Get A Deep Seat in the Saddle, Ma!

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:31

And greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. It is a Thursday. We have a lot to get to today, but I want to start off.

00:40

I argued with myself a lot as to whether I felt this was something that needed to be addressed, but since Doug Wilson did comment upon a part of this,

00:52

I felt it would be good to address before we get to some of the other very important stuff on today's program.

00:59

And so, over the past number of months, a couple of times,

01:06

I have seen tweets from a young man by the name of Jacob Brunton, who on November 3rd, so this would be yesterday, addressed

01:17

Doug Wilson, myself, and Tom Askall, and said this in a tweet, please call for Mueller to resign, and for Matthew, all whites are racist,

01:26

Hall, and Jarvis, I'm marginalized because I'm Black Williams, to be fired. Actually, it's,

01:33

I'm sorry, back up, it's will Douglas Wilson, myself, and Tom Askall, please call for Mueller to resign, da -da -da, because that's why it ends with a question mark.

01:44

If not, why not? If CRT is as dangerous as you men say, then act like it. Now, this is not the first time that Jacob Brunton has put out a tweet like this, it's,

01:56

I would call it bullying, it's a, it's a,

02:02

I'm going to throw this stuff out here, and I'm going to stir up the pot, and I'm not going to care what's going on in the background,

02:10

I'm not going to care whether you're a Southern Baptist or not, interestingly enough, two of the three people addressed are not even

02:18

Southern Baptists, and hence, really, honestly, don't have anything to do with, say, the trustees of organizations, of schools, or anything else, but I remember about a year and a half ago,

02:33

I'm guessing, Doug Wilson did address this particular issue, and basically what he said was,

02:45

I hesitate to do these things, I hesitate to stick myself in the middle of what's going on in other situations, basically because I know how complex these things are in my own experience, in other words, he is very much involved with New St.

03:01

Andrews, and anyone who knows anything about Doug Wilson knows that there are many, many, many people who suffer from Doug Wilson derangement syndrome, just as there are people who suffer from James White derangement syndrome, though he has legions more of his adoring followers in that realm than I do,

03:21

I would say. I'm a close second. Anyway, basically what he said was,

03:27

I recognize the complexities, and when I read his comments, I had to think of them, first and foremost, pastorally.

03:38

Anyone who has been involved with a church of any size for any period of time knows that every church has their former members, unless your church doesn't ever do discipline.

03:52

If your church, I suppose, there are a lot of churches that don't have, for example, membership and things like that, so if you never guard the table, if you don't engage in discipline for fornication or abandonment or any number of other things, even spreading of gossip, for crying out loud, there are a few people that actually do that.

04:21

The Bible does call it a sin. Anyways, if you don't do any of those things, then you're not really standing for anything, and so you may avoid having that former member syndrome, but if you do, then you have former members, and you know the situation you face when they start making public charges, because you know that pastorally, there are only certain things you can say without damaging other people, because it is simply inappropriate to address certain things outside the context of the fellowship of the church, and you just know how this works.

05:05

You know what people can get away with. You know that from the outside, people can say, well, this means this, this, and this, and that person thinks that, and that should happen to this person, and you know the actual facts, and you know maybe even the character of the people involved, but there's only so much you can do about it.

05:26

You learn to pray and to hand it over to God for His eventual vindication, and you have to just live with the reality that maybe, just maybe, in this life, vindication won't take place.

05:44

It'll take place in that great day, and that is a great encouragement to everyone,

05:49

I think, to recognize there is that great day coming. So here's the situation.

05:56

Let's talk about Matt Hall's comments. I don't believe for a second that someone who could make the comments that he did could change his perspective overnight, first of all, maybe in one or two conversations with a higher -up.

06:20

If he meant the things that he said when he said them, then the only way

06:27

I could ever believe that he doesn't still believe those things is either he never believed in the first place, he was just going with the movement, or if he did believe them then, the only way

06:40

I could believe he no longer believes them is if he would come straight out and absolutely not only repudiate the statements, but demonstrate that he now understands why those statements were completely fallacious.

06:54

Now, the problem with that is, if you come out as a leader and say, as a leader,

07:00

I said these things, and I was completely wrong, and I had no idea what

07:06

I was talking about, and had embraced a completely foreign epistemology and perspective and everything else, that sort of makes it hard for people then to follow your lead after that.

07:18

When you say, I've now come to understand these, well, actually rather basic truths, that's a bit of a problem for me.

07:27

But I don't know the man, never met him, don't know him, but I'm concerned about what he said and why he said the things he said.

07:39

As to Jarvis Williams, there is zero question. Anyone who listens to even the, oh, there was a video that popped out,

07:50

I don't know, about six months ago, that I think it was 2018,

07:57

I think it was from around 2018, and so a few things were coming out, but a lot of the terminology was not yet fully understood, plainly, clearly presenting the standard perspective that would be considered commensurate with CRT today.

08:20

Obviously, an amalgamation of Christian theology with very, very foreign elements in it, but very much the same perspective that is leading to all the divisiveness and division today, not understanding the true nature of reconciliation, not racial reconciliation, reconciliation itself, what that means in the body, and so problematic in both instances.

08:47

So the idea from Jacob Brunton basically is, evidently, that he thinks that Al Mohler is king at Southern Seminary, and there's a lot of people that would probably say that.

08:58

The problem is, Al Mohler, I don't think is king at Southern Seminary. Now, I know

09:07

Dr. Mohler, I've met him, we've talked a few times, but we're not buddy buddies.

09:16

Let's put it this way, I recognize how much I don't know about what goes on behind the scenes, about who knows what, about whom, about the role of politics and everything else.

09:30

There's a lot of people that think they've got all of that figured out. Well, okay, you're a whole lot smarter than me.

09:36

Maybe Jacob, well, Jacob is the head of the new Christian intellectuals and the new

09:43

Christian intellectual movement, and so obviously, very, very smart man by his own self -profession, and so maybe he does know all the background stuff, but you know what?

09:54

I just sort of doubt it. I think it's far more likely that he thinks he knows it than that he actually does, and so as a result, taking a position where I go, okay, there are no possibilities of any complexities whatsoever in the deeply political world of the

10:22

Southern Baptist Convention, which is why I could not function there, would not want to function there.

10:29

I don't want the politics. I'm thankful that, you know, I had to deal with some politics today.

10:35

I had to deal with some politics today. I came in and Rich had moved the podium, okay, and he moved that thing forward, and he moved the podium, and so we had some political stuff to deal with.

10:46

That's about the level at which I can function, okay? Really, beyond that, it just starts weighing too much on me, so I just go, no, don't want to do that.

10:58

So, yeah, I don't know all of the reasons, but I have to admit that there are quite possible reasons why

11:12

Al Mohler cannot simply deal with Matthew Hall and Jarvis Williams the way that the rest of us think would be the obvious way to deal with those things, and then you have the questions of why were people let go last year that seemed to be on the other side of things, and does that mean that he is actually trying to do this?

11:34

Well, there's a lot of theories. There's a lot of people running around with a lot of different perspectives out there, and I'll just be perfectly honest with you.

11:43

I got no way of knowing. I'm not really sure how they've got all this inside knowledge, but they have it, and so they want people to act based upon their knowledge, and I would just point out, let's say that they got rid of Al Mohler.

12:01

Let's say that certainly you can see over the past number of years that there has been a major shift in the perspectives of the presidents of the various Southern Baptist seminaries, and even though Paige Patterson was deeply anti -Reformed, there was a sense in which he was an ally on a lot of issues with Al Mohler.

12:33

Well, he's gone, and we're talking when you take a guy's stained glass window out of his chapel, he's gone.

