Bill Nye

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Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is the Dividing Line.

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

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

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

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United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

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James White. And welcome to the Dividing Line on a Thursday, got a lot of people who started sending me a few days ago the link to the

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Bill Nye the Science Guy video, and his assertion that if you want to live in a world that does not correspond to reality, that's your choice, but don't force your children to do that.

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Don't teach them that God created the world, teach them the theory of evolution, which

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I think you forgot the theory part, but be that as it may. And everybody's going, you need to respond to this, you need to respond to this, and I'm like, no

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I don't. There are going to be a billion people who do, there are going to be people who are specialists in the area who are going to respond to that, and they're going to respond to that better than I can.

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They're going to respond to that with more information than I could bring to bear on that subject.

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I mean, you know, a man's got to know his limitations, as people say.

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And yeah, I minored or majored in biology in college long, long ago, and I sort of try to keep up with those things and no more than the average bear on that subject, but that's not my area, and I just recognize, obviously, that what you've got going on here, we can learn something from this other than the people who have provided excellent responses to Bill Nye on a scientific level, but what we can learn here is that you can have a

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PhD at the end of your name, and these days, that probably means that you are not well taught in, well, what used to be called liberal sciences.

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In other words, any more to be able to be so specialized, to be specialized in the fields of science means you probably don't know a lot about other areas anymore.

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The days of the Renaissance, man, have long passed when you had knowledge of a wide variety of things, and instead, you end up with people like Richard Dawkins, who is just so abysmally ignorant of theology and history and philosophy and all these things, but real smart in genetics, and so you think that your field, your area, trumps everything else, and you don't see how your area relates to everything else, and so people who embrace a naturalistic, materialistic worldview, they very rarely are self -reflective on the relationship of their worldview to any other worldview.

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In fact, a lot of them don't even understand any other worldviews, and I've run into Christians that are the same way.

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That is, unfortunately, one of the problems with a lot of Christian fundamentalism is that you have just such a narrow view of the world that anything that's different than what

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I'm accustomed to is just automatically to be rejected, and I'm not even to think about it, and it's actually, it might even be evil to know anything about it or to learn anything about it, and the result, of course, is people not being able to talk to other people and communicate and everything else, and so when

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I saw Bill Nye's comments, I'm like, well, that's what any naturalistic, materialist is going to say. That's their whole point.

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That's their worldview expressing itself, and do they understand, do they even take the time to listen to what the other side's saying?

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No, the other side is too different from us and too separated from us and just not worthy of being listened to, and that's why people end up having problems talking to each other, and so no,

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I guess in the sense of, well, you know, learning something about pagans acting like pagans, you know,

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I mean, people who have a secular, materialist worldview are going to speak and act in light of that, and we need to be accustomed to that, be used to it.

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That's the way it is. So nothing much really to respond to there. I mean, let people point out that, you know, this is the kind of attitude that has resulted in so many university science faculties being utterly incapable of even allowing for the discussion of intelligent design and the many, many problems with neo -Darwinian, micro -mutational evolutionary theory and the massive growth in our knowledge of basically biochemistry, the chemistry of life, and its massive complexity, and its clearly ordered and designed nature.

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You can't talk about that. You'll have your tenure revoked, or you'll get fired, or whatever we, you know, remember expelled.

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What it was talking about was quite true. So that happens there.

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Look what's going on with the subject of homosexuality in, for example, social studies.

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I didn't have the name up, but someone might remember who it is. But recently a study was done that basically said, you know, it's probably best to have a mom and a dad.

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Oh, what a shocking thing. And basically it was saying, yeah, having two dads or two moms might not be the best thing, and here's the evidence for it.

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And the outcry of, you might as well be heretic, burn him, that's the way it is in the educational system, and in all sorts of schools today, you're just not allowed to go against these things.

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And that's just how it is. Ralph in Channel just said, the family's gathered around the iPad listening to Dr.

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Oh, that's me, Dr. Oakley in Channel, like FDR during a fireside chat. I think

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I talk a little bit more, I don't know. I haven't listened to, the only

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FDR fireside chats I've ever heard were ones relating to World War II, sort of an area of,

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I'm studying, not so much studying, but when I want to stop listening to Hadith or something like that, like right now, right now

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I'm reading a book, for those who care about such things, on the battle for Peleliu.

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And I'll bet you 99 % of the people in this audience have never heard of Peleliu.

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You've heard of Iwo Jima, you've heard of Okinawa, you've heard of Guadalcanal, maybe even heard of Tarawa, but Peleliu is the great forgotten battle of World War II.

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Were you familiar at all with Peleliu? No, see. And it's a shame, thousands of Marines lost their lives there, and thousands of Japanese.

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And to be honest with you, there wasn't any reason for it, no reason at all. We could have easily bypassed it, and it was not a threat, but MacArthur wanted it, and MacArthur got it.

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And it was a bloodbath, it was something else. And the

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Marines, they took it, but I think they lost nearly 7 ,000 men in the process.

