Michael Brown Twitter Contest, More Church History Background

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:33

Well, greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line on a Monday. We're here in particular because in a few moments,

00:40

Dr. Brown was delayed by a traffic situation.

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We had, well, it wasn't so much traffic situation after church last night. A number of our folks reported seeing a bunch of police cars headed north on 17.

00:59

There was a police shooting last night. It was the officer who, well, the suspect was eventually gunned down as well, but one police officer was killed.

01:09

A lot of cops have told me domestic violence is the worst thing.

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At least if you're going into a bank robbery, you know the other guys could be trying to shoot to kill you anyways.

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It's being in somebody else's house and don't know where things are hidden and all that type of stuff.

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But unfortunately, a Phoenix police officer was shot and killed yesterday afternoon.

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So a number of our folks saw all the red lights and sirens and stuff going up north. Even though I didn't think it was that far north.

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It was way up on Pinnacle Peak, so I didn't think it was quite that far out there. Anyway, so we pray for his family and I don't know anything about his spiritual background or anything like that, but these are difficult days we live in.

01:59

While we await Dr. Brown's arrival and hopefully a few moments of enjoyable conversation on the apologist brackets, the contest that's going on that evidently happened last year and wasn't even a part of it.

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I have a vague recollection now of someone asking why I wasn't a part of it and I was like,

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I don't know. I didn't know anything about it. No, wait a minute. That's not right. They said I made it into the final eight last year, but I didn't even know about it.

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So I wasn't promoting it. Who knows? Anyway, so that's ongoing right now and we're right down to the end.

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In fact, in the consolation bracket, one of the consolation bracket rounds right now is

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David Wood versus Bill Roach. Bill is a young guy. Man, we've been in contact for years and he's very, very active in the various apologetics groups and organizing stuff and good solid fellow.

03:08

He thought that when he got that Gracie guy from jujitsu to retweet him that he might pull off and still be in the winner's bracket, but he didn't quite pull it off.

03:22

What? No, no, no, no, no, no. Anyway, but there's only, there haven't been that many votes.

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I guess once it gets a consolation round, the votes drop off a lot. And so in mine, we're about to set a new record.

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We're about to break 4 ,500 votes in this one. We had about 4 ,500 in my competition with William Lane Craig, who we beat in the last round.

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And I guess we got Bill William Lane Craig. So, hey,

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Bill, you owe me big time, dude. So I just tweeted out that Bill needs your vote.

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And so go on over there and vote for Bill Roach when you're voting for me and Jeff Durbin, because if I get past Michael Brown, then it's going to be me and Jeff and hence we'll have what?

04:17

Go ahead. Go ahead and finish up. Go ahead and finish up. Go ahead and finish up. I was just going to, you know,

04:24

I want to chime in here. I don't want to get loose. Have you noticed how much more he's talking recently? I don't want to get, I would,

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I have an issue here. We have an issue. We have an issue? Yes.

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Yes. And I need to, we need to. The whole world has issues. We need to air this out right now. And I want to read this. Oh, oh, that's right.

04:42

You go ahead. Where you said not even I would blame Jar Jar for Rich's horrific impersonation, which sounded a lot more like Jimmy Carter attempting to imitate

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Sylvester Stallone. That was classic. Yeah, that was, it was a classic burn. There's no question about it.

04:58

I do have a couple of witnesses to my defense though. What are you calling

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Jar Jar? Well, first of all, I would never, never, I would never even attempt an impression of Sylvester Stallone.

05:16

You know. You know, you were in the armed forces when Jimmy Carter was president, weren't you? What's that? Weren't you in the armed forces when

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Jimmy Carter was president? For a very short time. He was, yes. So he was your commander in chief. And you're, and you're impersonating him?

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But you know, well, doing, as Richard Little used to say, impressions of Jimmy Carter is quite easily because it's easily done because all you have to do is say a good country and America a lot.

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It's true. But someone else I'd like to bring into my defense, and that is that, first of all,

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I don't even know why I would try to impersonate Sylvester Stallone. Never, ever, ever.

06:01

So, but, but anyway. Yeah, thanks. I just, you know, I did an off -the -cuff, no -practice impression of And we could tell.

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Of Jar Jar, who nobody in their right mind can do Jar Jar. Oh, anybody can do

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Jar Jar. Come on. Mesa thinks anyone can do Jar Jar. It's just not, he's, he's in Washington right now suggesting that someone be made president for life in light of the current, current crisis.

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So anyway, I just, since we're doing a little tiny bit of humor right now in a very serious time, I thought I'd, you know, give a little defense here.

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I'm not sure if you're allowed to have humor these days. That may have been outlawed. Speaking of humor,

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Rodney Howard Brown. No, Rodney Howard Brown, don't you remember what he was famous for?

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The Laughing Revival. He ain't laughing right now. You can go online right now and you can find his booking picture being arrested in Florida for having his church meet yesterday.

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Now, remember folks, the process is the punishment. Just write that down, type it out someplace.

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The process is the punishment. If some sense of normality is ever restored in our culture, um, this action will be thrown out by any meaningful court of law because no law has been passed, um, that would withstand the, um, the examination, but, but the process is the punishment.

07:44

And so it's, it's being dragged off in handcuffs and, and have the pictures taken and all the rest of that kind of stuff, um, is, is yeah, the perp walk, as they say, is, uh, how, how you're going to make sure that no one goes against what the state suggests in, in the future.

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Remember, suggests, um, then you've got, uh, de

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Blasio in New York. And did you catch that part of it? He, he didn't say we will close down churches and synagogues.

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He forgot to say mosques for some reason. There are a number of mosques in New York. I've, I've been in them. Um, but, uh, he, he skipped that part for some odd, strange reason.

08:28

Um, but he said churches and synagogues in, um, in New York, uh, if they were to meet, he didn't say we will come in and ask everyone to disperse.

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He said they will be closed down permanently. The catch, catch the threat there.

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It's not that we will disperse you. Now we will disperse you forever.

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You will be closed down permanently. Now, again, I would imagine there were a number of judges in New York city, just going grief.