12:42

That's just how the seller is doing. Now, there never should have been a stained glass window in that chapel.

12:48

I can assure you of that, but be that as it may, the movement, the direction of the leadership of the

12:56

Southern Baptist schools is very obvious. So is it possible that Dr.

13:02

Mohler views himself as the last general of the last fort, as the forces of destruction and degradation are coming over the last hill, and he's the last one there?

13:20

And that he views himself just trying to hold on to the last vestiges as long as possible? I don't know, but I have to recognize the possibility.

13:31

And so certain people seemingly think that, oh no, there's no complexities here.

13:39

You just take it and run with it, and this is the simple thing to do.

13:46

And I go, well, I'm sorry. I don't think it's all that simple. And I think there's a whole lot more complexities there, and I would love to see

13:55

Dr. Mohler have the freedom to very directly and openly say, this is wrong, and I will not have it being taught in my school.

14:06

I'll be honest with you. I'll be absolutely honest with you. I am stunned at how many of the people who attack me and attack any response to critical theory in all of its forms and to wokeism in all of its forms.

14:25

I'm really surprised at how many of them come from Boyce College and Southern Seminary. Because coming from Southeastern and now

14:36

Southwestern or New Orleans, that was what you expected. That was a given.

14:42

But how many now come from Southern is very, very surprising to me. And so with all that said,

14:49

I simply am not going to be bullied by young men who think they know everything. And my response to Mr.

14:58

Brunton was, I'm looking forward to the day when you mature enough,

15:04

Jacob, to stop obscuring what wisdom you proclaim by your arrogance and bullying. Maybe taking time to do actual pastoral work might help, just a suggestion.

15:12

That was my response to him. And you now know I referred to pastoral work.

15:19

When you actually get involved on that level and start dealing with things in that way, it sort of changes your perspective because you realize just how complex things can be.

15:30

But hey, some folks have it all figured out. By the way,

15:36

I just wanted to make sure I didn't forget this because I didn't have it on my list. There was a tweet a couple hours ago from Reuters.

15:47

Time has come for U .S. farms to cut methane emissions from the

15:53

Agriculture Secretary, which, of course, means the Agriculture Secretary of the Biden regime.

16:01

And I want you to think about what this means. So your farm animals produce methane because they don't have access to Gas -X and things like that.

16:18

And so it's a natural process. And in fact, mankind figured out a long time ago that if you take what comes out of your farm animals and put it back on the ground, you get more food growing the next year.

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And that led Luther, for example, to have some very interesting analogies and illustrations of various things because he was a good

16:44

German peasant guy out in the farm fields. And so anyway, what

16:53

I want you to think about, aside from just the insanity of what just happened in Glasgow and the hysteria, which has been around for a long time, but everybody was saying, hey, the submission that the pandemic movement has gotten, that energy will now be shifted over to the environment.

17:23

You've got people scared to death. They're driving down the road in their car with two masks on. They're alone.

17:30

That kind of person is the kind of person who's also going to believe that we only have now 11 years left, according to AOC, who, of course, just one of the leading experts on everything in the world.

17:42

And so now we're going to be able to get done what we've wanted to get done, which we haven't been able to get done up to this point in time.

17:50

Now, obviously, we know that the only way to achieve the goals these people want is to get rid of at least half the people living on the planet, first of all.

18:04

And then the rest of us need to live in huts without air conditioning and without the ability to travel, eating a diet of basically crickets and green leafy vegetables.

18:19

That's the only way to do this. Now, the elites will still have their jets and will still have their air conditioning and their houses and will be able to jet around the world to all the conferences where they can congratulate themselves and everything's done.

18:36

But the rest of us who become enslaved to this system, we just get to do what we're told to do, and that's how it works.

18:41

But there has to be about half of us. And so the real impact here, aside from the destruction of farms and farming economy and all the rest of that stuff, the real impact here is in the third world.

18:59

And that's already happening. People who were on the margins, who were dependent upon primarily

19:05

American economic activity, they are already in starvation mode. And people just have a hard time recognizing that the people on the left do not mind killing people.

19:22

They killed 120 million of them in the last century. And if they have to use a gun, that's expensive.

19:29

You have to make ammunition and it's just, it's very messy. And then you have to have bodies. Do it like you did in Ukraine, in the

19:37

Holodomor. Starve them to death. They die on their own. They frequently bury their own and then bury themselves.

19:46

Hey, it's nice, clean, easy. You can deny you had anything to do with it. Why not? These people do not want the marginalized alive because they take the resources they want for themselves.

20:00

And so Agriculture Secretary, time has come for the U .S. farms to cut methane emissions.

20:05

We feed so much of the world. We send our excess food all over the place. So you cut back on what we're producing, who's going to suffer most?

20:16

Oh yeah, you may pull up at McDonald's and it says we don't have anything. Oh, okay.

20:24

But what about the people that were dependent upon the economic activity that came from all that? They got nothing and they got no options.

20:29

They got no options. And these people, that's what they want. That's where they're going. And it's just like, people just don't get the idea as to how evil the left actually is.

20:43

They just can't, they can't, for some reason, that happened in the past. Yeah, that's not now.

20:51

Okay, well, some of us have been trying to tell you for a long time what's going on there.

20:59

Early on in 2020, I know this gentleman from Speaking Churches on Long Island.

21:12

Banu Gadi is, for example, some of you do know this name because he is a sponsor on Iron Sharpens Iron.

21:21

And so if you listen to Chris Arnzen, a lot of our folks do and help support

21:26

Chris. Banu Gadi is one of the sponsors. He has a

21:32

PhD in pharmacology. He has,

21:37

I think, three pharmacies on Long Island. And he's an elder in one of the churches

21:43

I've spoken at on Long Island as well. And so I've met him there and we've talked and he's a really, really bright guy.

21:49

And I just remember early on in 2020, he was one of the first people to come out and say, hey, we are having tremendous success dealing with this stuff with vitamin

22:00

D3. And he's not the only one who said this, but he was one of the first people that I heard this, saying this.

22:08

And so he's been on top of this stuff for a long, long time. And he pointed to an article that I linked to on social media yesterday.

22:21

Here's the title. SARS -CoV -2 spike impairs DNA damage repair and inhibits

22:29

VDJ recombination in vitro. Yeah, obviously they want this to be read by the widest possible audience.

22:37

No, it's a scientific paper. And so this is from the Department of Molecular Biosciences, the

22:44

Wenergren Institute, Stockholm University in Stockholm, Sweden. And this is published in Viruses 2021.

22:57

This was received 20 August, revised 8 September, accepted 8 October, published 13

23:04

October of 2021. All right. So what is all of this about?

23:10

To make it to just extremely complex, and again, all sorts of stuff about the relationship of the spike protein, the fact that we have produced these

23:27

Joe Biden cookies. We should call them

23:33

Kamala crackers. How's that? Instead of Joe Biden cookies, we've got Kamala crackers. Or is it Kamala?

23:38

Who knows? Kamala crackers. Isn't it amazing that we can't, we literally cannot talk about scientific papers because big tech will close you down.

23:53

You can't even discuss it. You're not allowed to. But everybody's, but that has, oh, that has nothing to do with anything.

23:58

Well, it's just coincidence. All right, okay. The method of dealing with this problem that has been forced upon us, even though it's completely different than anything we've done in the past, and violates every protocol we've ever used in the past, not only the speed, but the approach, all of it is completely new.

24:29

This particular methodology has focused upon what is called the spike protein.

24:37

I can't discuss this without using some of that terminology, unfortunately. There are numerous papers now documenting that this spike protein is pathogenic.

