Wide Range of Topics on Today’s Dividing Line

The Divine Line, my name is James White, and it is a beautiful day here in Phoenix, Arizona. It's been really cool recently. I mean, wow. It almost worries me. It's safe enough. We've gotten more rain this month in May than I can...

I mean, we set a record big time last week. Yeah, usually May is pretty dry. Oh, dry and hot, and I think sometime last week we got almost a full inch in one day, and the most had been .15 up to that time of that day.

So I was like, my cacti are happy about it anyways. But it's coming. It's coming. And you know it's coming. It's coming. And it's going to come with a vengeance.

We'll see. But you don't have to shovel it? No, you just have to... And you don't have to put on, you know, all these heavy coats.

No, this is true. Anyway, so many things to get to today. So many that are troubling that I thought it would be good, before we talk about all the troubling stuff, just to remember Hebrews, chapter 12, verse 3, for consider, and the term there is to ponder, to, you know, it's something we don't do very often, to be honest with you, to think upon something for lengthy periods of time, to sort of think about something and look at it from various perspectives and see how it relates to other things.

We're so very, I don't know, been influenced so much by our society that, for ponder, consider him who has endured such hostility by sinners against himself so that you will not grow weary and lose heart, or literally so that your soul will not be weakened.

Lose heart is a sort of an English phrase that we use to render that, but it's literally so that your soul will not be, will not fall down, be weakened. And this introduces the section on the discipline that God brings into our lives, but it is good to remember that our Lord lived with fewer freedoms that we have, lived under the oppressive Roman Empire, and he endured much hostility by sinners against himself.

It was directed at him, and sometimes we become very timid, we become very, you know, we back away when that timidity is directed toward, when that hostility is directed toward ourselves. And yet, we have been given an example, and in light of that, we should not lose heart.

But I'll admit, sometimes just reading the stuff in the morning, maybe that's one of the reasons I exercise so much, is that people who, you know, you get those endorphins going, so all the bad news isn't quite as bad, maybe, I don't know.

Maybe that's what it is, it's hard to say. But there were just so many things, and I thought, you know, look at the Word, remind yourself, where do I start today? You all heard, probably, what happened over the weekend.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who has performed same-sex weddings before, performed a same-sex wedding over the weekend. Now, I'll be perfectly honest with you, I consider that grossly, grossly disrespectful.

I consider it an insult. I am offended. But they don't care, because insulting people like me is irrelevant to them. We need to be insulted, from their perspective. But it certainly says to me, why do we bother?

I mean, you know, I just looked down Justice Elena Kagan's record as dean at Harvard Law School. Dean at Harvard Law School. She accelerated and legitimized the GLBT rights concept and law studies at Harvard Law School in the larger community.

She encouraged Harvard students to get involved in homosexual activist legal work. At a time when she, as dean, pushed students to engage in public interest law and to get clinical legal experience, Harvard Law School established the LGBT Law Clinic.

She recruited former ACLU lawyer William Rubenstein to teach queer legal theory. Promoted and facilitated the transgender legal agenda during her tenure at Harvard. I could go on and on and on. Neither of these people should even be on the court as far as dealing with this subject.

They're clearly incapable of even considering the arguments. I mean, they might as well have just gone to sleep and not bothered listening. Because it's a foregone conclusion. It doesn't matter what the arguments are.

It's a foregone conclusion. No thought process here. The whole reason they're there is to make sure this happens. And it just makes you go, wow, it seems like that experiment in liberty is pretty well done with.

I certainly feel that way. And then, over the weekend, I think it was Saturday, I did a big ride. I've signed up for one of these Strava things where I've got to climb 6 ,000 meters by the end of the month to celebrate the Giro d 'Italia.

I didn't have to do it, but I'm doing it. And I was listening. What's that? Something just flashed onto the screen. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Thanks. Appreciate that. Just having fun over there, huh?

You're working. Oh. Oh. Good to know that you're working. I'm glad that I'm keeping your interest.

