Road Trip Dividing Line: It Wasn't Broke, We Fixed It Anyway

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:37

My name is James White and I have got a bunch of feedback coming back from this little thing down here that we need to mute or it's gonna be a short program.

00:47

There we go. Thanks for being with us. We are live on the air and we are live on the road.

00:55

I am in Pryor, Oklahoma and you go, weren't you there a few days ago? Yes, I got here early and I'm just bumming off of poor people and just have to put up with it.

01:08

I'm sorry for them. And in fact, I am the poor person that I've been bumming off of.

01:15

So I'm not sure if I've ever referred to you as the troublemaker from Oklahoma.

01:23

I think I probably am. Just as an astronaut whose yard

01:28

I am currently putting divots in because the jacks are sinking.

01:38

In fact, I can almost guarantee you when I try to pull that jack up, it's going to take a jack to get it out of the hole.

01:50

We had a lot of fun because I shouldn't say this, but I was driving a little 19 foot southbound

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RV. It was pouring rain and the mirrors were gone.

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It was all fog. I'm into where I am right now.

02:25

I don't think it's out there anymore. No, we killed it. She killed the fourth.

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And then I guess track out here before.

02:45

So I about 2010, I think it's been 10, 12, 14.

03:01

Okay. And she, but she's only 10. Okay. And maybe it's 10. We're both getting sold.

03:12

That was earlier. It was the, it was the following year. We got broke into right after that.

03:25

I don't know. Um, and we're going to be doing a series tomorrow evening at,

03:36

I believe you said 6 30. Let me see the address of the church. It's 18.

03:43

Here in front. That's not where this campus.

03:51

Yeah. I'll leave the campus. And so, and we were trying to arrange it, preach a dedication.

04:02

So, uh, for, uh, three 30 and then 10, 15, 10, 15

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Sunday morning. Um, I'm hoping that, uh, the folks at G3 same topic.

04:24

You think there's any room for, for talking about the study of God. It works out that way.

04:38

So now you have,

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I have, uh, on the dividing line before it's my, uh,

04:57

Melton Ford. So let me, let me get, let's see.

05:03

The problem is I can't, but I'm trying to find that.

05:11

Uh, there we go. There's let's see, this is a, tell me a little bit about the mask.

05:21

So that's good skills together. Why is the more strength is something that was ninth century and for the layers grant strength to it.

05:40

So that blade there, I think has probably um, here, Damascus has even a

05:47

Damascus score. Uh, it also has layers of copper forge welded into the bullet and tools.

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So it's super strong, super nimble. I mean, it will undergo some pressure and yeah, it's a, it's a good boy.

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So has a, has a copper finger guard here. And then, um, that's a darn wood.

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That's a darn wood. Turquoise and a stack sandbar. And, and, uh, this is the only one that's ever had three pieces of Turquoise.

06:21

I do appreciate it. It's very in the reference there. So I want to make this thing.

06:29

I mean, I, I saw it at various, uh, and what in the world you were when

06:39

I first came here, you were a pastor in church, but you were also, uh, I think second in command of our police department, right?

06:47

Yeah. I served 30 years there. I was retired and police chief. And so full time and full time.

06:57

I had no time for anything. And so after I retired, my wife said, you need a hobby. You need a hobby.

07:06

I need a hobby. And the wife says you need a hobby then. It's been iron workers, my grandfather and my dad owned a steel fish and have since I've been able to, to walk and I love knives.

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Have you done anything like this before? No, I have not. You find a forge.

07:33

That's right. And YouTube videos.

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I met some master bladesmiths, watch them forge a few times and sort of started learning, learning by mistakes.

07:50

And have you saved errors? Just simply blade I ever forged in the house.

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I'll just show it. Yeah. I, you would not. I imagine.

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I mean, you sit out there and you pull these things glowing hot and you're, you're doing the old medieval blacksmith guy thing with a big old hammer and the whole nine yards.

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I mean, that is, if I was looking for a hobby, that's what

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I would have picked. Well, it's a little different, but that is my de -stressor. And so after I come home from a very stressful day or on Monday morning,

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I've got jet lag from preaching. I'll come out and work that out through to start hitting steel.

08:36

Now you guys over here. I call it my brick truck model is

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Damascus with actually made that for my wife. She deer hunts. And that's like a Damascus with a brick trout.

08:52

So again, you see the copper layers and the handle what's, what did you work? Yeah. That's called

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Brooke trout. It looks like a, a brook trout. Yeah. And so that's the book that there's, that's give to your wife.

09:08

Oh, she loves it. And she, she killed me for saying that song earlier. And that's the one

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I made myself clean six deer this year. Really? You've cleaned six deer.

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That's got a little extra little thing for a left -hander. Yes. Perfect. I see. All right.

09:25

Look at that. I'm trying to get it up there. Now you contacted me back when we started doing the project and you,

09:44

I do want to apologize that her wife was not allowed to come out and see which one and, but she did.

09:53

And I let her, I let her see it. But for not only a unit like this, but for this, the studio as well, mentioned this on the program before I said a bunch of times, you are faithful.

