was doing stuff with Stephen Wolfe. And so he changed his view.

You get along with people better that way, basically. And so there's, you know, that just popped up.

So I'm like, okay, let's go ahead and see what it's about and play it on the air.

And it's always dangerous to do things like that. But it's sort of funny that I had the sermon on the grove up in this one particular word processor

I use, because it's web, it's cloud -based. So if I write stuff at home,

I've got it here and stuff like that. And I just happened to look down and see, saw that I had used this word processor to write that response to Andrew Tate.

And so it just struck me that when he said, hey, if James Lindsay likes you, that means you're a bad pastor.

No, Joel, all that means is you're a real bad thinker, a really bad thinker.

The better way of putting it would be, if you remain consistent in your application of the gospel, will

James Lindsay know that he needs to make a specific decision about the lordship of Christ and his relationship to Christ and the claims of Christ?

Not, well, James Lindsay doesn't like me, so that means I've passed the test.

Why doesn't James Lindsay like you? Because the consistency of your living out the gospel? No, because of your wacky political stuff.

And by the way, Joel Webben is right about a bunch of political things. I mean, there's all sorts of, there's no end of truths that can be shouted from the rooftops about the woke left and the absurdity of the divisions in our society and hatred of white people and hatred of the founding fathers of the nation.

And that doesn't even take work to come up with that kind of stuff. That's the easy part.

It's when you use all that right stuff to cover over the white boy summer stupidity and the

Hitler apologetics and we're on the wrong side of that and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that's where you see the animus coming out.

The Jews did this, the Jews did that, and now you see it all over the place. I was going to respond, actually

I had it queued up, we'll do it next time, to that lady, what's her name?

Yeah, Carrie Prejean Bowler. Yeah, Carrie Prejean Bowler.

I had a quote from her that I was going to be looking at from Roman Catholic perspective, and it's all about why do

Protestant evangelicals hate the Catholic church and stuff like that. We didn't get to it today, and I don't know when the next program will be because I have my last my last inspection on this home installation thing, and it's on Thursday.

Past the last one, so we've got one more to go. This was this is pretty much just a formality of giving me the certificate and turning everything on, and the time frame is from 7 in the morning to 1 30 in the afternoon, so we've either got to go for Wednesday and just avoid that completely, or go later on Thursday, which for you guys in the east is now an hour later, even more, thanks to you playing with your clocks again.

So just keep an eye on X, keep an eye on the app. We'll let you know when we'll be getting together on Wednesday, Thursday, whenever it ends up working out to be.

So thanks for listening to the program today, even though we just sort of wandered around on stuff and spent a whole lot more time than I thought we would.