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But anyway, how in the world did I get to that? I was, that's the type of thing I listened to to sort of, you know, get out of listening to, you can only listen to Hadith studies and things like that for so many hours before you want to drive your, ride your bike off the road and face plant into a saguaro.

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That would feel better, whee! How'd I get onto that?

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Anyways, I don't know how I got onto that, but be that as it may. Okay, so there's Bill Nye, the science guy, and we're not going to worry too much about that.

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I did want to respond then to some articles. I wasn't going to do this. I honestly, if someone had, it's

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B1 Crawley on Twitter forced me to do this.

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It's all, if you want to blame anyone, blame B1 Crawley on Twitter. This morning as soon as Turretinfan came and channeled, he said, so David Waltz has some criticism for you.

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And I said, oh, there's nothing new. David Waltz is one of my stalkers. Now, unlike Edasham Gulam, who is just simply completely nuts, he is about two, three weeks ago.

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You know, he's my stalker on Twitter who, who constantly puts the outrageous tweets about linking to Peter Lumpkins.

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And what was the other one he links to? I mean, it's just, it is, it is face plantingly ridiculous every time he does it.

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And foul and profane. He includes profanity. He's allegedly a Muslim, but he's more like an atheist.

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But a couple weeks ago, he, he tweets, you know, I'm really sorry about having done this and I'm not going to do it anymore.

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And then a week later, it's all started over again. So which one is when he's on meds is the question.

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I'm not sure which one it is. So I've got some really interesting folks out there that are just, just really interesting.

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Now David Waltz is not like Edasham Gulam, but he is a stalker. He has been for over a decade now.

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And I don't know what he does right now. My understanding is that he made a bunch of money back in the dot com days and, and he just sort of lives on that.

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I don't know. I don't, I don't even bother reading his stuff to be honest with you. Because when it comes to me, all he does is follow me around and try to find something to, to pick on, try to find something to, to make him look like he's smart and I'm stupid.

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And normally it is some kind of definition of nitpicking.

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And that's what we have today. Now, one of my, one of the reasons that I, I, I'll be perfectly honest with you,

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I don't bother reading the man is because he is the quintessential definition of the person who is blown about by every wind of doctrine.

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He's been everything. You never really know where he is these days.

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And I, like I said, I haven't been keeping track, but he's, my recollection is he was once Jehovah's Witness.

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He's been, he's played around with Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy and just, you know, all the, just, just all over the place.

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And, you know, I have, I'll be honest, I have a real hard time working up a whole lot of respect for people who are blown about by every wind of doctrine.

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They can't, can't get their feet down on the, on the ground and stay in one place for long enough to actually accomplish anything.

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And so, you know, it's easy for him to sit around. He's a moving target because, you know, you criticize him today and next week he might believe something different than he does today.

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So it's like, that's pretty easy. That's the easy way to get around things. But he's very proud of his very large library.

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And so he sits around dragging quotations out and firing his stuff. Now the whole reason, again, that I am going to address this is, as I said,

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B1 Crawley on Twitter sent me the link after I had already heard about it from Turretinfan.

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I had told Turretinfan, what's, what's he up to now? Oh, he's, he's, he's talking about some of the things you said in the

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No Compromise Ever video. I was like, oh, okay. You mean about, you know, modalism and stuff like that?

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Yeah, he says you're misrepresenting the one in the skies and stuff like that. So once it was tweeted to me,

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I thought, okay, all right, let's take a look at what it is. Well, it was amazingly shallow.

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I mean, just really bad. And the only reason I'm responding to this is in the process of looking at what he was saying and then dragging out my very well -worn copy of Athanasius from the

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Nicene and Post -Nicene Fathers second series. I ran across in my reading an excellent citation to use in future debates, not with people like David Waltz or one of his folks or anything else, but with my

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Muslim friends. There are some Muslim friends who like to misrepresent

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Athanasius. And they will pull citations out that make it sound as if the early

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Christians did believe what the Koran presents, the idea of a physical relationship, not so much between God and Mary.

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Obviously, Athanasius isn't going to say much about that. But in the sense of the son being a physical offspring of the father.

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And so as I was looking at the citation that Waltz had provided, which is from page 472, it is from Dei Sinodos, the

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Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia. It's Athanasius' discussion of later

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Arianized councils and how to respond to them. And this is actually his section where he's talking about these councils and about the positions taken by people and the differences between them.

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But I found this section, this was section 42, he's quoting section 41, but section 42

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I found to be very, very interesting in providing a response to the misuse of Athanasius.

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Now remember, unfortunately, as we have demonstrated and documented in this program many times, our

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Muslim friends tend to, shall we say, network. And so if somebody comes up with a bad argument, it's going to be repeated by a lot of other people.

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So we've had the Jesus -didn't -know -who -is -touching -him argument repeated by a bunch of folks, some of whom it was totally unworthy of them.

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But there's this networking thing and they'll borrow from one another. So if I've heard

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Athanasius misused this way, you will probably hear Athanasius misused this way as well.

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So you might want to be aware of this particular section, section 42 of Dei Sinodos.