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Um, at that particular one, at least I would hope so. Maybe there are some other judges going,

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Oh, that would be fine. I don't know. Uh, but we're seeing, and then, and then you've got,

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I don't know her name, but the governor of Rhode Island, uh, talking about using the national guard to track down New Yorkers who escaped from New York to Rhode Island.

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Was it, it was Rhode Island, wasn't it? Wasn't Connecticut. It was, I think it was Rhode Island. Um, something along those lines, as I recall.

09:42

So are we good out there? Yeah. Well, in other words,

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Hi James. Hey, how you doing? Hey, uh, how are you?

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I'm, I'm good. Good. So, um, I'm seeing you, you know, talking about the competition.

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And so I just wanted to call in and chat with you for a second about it and just try to bring some reason before the chaos, before the storm comes.

10:13

What is it tomorrow or the next day? If you get past Brown. Well, now look, Jeff, we cannot assume, uh, that, that I'm going to get past Michael Brown yet.

10:22

I mean, um, you know, Well, God is sovereign. So when you get past Brown and I, if I get past Moreland, then

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I just wanted to, I'm going to tell you just a story that you're well aware of is the story of, of Mr.

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Miyagi and Daniel -san. Yes. Daniel -san. And yes. Yeah.

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You'll remember that, that Mr. Miyagi is fully responsible for, for training Daniel -san and he wanted

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Daniel -san to, to get on his own feet and just make his own way. And so he trains him, he teaches him everything he knows.

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And then he, he sits, when, when he's on the floor competing, Miyagi sits in the background and he just has a smile.

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He's just happy. He's, he's not looking for the floor. He doesn't go out there and fight Johnny himself. That's true.

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He, he, he's so happy to send Daniel -san off successful after all the training.

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It's, it makes him happy that Daniel -san is, is, is making his own way. Yes, this is true.

11:21

So I just wanted to, I wanted to remind you of that. But the, um, thing you're missing

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Jeff is, um, when this, remember what happens afterwards? Um, they go outside and, and the bad, the bad dojo master, um, he is going to cause problems and Mr.

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Miyagi puts him on the ground. And so Daniel -san needed Mr. Miyagi to go against the real big guy.

11:51

So, you know, it makes me, it makes me angry that you, you actually were ready. You had that on the ready before I did.

12:00

And I'm supposed to know that movie better than you. That's because, that's because Luke called me and warned me. No, he didn't. I would,

12:08

I, I didn't even see that. See, this is why you need to win because you see, you see all the things that see, okay.

12:15

All right, well, I'll grant that. So my thing is this, if you get past Brown and I get past Moreland, we need to, we need to film a competition of sorts where you and I do different competitions and then whoever's victor over that is, should be the one that everyone votes.

12:30

And I'm thinking a board breaking competition. It would be, I've already been thinking through some,

12:37

I don't want to tell everybody right now. Um, and we, and we don't really have time for the a hundred mile bike ride.

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Um, but, uh, that would be, that would be enjoyable. Um, given that you're, given that you're, well, you're like 16 years younger than I am.

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So, um, shouldn't, don't you think that, you know, a hundred miles in the beautiful Sonoran desert, you should just leave me gasping in, in, in your rear view mirror, shouldn't you?

13:05

That does not seem like a fair competition. I think, I think board breaking, multiple board breaking.

13:11

Board breaking, multiple board breaking. So, um, so when you're preaching Sunday with, uh, bandages on your hands, is that going to make it, is that going to make it hard to turn the pages or something?

13:22

I won't have any bandages on my hand. You don't have them on your hand. No, because I'm stupid enough not to break boards.

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I need the boards to put on, I need the boards to put on the windows to keep the zombies out from the coming apocalypse.

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Okay. So I don't. Yeah, that might come in handy. It might. That's, yeah. With what's going on, it, it most definitely should.

13:41

So, but no, but no, okay, let me, since you're on, we don't have it, we don't,

13:47

Mike, Mike hasn't called in yet. Okay. We're, we're waiting for Dr. Brown. So this, this works fine. Okay. I'm going to,

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I'm going to bring an internal apologia issue to the public's attention right now with Jeff Durbin.

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Now, I want people to understand what, what happened yesterday. You came up to me before church service, right?

14:06

Yes. And you said, you said you're going to be around for a while, right? You're not traveling. Yeah, no,

14:12

I'm afraid you're stuck with me for a while. Yeah. And so, so you said, well, you know, I think we need to have a, a good, you know, summary presentation on, on justification.

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So how about, you know, you're, you, you preached yesterday. You can preach again next Sunday. The week after that, you do something, you do a whole thing on, on justification.

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You preach on justification. I'm like, okay. And so then you start preaching. And let's see, yesterday you covered

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Philippians 3, Galatians 2, Galatians 5, and I think you were somewhere in Romans as well.

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And then you're doing the imputation of the righteousness of Christ next Sunday, which

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I assume is going to mean covering 2 Corinthians 5 and more in Philippians 3, the righteousness comes from God by faith in Christ Jesus.

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So here's the, here's the question that I have for you. What am I supposed to do on that third week again, since you will have covered every text on the subject of justification before I get to it?

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Well, this is the problem with you teaching me everything I know. I, I, I don't, I can't help it. So I don't,

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I don't really, I don't, I, I just wanted to, maybe, maybe you could just go out Sunday and you could say, isn't that all great?

15:28

That's about what I said. That's where I'm going to have to be. No, what I'm going to have to do, because you're going to have covered pretty much everything, is

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I'm going to have to bring in Rome's denials and maybe some other group's denials as illustrations, because you're not so much doing that as you are doing the positive aspect of it.

15:49

Yes. Right. Right. That sounds good. Yeah, I admit, it is kind of a problem.

15:55

So that is the problem when you, when you've taught me everything I know, is going, going after me is going to kind of ruin the, it'll ruin the, the, the excitement about yours.

16:05

Well, yeah, yeah, but, but I'm not, I'm not saying it's part of my strategy of winning in the

16:10

Apologetics Tournament. I'm just saying. But it fits. It fits.