Uh-huh. Right.

I was listening to Michael Brown's new book, Surviving the Gay Revolution, which will be out sometime in September, I think. I imagine, I haven't asked him, but I would imagine he's got to have it all written and then will make some changes depending on what happens in June.

It would be silly to put a book out on that until the court. Renders, decisions, verdicts, all of that assumes something about justice and stuff like that, and I don't even know what to call it until the ideologues who have hijacked in the cultural revolution the mechanics of what was once a great governmental system but now is whatever.

I don't know what to call it. Anyway, he told the story in there, and I went, No, can't be. I looked it up, and it was true. I can't read all of this, sadly, but this is an article that I pulled up from Politicker, New Jersey, Emily Schatz, April of 2013.

On Monday, March 18, 2013, the New Jersey Senate Health, Human Services, and Senior Citizens Committee held a three-hour hearing on S. 2278, a bill to ban minors who experience unwanted same-sex attraction from receiving therapy from licensed counselors.

Y 'all may recall that two years ago, you had California doing it, New Jersey was doing it, Chris Christie signed this bill once it was passed, but basically outlawing conversion therapy. So if you are a teenager and you experience same-sex attraction, the state, who knows all things and has all power, will step in and say, you can't get any help with that, because it's perfectly natural.

It's a good thing. It's wonderful. Testimony came overwhelmingly from homosexual activists who relied on unsubstantiated emotional and anecdotal arguments to support the bill. The most dramatic story came from Brielle Goldani, a man living as a woman in Toms River, New Jersey.

Oh, joy, I've spoken there many times. Goldani claimed that as a teenager in 1997, his church in New Jersey sent him to a conversion therapy camp in Ohio called True Directions, run by an Assemblies of God church.

There, Goldani says he was forced to engage in sexual activity to heterosexual soft-core pornography, flirt with members of the opposite sex, and submit to electroshock therapy and chemical IV injections in order to restore heterosexual inclinations.

International Healing Foundation Director Christopher Doyle, who testified in opposition to the bill, said afterwards, I was shocked and horrified to hear about such abuse. As a former homosexual and practitioner of sexual orientation change effort therapy, I had never heard of such inhumane treatment except from anti-ex-gay activists who often claim that SOCE, which is sexual orientation change effort, employs such barbaric methods.

Investigation revealed Goldani's story was fabricated. The Ohio Council of Assembly of God Churches denied the camp ever existed. The Ohio Secretary of State and Attorney General's Office confirmed this.

No ethics complaints were ever filed to indicate the existence of such a camp. SOCE practitioners in Ohio had never heard of it. And the current pastor of Goldani's former church said no one from his church would have been complicit with such a scheme.

Instead, Goldani's testimony was virtually identical to a 1999 movie called I'm a Cheerleader, where the abuse he described occurs at a camp called True Directions. New Jersey Family First Director of Government Affairs Greg Quinlan said, Everyone is entitled to think as he chooses about the merits of SOCE, but people should be able to form those opinions based on facts, not movies.

The New Jersey legislature has been taken for a ride by activists desperate to force their agenda, whose desperation displays their fear of having a real conversation. S. 2278 is an unconstitutional bill that violates minors' autonomy, parents' rights, professionals' judgment, and individuals' consciences, and is a serious matter for everyone's freedom when cynical mockeries like this are allowed to influence policy.

Regrettably, Committee Chairman Joseph Vitale did not seem overly concerned. While Senator Vitale may not care that a key witness lied, the Parents, Teenagers, and Professionals bill will in effect deserve a truthful hearing.

The legislature should not suffer such an insult or permit illegitimate testimony to determine binding votes. The right thing for Senator Vitale to do would be to call another hearing and bind witnesses under oath.

Well, that didn't happen. Evidently, this transgender activist wasn't under oath, and that's probably why charges weren't brought, but testified on the basis of a movie. And nobody caught it. Now, I wouldn't have caught it.