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But notice what he says. Accordingly, as in saying offspring, we have no human thoughts and though we know

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God to be a Father, we entertain no material ideas concerning Him. But while we listen to these illustrations and terms, we think suitably of God, for He is not as man.

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So in like manner, when we hear of coessential, we ought to transcend all sense and according to the proverb, understand by the understanding that is set before us.

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So as to know that not by will, but in truth, He is genuine from the Father as life from fountain and radiance from light.

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Else, why should we understand offspring and son in no corporeal way while we conceive of coessential as after the manner of bodies, especially since these terms are not here used about different subjects, but of whom offspring is predicated of Him is coessential also.

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Then at the end of that section, he says, but as this would be absurd for the Son is the Father's word and wisdom and the offspring from the

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Father is one and proper to His essence. So the sense of offspring and coessential is one and who so considers the

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Son and offspring rightly considers Him also as coessential. So what Athanasius is arguing there is the only way that offspring can have any real meaning in the sense that we are using it is that it becomes a synonym for homoousius of the same essence.

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Now, that is not in any way, shape or form what is being said by the

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Muslims in trying to say that we as Christians believe that Allah had a wife named

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Mary and they had an offspring named Jesus. And hence to quote Athanasius in that way is a great misrepresentation.

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So even in spending the time to look at what David Waltz has said, that is a citation that will probably end up in some presentations in the future, who knows, might end up in a book someplace in the very near future.

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I'm getting toward the 50 -60 page mark left. And a lot of that is already, a lot of that, the material is already there.

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It's, we're down to the point where it's, it's more, it's more right now trying to keep this thing getting too big than anything else.

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But we're, we're getting there. It's already listed on Amazon. It's listed at 240. It's going to be more like 275,

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I would say. But really excited about it. It gets exciting toward the end of the book when you start seeing what it's going to look like.

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You start seeing the, you know, the end notes piling up. And please, for those of you who have not maybe read some of my books recently, remember something about my books.

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You got to read the end notes. You got to read the end notes. Quit whining that they're end notes. You got to read them anyway. Publishers don't like footnotes because they, they, especially my footnotes, because I'll put entire quotations into footnotes or into end notes and you make them footnotes.

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And then it's that, you know, you've got this huge chunk of small text on a page and then they just don't like that.

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So hopefully the end notes will be at the end of the chapter, not the end of the book. That's a little bit easier to work with.

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I don't, I really don't like the books that have, you know, end notes for pages, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, that, but yeah,

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I, I understand, I, I fully understand how that works, but you know, we got to, got to deal with what we got to deal with.

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All right. Anyway. So that citation might, might end up in one of those contexts. Now, uh, looking at, if I can find my, there it is,

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I'm gonna find my cursor. I've got, I've got this really cool setup where I have, I have two Macs sitting here and somebody,

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I think, was it Monty in channel, uh, that told me, somebody in channel told me about this cool program for Macs that allows you to control two

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Macs simultaneously and you can run your, your, your cursor all the way across them.

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Well, but the problem is when you've got four screens in front of you and the cursor ain't that big. Sometimes like, where did it go?

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Uh, where, where's this thing going? All right. So the first article, uh, was posted, uh, yesterday,

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James R. White, you should have stayed out of the deep water. Part one. I just love the, the, uh, waltzes does not make any pretensions to humility.

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Um, and he talks about someone taking, uh, a potshot at Karl Truman and, uh, well, not everybody at the council, but I see it was

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Turks and, and, uh, basically what these guys want to do is they, they, they sit around going, look how smart

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I am about churches. I'm smarter than that person. I can disagree with, I can nitpick anything. That's what these guys are.

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And it's like they never leave their, their libraries do anything else. And I don't think

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David Waltz has ever actually debated a oneness person or actually gone out on the front lines and done it like that.

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They just sit in the back and toss stones and go, well, look how smart I am. And uh, so that's what he's decided to do here.

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And so he starts off taking on, and this is, this is a, a statement that I did not come up with.

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This is a statement that many people, uh, far, far more trained in church history than David Waltz could ever pretend to be, uh, have likewise stated.

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And he quotes me and here's what I said. I really think what we're dealing with here, and this, this may be more in, uh, in the good

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Dr. Truman's area to comment on, but as I have had the opportunity to teach church history in the past and also joining, uh, to that working as an apologist, it seems to me that a, that different periods of church history, the clarity that we gain on particular topics is due to the struggles the church is facing.

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And then he, then it's a dot, dot, dot. And a bit later at 7 .14 and following, in the early church, as was mentioned before, the difference between homoousios and homoiousios is a huge gap, but it is only one letter.

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Now, some of you will remember last year when we did a, what, two hour and 45 minute

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Christology class, we talked about these things. We defined heteroousios, homoousios, homoousios.

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And we talked about the fact that at the council of Nicaea, if you believed in homoousios, you were affirming that the son is of the same essence as the father.

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If you said heteroousios, it was a different essence. And homoiousios was the idea of like essence.

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And what I was addressing, of course, was the fact that when you, if you have someone who, and again, in elephant room, this wasn't the level of clarity that we're, that we're talking about.