24:49

It damages the body in a number of different ways. The problem is the therapeutic cookies, the

24:59

Kamala crackers, just spread the same stuff through the body.

25:10

Banu said that this was the most frightening paper he had seen, and he's reading all the papers. And to boil it all down, this study, quote, hereby using an in vitro cell line, we report that SARS -CoV -2 spike protein significantly inhibits

25:31

DNA damage repair, which was required for effective VDJ recombination in adaptive immunity.

25:41

Let me translate that. These things destroy your immune system, and specifically the genetic mechanisms that especially are related to cancers.

25:57

Now, in any other world, at any other time prior to 2020, this would have been enough to put the brakes on everything.

26:10

It will not be discussed. I don't even know if people in government, you know, read enough in these things to bring this to the fore.

26:25

But my experience is we don't have journalists anymore. The few journalists we have left have already been banned from every possible way of getting their word out.

26:40

But this comes out at the very same time that the FDA says, yeah, let's give camelot crackers to five -year -olds.

26:50

And then the FDA or the CDC, they all sound like KGB anymore to me.

26:56

They're all three -letter things that mean the same thing. I think it was the CDC came out with commercials promoting the camelot crackers to kids so that if you get your camelot crackers, you can get superpowers.

27:21

If there is any justice, someday we will have Nuremberg -like trials about what's going on right now.

27:29

I don't expect that to happen. But if there was true justice, that's where we would be.

27:38

I posted it. And if you go to the...

27:46

Let me see here. Oh, wow. Yeah, that URL is not something...

27:53

It can be found at mdpi .com, but maybe there's a search engine there that would be able to pull it out for you.

27:59

I don't know. But it's in the viruses 2021. So maybe put viruses 2021 into the search engine at mdpi .com.

28:09

Probably it'll pull it up that way. If you don't have... If you don't follow me on social media or whatever,

28:15

I did post it. Whether it's still there or not, who knows? I've been ghost banned forever on Twitter.

28:23

So maybe a lot of people didn't see it, but you should read it.

28:29

And I say to parents, all parents, please. I...

28:35

On the last program, I read that thread of the woman. And there's...

28:45

What has happened to people in Western culture? I don't know. I don't know.

28:52

All right, let's shift gears. We're about half hour in here. I wanted to respond briefly to...

29:00

And I linked again this morning. It's not up on the screen yet. We'll be using the screen for something a little bit later on.

29:07

To an article that appeared in the Aquila Report. A lot of us in the reformed realm will look at what's in Aquila Report.

29:16

This is from an OPC minister. The TR only movement, which we have addressed many times.

29:26

I, for example, talked about the upcoming thing next month. Well, actually this month in London.

29:34

Jeff Riddle's behind most of this, but there is a strong contingent in the reformed community, the

29:42

Presbyterian community as well, of the ecclesiastical text movement, whatever you want to call this.

29:50

And so it's a short article and it appeared October 29th called

29:57

Slightly Imperfect Bibles. And I wanted to interact with it briefly before we move on to the next topic.

30:07

It says, would you purchase a Bible that was missing an entire page? Not many would, I suppose.

30:12

But when compared to the Bibles, but I just have to stop for a second and point out, it is funny that the TR is based upon Erasmus' work and the one manuscript he had of Revelation was missing the last page.

30:25

It's sort of funny. And he had to translate from Latin into Greek and came up with readings that are still in the

30:30

TR today. And these guys would defend as being representational of the original when there is zero chance, absolutely zero chance that they are what

30:40

John actually wrote. But the problem is, as soon as you admit that any kind of revision has to be made of the

30:51

TR, then you have to present a system, a consistent system that taking the manuscripts will result in the

31:02

TR. The application of these principles to the manuscripts result in the TR. There is no such system. They know that.

31:08

They are well aware of that. Jeff Riddle is well aware of the fact that he has to use one set of arguments over here and one set of arguments.

31:16

And these two sets of arguments can be 180 degree opposite. It can be completely contradictory, but he'll use two different sets of arguments for two different readings because the reading has already been determined by the

31:25

Texas Receptus. So you use whatever arguments you need to use. So anyways,

31:31

I think it's fascinating. 12 verses for the New Mark's gospel are missing. Missing, notice that.

31:38

An additional 12 verses for John's gospel are missing. 16 other verses are usually found missing and several more words and verses have either been deleted or noted as questionable.

31:47

And so just as whenever we are dealing with King James only -ism, when dealing with TR only -ism, while the

31:55

TR only position sounds much more respectable because you're dealing with at least the original languages, the thinking and the argumentation is the same.

32:04

And the end goal is the same, one way or the other. And so all these folks will use missing, deleted, et cetera, et cetera, because their standard is not our standard.

32:18

And that's why I wanted to address this is I simply have to say to all the readers of the

32:23

Aquila Report that the vast majority of Reformed scholarship, which does not make it right, but I just mention it, believes that the goal that we should have should be the same goal as every generation in the church before us.

32:47

So in the second century, Justin began making reference to variations between the

32:56

Greek Septuagint and the Hebrew Masoretic text. And the issue had to be, well, what did

33:04

Moses write? What did David write? Not what did a tradition develop about what they wrote?

33:13

We want to know what they wrote. And so you get into the third century and now you're starting to talk about differences between New Testament manuscripts.

33:22

Fourth and fifth century, you get to Jerome, it's become much more complex. Origin complicated it, but I was also quite aware of it.

33:28

And the issue is always what was originally written until you start getting,

33:36

I've actually read one paragraph. Until you start getting traditions developing.

33:43

So the early church adopts the Greek Septuagint because that's the language they're reading and speaking. And so when

33:50

Jerome comes along with Latin Vulgate and renders anything differently than what you have in the

33:57

Greek Septuagint, there is resistance because you've become accustomed. Now, Jerome was right, for example, to question the

34:07

Septuagint's rendering of things. He didn't just simply take it as the final word. And he actually looked back into the

34:12

Hebrew and well, the Hebrew manuscripts available to him said this and the Greek Septuagint said that.

34:18

And so he would go with the Hebrew and that caused people problems because they were used to something.

34:24

They would have made the same arguments against Jerome by saying, but it's in the

34:29

Greek Septuagint. Why isn't it in the Latin Vulgate? Because they have created a tradition and they've enshrined that tradition.

34:38

The question should be what most accurately represents what was written. Now, up until the modern period, that was a very difficult question to answer for one very, very, very, very obvious reason.

34:54

All the way through the 16th century, the primary mechanism of the transmission of the text in the

35:00

New Testament was handwritten manuscripts. Even after printing, still, printing presses didn't just,

35:06

Kinko's didn't just pop up the day after, you know, Gutenberg printed his first Bible.

35:14

And so handwritten copies are still primary for a great period of time.

35:20

And handwritten copies of necessity have textual variance in them because they're produced by human beings, not by photocopiers.

35:28

And especially when you go farther and farther back, the relationship between manuscripts is next to impossible to establish.

35:38

Now, once you get in the modern period, you can go, oh, this one was copied from that one. It might even say that. But for the first 1400 years, you just don't have that kind of information.

35:48

And hence creating a genealogical list or line is next to impossible.

35:54

That's what CBGM tries to do as best as it can, is to overcome some of those issues.

36:01

But the point is, in the days where the, what's called the Texas Receptus was developed, the work of Erasmus and Stephanus and Beza, no one knew, no one knew who had which manuscripts.

36:18

There were no catalogs. There were no microfiche. Today, you can go online and any manuscript that is cited in a modern

36:26

Greek manual, whether it's the ECM or the SCL, you can go online and you can find out where that is.

36:34

You can find out what museum it's in. And thanks to CSNTM, more and more of these manuscripts are now available to us online.