I don't see movies like I'm a cheerleader, so I wouldn't have known. So, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Kagan, this kind of stuff, it's hard to even know where to start. It's hard to even know how to respond to just the lies and the dishonesty.

And you've got to understand, people like this transgendered liar, lying is this person's life. I mean, they have to lie to themselves every single day to pretend that they are something that they're not.

It's not second nature, it's primary nature. And it's so central to their self-identification of who they are that how could you ever trust what they have to say? And this defines them. You and I, we don't get up in the morning thinking about these things.

We have other things to be thinking about. I'm thinking about collecting really good resources for the future homeschooling of my granddaughter. I want to get her some of the videos I saw recently on creation and stuff like that.

Well, you can still do that before they throw you in jail for believing things like that. And I'm thinking about, you know, there's this real cool little general store up the top of Mount Lemmon. You can see I've got a new Mount Lemmon shirt.

And what size t-shirts do you get Clementine when I stop at the general store in Mount Lemmon? Because she really likes the Snoopy one. I got her last year, but it's getting too small. It's amazing. You keep shoveling the food in and it seems to be a natural process.

Something like that.

Actually, it sounds like God's created order to me. Yeah, well, it might be that.

That's the stuff we're thinking about. We're thinking about serious things and life things. And they're thinking about, every single day, that suppression of the knowledge. It just consumes them. And they're willing to do anything.

They're willing to do anything. And unfortunately, what can I say? Yeah, I will go ahead and open up the phones today. 877 -753 -3341. 877 -753 -3341. There is a phone ringing there. I guess it is along the same line.

One of the books, well, the book that I got all the way through on a study ride yesterday. I mentioned on Facebook, I drove down to Mount Lemmon in Tucson and spent a little over three hours breathing very hard at, on average, about 8 ,300 feet, I'd say.

Somewhere around that above sea level. And 74 of the oxygen that you have at sea level. I found a place online. I can just put the altitude and figure out what the average amount of oxygen is there.

Anyways, so it was a long drive down, long drive back. I started into a class on the history of the Roman Empire and actually got, I'm not sure how far, into a book that I... Facebook advertising is fairly effective.

I bought this book because I... There's some World War II in pictures or history thing or something on Facebook. And they're advertising this book about one of the last battles of World War II. It was after Hitler was dead.

There were still some diehard German units that didn't want to give up. And so it's a story about that. Not all exciting so far, but maybe it's building up to something, I don't know. But the book I got all the way through was Mark Ochtemeyer's book, The Bible's Yes to Same-Sex Marriage.

And I suppose on one level, there's nothing I can do about having to read these books. I don't want to be in a situation where someone says, Well, if you read such and such, well, if you'd read that, you know.

But there is absolutely, positively nothing new. Nothing new. I mean, we're just... We're being flooded, absolutely flooded by a tsunami of these books that... Nothing new in them at all. You start off with some...

You know, you pull the heart strings and you tell stories like this lie. Makes you really wonder at times. But you tell these stories and you get the emotions going. But, you know, I just couldn't believe that this would be God's will.

And so I started thinking about this. And I started thinking about what Jesus would do. And you build up this whole narrative thing. And then what I'm starting to see really regularly now is, you do that and you don't get to the key text in the Bible until after you've already completely determined the issue.

I mean, you've come to all your conclusions. The whole nine yards. And then you get to Leviticus. And then it's so easy to find a way around every single one. So simple. It's just... And this is a PCUSA minister.

And unless I missed it, I was distracted at one point while the notes... Because all the notes, there weren't very many notes. It's not a deep book. Not a deep book. And, yeah, I saw that mentioned in Channel.

And I almost said to you, anything but that. I have no idea what that's all about. I'm not even sure I want to know what that's all about. Anyway, once you... PCUSA minister. A PCUSA minister. And not one reference.

Like I said, there was one little time during the notes. I forgot to mention that. The notes are at the end of the book. So sometimes listening to notes is not overly exciting. I did not hear a single reference to Robert Gagnon's work.