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The questions that were asked of the oneness proponent at the elephant room were not clear enough.

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Now notice, it's funny, when, when folks picket nits, nits are small things, then

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I could deal with the overall, you know, well, were you actually addressing something important? No, they don't care about stuff like that.

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That's not why they do what they do. They're not in it about the big issues. They're not there. They're just, their whole essence is, if I don't like someone,

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I'm going to find something to disagree with them about them and say they're wrong about something.

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And that will puff me up and that will deflate them. That's just, you know, and it's, it's a sad life to be perfectly honest with you.

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I don't know what it'd be like to, to go through life like that, but that's, that's where some people are.

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Anyway, here is the response to that. And what I was talking about, of course, is the fact that there is a huge difference between saying that Christ is of the same nature as the

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Father or saying He is of a similar nature. Now, are there, does that mean that there have not been people, and again, another thing

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I just thought I'd mention here. I've talked about this in other contexts. I've talked about this in my books. I've talked about this in the program before.

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I've talked about this in my article in the Ziari Journal. They don't care about that either. They don't, they don't, they don't care about the fact that you have discussed these things.

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They just want to look at one little thing. That's what picking at nits is, is all about. And when you're a nitpicker, that's, that's, that's your life and that's what you do.

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I've talked about the fact that there is a vast difference between someone who, knowing what homoousius means, rejects it, and someone who rejects homoousius for the reasons that there were people who had problems with it in the early church.

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Specifically, there was a language problem between the East and the West. And the East had struggled with the use of homoousius by the modalists.

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And that had been before the Arian Controversy. So in the third century, there had been struggles in the

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Eastern church, especially against those who confused the persons of the

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Trinity and who presented different forms of monarchianism and modalism.

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And to be really specific, you have to say, well, which person are we talking about? What's their specific view?

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And we'll get to why I emphasize that in a moment. But the

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East had struggled with that. And one of the primary objections that some of the Eastern fathers had against the

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Nicene formulation was that they didn't want to have to go back to their churches and explain why they gave in to a term that could now be utilized by, well, heretics of the

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East may have felt were more of a problem than the Arians were. Or certainly went back to the struggles that they had had in the past.

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And so there could be people who, because they were afraid of blurring the distinction between the father and the son, would say, well, they're of like essence, that is the one divine essence, but they don't want to say of the same essence because that could destroy the distinction of the persons.

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That, by the way, is what Athanasius addresses in the quote. So here's what

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I say, in the early churches, as was mentioned before, the difference between homoousius and homoousius is a huge gap, he put it all in capitals, but it is only one letter.

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And then he says, is that an accurate statement? Ooh, that stupid

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James, he may have gone out in the deep water where I am the king of the deep water, you see. Note what

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Saint Athanasius, the great defender of the Nicene Creed and Trinitarianism had to say. And then we have the quotation from Dei Sinodos 41, which for those of you who have the

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Nicene and Post -Nicene Fathers set, the Hendrickson set, or the old Erdmann set, Hendrickson now publishes it. It's available online, if you want to see, it's just ccel .org

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slash ccl slash schaff, and then you can search for Dei Sinodos under there. But anyway, page 472 of the volume, that is volume number 4 of the second of the

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Post -Nicene Fathers, the blue ones, if you're wondering, if you have the older set like I do. And as you can see, see

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Jamie, this one's been rather, yeah, those are just the little page markers that I have in my edition of Athanasius.

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It's been around the block a few times. Anyhow, here's the quotation. I'm going to actually switch over to Athanasius here directly, because I don't want to take the quote directly out of his anyways, that wouldn't be the way to do it.

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Section 41, those who deny the Council altogether are sufficiently exposed by these brief remarks.

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Those, however, who accept everything else that was defined in Nicaea, and doubt only about the coessential, the homoousius term, must not be treated as enemies.

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Let me just stop right there. That's not what I was talking about, and David Waltz knows it.

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He knows it. He's not a stupid guy. He knows it's not what I was talking about.

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He knows I'm talking about someone at the elephant room who has a very different view of things.

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He knows that's not what I'm talking about. Athanasius is addressing people who accept what Nicaea said, but they have these reservations, and his whole argument is going to be, there's no reason for your reservations, because if you say, of like essence, reason with me, you're actually agreeing with what

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I am saying. I am not trying to destroy the distinction of the persons, and what you're saying is the same thing

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I'm saying. He is not accepting that homoousius is good enough.

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It's not. What he's saying is, if you accept everything else that Nicaea says, there is no reason for you not to accept coessential.

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Read from 41 on, and see if that's not the case for yourself. Go online. Read it for yourself.

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Don't listen to what someone, you know, giving you little partial quotes. Go online. Read it for yourself. So he goes on to say, anyways, must not be treated as enemies, nor do we here attack them as aeromaniacs.

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I think this was around 359 with additions from 361, so, hey, if you had been kicked out of your church as many times as Athanasius had been kicked out of his, if this had been the defining debate of your entire ministry,

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I can understand why you would come up with a phrase like aeromaniacs, nor do we, though I'll have to admit, there's some other people

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I could attach this to, you know, that we might be able to use as, oh no, now what? Don't get me in trouble.