10:17

Yeah, that's true. Because not only did I, with that little bit of used chaos,

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I mean, and I had, look, I think I've already mentioned this, but I, I did not have that little 19 foot self -contained and pre -rented for more than three hours before I destroyed air conditioner on a basalt hoop.

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I remember. Oh, but see, I didn't even realize I had done it until I hit a rainstorm on the way out.

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It just poured in. And so, so, so you got to picture this folks. You really do.

10:55

What, what has this man had to put up with to have me around? Not only does he have to kill his, his plant out there by running it over and then get stuck in the mud.

11:05

He has to pull me out of the mud twice. But then when it stopped raining, finally, cause that was a real rainstorm.

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I mean, that was like a week long rainstorm. And you had to, you got up on the roof and took the cover off the air conditioner.

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And that's when we realized it had been shoved back. Like there's like three inches. Hell, there's blue sky.

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And so we, we started putting, pushing back into place and we, we went to a local store and we bought sealing tape,

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Gorilla Grip sealing tape. I carry some now just in case. And we got the, you know,

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I got all the way home without leaking anymore. It probably still does some way. No, the, believe me, replaced it.

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That thing may be sitting someplace in, in, in the woods, Oklahoma, someplace.

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Cause there's a lot of those types of things. Yeah. I had to put up with all that stuff with me.

12:05

It was absolutely amazing. But you knew we were doing this fundraiser.

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And so now, by the way, okay. So when it was out here, you said,

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I saw inside your unit and that's where I saw bunks in the back, which is what popped into the old brain last year and led to this whole idea.

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You said, get this kind of wall, not kind of wall you have on yours. And you said, get a fill because it's more stable in wind.

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And we did all, you are really to blame for a lot of this stuff. Brother, I appreciate it.

12:53

I wouldn't believe, I mean, I even, I even mentioned to you, I think somewhere on the line that I, with this morning at breakfast,

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I mentioned when I went into your unit, you had the doors open. It was active.

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You had a store based for the time you had the doors open and explain. If you don't do that,

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I learned. I remember every time I parked the unit. So we learned a lot real fast.

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And so I thank you very, very much. However, who has now pulled an RV farther than you have?

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It's nice that way. You may find yourself being a minister someday and now, you know how to, now, you know how to do all this stuff.

13:38

So, you know, you knew we were raising funds for all this stuff. And you are also one of the two people that I saw with a

13:49

Jeffrey Rice rebuying before I had one. That's right. You had a, what is it?

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It had the five solos. I think mine is the first one that Jeffrey did with five solos.

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I mean, I've never seen one before and now it's gone crazy. You know, you can buy them that way now, but I think

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I had the first one. It was something I wanted on my preaching Bible. And I had Jeffrey rebuying my new

14:17

American standard for me and do that for me. And that was when he was first learning. So he was pretty new at that.

14:23

Right. And then Kofi. Then Kofi had one done before I did. Right. Okay. So those are the two that I saw.

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Right. And that's when I contacted Jeffrey and said,

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I have a Greek New Testament that I'd really like to have done. And he just went all out on that.

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And when I showed him the timeline, that's what led to the, really to the business itself for Jeffrey.

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So you were one of the two people that were very important in doing that. All of that said, you said, once Jeffrey said he was going to do the

15:02

Bible to help with the fundraiser. I'm pretty sure, and I could be wrong about this, but I think that is done.

15:16

Right. Maybe I'm not sure. Talk to us right now.

15:22

But the last bid that I saw on the

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Jeffrey Rice rebuying Bible was $1 ,700. Now I sat around and I figured that's 17 gas stops on a trip.

15:39

Right. Because as you know, you have the diesel truck. Right. And I'd say probably average is right at a hundred bucks.

15:48

Oh, unfortunately he just, he just texted me and I left my phone in the other room and it said, look,

15:56

I've just pulled it up here. Yeah. 1 ,700. So I'm assuming that was what it's done.

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That's done now. I'm not a hundred percent certain, but obviously everybody, we realize that that is a, just a wonderfully generous donation.

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And we're very, very thankful. And I'm very, very thankful for everybody else who gave, but somebody else contacted me and said,

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Hey, I would like to donate something for the fundraiser. And that is one of these beautiful knives.

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Now you're working on it. You were showing me some of it this morning.

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You said it's all wrapped up cause you're doing the hands. Right. I'm working on the handle. But you said that you actually said before we got started that I, that I, if I wanted to,

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I should maybe think about auctioning my knife and taking this one because you're saying this steel is just absolutely amazing.

16:52

This steel is probably the best I've used in all these years of making blades. It's visually stunning.

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It's going to have layers of nickel steel into the tool steel as well.

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So it's got layers of raindrop Damascus with nickel, and then a tool that's going to be blackened with that silver guard and then a stabilized maple handle with blue rosin in it.

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It's going to be, it's going to be beautiful. It's going to be beautiful. So now I'm not,

17:33

I don't know. Um, I think there was actually someone trying from London to get the

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Bible. They probably couldn't get that knife in London. I don't know.