16:16

Well, we got to be doing something because you and I were supposed to be doing a debate last weekend.

16:24

No, well, next weekend, next weekend. Right? That's right. Yeah. Yeah, next weekend, we were supposed to be doing a debate that we had started preparing for, and who knows when we're going to get a chance to reschedule that.

16:37

And so, yeah, everything, everything is up in the air right now. And everything's on hold.

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I'm sure you saw different states talking about, like, May. Yes. June.

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June, yep. I just can't imagine the consequences that's going to bring on our culture and our society waiting that long for people to get back to work.

17:00

Yep. I cannot begin to imagine, not just our society, but the society, our, our economy has been propping up everybody else's.

17:09

So when ours contracts this massively, many people on the margins in other countries are going to have nothing, nothing at all.

17:18

That's right. We have close friends in Northern Ireland, and when this all started going down, she learned that she was pregnant.

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And I assume she went to the doctor, got the full confirmation of the pregnancy. And they've been told because of the coronavirus and her pregnancy,

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I'm not sure how this all ties together. They've been told they have to stay in their home for 12 weeks.

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And they, they live out in the sticks and in Ireland. And I'm not sure how people like that can even make it being told to stay home.

17:51

So, yeah, it's a pretty intense situation globally. Well, and of course, we've, we've got people in our own fellowship who have already lost jobs and income, and everyone's having to pull together to try to, you know.

18:05

That's right. That's what all the churches are doing. That's right. Yeah, I put up, I put up my page last week.

18:12

I would like to pray for people who might have lost jobs or a family have lost jobs, or if you've lost your businesses. And just, there was a flood, a flood of messages from people who have already lost their jobs and businesses.

18:23

And, I mean, that was only last week, and it seems like now the consequences of all this are only being ramped up.

18:32

So, it's definitely concerning. Well, we try to remain faithful, and in the midst of all this, it's a real challenge.

18:38

But I appreciate your, what, Rich, did you want to say something? No, I just was going to say we do have

18:44

Dr. Brown on the line. I don't want to lose him. I'm hoping he can hear us. We're flying a little bit by the seat of our pants over here, so.

18:50

Okay, all right. I hope if he nods, he says that sounds normal. Okay, all right.

18:55

All right, thanks, Jeff, for the phone call. We'll see you, we'll see you in a couple days in the competition.

19:01

All right. Absolutely. All right, thanks, Jeff. All right, God bless, bye -bye. All right, so let's see if this is going to work.

19:09

So, Michael, can you hear me? Uh -oh, I've got a frozen,

19:15

I've got a frozen screen there, but Mike, can you hear me? Nope. Mike's not able to hear me.

19:21

I can hear Michael breathing. Rich, can you get hold of Mike? Can you try to say something hello to Mike?

19:29

He's typing. Okay, you'll have to take him off and try to contact him as best you can, because something's not working there, unfortunately.

19:42

And Rich right now has that look that's going, that should have worked.

19:49

It worked last time. I don't know why it's not working this time. Because I can certainly hear him, and the nice thing is,

19:56

I was just on with Michael on his own program, and I could barely hear anything.

20:05

The static was like we were having a sunspot attack, you know?

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It was really, really, really bad. And so I wasn't exactly sure exactly if, you know, we couldn't interact that way, really.

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So I just had to give brief answers and then sort of stop and hope for... Because when he started talking,

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I could hear him. The static would go down for some reason. I don't know. So I was on for just a few minutes.

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We had a few conversations. There were a couple of... There was at least one tweet I wanted to read to Michael.

20:43

Uh, trying, but you could not hear us.

20:53

So I'm not seeing anything coming from Rich right now to tell me what's going on at all.

21:02

Any sense of whether this is going to work or not, or...

21:11

I think someone's just typing out there. So once we figure this out one way or the other, just so you know what's coming up,

21:20

I listened to an interview that Leighton Flowers did with Ken Wilson in 2018,

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I believe it was. And I want to review the interview. The reason being that at the end of the interview,

21:43

Leighton Flowers encouraged Ken Wilson to write this.

21:49

This didn't exist yet. So it is interesting that Leighton Flowers and others are quoted, or at least referred to in this particular book.

22:02

But the reason then to review the commentary is if what is said in that interview, which he kept making reference to this, the dissertation, if what's in the interview is the same as what you've got here, then all of the complaint about reviewing what's here, which and this is what most people are reading.

22:26

Almost nobody's reading this, okay? Almost everybody's reading this. So if it's in the interview, and then it's in here, where's the complaint supposed to come from?

22:37

There's consistency there. Because this didn't exist yet. So that would mean this is an accurate representation of what

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Dr. Wilson's thinking is. So we'll listen to that. And that's easier for a lot of people to do than just read quotes and things like that.

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So final verdict here, Mr. Pierce. We are trying to get

23:00

Michael's speakers working is what's working, is what's going on, or something along those lines.

23:07

So it's worth the shot. And one of the reasons

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I say that most people would find the audio version, you know, in other words, listening to Dr.

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Wilson speaking, I started putting the quotes in for specific statements out of the book that I wanted to respond to.

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And that's when I realized how text -based this is going to be. It's hard to do a lot of text -based stuff on a webcast.

23:37

That's just all there is to it. A lot of people struggle to have a bunch of text on the screen that someone's reading.

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It's almost like time slows down, in essence, at that point. And it's really easy for people to start skipping over things.

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And I want this to be a broadly educational encounter.

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In other words, what's interesting is that Dr.

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Wilson and I have both taught at the same seminary. In fact, he has a THM from Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary.

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I don't know when he was there. I don't know what years he was there. If someone could send that information to me,

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I'd be very, very interested in that. Because I taught for Golden Gate from,

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I should have looked up the first year, but somewhere in the early to mid -90s until, what was it?

24:38

2010 was the last time? Something like that. It's been about a decade or so. And I taught a wide variety of classes there, including a

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Christian philosophy of religion a number of times. Studies in apologetics, systematic theology,

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Greek exegesis, Hebrew exegesis, and most importantly, development of patristic theology.

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Development of patristic theology, which involved sitting with the students and reading.