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Did he really say aeromaniacs? Yes. Yes. Nor do we here attack them as aeromaniacs, nor as opponents of the fathers.

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We discuss the matter with them as brothers with brothers who mean what we mean and dispute only about the word.

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Now what was I talking about? I said there's a huge gap between believing in homoousios and homoiousios.

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I'm not arguing that homoiousios is the same. Now maybe David Waltz is. Maybe David Waltz is actually an

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Aryan. I don't know. He's been an Aryan in the past. Maybe he still is.

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I don't know. But what I was talking about, the fact is, if you know what homoousios is, not if you agree with all of them,

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I see it, but if you know what homoousios is and you reject that, and you're saying, well, it's a similar essence, but different.

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Everything else Athanasius says in this section is based upon the idea that they're not going to make that next statement.

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It's a different essence. And of course, anyone who honestly, anyways, who isn't just so grossly prejudiced like David Waltz is about anything that I say about any subject whatsoever is going to recognize that's what

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I'm talking about, because that's what I've talked about in my articles and published works and everything else. I think it's important you take into consideration everything that someone says when you criticize them.

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Anyways, for confessing that the son is from the essence of the father and not from other subsistence, and that he is not a creature nor work, but his genuine and natural offspring, and that he is eternally with the father as being his word and wisdom, they are not far from accepting even the phrase coessential.

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Well, of course. Now such is Basil, who wrote from Ankyra concerning the faith.

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For only to say like according to essence is very far from signifying of the essence by which rather they, as they say themselves, the genuineness of the son to the father is signified.

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Thus, tin is only like to silver, a wolf to a dog, and gilt brass to the true metal.

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But tin is not from silver, nor could a wolf be accounted the offspring of a dog. But since they say that he is of the essence and like in essence, what do they signify by these but coessential?

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So his argument is, you're saying what we are saying. There is no reason for you to continue to object to the homoousios, you're saying the same thing.

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What am I addressing? The people who are not saying the same thing, but are specifically making a distinction in essence and substance.

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So just going to the text itself, and these texts are generally available, thankfully these days.

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I mean, back when I first started reading this stuff, that wasn't generally available like that. But you can get them online, the

34:40

PDFs are available, you can get them for Logos, there's all sorts of ways in which you can have this material available.

34:46

I think I have, on either the ministry resource list or maybe my personal resource list,

34:53

I think I have that set that I would love to have in, was it

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Logos? Or was it in Accordance? I think it's in Accordance. That would be something that would be extremely, extremely useful to have, because then

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I could have it on my iPad and that would be great. But anyways, so I go back to this.

35:12

So that was the first whoops whoops, allegedly, but actually we call it nitpicking.

35:23

Then we have the fact that, again, I'm sure that David Waltz will be directed to this particular podcast, but many of you, who especially last year were listening, probably got a little tired over time of the lengthy period of time in which we reviewed the debate that had taken place between my upcoming

35:49

Oneness Pentecostal opponent in Brisbane and actually, if I recall correctly, a

35:57

Church of Christ minister. We spent literally hours dealing in -depth with the statements of the

36:09

Oneness Pentecostal proponent and others, hours in -depth, and what we kept encountering over and over and over and over again was the fact that the only meaningful way to understand the outcome of the argumentation that was being presented was that in the

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Jesus of the New Testament, you have two persons. They speak to each other. They differentiate from one another.

36:40

They have different origins. One's eternal. One is not. Now there are different views taken by individuals within the broad camp of oneness today.

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And especially after the breakup, well, breakup, I guess they still refer to it this way, the

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Great Apostasy that took place. You know, the United Pentecostal Church, that organization was rather monolithic for a long period of time, extremely legalistic and extremely strict.

37:16

And then there was the Great Apostasy. There were people who basically broke out, they left, they got kicked out, however you want to view it from whichever perspective.

37:26

And really, you know, the Phillips, Craig, and Dean churches are really a part of the spinoffs from that, people that got into more seeker -friendly stuff and they wanted to be able to, you know, wear 21st century clothing and things like that.

37:45

And so you get, you end up getting a much wider spectrum. Now I have written on the subject of oneness theology for a long time.

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And if you're going to criticize me, then criticize me on what I wrote. Go look at my published works.

38:08

Instead, what he does is I made the statement. Here's what

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I said. But before that, before those questions, Jakes had provided the absolutely necessary redefinition from a non -Trinitarian, modalistic perspective, which was when asked initially about the existence of three divine persons, the response was,

38:27

I can go there, but that's not my favorite way of saying it. That doesn't do it for me. Well, when someone starts talking about the ancient creeds of church and says that doesn't do it for me,

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I want to know why. When you go back into his teaching before this, he has consistently used the language of manifestations.

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He has said that there is one God, but different manifestations, going to a major text of 1 Timothy 3 .16,

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where God was manifest in the flesh, even though the earliest reading the manuscripts he was manifest in the flesh.