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London, London. Yeah. No guns, no knives. So the folks from London probably don't want to be, uh, but in the back of your mind, are you sitting there going, well, and you know,

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Jeffrey got it, which is going to write going on here.

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And so, um, what we'll probably do, my assumption is what we'll do is, um, well, you'll probably have it.

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Right. Absolutely. So I can take it with me. We need to, we need to get some, you've gotten really good at taking pictures too.

18:30

Well, I hired that. That's why I hired that. Okay. All right.

18:35

All right. I can, I can try to fake it and, uh, we'll try to get some pictures taken.

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And so, um, maybe by the next dividing line, we'll, we'll see. I might be able to, we might be able to start a process, uh, with one of these, um, now primarily going to travel fund, but you know, it's all getting, keeping this thing going down the road, uh, which is the challenging part of everything.

19:00

So, um, I'm from what you're telling me, uh, you know, maybe I'll have to put a bid in myself or something, you know, because you're, you're telling me this, this supposed to be really, really, really.

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So it's going to be beautiful. It's going to be, it's going to be utilitarian. It's going to be useful. So, well, see, see what's utilitarian about this for me is that it's, it's absolutely gorgeous and beautiful and, um, and stuff like that, but you go out and you kill things and, and things like that.

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And you love when you see your blades getting used. I'm not trying to put this blade down just because I don't go out and kill something.

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Uh, but someday, who knows, maybe somebody offered. No, I know.

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I know. It's just, it's not like you're next door from where we are here.

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So, so, uh, you've been here now, uh, the, the church was found January 10th, 1999.

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I started a teen ministry in 1991. So I started working with street kids and still are, still are.

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We're 30 years into serving Thunderbird. It's a military department ran program for at -risk teenagers, 16 year old high school dropouts.

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Well, yeah, you've spoke to those kids in years gone by. And so we're 30 years of working with, uh, troubled teens and we love that.

20:29

But now grace line church, um, is the, the parent church ministry over that. And so a lot of ministry and, uh, we have a growing adult ministry and we had to move to a new campus.

20:42

We bought a new campus about half of the Seabuck actually, uh, about a year and a half ago. And we're real thankful.

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Lord has made way for that. And it's a very kind, gracious, godly people helped us to get into that property.

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And things have just been really gangbusters ever since. And prior, uh, back when

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I first came pretty, pretty small area and then Google came. That's right. And so, um, you're starting to face some challenges because Google has brought in stuff in the public schools, stuff like that.

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So there's a lot of, uh, need for, you would think in, uh, in, in Oklahoma, the

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Bible belt that, uh, but it's not that way. It's not that way. It used to be the

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Bible belt and everything that is in California is prior now, sadly. And we're seeing that, that drift.

21:36

And, um, but you know, we're, Yeah, but you were a cop, you saw it all. That's true. You saw it all. That's true. So you are, you already knew the buckle was rusted.

21:43

Right. You had seen right up front, uh, you, you probably, horrible,

21:52

Romans chapter one, you can possibly have. Yeah. I mean, there are things I wish I didn't see. Oh, sure. I've not seen it.

21:58

Yeah. Yeah. Thankfully the Lord helped me through all those years and I'm thankful for every year

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I get to serve. And I did six straight years of sex crimes against children. Uh, back in the day when

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I did before I became the assistant chief and, you know, some rancid.

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And, uh, I just remember back then you were really looking forward to retire. And I'm thankful to be retired.

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I bet for all you've done. Thank you for all the wisdom. And, uh,

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I have, I have very said to brother Derek that if, because, you know, maybe if the

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Lord willing, you know, he's going to be looking at getting, uh, uh, you know, a fifth wheel type set up in the future,

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I hopefully will be able to be of assistance to you. I hope so. From experience now that I have gathered, you know, what's going to happen is

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I'm going to drive down the road on Monday morning and drive off into a ditch like that.

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Cause you were, you were bragging about how far you got that thing going. That's what's going to happen.

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You just, you just know it, you know, snow. But thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure. There are, there are pastors across the

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U S that I've, and it's funny, most of them are not in real big places.

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You know, you got Tom Buck, uh, you know, you know, some massive, huge place. And a lot of the pastors that I've gotten to know, uh, are in smaller places.

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And that's really, I don't know. There's just something about the faithfulness level required to be dealing with those situations.

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And it's not all the politics and all the rest of that stuff. It's just dealing with people. And so it's, uh, it's been a pleasure to be here and hopefully the folks have, uh, gotten used to the very strange, bald

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Scotsman, uh, coming in every, every few years. Well, they're excited. Yeah.

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I'm looking forward to it. They cheer every Sunday when we make the announcement. So they're excited. And I've been excited.

24:01

I always love when you come just to hang out and go eat. What's the place called?

24:08

Hugo's. Hugo's. Uh, go eat. If you, if you come, yeah, you said, told me this morning, you used to have one in Pryor.