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We didn't get to Augustine. Augustine's considered sort of the transitionary point.

25:20

But reading in many of the early fathers from the original languages, and so, isn't it ironic that he now is an adjunct with Gateway?

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Golden Gate has become Gateway. Golden Gate had been in Mill Valley, California.

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Beautiful, beautiful campus. Older campus, a little dated, okay?

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But a beautiful campus on some of the most expensive land in America, to be very honest with you.

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And they then, I think for survival reasons, sold that land.

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Must have been worth an incredible amount of money. And I'm not really sure where they're located now, but they're now called

26:12

Gateway Seminary. And he's teaching, doing some teaching, or has, I'm not sure if he still is.

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He is teaching for Grace, it's a Grace Theological Seminary. It's the anti -lordship seminary.

26:28

Charles Ryrie was part of that, getting it started and things like that. So that may come up as well.

26:35

Are we ready to go? So what we're going to do is, Dr. Brown should be on with us right now. I hope,

26:41

Michael, can you hear me? I can hear you, yeah. Okay, and you'll be able to hear James, so we're having to do it over his telephone.

26:48

But, you know, working the magic of technology, we can see him too. How about this?

26:55

This is old school music. This is old school, man. Wow, this is really strange.

27:00

It's sort of like something in space is going on today or something, I don't know. Because when I was trying to talk to you,

27:07

I could hear you all right. It was sort of staticky, but then when I started talking, it was like the ocean was roaring in my ears.

27:14

Yeah, we didn't hear that part, but it was a very spotty connection hearing you. But when

27:19

Rich, your assistant, called in, he was loud and clear for the sound check. Yeah, isn't that weird? Figure it out.

27:25

Yeah, well, people are telling me that there's issues with the internet right now.

27:31

It was never designed to have this many people home watching Netflix all at the same time.

27:37

So that's part of what's going on. So before we get to the fun stuff, Mike, you and I...

27:45

Look, anybody at all is seriously concerned about what's going on in the world right now.

27:54

I mean, unless you live in a lead mine, you're not aware of the fact...

28:01

That's the only person who could be not aware of the fact that serious and serious things are going on here. And you had asked me a question that I wasn't able to answer very well, because, again, because what

28:10

I was hearing... You've got a clock, so you've got to go to breaks. You've got hard breaks.

28:16

And you know me. I try to listen for the music coming up so that I can help you to make it sound good.

28:22

I couldn't hear any of that stuff. So I went short so that you would have control of the time breaks.

28:29

That's what was going on there, if you wonder why I wasn't waxing as long as I normally would. But I think it would be good in light of the fact that I got a tweet that I wanted to read to you here that I'm not sure if you saw.

28:46

Here's what the tweet says. It was unwise of you to appear on an episode of his, that's

28:52

Dr. Brown's program, where Brown threw his hat in the ring in tentative support of Chuck Pierce's and Sid Roth's prophecies that the coronavirus pandemic would turn directions on the

29:03

Passover. And that's from Chris Rosebaum. So... I'd expect nothing less from Chris.

29:11

But here's what always grieves me. We have our disagreements, but it's the dishonesty of the hypercritics that concern me.

29:19

My whole reason for playing these clips was to put everything out in the open for both sides.

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In other words, if these are real prophetic words, then is God speaking prophetically? Should we take notice of that?

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Is he emphasizing the Passover and the blood of the Lamb? Or are these flaky words or proof that prophecy isn't for today?

29:40

Let's look at it. So that's my whole purpose. I endorse nothing other than the process of using accountability for things that claim to be prophecies.

29:52

And in both cases, these brothers had prophesied shaking or upheaval the first few months of this year with a real shift coming in the

30:00

Passover. I thought, okay, so they spoke about something in advance. Now they're giving a time when we can expect a clear shift.

30:05

Let's see, because we have very little accountability in the charismatic movement for prophetic words. I thought, what a great opportunity to put this in front of everybody.

30:14

Yeah. So that was the whole purpose of doing it. So if Chris thinks the people involved are crazy or whatever, that's his business.

30:23

He's cessationist, etc. But I didn't throw my hat in with anyone.

30:29

What I said is, let's use this as an opportunity to test and to see. Okay, a couple things.

30:35

I think it's a great time for you to be on, actually. Okay, a couple things. First of all, Rich managed to get...

30:42

He's got your mic now, so you sound great now. You can still probably only hear me over your phone, but your microphone is now working for us, so we've got you really, really clear through your microphone.

30:54

So I guess the way for you to hear us is through your phone, but now it's through the microphone, just so you're aware of that.

30:59

You sound even better. Let me just... Are these the words... Because someone had tweeted this.

31:06

Let me just see if I'm... Because I haven't followed this, I'm sorry. It's not really my area.

31:12

And let me just mention that when we use the term cessationist, I'm not sure exactly how you're using that all the time.

31:20

But for us, that's primarily in regards to sign gifts, apostolic sign gifts.

31:26

I guess maybe that might have something to do with the idea of a prophet in some sense, though there are different kinds of prophecy.

31:34

But here are the two things I've seen. Chuck Pierce says, there's going to be a transition. A season is going to end, and a season is going to begin.

31:43

And then Tracy Cook says, we're going to come to the first stage of this on April 15th to 16th during the

31:49

Passover season. That was on Supernatural. So here's my question. How could those be disproven?

31:57

Because there's nothing really specific. I mean, there are hundreds and hundreds of news articles that are coming across all of our phones and desktops every single day.

32:09

And any one of them could be pointed to, see, there was a change. There was a 1 % difference over here type of a thing.

32:16

I mean, do you hear one of my concerns is that, and I would think this would resonate with you especially, in dealing with Messianic prophecies, we have to deal with how the

32:33

New Testament writers interpreted Old Testament texts. And so we have to be very cognizant of some of the arguments that, well, that's too vague, that could be fulfilled by anything.

32:47

You see what I mean by we have to be consistent and very focused upon how something like this would actually work out.

32:52

Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah, so a few responses. One is that we know for sure that there are biblical prophecies that are somewhat ambiguous, or how do we interpret the book of Revelation, or some of the visions in Zechariah or Daniel.