36:45

We can look these things up ourselves and verify. That has never existed before.

36:52

And hence to have collations of manuscripts, that is where you take manuscripts and you take a standard and you then have the information, this manuscript varies from the standard at this reading and this reading and this reading.

37:05

And now to have all those in databases as we have with the ECM and CBGM, never had anything like this before, ever, ever.

37:17

And if the ecclesiastical text guys are right, we have completely wasted our time in doing all of this. It's irrelevant, completely irrelevant.

37:26

It does not matter that we now have more information about the readings of the texts in New Testament we've ever had before.

37:33

Irrelevant, wasted time, wasted money. There's no reason to study textual criticism because you have it, you have it in the

37:40

TR, it's all done. There you go. This is, this is the position.

37:46

Just look, just go back, you know, since the folks at MetTab directed folks to the debates

37:54

I did with Jeff Riddle, go watch them. Go listen. I think any person who hasn't already started buying into the methodology who just sits back and wants to hear, is there a consistency here?

38:07

We'll be able to see very, very clearly that the argumentation to defend Ephesians 3, 9, the argumentation to defend

38:13

Mark 16, 9, is completely different. Utterly different. And that's the whole point.

38:20

So anyway, we now have the ability to know what these texts say versus those texts.

38:32

They did not have that ability in the 16th century. And I'll give you an example.

38:38

I wish I had, yeah, go get me Stephanos.

38:44

You know where it is. I'm not going to, what do you mean you don't know where it is? It's in the, it's in the, it's behind me when

38:49

I'm sitting in the studio. It's down, down on top of Codex Sinaiticus. You know where it is. Let me, let me have

38:57

Rich grab Stephanos for us for a second. And I will wet the whistle while Rich is doing his thing.

39:10

I love when I get one of those little ice chips, you know, hmm. It's still warm here in Phoenix.

39:16

I know I'm wearing my Coogee. I'm sorry. There are only so many months out of the year where you can do it.

39:23

And so we've got the air running here and blowing on me. And yes, yes. We got

39:30

Rich's arm into the, into the shot. Yes, this is,

39:37

I'm not doing this just to make all the TR only guys jealous and angry and mad, but they are jealous and angry and mad.

39:47

Doug Wilson's drooling. And, and by the way,

39:52

Doug, just today we were talking about Swear to Us dialogues again. Doug, I promise that when

40:01

I come up in April, we are supposed to be doing a debate in April. Finally, we pretty much have this nailed down to debate pedo communion.

40:13

And I want to debate this issue because Doug and I have done a book on it, but we haven't done a live debate.

40:18

We've, we've done a written debate in Credenda Agenda back in late nineties,

40:23

I think. And then we did a written debate, but I want to do a real debate for,

40:30

I'd love to do it for new St. Andrews. Let's, let's, let's, let's do it for new St. Andrews. I think it's important, but I'll bring this because this is the version that Doug said, there's my standard, 1550

40:41

Stephanus. I'll bring this with me, but only if we do the debate. I won't, there's, now it also returns with me.

40:49

I just want you to know, it's not going to somehow find itself in the library at new St. Andrews or something like that.

40:55

But this is a genuine, this is not a copy. This is not a reproduction.

41:01

This is a 1550 Stephanus. It is 471 years old.

41:08

As you can see year before last, I would say we had

41:15

Jeffrey Rice. We had Jeffrey Rice rebind the front and you might say, well, there goes all its value.

41:24

Well, the reason that we got this, the reason it was given to us was for the text, for what's for what's in the text and the text needed to be protected.

41:36

And so that was most important. The front cover had fallen off.

41:42

So had to be protected. Jeffrey Rice did an awesome job. Look at the Stephanus on the front.

41:48

He used archival leather. It's rich and oh, it's just beautiful. So I can actually use it.

41:54

I can actually take it places and do things like that. This is the Stephanus text of 1550.

42:03

This is the last text before verse numbers were inserted into the

42:08

New Testament by Stephanus. So the 1551, you might go, well, why wouldn't that one be more popular than the 1550?

42:17

Because of its size and its print. The 1551 was much smaller. And just think about how many people back then would have trouble reading because this font was smaller because you didn't have

42:29

LASIK. You didn't have reading glasses, all sorts of stuff. So this one remained extremely popular. Why do

42:35

I point this out? Why is this important to this situation? Real simple. In 1598,

42:42

Theodore Beza, Calvin's successor at Geneva, put out the primary one of his texts.

42:51

And he had utilized a manuscript that we call today

42:58

Codex Bezae Cantabrigensis, Codex D. And Codex D, as he himself said, was more useful to be stored than to be studied.

43:12

And it's a very strange manuscript. It contains all sorts of incredibly unique readings.

43:18

I've often pointed out that when Peter was freed by the angel from jail, it tells us how many steps

43:24

Peter went down to the street. It has some odd readings. It's the first manuscript in history to contain

43:31

John 753 through 811, the woman taken in adultery. It's not in any of the manuscripts that precede it.

43:40

And so Beza had it, and he did utilize it, but he also didn't trust it all that much unless it had the same reading as other manuscripts, which is a wise thing to do.

43:52

So in other words, Beza was using textual critical principles, just like we do today, which produce the

43:58

TR, but now if you hold the TR, you shouldn't use textual critical principles. It's just part of the absolute incoherence of this position.

44:05

It just does not make any sense. Anyhow, so Beza had

44:13

Stephanus, of course, and in Stephanus, on the sides here, right here, there is a real basic set of readings from a small number of manuscripts that Stephanus had available to him.

44:34

And his beta manuscript, B in our alphabet, his

44:41

B manuscript, which he cites in the text. Beza didn't know what that manuscript was, but what he could, what he should have known in hindsight,

44:57

I mean, he wouldn't have had any way to know it, but which would have impacted his readings. What Beza didn't know is that Stephanus had

45:05

Codex Bezae Canterburgiensis before him. Stephanus had it years before he had it.

45:12

So before it was given to Beza, it was in Stephanus' possession, and that's his beta manuscript.

45:20

So Beza's looking at Stephanus, he's looking at Bezae Canterburgiensis, and then he notices, oh,

45:27

Stephanus' beta reads the same way. That gives it more weight, but it's the same manuscript, and he didn't know.

45:35

Okay? So the point is, there is an example of where it's vitally important to have real catalogs of which manuscripts are which, and we've only had that in recent generations, and fully accessible on your handheld device in the past decade.

46:00

Vitally important. Extremely important. So all that background, which we've covered,

46:08

I know, many, many times before, just so that we can look at what's said here.

46:14

I recently received a catalog from a book distributor that included a discount section titled, Slightly Imperfect, and yes, there were several

46:20

Bibles listed. Obviously, the phrase slightly imperfect was intended as a reference to cosmetic defects, but it got me thinking about more substantive imperfections that no publishers dare acknowledge while advertising their

46:32

Bibles. By the way, this particular author organized a big conference last year with Jeff Riddles, so this is the same group.

46:41

It's the same ecclesiastical text group. Would you purchase the

46:47

Bible as a missing entire page? Not many would, I suppose, but when compared to the Bibles published in Reformation times, most modern versions are actually missing about that much content.

46:57

12 verses in Mark's Gospel are missing, an additional 12 verses in John's Gospel are missing, 16 other verses are usually found missing, and several more words and verses have either been deleted or noted as questionable.

47:07

Many seek to minimize these discrepancies by speaking only in terms of the percentage of material missing. The 40 verses referenced above constitute less than one quarter percent of the whole.

47:18

However, if you compare the amount of missing material to the length of some books in Scripture, the discrepancy appears as more significant.