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It's no longer. Yes. Right. So there is a, there is a restaurant that you want to have the largest breakfast.

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If you want to see what pretty much the entire looks like in the form of, uh, this, this place is famous for it.

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And it was good again this morning. It's always good. We've had some, we've had some in -depth conversations about a lot of interesting things.

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That's the truth over the tables and love it. Oh yeah. It's good stuff, brother. Thank you so much. We'll look forward to getting the pictures of that new laid up and, uh, uh, getting things set up as far as the, uh, uh, and we'll see what happens or blesses it for the minister.

25:03

There you go. Let me keep your, uh, now we're going to hope that he hasn't fall over here because trying to get in here is a bit of a challenge, but thank you very much.

25:17

And I'm going to kill that microphone and I'm going to stay on this one, uh, for the, for near future, for the rest of the program.

25:27

Thanks for letting us do that. Uh, thanks for listening in and, uh, pray for pastor Derek and the folks here, uh, in prior and ministry here.

25:35

He really is a wonderful ministry. He's a great guy. Uh, give you the shirt off the back and, um, uh, it's, uh, it's great.

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And I, I, I've gotten to know his cats. There's a little teeny kitty.

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She's getting really old. I'm not, this may be the last time I see her. So, uh, anyway, uh, just personal stuff.

25:55

Um, a couple of things I want to get to today and I do need to be wrapping up pretty much at the top of the hour.

26:01

So, uh, and there's stuff to play as well. All right, let's transition to a few things.

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I said last time I wanted to talk a little bit about Andy Stanley. He's doing a series and I will, um, oh, by the way, do you like the background?

26:17

It's different, huh? Yes. I put that up. I did that even with my bum shoulder.

26:24

Um, I'm going to have to do some repair to it and things like that. Rich would have done a better job, but I don't think the camera could tell one way or the other.

26:33

Um, and, uh, so yeah, we keep working on ways of doing stuff.

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And, um, I'm wondering what the timelines are, uh, that Rich is seeing right now.

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Looks like you're beneath the sea now. It does sort of look like that.

26:55

I don't have rotating through colors or anything like that. We should do that. Let's see if it, let's see if it changes.

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Yep. Uh -huh. Uh -huh. Okay. This could absolutely drive the camera insane.

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If I see smoke coming out of the camera, I will stop it, but sort of fun for now to let it just sort of do its thing.

27:26

Anyway, uh, Andy Stanley, I listened to the sermon.

27:33

He's doing a, a series called the Fundamental List, not Fundamentalist, Fundamental List.

27:42

And here's my, I, most people, a lot of people have commented on the fact that I'm not an

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Andy Stanley hater. I'm not those people that are just you know, tossing nuclear bombs in his direction and just, you're, you're done, you're out of here.

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I try to think about what his background is and I try to be fair in my criticisms.

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And he does follow me on Twitter, so I hope that maybe one day he might hear something that I'm saying.

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And I, I would like to try to be a voice to say, here's some of the dangers of what

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I'm becoming. Here's my concern. In this current sermon,

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I'm not going to play anything, I've got other things to play. In the current sermon, he emphasizes, we have four

28:42

Gospels. And he makes a distinction, because remember, we've unhitched from the

28:47

Old Testament. And he says, not everything in the

28:54

Bible is equally important. And he's specific, he makes reference, all scripture is

29:01

Thaddeus' house, all scripture is God breathed, but that doesn't mean everything is equally important. Well, okay.

29:08

The narration of a particular battle in the

29:16

Old Testament, in a certain way of looking at this, as far as the centrality of the message of scripture, yeah, obviously.

29:27

But the problem is, what he's doing with this is he's establishing different levels of authority in scripture itself.

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My concern, my concern is most of us should be aware of the fact that there is a movement called, well,

29:55

I call it hyper red letterism, but the red letter Jesus, it's a movement, red letter

30:01

Christianity, that in essence says that the teachings of Jesus are the normative, are the norm that norms everything else.

30:16

So that you can put aside Paul and others at a lower level.

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And we've seen what happens here, you look at a Brian Zond, you look at the emergent church, the emergent church was very much associated with this perspective as well.

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And the result's not good. The result is always a deformation of anything close to biblical orthodoxy.

30:49

And so here's my concern. And I think a lot of people would agree that there's reason to be concerned here.

30:59

My concern is that Andy and his leadership are moving toward an affirmation of various perspectives, including gay marriage, homosexuality.

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And these are the issues of our day. These are the things we're being attacked from outside.

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And the church is going to have to take a stand. And we already know progressivism has capitulated on these things.

31:38

It cannot make a meaningful, moral, or ethical argument because it does not have a meaningful, moral, or ethical view of scripture.

31:51

And so my concern is this is the preparatory movement, almost like a five -year plan, except these days it might be like a two -year plan.

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Do this sermon series, establish this aspect of it, then you do this, this next one, you do this next, and it's a degradation down to the point where you can then make affirmation of these things and make the church an affirming church or something along those lines, and bring as many people as possible with you without necessarily splitting the church.