33:09

So even though that's God's word, we differ in terms of understanding, interpreting prophecy.

33:15

In other words, it's not always going to be laid out as history written in advance in every detail. Some cases it is, others it isn't.

33:22

But in these cases, both of these men spoke about these things months earlier.

33:27

So I was trying to find someone that would have credibility for having spoken about it in advance. Because otherwise you could say, well, why should we listen to you now?

33:35

You didn't speak about it in advance. And both of the advanced words talked about something major shifting in the

33:42

Passover. And I think it was January 26, Chuck Pierce talked about a massive plague that was going to invade the land.

33:48

So they've spoken of either a clear shift or a clear diminishing. So can you say decisively, if it comes to passing out?

33:59

Well, you can certainly say if something dramatic happens, and suddenly at Passover, it's like, wow, this was dramatic, or a vaccine came out, or a cure, or suddenly the case has just dropped dramatically.

34:10

That would be one thing. If everything went on totally normally, that would be one thing.

34:16

So there was enough, I didn't play all the clips, but there was enough from what I listened to that seemed to focus clearly on ending on a clear change by April 15th, 16th.

34:28

And the original words were spoken some months ago. So to me, I thought this is as good an opportunity to test as anything, because a lot of words can be very ambiguous and only become clear as they come to pass.

34:40

So hopefully, there'll be enough clarity through them that we can actually test and that it won't be.

34:46

Now, look, maybe there's some shift and people say that's it or not. That would make it more difficult. But I'm looking for something fairly dramatic from what

34:54

I understand these men were saying. And if everything goes on totally normally, then I'll say, obviously, they were wrong.

34:59

They missed it. If we have some kind of dramatic shift, I'll say, hey, was God getting our attention? But Mike, right now, every day is different.

35:07

I mean, every morning we get up and some governor has decided to start using the

35:13

National Guard to look for refugees from New York and Rhode Island or something like that. I mean, there is no normal in this situation.

35:22

It changes every single day. That's why I'm wondering, isn't this a self -fulfilling prophecy?

35:27

Because I think the fact that Rodney Howard Brown has a mugshot today because his church met yesterday, what if somebody had quote -unquote prophesied something for whatever the date today is, the 30th of March?

35:47

Would that be a fulfillment because Rodney Howard Brown got arrested? Do you see what

35:53

I'm saying? Yeah, well, I think, again, you have to look at the full text of what they said.

36:00

I played part of it on the radio. But I have links where folks can listen to the larger context, all right, which, as I said, is more specific.

36:09

But there's something that's supposed to actually happen if these men are right about the virus itself, something, there's going to be a different stage.

36:18

So right now, there's been increase, increase, increase, OK? If suddenly everything changes or what the folks are forecasting is different, that would get my attention.

36:29

But here, I'll give you an example. I got contacted by a staunch opponent of the charismatic movement during the days when

36:38

Trump was running for office. And he said to me, will you call out those who prophesied that he would be president if he's not elected?

36:46

I said, of course I would. Absolutely, I'll deal with that. I said, will you acknowledge these as true words if they come to pass?

36:52

Well, he didn't respond then, but subsequently responded later and said, no, that doesn't make it true because he could have won anyway.

36:59

And he was one of two candidates. I said, but these were words spoken years before he ever thought of running for office.

37:05

And he said, no, that wouldn't prove it. The only way to prove it is negative. So to me, it was kind of a worthless endeavor then.

37:13

You know, you're damned if you do. You're damned if you don't. But my whole goal, James, and maybe this is one of the best examples, but because this was on everybody's mind and there are specific dates, my goal was to put these forward for public attention with the hope that there could be accountability and or recognition of God's speaking.

37:33

So if it's too nebulous, then that's what we're going to have to deal with. But I'd look for the clearest things with specific dates from guys that had spoken about this previously.

37:42

So my whole goal, again, in doing this was to put forward a model where we can look at this in advance, say the words are out there, and now evaluate whether they're true or not.

37:51

Maybe they'll be too nebulous. Maybe both will be able to say how we told you. But I'm hoping for something decisive either way.

38:00

Do I assume you know these gentlemen? I've never met

38:06

Tracy Cook. I've met Chuck Pierce a couple of times, but we've never ministered together, never had a lengthy conversation.

38:14

So I'm really in no relationship with either of them. But I have friends who are in relationship with them. I mean,

38:19

I just, obviously, I don't have the time to do this type of thing, but some people, somebody's going to dig back into years worth of their sermons to see if they've ever talked about plagues or anything like that before, eventually,

38:33

I would assume. But I don't have time for that kind of thing. We've got plenty of other stuff going on.

38:40

But I heard you talking about it, and so I had to tweet, and so I wanted to get your take on what was said there.

38:48

But a guy like Chris, as much as he's a critic of mine, and I feel often unfair,

38:56

I mean, I don't follow his stuff, I get headlines sent to me, but he should actually appreciate a charismatic leader drawing attention to words in advance with the hope of saying, hey, if these come to pass in a clear, accurate way, that should get our attention.

39:10

If they don't in a clear, accurate way, that should get our attention. So that's my goal here, to draw attention to these things rather than just let all the stuff be out there.

39:20

And in my circles, you know, I bridge your world and then the charismatic world, a lot of people are asking about this, and what about this prophecy, that, so I'm trying to address it constructively as a shepherd in the body.

39:32

Well, I would imagine that there's a lot of stuff being said right now in light of what's going on that has to be examined, especially examined from a biblical perspective, and so I would encourage you to be doing that.

39:47

So let's mention, since you had to take the long way home and you probably haven't had a chance to have your beans and salad yet, are you still eating beans and salad?

40:01

Of course, man. I had massive blood work done that I get every year from this leading doctor in California between the blood tests and the nutrition report, it probably goes to over 30 pages.

40:14

Wow. And he said he's seen between 20 ,000 and 25 ,000 patients, and my blood work and nutrition came in in the top 1%.

40:21

There you go! So it's a miracle, man. It's grace. Well, I had suggested to someone that they watch our debate with the two

40:30

Unitarians, and every time I watch that, I go, well, that was before Michael started his diet program.