47:25

Now, I just stopped for a second. What Reformed theology, what

47:30

Reformed doctrine is based upon any of the parallel verses in the

47:36

Gospels, because that's what he's referring to, there are numbers of places where Matthew has a verse and Mark won't, and so there'll be manuscripts that'll put

47:47

Matthew's verse in where it should be in Mark, if Matthew and Mark were supposed to be photocopies of each other, which they're not.

47:54

In the woman taken to adultery, and especially the longer ending of Mark, which

48:00

Reformed doctrines, is it predestination that's dependent upon them? How is any

48:07

Reformed doctrine impacted by any of them? I would say none, absolutely positively none.

48:17

40 missing verses contain 854 words. That's more than the prophecy of Obadiah.

48:25

That's more than the epistle of Jude. That's more than Paul's epistle to Philemon. That's more than the second and third epistles of John combined.

48:33

Would you buy a Bible that was advertised with this disclaimer, slightly imperfect, missing only one or two epistles?

48:40

Modern scholars will undoubtedly take some umbrage of such argumentation, as we should if we are consistently

48:46

Reformed and logical with our own principles and presuppositions. That is only because they believe the missing verses never belonged there in the first place, or it's because they hold to the position that I want to know what

49:00

Paul wrote. I want to know what Luke wrote. I want to know what John wrote.

49:06

That's the issue here. That is absolutely the issue here. Once you embrace

49:13

TR -onlyism, that is no longer your perspective. You have now said,

49:18

I know what they wrote, and it was produced in a haphazard manner by Erasmus primarily.

49:28

And in fact, my entire understanding of the Book of Revelation is based upon Erasmus' rushed work from the borrowed

49:38

Latin commentary from Johannes Reuchlin that was missing the last pages that Erasmus knew was a mess and had to be fixed, but didn't fix it because he told his printers, go get those guys'

49:54

New Testament that had done it since he had put his out and fix my Book of Revelation in light of what they have, but didn't know that they had based their work on his

50:02

Book of Revelation, so it was never fixed. And so the errors he made in his first edition are in the TR today, but that's what

50:08

John wrote. That's what John wrote. No Christian had ever seen it until 1516.

50:16

No Christian had ever possessed the actual text, the Book of Revelation until 1516, according to these guys.

50:23

Never seen it. But now, we have it. And there's no questioning.

50:30

Can't apply any analysis to it. All this historical stuff you're talking about, ah, yeah.

50:41

If you want to know what John wrote at Revelation, you can't be a TR -onelist. Period.

50:49

I'll debate anybody on that. Anybody, any of you guys want to do that? Dr. Reilly, you want to do that one?

50:56

Because that one, that'll never happen. That'll never happen.

51:02

Because, wow, Revelation 16 .5, Revelation 14 .1, just so. Last six verses, and every single one of those verses, you'd have to use different arguments to substantiate the mistakes that Erasmus made.

51:19

Not going to happen. And if it doesn't happen, your position's refuted. Stan's refuted, and all you can do is hide in your little

51:26

Facebook groups and talk amongst yourselves. And that is a shame. It is their position that the otherwise pious scribes in ancient times intentionally corrupted the

51:40

Bible by adding words to it. Okay, let me correct that.

51:45

It's fallacious and false, but let me correct it. Especially the parallel corruptions were probably not intentional.

51:55

In the sense that, when you have, and you see this, if you would do what

52:03

I did, I think it, was it seven years or nine years? I'm trying to remember how many years it was that I taught through the

52:12

Synoptic Gospels, and I used a parallel Greek text to do it.

52:20

And so you've got Matthew, Mark, and Luke, when they all are giving the same pericope, very frequently that doesn't happen, but when you have parallels, what you see is whenever you have a major difference in wording, inclusion of a short or even longer verse in one that's not found in the other, there are many scribes that attempted to harmonize the two parallels.

52:49

And their reasoning could either be Matthew is supposed to be a photocopy of Mark, which is supposed to be a photocopy of Luke, which is simply not true.

53:00

Or they thought, because they knew the text from Matthew, that it was supposed to be there and the preceding scribe missed it, and so they weren't intentionally trying to corrupt anything, they were trying to be a conservative, good, pious person, as it says here.

53:21

Or they were copying by memory and had it memorized and knew it from the other version and just put it in.

53:29

That's what happens in Colossians 1 .7 when it's paralleling, Colossians 1 .14

53:35

when it's paralleling Ephesians 1 .7. We have redemption through his blood. That was the more commonly used phraseology from the longer section in Ephesians 1, but it's not a part of the

53:52

Greek manuscripts of Colossians 1 for 900 years. And so we know how it got there, it's the same language as Ephesians, and so someone who knew it from Ephesians probably inadvertently inserted it in, didn't we know they did?

54:06

So it's not the case that it is their position that the otherwise pious scribes in ancient times intentionally corrupted the

54:13

Bible by adding words to it. This is not true. I don't know why you have to put this type of stuff in there, but it is common from this group.

54:25

This view, however, now listen to this, is out of accord with what the Reformed have confessed for centuries, namely that God not only inspired the

54:35

Scriptures, but also kept them pure in all ages by his singular providence and care. Westminster Confession of Faith 1 .8.

54:40

It's also in the London Baptist Confession of Faith, and once again this is an abuse of the confessional statements.

54:47

The confessional statements did not have available to them. The men who wrote them did not have available to them what we have today.

54:56

To try to drag them into this dispute, I think is just one of the most unfair things that is done in this situation.

55:05

They did not have the information we have today, they did not have access to the manuscripts that we have today, and so to say that they were taking a position that this text, this

55:16

Greek text over against this much more ancient Greek text. In fact,

55:22

I can guarantee you, those men, if you had, let me put this in a real world way.

55:30

What you're saying is, is that a portion of the later

55:36

Byzantine manuscripts, and not even the best portion, not even the ones that go back the farthest, the 12th century version of the

55:48

Greek manuscripts is what God has preserved over against the

55:54

Greek manuscripts in the possession of the ancient church when they were arguing the ecumenical creeds.

56:01

That's what you're saying. That's what you're saying. And if you had told that to the King James translators, if you had told that to the

56:08

Westminster divines, they would have laughed at you. They had no interest in dividing themselves off from the early church and the text that they would have had.

56:23

So don't, when it talks about being kept pure in all ages, they knew there were textual variants.

56:33

They are primarily responding against the counter -reformation and the

56:38

Jesuits, and what did Rome put forward as the great standard initially in response to the reformation?

56:45

The Latin Vulgate. And it was Rome that attacked the Greek manuscripts.

56:51

And so they defended simply what they had against the counter -reformation.

56:58

To ignore that context and then say, oh, they'd be with us, I think is just absolutely abusive.

57:08

Abusive of church history. It really is. These are two very different views of the transmission of Holy Scripture.

57:16

One assumes early corruption and the other presupposes providential preservation. That is not true.

57:24

You cannot for a second dispute the fact that beginning with Justin, going through origin, you've got

57:33

Tatian, you've got quotations. Anybody who knows church history knows that there has been a discussion of these variants and the manuscripts bear it out.

57:48

This is the historical reality that we have to deal with. And so the issue is not whether God preserved the text of Scripture, but how.

58:01

And Rome said they did it through the Vulgate. You say they did it through the Texas Receptus.

58:06

And we say they did it so that every generation of the church had access to God's truth.

58:14

See the difference? Rome had given up on saying, we need to know what

58:21

Paul wrote. We know what Paul wrote because God gave us the Vulgate and God's used it in his church for 1100 years.

58:27

That's it. And now we have people saying, we know what Paul wrote because God gave us

58:33

Texas Receptus and it was used by the Westminster Divines and it was used by John Owen and therefore we know.