A single one. Matthew Vines? Oh, yeah. Yeah, you bet. James Brownson? Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Robert Gagnon? It's just like the other side isn't even there. Does not exist. There's no dialogue. There's no refutation.

It's just like, really? Seriously? This is supposed to be taken seriously. Yep, it's supposed to be taken seriously. Just as the book that I mentioned to you last year from the vineyard pastor up in Michigan.

And how the church down in Southern California, that big evangelical church that collapsed on the subject a couple weeks ago. They mentioned they read that book together. It was part of their journey.

I really wish I didn't have to read those books. I really do. But there will come a day when I'm just going to say, forget it. That's enough. You can only read so much that kind of stuff. It eventually is just too corrosive.

Just too corrosive. Really is. Oh, before I go to the phone calls. Two things. Please remember to pray for the debate this Saturday. 4 .30. Let me see here. That's my beautiful singing voice there while I bring up the specifics.

I'm not. 2430. 20430. Yellow Brick Road, Walnut, California. 4 .30pm. I'll be debating Sheikh Mustafa Omar. Jesus prophet and slash or God. I'm not. Now that I'm looking at that. He's both. It's and. Not or.

But he wouldn't say or. He would just say only prophet. Whatever. I think we all know what the subject is. But as always, the issue is the fact that the Quran does not have a category for the real Jesus.

The Quranic Jesus is merely a prophet. Only a prophet. But the author of the Quran doesn't seem to understand. May not have ever been exposed to a meaningful presentation of the fullness of who Jesus really was.

From the text of the New Testament. So anyways, I'm really. I've been told there's a possibility of doing a number of these with a number of different Imams over time. And if so. I really, you know, I really enjoyed the encounter with Muhammad Musli in California.

I'd like to have more encounters with Imam Musli. I want to get to know Sheikh Mustafa Omar. He's only a few years older than my son, actually. Only a few years older than my son. Actually, I would adjust my indenture.

That's how I'm starting to feel. But I think I can still take him on a bike, though. That's my only advantage. But I want to get to know him. I want the issues to be clear. But when people finish listening to that debate.

I want them to not only understand both sides more clearly. But to have a foundation for more conversation to take place amongst the people in the audience. And the future. I fully reject the idea that there needs to be a nuclear war with blood on the floor.

Or you haven't done your duty. And so, just in passing, I'll mention that I posted a Facebook article briefly over the weekend. In response to a criticism of doing debates with Muslims. It was said by someone on Facebook that Paul never would have done these things.

I'm not sure what he was doing in the synagogues with the Jews. But he certainly wasn't debating Muslims because they weren't around yet. But the arguments against Jesus as Messiah and Son of God are pretty much the same.

The Muslims may not like this. But they pretty much argue like Jews do. Islam is really a return back. It's an unwillingness to go with what the revelation of God and the incarnation. It's going back to where the Jews were.

And so, their arguments made the issues we're dealing with are the same issues. And that's why it's not overly surprising to find Muslims borrowing the arguments of many Jewish apologists and things like that.

So, you do have clear evidence that the Apostle Paul did these things. But evidently the suggestion was that I don't present the gospel in my debates. Now, what made me chuckle a little bit about that.

Aside from the fact that the person making the argument I don't think has listened to almost any of my debates on Islam at all. Is that, what am I very often criticized for? For presenting the gospel in my debates.

I mean there are a lot of people who say, you do too much preaching. Well, you know, I try to honor the debate by sticking with the topic. But, I do manage to find a way, almost always, to make a pretty clear appeal to the Muslims in the audience.

And I do so along with the assurance of my respect for them and my love for them. And I think that's what bothers a lot of people. I think there are a lot of people that if they're just honest, they just don't like Muslims.

They just don't like them. If they're honest, the only thing they're praying for is protection from them. They're not praying that God would use them to break through the falsehood that keeps Muslims from hearing the truth about Jesus.