40:36

So, but at least the one that we did with the two homosexual folks, much more closer to this current time frame, was a little bit more representative of where we both are these particular days.

40:49

Yeah, absolutely. But right now, once again we find ourselves in competition, and I must say that your attempts to make this an interesting competition have been creative in the extreme.

41:09

Let's just put it that way. I just want to point out that I do have on this very computer a picture of you and a

41:17

Coogee, but I did not whip that out. I did not utilize that as a counter argument against one of your memes that you put out there.

41:28

I just wanted to point that out to people that some of us have limits as to how far we'll go.

41:34

Here's the thing. You'll be amazed at my integrity. Every meme aside from that one,

41:40

I contributed a concept to that you thought you were predestined to win, but everyone had a choice.

41:47

And a couple other memes, the color one, vote diversity, vote brown, people of color.

41:53

But that one was entirely done by my producer and his dad, the

41:58

Coogee one. So maybe because I knew I had a skeleton in my closet, excuse me, a

42:03

Coogee in my closet. So that was entirely theirs. But you've got to admit, the video was classic.

42:09

The video was classic. There's absolutely no doubt about that. And I asked you on your program about the book that you were holding, because at one point

42:19

I could see it and it seemed to have like a central text and then commentary on the outside, which

42:27

I'm used to in Jewish commentaries and stuff like that. But you said it was actually a lexical source, right?

42:34

Yeah, it was Otsala Shohamechra edited by Joshua Blau and others. It was a multi -volume work that started when

42:42

I was in grad school. And I don't know that they ever got beyond three or four volumes. It was going to be massive, massive.

42:48

So it was going to be kind of a combination of a concordance, a thesaurus, a lexicon.

42:55

So I have the first three volumes. So I grabbed one of those. I didn't want to take a Talmud volume or a

43:00

Bible volume, because it just could have seemed a little irreverent to folks. Because this was completely lexical,

43:06

I thought this would be a fun one to use. Yeah, well, I'm not sure how you kept it balanced while you were rowing.

43:12

I must give you some props for that. Because did it fall off in a bad take at any point or anything like that?

43:20

No, no. But if I kept doing it long enough, it would have. And I couldn't nearly row full out on that.

43:25

Oh, of course not. No. And yeah, we had a few other shots like me doing chin -ups and pull -ups.

43:31

But those were so limited, I couldn't do those long enough to get good. Well, you're wearing a suit.

43:38

Do it from this angle. No, no, do it from this angle. Let's do it from that angle. But you're wearing a suit. Did you come from church or something?

43:45

No, here. That was my producer, Matt, who had this whole concept for a video.

43:51

And then I got the idea of doing some training stuff. So I dressed up like that specifically for the video.

43:59

And then he came in with the wig and the whole... I was like, you want me to do this, really? So he came up with all the props and the whole bit.

44:06

And then we just went to my home gym with my grandson, Andrew, and did some of the shots there.

44:11

But yeah, I dressed up in the jacket and the dress shirt and dress pants just for the video.

44:17

Well, I think you've moved since we worked out at your house, right? Yes. Yeah, yeah.

44:22

Because I recognized the rower, but it was like, this is in a different spot than it was that night that you opened the door and were waving it back and forth to try to cool me down because I was going for my...

44:36

I think it was my half hour record. And I think it still stands. I don't think I've beaten it. Oh yeah, I was stunned. Yeah, I was absolutely stunned by how you made the exact pace maintain that entire time.

44:46

You were shaking at the end. Oh, I was dead. That was a tough workout. So anyways, some people may not even know what we're talking about.

44:53

There is a apologetics bracket. It is sadly the only bracket that has survived the month of March.

45:03

The basketball one is gone. I guess they figured we're expendable or something. I don't know.

45:08

But it doesn't have any particular meaning outside of who has the larger presence,

45:16

I think, maybe in certain forms of social media or who can make the better memes or whatever else it is.

45:23

Because I beat William Lane Craig quite handily. So what does that mean?

45:28

Well, it means that William Lane Craig doesn't use Twitter. When I came from behind and beat

45:34

Robbie Zacharias last year, it was that he was busy doing apologetics, and my team and I were busy playing a game online.

45:41

Yeah, that's basically right. Well, right now, who could have envisioned a year later, everybody's sitting at home.

45:48

That's sort of how it works. You've probably had trips canceled. I've had trips canceled. Who knows what's going to happen the rest of this year.

45:55

I had one of the busiest years ever scheduled, but that's all in the Lord's hands, as we

46:01

Reform folks say. But anyway, so it's you and I. I think it's till approximately 11 .45

46:10

or something tomorrow, I think, is when... No, it's actually... Hang on. I just heard from...

46:17

Somehow it's going a little longer. It's until 9 p .m. Eastern Standard tomorrow, roughly.

46:22

Oh, OK. All right, 9 p .m. Eastern Standard time tomorrow. Most of your folks have already voted.

46:28

Most of my folks have already voted. I'm not sure how many people are undecided at a point in time like this, but we both came up with different ways of how we might decide this contest.

46:41

And mine was sort of like the number of debates you've done, times the number of books you've written, times the hate posts from King James Onlyists, because I figured no one can beat me on that one.

46:56

And you said, well, the King James Only guys hate me too. And I'm like, no, bro. They...

47:01

You use something other than the King James, yeah, but you got no idea. You know, when

47:09

Gail Ripplinger starts writing books about you, then you get the idea. But you've got your own critics out there, just from a different perspective.

47:17

Oh, I think I can compete with anyone in terms of hate mail. From every... But look,

47:23

I mean, how many people actually post pictures of you dressed up as Satan, and it's a

47:29

Christian website. The Black Hebrew Israelites were doing that for a long time after I...

47:36

I don't know if you ever heard the debate I did with Elder Rakah, because... I watched parts of it. Yeah, it was...

47:42

It blew up the internet. And the number of videos of me with horns and a pitchfork in flames that appeared on YouTube after that was truly astonishing.

47:54

And most of them I couldn't play on the air because of the profanity. I mean, that's...