32:26

That's my fear. That's what I'm hearing. I'm listening. I'm trying to listen fairly, but I'm hearing the same stuff from the past that we've all commented on and we've all said, well, this is really troubling.

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And I see it continuing. So I'm going to try to find the time to keep up with this series.

32:52

What is the fundamental list? Because he was saying that there's all this stuff that we have made definitional that is not definitional that becomes stumbling blocks.

33:03

And my concern is the argument is going to be this kind of strict interpretation of these quote -unquote clobber passages is a stumbling block to the gospel.

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And that's why we should be affirming and so on and so forth. That's my concern. That's what

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I'm hearing right now. And I have reason to be concerned about these things. And another reason to be concerned about these things came up just today in looking at a woman by the name of Rachel Gilson who is scheduled to speak at the pastors wives slash women's conference.

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Imago Dei created in his image female. Monday, June 12th,

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New Orleans, Louisiana convention center. So this is a part of the

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New Orleans convention of the SBC, the pastors wives women's conference and Rachel Gilson is speaking at it.

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And what I have heard her saying is really troubling.

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Very, very troubling. And we've been hearing people talking about the drift in the

34:42

Southern Bapst convention. It's really the direction. And when you had certain people who had the presidency for like three years, very, very plainly there are big names that want the

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SBC to pretty much go the exact opposite direction that it went because of the quote unquote conservative resurgence.

35:10

And their understanding very plainly is that if it doesn't go that direction, it will die.

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Their understanding is that the church needs to adapt to this cultural situation.

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And to say adapt to this cultural situation means to accept the progressivist understanding primarily of sexual ethics.

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Now, how far that can go? Just look at the progressivists, look at what's happened to every single denomination that has gone down that road.

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And the odd thing about the SBC is it was going down that road and then reversed course for a while.

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But it seems very plainly that that course is now being reversed back, the direction it was going all along.

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And here is a real clear, obvious example of that. I think

36:14

I still had, I thought that was that there.

36:19

It's not. Let me see if this will bring it up.

36:26

It doesn't look like it wants to. Oh, I know what's going on. It already has that screen up.

36:34

And so it's not going to go to Twitter because that Twitter screen's up. This is only 39 seconds.

36:42

So let's look at this one first. Let's see if I can play this for you. And let's see if the sound comes through.

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That's going to be the difficult part here. Let's see how this goes.

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Let's do it. The Bible holds forth and God is very clever, right?

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His word says, hey, there are two equal ways to faithfully wear your sexuality in the world.

37:09

You can be faithfully single or you can be faithfully married under my definition of marriage.

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And like to live in either of those, you could be attracted to men or women or both or neither or potted plants.

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Like it doesn't, you know, your attractional patterns don't hold you back from having access to God's spirit in order to live faithfully.

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And I find that incredibly freeing. Okay. So the thing is that she is either a graduate of or a student at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.

37:52

Anybody with eyes knows what's been going on at SEBTS for a long time and what has been encouraged to go on at SEBTS as far as CRT and woke perspectives and a much more progressivist viewpoint.

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And this is happening at all the SBC seminars, all of them. Yes, including

38:19

Southern. You can find all sorts of stuff there too. And it's almost expected at some of them.

38:27

It's sort of like, well, yeah, we give those folks over to, it's like all of them. So she's a student at, graduate at something at SEBTS.

38:39

The scary thing is for most Christians, they listen to that and they go, well, you know, you either have to be single and celibate or married.

38:52

And yeah, that sounds right. So yeah.

38:58

Okay. That sounds good. And it's like, did you hear what she said?

39:05

She literally said, hey, as long as you're in one of those two categories, it doesn't matter what you're attracted to.

39:11

You can be attracted to potted plants. Potted plants?

39:19

God's creative intention for mankind and sexuality can include potted plants.

39:31

Now, my understanding is I am seeing online that she herself is same -sex attracted.

39:39

I have not been able to absolutely affirm that. Double -check it, find something she wrote, something along those lines.

39:47

But if that's the case, then you would understand, you could understand what this is all about, sadly. And it should never be that.

39:55

When you're talking about what God says about marriage, you shouldn't be the issue.

40:02

And if you make yourself the issue or you allow your sexual proclivities to determine what you're saying, there's the problem.

40:13

But it should be really obvious to anyone that there is a fundamental disorder in being attracted to the same sex, being attracted to children, being attracted to animals, being attracted to houseplants.

40:38

And now today, we see all of that almost every day. That is disordered.

40:47

That is not part of the liberation of Christ. Oh, we're being set free.

40:54

We don't have to worry about these things. This is someone coming out of Southeastern and teaching at a pastor's wife's women's conference as part of the convention itself.

41:10

And there's no drift? Yeah, there's a drift.

41:17

There's a big drift. And it's sad to see. But there you go.

41:26

Anyway. All right. Big topic here at the end.

41:31

And I think this is vitally important. I'm going to have to be brief in my commentary.

41:37

We can expand upon this in the future. We really can't. Check my email one more time here because I emailed someone to ask them a direct question.