Who they say they love, but who they don't really know. I think a lot of people, there's a lot of Islamophobia. And you say, oh, I can't believe you used that word. Well, I've seen some people that are that way.

I mean, there are people that if you even try to suggest that there might be real Muslims that do not want to kill you. Oh, they're not real Muslims, and you're a sympathizer, and they just go nuts. I'd say that's Islamophobia, yeah.

There's a lot of Christophobia out there, too. And there's a lot of Christophobia on the part of Muslims, if we're just honest with ourselves. But I will right here and now confess to everyone in this audience.

And this video feed is just the source of so many memes that it's not even funny. I mean, you could find my face in any position, as long as you just download the video and just work at it long enough.

It's just the way video works. Eyes closed, eyes open, mouth, you know, you can do anything you want. Oh, it's all sorts of stuff. But I want to make a confession here and now before everyone. And that is, for the sake of Jesus Christ, I love the Muslim people.

Sorry, some of you, you know, are very upset about that. But I do not do debates with Muslims to embarrass them. I do not do debates with Muslims so that I can stand at the end with my theological sword raised in the air.

Look what I did. Look what I can do. I try to balance the reality that for the sake of Christ, at his command, I am commanded to love and to proclaim and to defend. Holding them in balance isn't easy.

There are times I have to be very straightforward in refuting falsehood. I think of the time in the mosque in Lenasia, the first time I debated in the mosque in Lenasia. There was a fellow who came up and asked a question.

He was wearing an FBI cap in South Africa. Can you imagine? A baseball cap said FBI in South Africa. You didn't know about that? Well, I'm not sure what it means in South Africa, but I know what it means here.

Anyway, and he was a little, I'm not sure what term to use, aggressive. And I just had full freedom at that point in the debate to be perfectly aggressive right back at him. And it was exactly what he needed.

I answered in the exact way that he needed me to answer. I mean, I went toe to toe with him. And I said, you don't know what you're talking about. And here's why. I did it with a smile. I had already established the fact that I respected the Muslims well enough to know what they believed.

That I'm not operating on a Fox News level understanding of Islamic theology. In fact, a lot of those people in that audience knew I probably knew the Quran better than they do. Certainly know the Hadith better than most of them do.

And so, I could go toe to toe with him. And the next night, he was in another debate I did. And standing behind me, somebody started getting, and he shut them down. The Muslim shut them down. Said, hey, hey, cool that.

And they did. So, the point is, if you're going to fault me for the Muslim. Well, this fellow actually faulted me for the Muslims not having killed me yet. Well, okay. I think my life is in the Lord's hands.

That's up to the Lord. They didn't manage to kill Paul, remember? He was there for three years in Ephesus, and somehow he managed to survive all that. Supernaturally, but it just didn't make any sense to me.

But I had forgotten that I had created a video a couple years ago. Just showing some of the gospel presentations that I've done in Islamic context. I could make a much longer one now. Because I directed people to about 40, what was it, about 42 minutes?

41, 45 or something like that into the debate inside the Masjid this time in Erasmia. And just listen. Listen to what I'm saying. Watch as the camera pans the audience. You see it's 80%, 85 Muslim seated right there on the floor.

And I'm talking about my unworthiness. And I'm talking about the imputed righteousness of Christ and sin and whole nine yards. I mean, they're hearing stuff they've never heard before. And if I adopted my critic's attitude, they never would have heard it either.

Because he will never get invited to go there. Never. Not going to happen. Not going to happen. So you tell me. You tell me. Just something to think about. So pray for the debate this coming Saturday, May 23rd, 4 .30 p .m. I will be flying over.

So pray for traveling mercies. You know, I don't need to be getting there late and having to rush in and all the rest of that type of stuff. You know how it is. But I especially figure from here to L .A., there are so many flights that if one gets canceled, you'll get there eventually.

So we hope. And then very early the next morning I'm coming back. It's going to be a long day at church. We've got a lot of stuff going on at church that day. So it's going to be interesting. There was something else.