58:40

They're both utterly invalid arguments and must be rejected. Must be rejected if we are going to do any kind of defense of the

58:50

New Testament text outside of our little Facebook groups that we make private so that people can't see what we're saying.

58:58

Yeah, there we go. One assumes early corruption and the other presupposes providential preservation.

59:04

Slightly imperfect Bible seems to portray a slightly imperfect confidence in the promise of Christ. Heaven or earth shall pass away but my word shall not pass away.

59:11

Jesus' words in Matthew 24, 35 have nothing to do with the Texas Receptus. That is a perversion of Scripture. Okay? So Christian McShaffery is a minister of the

59:22

Orthodox Presbyterian Church, pastor of Five Solas Church. That's Five Solas Church. I would say your enshrinement of tradition is a fundamental denial of Sola Scriptura.

59:34

So I'm not sure what that Fifth Sola is. I'm just challenging you on that. As your brother, I challenge you on that.

59:40

You're being inconsistent. You're being inconsistent. So there you go. Good to have

59:49

Stephanos. Good Stephanos. Good job. Good job. Oh, goodness. I've already gone an hour, haven't

59:55

I? Yes, I have and I am not done yet. I do need to get to the big board and so we will just press forward.

01:00:07

You know, Rich, you got enough water back there for you? I just provided the private

01:00:19

Facebook groups with more than enough to be talking about for... Yeah, there you go.

01:00:26

All right. Starting last week, we began looking at a

01:00:35

Christian doctrine of God's kingly freedom.

01:00:43

We began discussing from Scripture the Koch, the decree of God.

01:00:51

We looked at Psalm 2, where we have the decree of Yahweh that brings

01:00:58

Christ into the world and not just brings Christ in the world, but encompasses all that Christ does even to the end of time, even in the summing up of all things in Christ as we saw in Ephesians 1.

01:01:13

We have only touched, really we've only scratched the surface with what can be said there.

01:01:20

I was reading the 139th Psalm before the program started and I was struck once again by the reality that if you read the 139th

01:01:32

Psalm and you think, you keep hearing the psalmist saying,

01:01:47

I'm not going to put this up, but, O Lord, and this is the 77

01:01:53

NASB, so it's going to have some vowels in it, which are fine and wonderful, by the way. O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me, thou dost know when

01:02:03

I sit down, when I rise up, thou dost understand my thought from afar. Thou dost scrutinize my path and my lying down and art intimately acquainted with all my ways.

01:02:11

Even before there is a word on my tongue, behold, O Yahweh, you know it all.

01:02:19

You have enclosed me behind and before and laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me.

01:02:24

It is too high. I cannot attain to it. That's where I stop and I go, this is not as would be seen in so much

01:02:36

Christian education today. A late

01:02:42

Stone Age man, early Bronze Age man, something, whatever, some benighted soul, writing poetry that has just happened to be preserved for us.

01:02:58

When you look at Jesus' use of the Psalter, when you look at how many messianic prophecies he said had to be fulfilled, in his own betrayal, he's quoting from the

01:03:09

Psalter saying, this is what's happening. Jesus' view of these words is so much higher than so often is what is presented in our educational, our

01:03:23

Christian educational systems, especially in the Old Testament, where for most people, it's just simply a given.

01:03:30

It's just a given that there is contradiction and inconsistency in the

01:03:35

Old Testament. It's been redacted and so on and so forth. But when you listen to what the

01:03:41

Psalmist is actually saying, he's saying that his knowledge of God's omniscient knowledge of him, that he knows everything.

01:03:53

Before a word is on his mouth, you know it altogether. You have enclosed me behind and before and laid your hand upon me.

01:04:04

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is too high. I cannot attain to it. May I suggest something to you?

01:04:13

If you don't understand what it means to have peace with God through the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ, you will not consider it wonderful that God has enclosed you before and behind and his hand is upon you.

01:04:33

If you continue to hold to a worldly understanding of your own autonomy, you don't want what the

01:04:40

Psalmist wanted. Why is such knowledge too wonderful for me?

01:04:47

It's too high. I cannot attain to it. But what's the knowledge of? It's not of him.

01:04:54

It's of his God and what his God knows and the grandeur of his God. This is

01:05:00

God -centered theology. Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can

01:05:06

I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, you are there. If I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the most part of the sea, even there, that hand will lead me.

01:05:17

Your right hand will lay hold of me. If I say, surely the darkness will overwhelm me and the light around me will be night, even the darkness is not dark to you.

01:05:26

And the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to you. There is no limitation to God's knowledge.

01:05:33

Whatsoever. And then notice the connection of the non -limitation of God's knowledge to what?

01:05:41

Same thing we saw in Isaiah. For you formed my inward parts.

01:05:47

You wove me together in my mother's womb. You! Not some natural process.

01:05:54

He used a natural process, but it was a process he designed. I will give thanks to you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

01:06:02

Wonderful are your works, and my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you when

01:06:09

I was made in secret and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth. Your eyes have seen my unformed substance, and in your book they were all written the days that were ordained for me when as yet there was not one of them.

01:06:30

All the days that were ordained for me when as yet there was not one of them ordained for me.

01:06:40

Huh. Sounds like God is sovereign over this man's life and totality.

01:06:50

How precious also are your thoughts to me, O God. How vast is the sum of them. If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand when

01:06:56

I awake. I am still with you. And then he goes on to pray for God's judgment upon the earth, upon his enemies, and then that beautiful prayer at the end.

01:07:07

Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me, and know my anxious thoughts, and see if there is any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way.

01:07:13

So, when you listen to the 139th Psalm, here's my concern.

01:07:23

I'll just be very blunt here. I remember a young man who was very bright, he was going off to seminary, and I remember saying to him, do not be ruined by the love of philosophy because I've seen it too many times.

01:07:45

And most Christian philosophers that I know of, I'm sorry, they do not start with Scripture.

01:07:54

And given the degradation of the view of Scripture, as being theanustos,

01:07:59

God breathed in so many schools today, it's not difficult to understand why.

01:08:06

I mean, all of these texts from the Old Testament, Isaiah, I mean, you were reading from Isaiah 40, that's

01:08:13

Deutero -Isaiah, it's not even Isaiah, it was written all after Cyrus, and it's all the rest of this stuff, and so I can understand why there would be a lot of people that would go,

01:08:22

I really can't, I can't start there, it's not really consistent. Well, if you can't start there, you're never going to have a truly

01:08:30

Christian epistemology or Christian philosophy, because Jesus started there. And are you really going to buy the idea that Jesus was just a man of his day and believed what people believed in his day?

01:08:44

That leads, there's only one place that leads. When I read so much of philosophical discussion amongst

01:08:56

Christians, it seems like there is this great aversion to going, well, here's my syllogistic argument, but you know,

01:09:09

Paul's understanding should come in here and should inform this, and even though we have a couple options here,

01:09:17

Biblically, this is where we have to go, because that would fit with what Paul taught here. And Jesus said this, no, you don't get that.

01:09:25

You don't get that. It's like, we can't do that, we won't be accepted in the philosophical societies if we do that.

01:09:35

Okay. So we were talking about the subject last time of what's called

01:09:43

Middle Knowledge, and I said we would look at William Lane Craig's presentation, we'll look at some other people too if we have some time today,

01:09:48

I don't know, we'll get to it. Most of the people that are writing on this subject are all from the same groups right now.

01:09:57

So Dr. Stratton, Dr. McGregor, they're all with William Lane Craig, they're all in his ministry.

01:10:03

So it's very much in that area. But this, again, going with the same book we were looking at last time, now in the presentation of Middle Knowledge.