41:48

I haven't gotten an answer yet. So I can't share that with you. When I first saw, excuse me, somewhere within the past month or so,

42:01

I saw the announcement of a Credo Magazine dialogue between Matthew Barrett and Karl Truman.

42:12

I really like Karl Truman. Karl Truman is brilliant. Karl Truman is a fellow cycling enthusiast.

42:22

Go, Geraint Thomas. Actually, I'm a Primoz Roglic guy myself. So I'm figuring he's going to win.

42:29

We're talking about the Gio d 'Italia. Don't worry about it. Anyway. But I have had to make mention in light of the

42:38

Thomistic Renaissance and resourcement and whatever terminology we want to use, that Karl has gone that direction.

42:49

He says 2016, he really dove into Thomas and now is a real devotee and things like that.

42:59

And that's concerning to me. And I mentioned, I was very, very concerned when I heard a webcast he was on about a year and a half ago now with two, with one man who's

43:11

Roman Catholic, one man's Eastern Orthodox, but they are both formally Reformed. So they have abandoned the

43:18

Reformed faith for Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. And it was on that program that not only did

43:26

Karl make some comments about the canon of scripture that made me go, but the main comment that he made that was very, very concerning to me was to say that it's a real struggle.

43:39

And I played this on the program. We commented on it. It's a real struggle to recognize that the men from whom you learned the most about justification by faith were wrong on the doctrine of God.

43:55

And I'm pretty certain that's pretty much a straight quote, wrong on the doctrine of God. Now on another program, he had taken shots and people thought he was taking shots at me.

44:05

And maybe he was, I don't know. About Neo -Sassanians, which

44:12

I would be really disappointed in because no one who knows church history could ever say that.

44:18

And he knows church history. It would involve such a massive, massively unfair, well character assassination, yes, but category error, just horrible category errors.

44:31

But anyway. So when I saw the announcement that Credo was going to be having him on,

44:39

I asked somebody to let me know. Well, I didn't have to because Twitter blew up with it. And then interestingly enough,

44:46

Credo Magazine started blocking everybody. I mean, anyone who has ever said anything, reviewed a

44:57

Credo Magazine article said, man, these guys are really imbalanced on Thomism. We're all blocked now, including myself.

45:03

Now, Matthew Barrett had blocked me. Craig Carter blocked me. And of course, for simply disagreeing with them.

45:13

I have a long block list. Anybody who does profanity, people with 22 followers that question my heritage and my parents, yeah, they're going to get blocked.

45:24

So I've got a long block list, but I don't block people like that. But, you know,

45:31

Craig Carter did it based on a lie. I don't know why Matthew Barrett did it. These folks seem to be very fragile, very thin -skinned, very, ooh, don't question us.

45:41

I, strange, really, really is. Anyway. So the dialogue comes out, and it's not very long.

45:51

There is a lot that could be commented on in it. Barrett made a comment about people and their doctrine of Christ, saying that Christ, I forget the term he used, but he was trying to make a shot at Kenosis, Matthew 24, 36, that whole stuff.

46:15

You know, the fact that I've used language that I can trace all the way back through church history type thing. Yeah, that type of thing. And that was dealing with that text, you know, years ago, most of these guys would have said, oh, just we'll let you do that.

46:29

You know, they weren't even concerned about this stuff. Now they're the experts in all this stuff. Anyway, he did make a comment about that.

46:36

I didn't have time to pull that one up. I might pull it up for the next one and just to make a comment about that. But there were a few things right toward the end that I wanted to comment on today that I think are really troubling, really troubling indeed.

46:51

So let's jump into this. And again, I hope that the sound will, if the sound worked last time, no, the sound wasn't where it was supposed to be.

47:09

I'm going to try to send it where it's supposed to go. And now

47:15

I'm not going to be, I have no way of knowing whether it's working or not. Let me see if I can get signal up here to where I can, okay,

47:28

US only on that one. Yeah, we're only going to take US bids on the knife once we put that up there.

47:36

Because we can't send a knife like that overseas. It'll never be seen again.

47:42

And we will be banned from ever traveling to those countries, which I'm not traveling anyways. The other sounded fine.

47:47

Okay, let's see if this works. I'm just going to hit it. And we'll see if it works.

47:55

You know what? I'll bet you now it's going to work.

48:00

Let's see. Connected to that, I think there's a biblicism, a confusion between being biblical and being biblicist.

48:09

I was seeing a tweet by a well -known, very conservative Baptist last week about Philippians 2.

48:15

And, you know, it struck me as he's speaking as if he thinks nobody's ever seen this. Nobody in the whole of church history has ever realized the various problems associated with this text.

48:24

And it struck me as, that's a very biblical, you know, just throw out a text, and 2 ,000 years of church reflection vanishes down the plughole because they're all idiots.

48:32

And I've suddenly noticed this text. That's a problematic way of thinking about theology, but it works very well in a democratically -impulsed, pragmatic, anti -metaphysical, biblicist.