I'll skip it. We've got to get to the phone calls. But let's start off with Andrew. Hi, Andrew. How are you doing, Dr. White? Good.

I'm not trying to toot my own horn here, but I was a guy who put that YouTube thing together. I'm not sure. What are you talking about, YouTube thing? What?

Downloading old. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. I remember some. Some. I remember some issue about this from a couple of weeks ago. I don't know why anybody was criticized. There was any criticism or anything. I don't know.

That's fine with me. I don't care.

Come on.

You have a biology. I majored in biology. I made the mistake of taking my B .A. in Bible rather than B .S. in biology. I should have. Oh. Okay. They called up like three days before graduation and said, you can either have your B .A. or your B .S.

And one of the decisions in my life I have rude the most was, they gave me no, I mean, it was literally, which one do you want? No time to think about it at all. And I took the B .A. And I shouldn't have.

I should have taken the B .S. But anyways, I finished all the work for it. So, yeah.

We feel logically minded. And you do know the science behind this, at least on some level. Yeah. What? How should we view people? I mean, there's the whole LGBT controversy that's going on right now. The address, the intersex have genetic defects to the point where they cannot possibly be considered male or female definitively, like the hermaphrodism and all the other, not a category.

Well, let's let's recognize that we're talking about an incredibly small number of people. I mean, of course. I mean, percentage wise, this this really doesn't have anything to do with LGBT because they just they're so few.

It is such a rare disorder that they're often held up as well. OK, yeah. And that's and that's the problem. If you can take what is universally recognized as a, in many cases, severe genetic disorder, very often it has has great impact upon the health of such individuals and is frequently associated with other defects that impact their overall health and longevity and everything else.

If you can take that and make that normative. If you can take something like that and say we should let a 45 year old guy with male anatomy into the woman's bathroom so that we're all really nice people, you've lost you've lost your mind morally and ethically and everything else.

It's absurd. But laying that aside, obviously, if you have an individual who has genetic disorders of of any kind, the church has always sought to extend ministry to such people. You you have blind people.

You have deaf people. You have people who can't walk. You have people who have all sorts of things that fundamentally impact their ability to function in a normative way. And the church has always viewed such people and in such a way as this require the extension of mercy and grace.

And obviously, the best way to handle that is within a Christian family so that that Christian family is going to be in a Christian church. And there can be, especially during formative years, that kind of spiritual guidance to where you have numbers of people who observing the situation, knowing what the situation is intimately can determine the best course of action for someone like that.

So they're not left alone. I mean, every situation is going to be different depending upon the manifestation of the genetic symptoms and so on and so forth. And but in any situation, I would say that from a Christian perspective, the desire is going to be to determine for that individual what would be the best genetic best gender fit and not come up with the idea of, well, let's just come up with something new just to satisfy our our being new in years past.

The idea would be, well, is there would it be better if we functioned as a male or function as a female? And it was accepted that those would be the appropriate norms just simply to allow the person to have the best opportunity of a full life and of function within society and even function within the church.

And the idea was never, well, everybody else has to change for the tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny minority. The idea was, what's the best way to fit in and hence to experience the fullness that life would have to offer.

So there's no cookie cutter answer to that. I mean, I've I've at least to my knowledge, never met a person who actually had that. I mean, I've read about it in my in my genetics books in in college, but I've never actually encountered anybody in that situation.

But I can see, especially today, outside of a Christian context, a Christian worldview. My, that would be a very, very, very difficult, very difficult situation to face. That's why. Yeah. It'd be outside of having that kind of of support system.

And if your parents didn't have a Christian worldview or had a worldview that would allow it to be just a throw, throw everything up in the air and figure something out, man,.

That would be. That'd be very difficult that you said that the free grace theology has thrown.