01:10:15

And I just want to read some quotes and interact with some of the material that is found here. First suggested, discussing

01:10:23

Middle Knowledge, first suggested by Jesuit theologians of the 16th century. Now, some people would argue with this,

01:10:30

I suppose I should go ahead and where did it go, there it is. I mean, I'm probably not going to do much on this one, but it's nice to have the option,

01:10:38

I didn't, did that, there we go.

01:10:43

I didn't see the little bluey thing go bluey. It made the sound, but didn't do the thing.

01:10:52

First suggested, first suggested, okay. Again, there are some people who would try to credit some of the early

01:11:04

Anabaptists with similar thoughts. I think sometimes Balthasar Hubmeier is mentioned, but Dr.

01:11:14

Craig is taking the position that it's first suggested by Jesuit theologians of the 16th century.

01:11:21

So let's just, I appreciate the fact that what we're saying here is that all

01:11:30

Christian thinkers through the Reformation missed this wonderful way of figuring everything out.

01:11:41

I just sort of go, okay. First suggested by Jesuit theologians of the 16th century, middle knowledge, if coherent, is one of the most fruitful theological ideas ever conceived.

01:12:01

For it would serve to explain not only God's knowledge of the future, but divine providence and predestination as well.

01:12:08

If that's true, then up through the Reformation no one could have figured these things out.

01:12:16

Okay. Now, he then talks about logical priority, and we've already talked about this, but let's just remind last time

01:12:27

I put up here God's natural knowledge and God's free knowledge. Remember? And we talked about what natural knowledge was, we talked about what free knowledge was, and then we inserted middle knowledge and started talking about what it allegedly is about.

01:12:44

And so what we mentioned was this, these moments of God's knowledge are not temporal.

01:12:55

Okay? So it is not to say that the one occurs before the other in time.

01:13:04

So this isn't saying God is trapped in time and he can only do these things and this flows from that in that way.

01:13:15

Rather, logical priority means that something serves to explain something else. But here's the key.

01:13:21

This is what I've outlined here. The one provides the grounds or basis for the other.

01:13:32

So think about what that means for middle knowledge. So God's natural knowledge provides the ground or basis for middle knowledge and then

01:13:46

God's middle knowledge provides the ground or basis for his free knowledge.

01:13:52

So that's extremely important to keep in mind. Alright? Keep that in your bonnet and let's look at the next statements that we want to look at.

01:14:10

There's more discussion of that. Alright, here we go. Now, he's talking about these kinds of knowledge and Thank you.

01:14:24

People can probably hear that now. He's talking about different kinds of knowledge. Go a different color here.

01:14:31

To skip ahead, the third moment of God's knowledge is his knowledge of the actual world which he has created. This includes his foreknowledge of everything that will happen.

01:14:39

The third moment is logically posterior to God's decision to create the world. Therefore, he has control over which statements are true and which are false in this moment.

01:14:46

By willing to create another world, God would have brought it about that statements which are in fact true would be false and statements which are in fact false would be true.

01:14:54

What is this talking about here? The idea is that God has the ability to envision different worlds.

01:15:09

God could have created a world where gravity would be different and so human beings would look different.

01:15:21

Where we have three legs and four arms and all sorts of stuff like that.

01:15:30

The idea is God could have envisioned these things and if he had created in such a way that things would be different then true statements that would be true in this world that he did create would not be true in that world which he didn't and vice versa is basically what he's saying.

01:15:49

This idea of God envisioning different worlds. It's a basically it's a mental argument that again doesn't have a lot to do with how the prophets and apostles thought but it's understandable.

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So for example if God created a world which George Washington never existed then all the true statements about things he did would be false.

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Thus which statements are true and which are false and the third moment depends on the free decision of God as to which world he has willed to create.

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So keep in mind here look at this. Depends on the free decision of God that sounds like what

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I've been talking about right? That sounds like what I've been talking about when I talked about Ephesians 1, the eudachia, his kind intention, the demonstration of his will, the counsel of his will, the summing up of all things in Christ.

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That sounds like what I'm saying. It's not. That's what's so important here.

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It's not. Depends on the free decision of God as to which world he has willed to create.

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Now in my understanding God's will is to glorify himself in the most perfect way possible.

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It's all to the praise of his glorious grace and he is free to do that as he sees fit. What we will see is that right here middle knowledge will restrict the possible worlds that God can create.

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The content of middle knowledge will delimit what worlds

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God can create. And so the question is how does middle knowledge arise and how is it related to God's freedom?

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Accordingly this third moment of knowledge is called free knowledge. Natural knowledge, free knowledge.

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It is God's knowledge of the actual world. God could lack this knowledge and still be God because before he chose to create he was still

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God. He must have this sort of knowledge to be God but it's content could be different.

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For if he had created a different world the content of his free knowledge would be different. No real argument there.

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But in between God's natural knowledge and his free knowledge is the second moment of omniscience.

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Second moment of omniscience stands

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God's middle knowledge. Now again I just remind you, large majority of church history,

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Christian theologians did not see any need whatsoever for this but here it is.

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God's middle knowledge. In this moment God knows here we go, what every possible creature would do not just could do.

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So would not just could. So it's not just a hypothetical that because God makes creatures with two legs and two arms that can run and run fast that a certain person or situation could run away.

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But he knows that they would in a certain situation run away.

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Okay? So there's more to it. It's not just what is possible in light of what he's chosen to create but what would happen in any set of possible circumstances.

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For example he knows whether Peter if he replaces certain circumstances would deny

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Christ three times. By his natural knowledge God knew in the first moment all the possible things that Peter could do if placed in such circumstances.

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But now in this second moment he knows what Peter would in fact freely choose to do under such circumstances.

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Freely. Now I hope you're thinking with me at this point and you're going well

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God hasn't decreed Peter's existence and there are all sorts of things that define who

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Peter is. Peter was impetuous.

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Peter's the guy that decides to pop off on the Mount of Transfiguration and Luke's kind enough to say

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Peter didn't really know what he was talking about. It's like Peter's being treated as if there is a

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Peterpod. And it's a disembodied something that just sort of floats around out there and can be known all about and then it's manifested in Peter.

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But Peter would be different if he was born in the 21st century than in the first.

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And if he spoke English rather than Aramaic. And there's just so many things that would change.

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And the things that would change are based upon what we believe is

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God's sovereign ordaining of who we are. God determines how tall we are and God determines our genetics and our level of intelligence and just our health and there's just so many things that are a part of the decree.

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But remember, middle knowledge is before all this and somehow God could know what

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Peter would do in any given situation and it's like Peter just has this existential existence and God hasn't chosen to create

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Peter yet. And God doesn't get to define Peter. That's the issue.

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Because the whole point of all this is to defend libertarian freedom for creatures.

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It's not to defend God's libertarian freedom. It's not to defend God's kingly freedom. Middle knowledge is solely focused on free creatures.

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Nothing else. That's all it's about. And so it is not meant to give us any insight into God's nature or God's freedom.

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In fact, it limits God's freedom, as we will see. It's all about man. It's all about man.

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Very, very important to see that. But we are not done at all.

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Let's go to the next quotations. Middle knowledge

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Thank you. Middle knowledge like natural knowledge thus is logically prior to the decision of the divine will to create a world.

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Mark that one down. Here's why this is important.

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In this scheme, when God envisions what worlds he can create, the range of possibility is determined by middle knowledge.

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There are worlds God cannot create because knowing what free creatures will do, he may want to do something in a certain world, but there is no free creature he could put in that situation that would do what he wants to do, so he can't do it.

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He can't do it. That's why Molinists will tell you

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God simply could not create a world in which there was no sin. All free creatures, whatever.