48:47

Okay. Now, I tried to text.

48:53

I used to have Carl's number. It's been changed. Whoever got that text probably thought it was very strange.

49:01

I emailed, and I have not gotten a response to the email.

49:09

I would very much like to know. And I've emailed Carl, and unless he cancels his

49:16

Gmail account, he should get it. I'm not going to sit here and go back through my feed for the past, because I didn't know when this was recorded.

49:27

And look for everything I've ever said about Philippians chapter 2, but I've said a lot about Philippians chapter 2. If he's describing,

49:34

Carl, if you see this, if you're describing me, shame on you. You know that's not what

49:39

I did. You know that's not what I would do. So I want to know who you're talking about.

49:48

If you're going to make a comment like this, if you're going to talk about people putting 2 ,000 years worth of interpretation down the rabbit hole or whatever, you should know

50:01

I would be someone who has looked at how many people have interpreted this text.

50:07

But you also should know that their interpretation does not overthrow the fundamental exegesis of the text itself, and that there have been many down through history who have been deeply damaged by following origin, by following Thomas's ideas of exegesis, where he just connects a word.

50:32

There's a word in the psalm here, so you connect it here, and that means this in here, and that ends up making Philippians 2 mean something completely different.

50:41

I've documented how Thomas does this, for example, in Romans chapter 4. I don't know how much of what

50:47

I've actually said you've listened to. And how much you may be just listening to others. I'm hoping that you're referring to somebody else.

50:55

I'd like to see this tweet. But I have a feeling when you're talking about a well -known conservative

51:03

Baptist in Philippians chapter 2, forgive me for thinking that may be a shot at me.

51:10

And if it is, it was unworthy of you. Unworthy of you. And here's my challenge.

51:15

If you have any integrity, sir, you'll provide the tweet, and I'll have you on this program to talk about it.

51:24

How's that sound? You and me on this program, live, we'll talk about it.

51:32

See, I have nothing to hide. I'm doing this for the welfare of the church. So if that was me, if that's what you're talking about, identify the tweet.

51:43

We'll play this. We'll see if that's what I did. And then we can talk about what

51:48

Philippians 2 is saying. Is that fair? I think that's really fair.

51:55

I think it's really necessary. And unlike so many people in the Thomists, amongst the

52:02

Thomists, this seems to be a characteristic. You all will take shots, but you won't give names. You won't give references.

52:07

You can't check things out. That's not right. That's not how to do it.

52:15

That's not how to do it. So I hope it wasn't me. But let's find out. I think it is absolutely fair.

52:22

Find out. Now, evidently that sounded great because I was sending the audio straight in.

52:30

Now I'm going to play a later section, and we still have eight minutes.

52:36

So let's get to it. Judge Truman, do you have anything you'd like to add to that? Yeah, just as a practical level,

52:42

I think one of the things that a lot of the scholarship surrounding Reformation and post -Reformation theologies, and the debate surrounding the

52:49

Trinity, I think it's perhaps time for Protestants to reorient how they think about ecumenism.

52:55

Not arguing here for wishy -washy, relativizing all differences, but one of the things that strikes me is

53:01

Protestants seem to think that agreements on soteriology relativizes fundamental disagreements on the doctrine of God.

53:09

And I want to say maybe we need to rethink that. Okay. We need to think about what

53:17

Carl Truman just said and what he's saying here at the end that Matthew Barrett then agrees with.

53:23

We could play the whole thing, but like I said, we can come back to this. I've saved this file. We're good. What I'm hearing goes with what he said a year and a half ago when he said the men from whom

53:41

I learned the most about justification, soteriology, were wrong about God.

53:48

What does it mean to be wrong about God here? What I'm hearing are the classical theists.

53:57

And again, that term, when it was coined by the Oath Theists, would have referred to all of us.

54:05

Anyone who affirms that God is unchanging, God has full knowledge of future events,

54:11

God is sovereign over all things, that there are three divine persons and one divine being, that would have covered all this back then.

54:21

But you see, now that term has been stolen by a subgroup. And that subgroup says, we are the classical theists.

54:31

Let's not worry about where this term actually came from. And let's not worry about people who affirm the doctrine of the

54:39

Trinity, have written books on the doctrine of the Trinity. Let's not worry about any of that.

54:48

We have a new definition. We have a new emphasis in our identity. And if you don't buy our metaphysical categories, and if you don't agree with us that the

55:04

Thomistic concept of simplicity not the idea that God's not made up of parts of his creation.

55:17

No, no, no. You can do all that biblical stuff. We don't want anything to be biblically here.

55:22

We want something way beyond anything to be done biblically. So we've got to have Thomas's emphasis upon divine simplicity,

55:30

Thomas's emphasis upon the attributes of God being one ad intra and only distinguished ad extra by creatures.

55:40

And then you also need to have something that none of us even understood even knew about until just recently.

55:47

But now it is the definition of orthodoxy in several operations.

55:53

Explain it to anybody without sounding like a bunch of wild eyed modalists, but it's absolutely definitional.