Well, I forget what it was he said, but certainly a person who does not hold to the concept of the necessity of repentance and faith is going to be fundamentally hamstrung in seeking to respond to the apologetic that is being presented by David Gushy and that that viewpoint, because if you don't have submission to the Lordship of Christ, if all you have is a content less repentance, less faith, then there's no reason to be submitted to the Lordship of Christ and hence to his divine commands in regards to gender role or marriage or anything else.

So, yeah, I mean, that movement isn't that that movement has certainly, I think, gutted a portion of evangelicalism in in its ethics and its morality. Most definitely.

Coming to the reform faith, I was involved in that and even among my family and talking about these issues. I say, yeah, obviously a strong faith. Yeah, you're right. Karen mentioned the faith.

It's interesting that you put Evans in that in that viewpoint. I don't know. I don't know much about Evans, but when I hear that name, I think liberal. Am I wrong about that?

He's not so much liberal as he is theology. When it comes to his belief on the resurrection of Jesus Christ, his belief on the inerrancy of the Bible, he would say yes. But the shallow, shallow, shallow, all these very secular means to help people grow, like psychology and things of that sort.

So in that sense, he would seem extremely liberal because the power of the Holy Spirit over the believers lives is so low.

Well, he wasn't the one that was on Fox News. Did he put a book out on the why Jesus died? Was that Tony Evans?

I don't follow him that closely, but I do know that about him.

That may have been the guy I was listening to on Fox News. I sort of interpret him as emergent personally. But anyways, that's not really what you're asking. I suppose. I mean, I don't know. I haven't heard of these folks doing much in the way of of debates.

It might be better to be focused upon something a little bit more exegetical or something, you know, James Chapter 2. That'd be fun. That'd be fun to try to get, you know, watch the human contortion machine kick in on James Chapter 2.

But I suppose, but it's not something I'm looking for. It's not a subject that I really have a lot of focus on.

I mean, at least personally, I would suggest that it's because at least from my context, I come from the biggest when I was young with the and I've consistently seen and that's the response to the homosexual.

If you just need to convince them that it's wrong so they can be, you know, super Christian and everything like that. Wow. And I can just go call them Christians.

Yeah. Yeah. Andrew, your connection's breaking up on us and really getting about half of what you're saying now. So I'm not sure if it's a cell issue or just what it is. But yeah, it's a possibility. I mean, I think it is a gospel issue.

And so if if someone were to, you know, really, you know, I'm just not sure when it would happen right now. But yeah, it's I'm not I'm not closing the door to it. I don't know that I ever debate Wilkins again, but it's it's possibility.

Hey, Andrew, I got to get there. Bales for the time runs out. Thank you for your phone call today. Let's talk with Alan. Alan, you better make this good.

I better make it good. Yep. Okay. Well, it's kind of on topic. There's been a lot of talk lately about gay wedding cakes. There has been for the last couple years. There's no such thing as a gay wedding cake.

Well, you know what I'm talking about when a same sex couple is pretending to, quote unquote, get married. Yes, I know. And they go to the to the baker. And I had an issue, I think I told you about a couple years ago, where there was a gay, quote unquote, wedding card that I refused to sign.

But here's my question. I saw something recently on Pulpit and Pen about Andy Stanley, and I didn't look too much into it, but I I've heard varying different opinions on this. But do you think that it is universally a sin for the Christian who is a baker by profession?

Oh, I do not see how a believing Christian can. I don't see how a believing Christian can attend a profaning of marriage ceremony. If the Christian does not believe that they are in any way using their skills to in any way participate in this event, then I guess I could see how they wouldn't care one way or the other.

It's difficult for me to see how that is the case, given that this is a part of the celebration. It is a part of the profaning of the marriage ceremony. I certainly couldn't. I I'm not going to bother to argue with a person that says, hey, it's no different than, you know, providing the chairs or, you know, working at the electric company that happens to be providing the light for the electricity for the event either.

Obviously, I see a difference. And those bakers who have objected consider their actions to reflect their personal beliefs. And that then becomes that then becomes the issue. And the question becomes, do we yet have the liberty and freedom in this nation to not be forced to do things that are against our conscience?