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But leaving that to the side, oneness Pentecostals, Jesus -only Pentecostals teach that Jesus is literally two persons.

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Now he says, James White does not know what he is talking about here. Oneness Pentecostals do not teach that Jesus was literally two persons.

39:13

Now, again, if you're going to be honest, which David Waltz is not, he is a dishonest man. He's been documented to be dishonest many, many times.

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And he's going to write long responses that I'm not going to even bother reading because I don't care.

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It's been proven too many times to even bother. His credibility is gone.

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But if he would bother, if he were, if he would bother to actually look, then he could find an article.

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It's been posted on our website. It was one of the first things we ever posted on our website. I mean, it is ancient.

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With lengthy citations from David Bernard and now it's the UPCI, United Pentecostal International.

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It was different back then, but they've changed the name a little bit. I have tried to get David Bernard to debate.

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I have done presentations within miles of their headquarters on the subject of Oneness Pentecostals.

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And with Oneness Pentecostals sitting in the audience and having questions and answers, I've gone through all this stuff. I've actually debated these people.

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He has not. So he sits in his easy chair in his nice library and throws out cavils, but doesn't actually engage these folks.

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There is absolutely no question that when you listen to what these folks have to do, and I'm talking about the

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Jakes style, I'm not even talking about an even semi -scholarly view of it, because Jakes isn't coming from a semi -scholarly perspective.

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The very fact that he never even mentions the textual variant in 1 Timothy 3 .16, he just quotes it as if it's just the given text, demonstrates that we're not talking here about someone who is making fine distinctions, similar to the vast majority of Oneness Pentecostals with whom

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I've had debates in the past as well. And certainly, certainly, go listen to the debate that I had in Brisbane last year.

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And you tell me that the Jesus that is presented by my opponent is not two persons.

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He is going to affirm that the deity makes reference to the humanity, the humanity makes reference to the deity.

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That's the whole thing that I emphasize. That's the whole thing that the question and answer was meant to prove.

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It's too easy to demonstrate these things. And so he goes and he quotes from the

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Oneness of God, Jesus is true God and true man as one divine human person. Yeah, well, what does that mean?

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We can distinguish these two aspects of Christ's identity, but we cannot separate them. The Incarnation joined the fullness of deity to complete humanity.

41:54

That sounds wonderful. But given the fact that you deny the eternality of the

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Son and yet have the Son speak in distinction from the Father, what is the result of this?

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What is the only logical result of this? I mean, it's like saying, yeah, well, the one who is

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Pentecostal don't really deny the deity of Christ. Well, if you're going to make the Son a creature that comes into existence at his birth in Bethlehem, and I know,

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I know, or there are some who would say he was an idealized plan in the mind of the Father. He came into existence at his birth in Bethlehem.

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And we, again, how many hours did we spend on this program listening and very carefully examining what was said on this very subject?

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Does he quote any of that? No. All he does is he just takes one statement from a video presentation, which is the conclusion of the logical result.

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I wasn't sitting there saying, now, let us take time to look at what the website here says. This is what

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I call nitpicking. Ignore the published work. Ignore the actual interaction with the proponents of these viewpoints.

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Find one thing and try to make yourself look really good, because you've actually never done anything. So this is how you make yourself look good.

43:24

Pitiful. So today, you have James R. White. You should have stayed out of the deep water, part two.

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And we have a discussion of modalism.

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And here's what I said. It would be very easy, would have been absolutely simplistic, to press

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T .D. Jakes to come up with a meaningful response to one simple question, which I would think would be just obvious to a church leader at least, and that is this.

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Did the Son, as a divine person, pre -exist His birth in Bethlehem?

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That is exactly what I said. That is exactly what should have been asked, and right after Elephant Room 2,

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I mean, what was it, the next day? I think it was the next morning, if I recall correctly.

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We were playing His exact statement. And that's exactly what

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I said. Exactly what I said. Not as an ideal idea, not as a concept in the mind of the

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Father, but did the Son, as a divine person, exist prior to His birth in Bethlehem?

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Did He have interaction with the Father? And a bit later, at 15 and following. All you have to do to recognize modalism, and to unmask modalism, is to say, do you believe the

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Son, as a divine person, pre -existed His birth in Bethlehem? Was in relationship with the Father? There was communion and love between the

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Son and the Father before the Incarnation. The question was not asked. Now, the form of modalism that T .D.

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Jakes has taught consistently over the years would specifically be identified by that question.

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That would unmask it. And even in the statements that he made, going back to the

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Manifestation stuff, he clearly is still holding that. So, what does

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David Waltz do? Does David Waltz follow the context? Does David Waltz allow the context to be

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T .D. Jakes? No, of course not. He says, I discern two significant problems with the above comments by James.

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We're not on first name basis, Mr. Waltz. First, modalists believe the one being that is

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God, I'm using James' own phrase from his book The Forgotten Trinity here, pre -existed

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His Incarnation as Father, Word, and Spirit. Are you talking about T .D.

46:00

Jakes? Because that's who I was talking about. You got a footnote here? To T .D. Jakes, specifically?