56:03

And now they're saying, if you have any problems with that, if you go, um, hold on one second here.

56:14

Um, we have questions about, is this apostolic? I mean, can we talk about what the apostles would have thought about this?

56:22

Can we talk? Can we do? Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, you can't. No, no. What I'm hearing now is you're wrong about God.

56:33

And that's more important than the doctrine of indulgences.

56:40

That's more important than the propitiatory sacrifice of the mass.

56:46

That's more important than a mark on the soul of the

56:51

Roman Catholic priest that allows him to work the miracle of transubstantiation. That's more important than purgatory.

57:00

That's more important than the fact that the Roman Catholic gospel does not give peace.

57:06

It's whether you understand the doctrine of inseparable operation. It's 99 .9

57:12

% of all practices in the world go the doctrine of duality. I'm seeing a division here.

57:23

Saying we have a division about God. I have seen stuff. Look, may

57:29

I say this again? I don't agree with Bruce Ware on EFS, ERAS, et cetera.

57:37

I don't agree. That's not his perspective. But I spoke at the

57:42

G3 conference with Bruce on the doctrine of the Trinity. And I knew then that people that were listening carefully could see differences of emphases.

57:50

What I'm hearing now is he's not in the kingdom. You are supposed to have more in common with the

57:59

Thomistic Dominican priest than you are with Bruce Ware. If that's where you're going, you people are going to absolutely marginalize yourselves.

58:09

You're kicking yourselves out. You're creating division that will destroy institutions.

58:20

And for absolutely no reason, because I'm telling you guys, you can't harp on this stuff.

58:26

Your people will walk away after the 47th sermon on inseparable operations.

58:33

They will. Your students are going to leave, except for the students that are just the ones that are just agents.

58:41

I just love philosophy. And I get up in the morning, I start reading philosophy. Okay, you're going to have them, but the rest are just going someplace else.

58:55

So an ecumenism that starts with arcane definitions, we're not talking about the

59:07

Trinity here. And if you try to make this definitional of the Trinity, then you are going beyond the creedal statements.

59:18

Well, but there are people who believe this idea. Look, they were all written before Thomas, and most of the efforts to try to cram

59:29

Aristotle back into them are transparently invalid.

59:39

So what do you do? Where does this lead?

59:45

Where does this go? It is deeply troubling to see this happening.

59:53

And then when people out here go, hey, you know, maybe we need to be doing some debates on this.

01:00:01

Maybe we need to have some real exchanges going on here. What does the magazine do?

01:00:06

It starts blocking everybody. We can't have anybody who's questioning us.

01:00:14

Well, okay. You all can block anybody you want to block. I can block you too if I want.

01:00:21

I'm not going to, but I could do it, so what? What's the end result of all this is the question.

01:00:30

It's very concerning. I've been warning about this for a while now.

01:00:38

Very, very concerning. And I haven't even started talking about some of the material

01:00:44

I already have of students of some of these men and their conversion to Roman Catholicism.

01:00:55

One young man received in the Roman Catholic Church this past Easter, just a matter of weeks ago, and people saying there are many others.

01:01:06

I haven't even gotten into that. I'm trying to stay focused on the key issues, but that's not a key issue.

01:01:17

I don't know what the source of all this is. I really don't. People can speculate all they want.

01:01:24

I'm good enough going, scholasticism is scholasticism.

01:01:29

It happens all the time. But I'm trying to warn folks about it.

01:01:37

And that's part of the reasons. I think it's one of the reasons that the

01:01:43

Lord made sure that this ministry is supported by individuals all over the place, and not by any particular publishing house and publishing agreements or schools and institutions, all the rest of that kind of stuff.

01:02:00

Because I think there's a lot of folks who agree with me, but they're afraid to say anything. For their jobs, support, whatever it might be, we can do what they need to say.

01:02:17

And I'm thankful for that. I'm thankful for that. With that,

01:02:23

I have gone a couple minutes past my hour. There's folks waiting on me to go get some really good chicken fingers.

01:02:32

I tell you all too much stuff, but that's just the way I am. It's so funny. I meet people in real life, and they're like, so you're just like a normal guy, and the stuff you do on the dividing line, that's how you are in real life.

01:02:49

I ain't smart enough to have some persona. I can't do that. I can't pull it off.

01:02:54

Wouldn't want to anyway. I am just some weird Scotsman guy without any hair, and with a fairly decent white beard.

01:03:04

It's okay. Thanks for watching the program today. I don't know when we're going to be able to get back together with you, but I know by Tuesday where I'm supposed to be on my trip home, and I'm already scheduling other stuff to do in here.

01:03:20

I have a video, have Starlink, will travel. At least on Tuesday, I'm definitely planning on another full program.

01:03:32

Hopefully, I'll have some information. Let me check my email here real quick. Hit the refresh thing there.

01:03:39

No. Oh, well. Maybe I'll have some information that I can share with you for the next program.

01:03:46

We will see. Till then, pray for our conference here this weekend. Sovereignty of God, and we'll see you next week.