48:01

You know all about that, because you've dared to address Black Hebrew Israelism as well, and their odd version of Hebrew and everything else that comes along with it.

48:12

That's a whole other subject. But obviously, I have said for a long, long time, your materials on Jewish evangelism, the prophecies, answering

48:22

Jewish objections to Jesus, were all dependent upon that material, just top -flight stuff all the way along.

48:31

And obviously, on the subject of homosexuality, which isn't it interesting though,

48:37

Michael, how fickle our society is? And all of a sudden, all that stuff that was just front page on everything, identity and transgenderism and everything else, silent as a tomb right now because of the pandemic.

48:58

Yeah, now you realize what really matters. Oh, yeah. And for me,

49:04

I'm concerned about people suffering. I hate the fact that people are in fear, and some are dying, and people are worried about the economy and everything.

49:14

But for me, this is an extraordinary opportunity for us to recognize what really matters. And I feel like the church needs to seize the moment, instead of waiting, counting the seconds to find out how long before things get back to normal.

49:27

They shouldn't just get back to normal, because our normal was not good. What's God saying to the church is about how we do church, and what our role in the community is, and are we walking in faith or fear in terms of our own attitudes?

49:41

And again, we use wisdom, we comply with guidelines out of love for others, but are we acting in fear?

49:47

Are we stable in faith? To me, this feels just like another day, except that people realize the stakes are higher.

49:54

And it's interesting, because I don't hold to a pre -trib rapture, I believe that God will be with us no matter what happens on this earth.

50:03

So that gives me great comfort and encouragement. This is not one of the plagues from Revelation, and this is the end of the world.

50:10

It's a bad time, but this is not the wrath of God being poured out, and the whole world shaking and quaking.

50:17

This is a minor blip in that regard. But it is a reminder that everything can turn on a dime, that before we know it, things could be in motion that we never dreamed of.

50:28

So it's such a key moment for the church to wake up and grab hold of this, and say,

50:34

God, what are you saying to me? How am I supposed to live in the light of eternity? Because this is—who would have thought of it?

50:40

No sports, Olympics postponed, everybody home from school, this whole nation shut down and quarantined, and it just—boom !—happened

50:49

over a little virus. And all of a sudden, people are going, hey, this homeschooling thing, this is interesting.

50:56

And of course, my daughter's a homeschooler, so she's like, nothing changed here, you know? Everything's the way it's been for a long time.

51:04

Well, real quickly, Michael, I'd be interested in your thoughts here. For a couple of years,

51:10

I have been including an illustration in a lot of my sermons that we have that text in 1

51:15

John that says, if anyone loves the things of the world, the love of the Father is not in him. And I've said, as I've looked at governments becoming more and more anti -Christian and more aggressive in their seeking to promote a secular worldview, which promotes allegiance to the state rather than allegiance to God, I've said, you know, the only power that the world can possibly have over a believer is the power that we give to the world by loving the things of the world.

51:47

If we don't love the things of the world, there's absolutely positively nothing the world can do to us. If our love is where it should be, the world cannot interfere with our relationship with God, cannot take away that relationship, cannot alter that relationship in any way.

52:01

And so, the only power that the world has against us is the power that we give to it.

52:07

And so, the question is, will we love God's truth and be obedient enough to stop giving the world the power that it claims over us?

52:16

That really is a sermon for me, first and foremost, all the time. But I think it speaks to really where the

52:24

Church is in the West, that we've had so much for so long that the idea of being content with whatever the

52:31

Lord gives to us is a difficult concept for a lot of people. Paul It is, and of not filling our hearts with things that are of no value.

52:39

It doesn't mean that we can't enjoy sports or relax with our families, but it does mean that we become obsessed with things that are going to pass away, that they dominate our time.

52:50

Like you think of so many churches, we have to get you in and out quick because people are busy, everything else comes first.

52:56

No time to just stop, reflect, get with God. I mean, think if we didn't have internet now, and we're just home alone, and drive the point home even deeper in terms of reflection and stopping before God.

53:10

So, to me, this is a great opportunity for soul -searching, a great opportunity for people to ask questions about what really matters, as opposed to you just can't wait for everything to get back to normal, and fill the restaurants, and fill the stadiums, and have everything on TV day and night, and not have a free minute.

53:29

Let's step back. Let's ask God, Lord, what are you saying to us as people who are in this world, but not of it?

53:35

One thing I did, because I had a trip canceled. I was supposed to be in Lagos, Nigeria at a leadership conference, and I had that canceled, so I just had more time at home.

53:44

So I wrote day and night, and wrote a short book, maybe 150 pages, that should be out by April 10th, called

53:51

When the World Stops, Words of Wisdom, Faith, and Hope in the Midst of Crisis, to try to step back and say, okay, what can we learn from situations like this, so that regardless of storm crisis, we're living consistently before God as people who are living in the light of eternity?

54:09

The old Lennon -Ravenhill question, are the things you're living for worth Christ dying for? I think that's a good question for us to ask ourselves on a regular basis.

54:17

Yeah, it is. No two ways about it. So I know I never expected anything like this in my lifetime.

54:24

I didn't see anything like this. We were all thinking about the 2020 election and all the rest of this stuff, and now everything has been thrown in the air, and if that doesn't tell us that we should be people who are focused upon eternal truths, because those cannot be thrown in the air.

54:41

There's nothing that's going throw God's purpose in the air. Even though you and I disagree as to exactly why that is, we both agree

54:48

God's in control. He's not sitting up there in heaven going, oh no,

54:54

I had so many plans of what I'm going to do now. So if we're focused on that, if that's what our hearts are passionate about, then we can't be unsettled.

55:04

We cannot be thrown about. And I hope we learn from this, but you remember 9 -11 just like I do.

55:11

And we all had hopes that there would be repentance, and it didn't really pan out.

55:18

We hit the snooze button. Yeah, we hit the snooze button. We really did. Well, I kept you a lot longer than I said I would.

55:23

Sorry about that. So till tomorrow, you can go online to Twitter to Adherent Apologetics.