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Pre -existed His Incarnation as Father, Word, and Spirit. Evidently not as Son.

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Now, notice he's confusing essence and person. James' absolutely simplistic question is easily sidestepped by historic, traditional modalists.

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I haven't found them to be able to sidestep it. And I actually debate them, unlike Mr.

46:37

Waltz. Second, a number of evangelical theologians, including Reformed folk, deny the Second Person of the

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Trinity existed as the Son prior to the Incarnation. See this thread for documentation.

46:47

Well, interestingly enough, A, I don't know how that's relevant, because if you're

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Reformed, you believe that the Second Person of the Trinity existed.

47:02

And whether you want to use the Sonship language, that's certainly the Orthodox Reformed view.

47:08

But even if you don't, the fact is that you would still affirm that there was the

47:15

Second Person of the Trinity who existed in relationship with the Father. Or you're not

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Reformed, and in fact, you're not Trinitarian. And then he puts three exclamation marks after that, as if,

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I bet you don't even know that! Maybe it was just an off day for James.

47:34

I sincerely hope that in his debates with modalists, his arguments were substantially more accurate and solid. In other words, I've never listened to any of his debates with those folks!

47:42

But with that said, I shall end this post by recommending that a good portion of his presentation in the

47:47

No Compromise video should be forgotten as soon as possible. Isn't that sweet? And so much for the knit pickers, and the fact that when you picket knits, all you're demonstrating is that you're on the same level with the knits.

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And you really need to get a life! Do something positive!

48:11

David Waltz, it's just sad to see you wasting all that... Well, actually, get

48:16

Orthodox first! Get grounded, get in a solid church, start doing something meaningful down the road. Maybe that would be something you would want to do.

48:23

You know, I was... actually, I was looking at you out there. I tried to bring up the phone system, and I couldn't.

48:31

It's dead. What? Well, it wasn't doing it for a while, and then it finally came up, but...

48:40

Yeah. Our one caller was... who's actually called from Australia, by the way. Oh. Yeah, I'd already, you know, dropped him.

48:48

You know, tried to give him a decent explanation, though. On what? But I didn't get the...

48:54

I couldn't, because I was trying to bring up the phone system, and I was like, well, you know, so... Didn't we just get that phone system back a little while ago?

49:00

Yes. Yes. Okay. All right. Well, we may need to have it repaired once again.

49:06

But the last time, it was just the power supply. Is the power supply up? It is up, but it just doesn't want to talk to anybody anymore.

49:13

Oh, great. Okay. Well. All right. I was going to throw the phone lines open there, but we will not do that, because I can't get through to it.

49:25

It doesn't want to talk to me anymore, and evidently now it's not wanting to talk to the people sitting right in front of it. That's a bad thing.

49:31

So we'll hopefully... And no, we can't do Skype right now, because that takes two people, and we've only got one person here right now.

49:39

So I am ready. I am ready to press on in responding to Paul Williams.

49:47

So we will be okay. We will be fine. I just need to keep my eyes on the... We both need to keep our eyes on the video, the cameras.

49:55

We had an interesting experience here yesterday. We had a... I don't know how to describe the guy.

50:02

I guess he'd be homeless, but... A bum. Well, okay, yeah, but I don't know.

50:11

He looked a little more shifty than just your standard person going down the street. And the reason

50:17

I say that is he knew how to make it look like he was where he was supposed to be. He just walked with a purpose.

50:23

Yeah, he walked with a purpose, and that made it look like he... And he decided to just walk into the building here and head into an area that...

50:31

Well, there's no air conditioning or anything like that. It hasn't been used forever, but it would be a really good place to hide.

50:38

I don't go walking up those stairs and checking the place out or anything like that.

50:43

And if we had walked... If we hadn't seen him on the video cameras, he could have set up a nice little spot up there, opened the window, you can go out that direction.

50:53

Who knows? We probably would have smelled him, though. Oh, really? Okay, I didn't have any direct encounter with him.

51:00

But anyway, we've got to keep an eye on things. We are in the fifth largest city in the

51:07

United States, unfortunately, and so things do happen. So we're going to keep on going here, and even while I'm playing

51:15

Paul Williams, I will still keep my eye on the cars out there. So anyways, hopefully you've got this queued up.

51:25

If you've lost track, and we'll only do a few minutes here, we've been listening to Paul Williams' presentation in a debate,

51:32

I believe it was with Chris Green, I believe was the name, off the top of my head. It's been a little while. And we've heard him throwing out all sorts of accusations against the

51:41

Gospel text, not showing any contextual sensitivity to what's actually being said.

51:47

It's the old one standard for the New Testament, different standard for the Qur 'an type stuff. And remember, it was Paul Williams who suggested that article that I read last time, that identified our

51:55

God as non -compassimentus, which means basically insane. And so we found further inconsistencies there.

52:04

But we're, I think, about to look at what he's trying to do is assert, again, the synoptic problem as a means of argumentation here.

52:16

And I think we, I'm not sure exactly where the break in his presentation is. We'll get to it eventually. Evident from the changes he made to Jesus' words, by removing his denial that he is good.