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And immediately in the back of your head, hopefully there's a voice going who determined that?

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Out of what will did it come to define that all creatures are going to behave in this way?

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How does that work out? Well, that's what this is all about.

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That's why we're talking about it. We go down here. Actually, in the second moment of knowledge,

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God knows which of the possible worlds known to him in the first moment are within his power to create.

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For if it is true that Peter would sin if placed in certain circumstances, it follows that even though a world with identical circumstances in which

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Peter does not sin is possible, nevertheless, it is not within God's power to create that world.

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Do we see this? Are we hearing this? It is not within God's power to create that world because middle knowledge tells him that Peter would do this thing.

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How has Peter been defined in such a way as to have this certainty of knowledge, so much so that it limits

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God's ability to create a world that he may desire to. God's freedom is limited by middle knowledge.

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Where does that come from? Where does that come from? For if he were to create such circumstances and place

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Peter in them, then Peter would sin. This does not mean that God could not prevent Peter's sinning, for he could, but then the circumstances would no longer be identical because God would be, here,

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God would be interfering. This is all based upon a concept of autonomy.

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Hence, there are any number of possible worlds known to God in the first moment of knowledge which he cannot create because why?

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Because free creatures would not cooperate. Free creatures would not cooperate.

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His middle, so this is what I've been trying to say, his middle knowledge serves, so to speak, to delimit the range of possible worlds to those he could create given the free choices which creatures would make in them.

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There is Molinism. There is, so God is limited to what he can create by the free choices which creatures would make in them.

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He doesn't determine those things. Who did? Because God has not,

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God has not decreed, made the decision, remember we had natural, free, here is the decree to create, and middle knowledge comes before that, so God has not defined any of these free creatures.

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If you have middle knowledge of exactly what those free creatures would do, then God is not free to create those creatures in such a way as to glorify him in the way he desires to be glorified.

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Now, let's take Peter out because we don't know a lot about Peter personally, but isn't it a given that we believe that the gifts, you know,

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I remember being a teenager, and there was a, there was that period of time when there was a great deal of discussion by my elders above me as to what

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I should be looking at and doing in life. And one of the things they said, well look at the gifts that God has given to you.

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What gifts has God given to you? Well, doesn't the gifts that God has given to me, aren't they relevant to how

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I will react in any given circumstance? But isn't that a part of God's free choice to make men differ?

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Sounds to me like middle knowledge makes men differ and God doesn't have freedom in that matter. So, who determined this?

01:29:37

Who determined these things? God's middle knowledge is like his natural knowledge in that it is logically prior to his decision to create a world.

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Indeed, God's decision to create a world is based on his middle knowledge.

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Based on his middle knowledge. This is how important middle knowledge is. Think about this.

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For the majority of the history of the Christian church, the very basis of God's decision to create a world, which, by the way,

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I just want to point out is really not biblical language, but we had no idea.

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Somehow, no one figured this out. May I suggest why? Because no one reading the Bible would ever come up with this.

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Ever come up with this. That's why I said last time, talk about Saul, talk about Matthew 11 all you want.

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None of that is middle knowledge because it's all part of the created order. It's all come after the decree to create.

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So God knows Saul. He knows what he would do, but that's not some theoretical Saul before the creation.

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He knows what Saul would do because he made Saul! He created Saul! He knows what the men of Christ and Bethsaida would do because he created them!

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His will is behind all that. You can't get middle knowledge out of that. Don't abuse Scripture that way.

01:31:08

That's post - decree. So God's decision to create a world is based on his middle knowledge and consists of his selecting to become actual one of the possible worlds known to him in the second moment.

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But middle knowledge is like his free knowledge in that its content is not essential to God.

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Since creatures could choose differently, God's knowledge would be different if they were to do so. Now, that one's a little bit hard to follow.

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Middle knowledge is like his free knowledge in that its content is not essential to God.

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So remember, free knowledge is over on the side and that's dependent upon his creation. Since creatures could choose differently,

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God's knowledge would be different if they were to do so. Okay, look at this for me for just a second.

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Okay, this one right here. Okay. Since creatures could choose differently,

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God's knowledge would be different if they were to do so. If this, it's not as clear as I'd like it to be, but if this is about middle knowledge, then what action logically is prior to and determinative of God's action of creation?

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The decisions of free creatures. Because if this knowledge is this knowledge, and that's the basis upon which he can actualize worlds, then the actions of free creatures is what determines which worlds

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God could actually create. That's what's being said here. That's what's being said here.

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Every time I've done this in the past, and we haven't, we've never had a board to be able to do this. We did,

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I've still got the little markers in my copy, my paper copy of this book.

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So we have read through some of these quotes in the past. But I think seeing it and having the board really helps.

01:33:39

Really helps a lot. Because most people responded to the Molinism programs done in the past with sort of like, could you provide

01:33:46

Excedrin with those programs? So we can get through them. And I get it. I get it.

01:33:52

We're not done here. We're not done here. Because once we finish with Craig's presentation, then we need to look at Stratton.

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We need to look at mere Molinism. We're not done.

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You may say, why? Well, I have consistently for decades believed and acted as a

01:34:25

Christian pastor, theologian, apologist within the context of recognition of the kingly freedom of God to glorify himself as he chooses to glorify himself.

01:34:43

And as I see Molinism re -energizing the counter reformation, this is not reformational.

01:34:57

One of the things I want to talk about is Dr. Stratton claims you can be a five -point Calvinist and believe this. That is absurd.

01:35:06

Absolutely impossible. Oh, but I know people. Then they are a walking self -contradiction.

01:35:14

A walking self -contradiction. Or, more likely, what you have is there are people who call themselves

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Calvinists. I'm a five -point Calvinist. You're not reformed. What? You're not reformed.

01:35:31

There is a foundation to the five points. The five points arise from a particular understanding of God's relationship to his creation.

01:35:47

And if you don't have that connection, you may be a five -point Calvinist, but you're not reformed. You're not reformed.

01:35:54

That's all there is to it. And I think we'll be able to illustrate that when we get around to that.

01:36:04

And I think it's important. It will help to clarify things. We try to provide a resource to people and look, let me make one last application and we'll close up for today.

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We've gone quite a long time. We even had a visitor watching the program and I drove the poor guy out just a few minutes ago.

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I just went too long for him to even stick around. And he was younger, so he probably didn't have the problems us older men have when we started doing two -hour -long programs.

01:36:36

Let's just put it that way. Why is this important today? I mean, we've got mandates, we've got people losing their jobs over an abusive secular government using this to crush freedom and enslave people.

01:36:55

That's just all there is to it. So why in the world would you be talking about stuff like that?

01:37:03

I mean, look at that mess on that board right now. Let's make application real quick.

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As I look at what has happened in the past, I believe that I can take lessons from what took place, for example, under the

01:37:22

Soviets, because I believe God has an intention that he is accomplishing. And we're given a deep insight into the depravity of man's heart that expresses itself in Marxism, Leninism, communism, but we didn't learn the lesson well enough.

01:37:42

What if we are going into a period where it's going to be even longer, more than 70 years, maybe it'll be even global?

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You have to have confidence, not just that God knows the future, but that he intends that future to result to the praise of his glorious grace.

01:38:09

And I believe there is something fundamental, fundamentally corrosive to placing that statement within the context that what

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God has created was delimited by human free choices, rather than God's free choices.

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I see a fundamental difference in the confidence that we can have that God will accomplish his purposes in that context.

01:38:47

So, that's why we do it, and that's why hopefully you'll be back with us the next time, if we're still around, because I did talk about Camelot Crackers and stuff.

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We have to say it every time, if we're around, Lord, keep us protected.