52:29

Here is Matthew's altered version in chapter 19, verse 17. A man asked

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Jesus, good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus said to him, why do you ask me about what is good?

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There is only one who is good. Instead of Mark's original, why do you call me good?

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Although I don't intend this evening to dwell on what the later figure called

52:56

St. Paul taught about Jesus, as he never met Jesus during his life. Yes he did.

53:06

Yes he did. During his life. He means his life as in Jesus' life.

53:12

Well, I'm going to assume. Let's extend the benefit of the doubt and say he means he never met

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Jesus during Jesus' life. Because when you think about it, from the Muslim perspective, if Jesus didn't die, when he was taken up to heaven, then how could

53:30

Paul be having visions of him? Well, I guess he could be having visions of him because Muhammad did. But if, it was just an ambiguous statement.

53:38

Because certainly Paul did claim to have met Jesus. And if you dismiss

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Paul's claims, then you have to dismiss Muhammad's claims as well. For that very thing. But, once again, and this is something

53:53

I would highly recommend to you all. There is a great module, and I'm sure

54:00

BibleWorks has it. I remember BibleWorks did. I'm looking at Accordance. I don't know about Logos.

54:05

I have Logos, but I've never found the Bible program to be, well I've found it to be mystifying. But I use

54:12

Accordance. There is a synoptic section. So you can either buy a paper, synoptic, you know, publication type thing.

54:21

Or you can bring up synoptic parallels in a lot of the

54:26

Bible programs that you have today. And, once again, the assumption here is you have

54:35

Mark. It's just this literary dependence. It's really the simplistic way of getting around the real issues in the synoptic

54:45

Gospels. I'm just going to be honest about it. I think if you just buy into, yeah

54:50

Mark wrote first, and Matthew and Luke had him. And they also had this Q source which we never found.

54:56

And they're just sitting there doing the editing thing. I think that's the cheap way out. And I think much of New Testament studies these days has taken the cheap way out.

55:05

It's not only a non -supernatural way out, but it's a cheap way too. Because it ends up asking more questions it can answer.

55:12

And it ignores the context of these documents in the early church. And I think it's rather dismissive of both

55:20

Matthew and Luke as well. But in this case, once again, we catch Paul Williams not being completely up front with the text.

55:29

Because you have in Mark, good teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?

55:36

And Jesus said to him, why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. Now, by the way, I believe it was either

55:41

Bigelow or Monty in chapter that did point out to me that I was correct.

55:49

And I have this on my other Mac and I keep forgetting to transfer it in here.

55:55

But there is the comment, I was right, that Richard Balcom, who is one of the sources that Paul Williams cites all the time.

56:05

Richard Balcom did, in his dialogue with a non -Christian scholar on the early worship of Jesus on the unbelievable radio program.

56:16

It's not a long section, but he did cite this very portion of the

56:24

Gospel of Mark. And Balcom said that clearly people who cite this as evidence against an early belief of worship of Jesus, so on and so forth.

56:38

Just aren't understanding what the text is saying. Which, of course, is what I've said all along, coming from a different perspective, obviously.

56:47

Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. So, do you really think

56:53

I'm good? Now, Matthew has, why are you asking me about what is good?

56:59

There is only one who is good, but if you wish to enter into the life, keep the commandments. Now notice, there is a significant difference between Mark and Matthew's rendering.

57:13

You would have to assume that Matthew is just making stuff up on the fly. It makes much more sense, you don't have to accuse anybody of dishonesty.

57:22

It makes much more sense to see that Mark and Matthew are drawing from different streams of the same tradition, than it is to say that Mark has written one thing and Matthew doesn't like it.

57:32

But if later people are trying to do this evolution type thing, then why does

57:38

Luke have what Luke has? A ruler questioned him saying, good teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?

57:45

And Jesus said to him, why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. Sounds like Mark and Luke are drawing from the exact same tradition.

57:53

But if Luke's writing later like Matthew, why hasn't he become embarrassed by this statement?

58:01

The fact of the matter is, that when you put them together, the idea that there has to always be evolution, ends up creating more questions than it actually answers.

58:16

And it necessitates your assertion of dishonesty on the part of the individuals who are collecting these things.

58:24

Anyways, we will continue right where we are with that.

58:30

Next time on The Dividing Line, continue to pray for the book. And yes, heading to London, we will be debating at the

58:40

East London Mosque and at Trinity Road Chapel in September.

58:46

I mentioned that on Twitter this morning. We will be at the East London Mosque on the 17th of September.

58:54

We will be at Trinity Road Chapel on the 19th. We are looking for a location for a debate the next week on either the 24th or the 25th.

59:02

Still working on that right now. But we will have information up and on the website as soon as we can give you addresses and times and all the rest of that stuff.

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We'll talk to you next time on The Dividing Line. See you then. God bless. The Dividing Line The Dividing Line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.

01:00:02

If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at P .O.

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Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona 85069. You can also find us on the

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World Wide Web at AOMIN .org. That's A -O -M -I -N .org. Where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates and tracks.