55:30

Mike has linked to it, I've linked to it, and you can vote for either one of us. If you like lots of memes and things like that, then

55:44

I lose on this one. But you base your decision on whatever you want to base your decision on.

55:51

I do know one thing, the Lord knows who's going to win. The Lord knows who's going to win. And right now it's looking good for you, man.

55:58

You are nailing it. This much is clear, this last thing. If you get past me with the amount of votes we've been bringing in,

56:04

I know you have Jeff Durbin ahead of you, but you are the presumptive favorite to take it home. So well done so far, man.

56:11

We'll see. It's not over yet. We'll see. Well, if I do get past you, then I'll try to win just for you. Just for me, man.

56:17

I'll be cheering for you. You've got my vote from here on if you get past me. All right. God bless. Thanks, Mike. I love you. Talk to you later. Love you, too.

56:23

Bye -bye. All right, Michael Brown on the phone with us. Y 'all need to...

56:30

I know some of you just are not even going to listen. That's fine. I've given up on even trying.

56:37

But you've got to understand, Michael's background is in a Pentecostal holiness movement, and so he's always had a real strong focus upon, well, holiness, otherworldliness, a separation from sin in that sense.

56:54

And so what we're talking about as far as not loving the world and things like that, he's been talking about that for a long, long time.

57:02

So whatever else you say about him, he's been saying that type of thing for a very, very, very long time. Now, obviously, was there something you...

57:09

No, okay. That went considerably longer than I had expected, and we were only going to do like 10, 15 minutes, and so we're...

57:20

I have to wrap up at three o 'clock, so we're only going to get started here, unfortunately. But I still want to get started because it is my intention to do programs on tomorrow and on Wednesday.

57:38

After that, I'm helping my son -in -law and daughter move.

57:44

They need an extra driver because my daughter is still not physically well. She lost her baby, and there are complications from that.

57:54

She had another doctor's visit today, and those complications have not gone away. They have not been...

57:59

So your prayers would be appreciated in that situation. So she can't drive all the way down from Las Vegas, and so I'm going to be flying up.

58:08

That didn't cost much. I burned a tiny number of miles, and the grand total cost was $5 .60

58:18

for first class. Yeah. So I'm going to fly up to Vegas and drive one of the vehicles back.

58:28

They're moving down here. Eric and her are going to be part of Apologia Church, and we're really looking forward to that.

58:36

It's going to be exciting to have them here, but your prayers for the move, and especially for her, would be very, very, very appreciated.

58:43

So we're going to try to cram three more programs in. I actually had someone complain on Twitter that they're so far behind now because we're doing so many programs.

58:54

We're running too far ahead. Well, what can I say? A lot of people have a lot of extra time right now.

59:01

So I started making some comments. You knew I was filling time as we were trying to struggle through the issues that managed to get working there toward the end, and that was great.

59:17

And I thank Michael for joining me. I made some references to some of the background as to why what

59:26

I want to do, and I'm going to try to get to it today. I want to do some biblical background first, but why

59:32

I'm going to play an interview between Leighton Flowers and Ken Wilson, because that is where the thesis of this book, and this is the book that is being read.

59:46

Now, did we buy this or was this sent to us? Who did? Okay, Dr.

59:52

Wilson sent his book, he sent his thesis, okay, the dissertation, and so it has arrived.

59:58

I've already started looking through it very briefly. This is the book that's being read by the vast majority of people.

01:00:08

This is nearly $100. It is from an academic publisher. This is from Morris Ibeck.

01:00:14

You have Brill, which does a lot of these things, and then a lot of dissertations are published in this form.

01:00:26

And as you know, I have, in looking at this, I'm in deep disagreement with the methodology, with the historical methodology that is being utilized to come to theological conclusions based upon what

01:00:46

I believe are just unacceptable historical methodologies.

01:00:54

It is, when I first started hearing about this book, I made comments on this program about the history of Augustine, influences, his background, what was going on at the time, the deep influence that Greek philosophy had upon many people in the early church.

01:01:19

Now, Greek philosophy could take a lot of different forms. There's lots of different forms of Greek philosophy and different understandings.

01:01:25

I've talked about the different kinds of Gnosticism, how Gnosticism was the

01:01:31

Plato of theology, how it would morph and change, and how you have to be very careful not to say things like, well, all the

01:01:42

Gnostics believe this, because Gnosticism had no systematic theology. Gnosticism did not believe in propositional revelation, in the idea of God says this, and there is a propositional truth that is revealed in such a way that it's supernatural.

01:02:06

If you've got mystery religion, where you experience ecstatic religious fervor to gain insight into the heavenly truths, that's different than having a propositional truth that is going to be the same in this generation as in that generation.

01:02:27

It's going to be the same for this person in this language as that person in that language. And so,

01:02:34

I have discussed the historical backgrounds, why you have to be so careful not to just say, well, that's a

01:02:46

Gnostic thing. What you have to do is go, well, certain

01:02:51

Gnostics had this kind of belief that's represented in the

01:02:56

Gospel of Peter, or can be seen a little bit in the Gospel of Thomas in this section, or whatever else.

01:03:02

You have to be accurate and recognize the broad spectrum that would be represented within Gnosticism, or even amongst the

01:03:10

Stoics, amongst Platonists, Neoplatonism, just a huge variety.

01:03:19

And the fact that whether we're talking about Greek philosophy, whether we're talking about patristic sources, that is the early church fathers, we have fragmentary information.

01:03:30

We have fragmentary information. So, anyone who says, well, all their church fathers said this,

01:03:36

I am immediately extremely, extremely suspect of them. The only thing

01:03:42

I've ever said about that for the early church is monotheism. They're monotheists. I believe there's one God. Outside of that,

01:03:50

I think you can make a case for a variety of opinion on almost everything.

01:03:56

There is that wide of a spectrum. And then for many early church fathers, we only have a portion of what they wrote.

01:04:06

Or, well, and in many instances, what we know of what they wrote, we have through a secondary source.

01:04:13

For example, if we didn't have Eusebius' church history, there would be a bunch of people wouldn't even know they existed, let alone have anything they wrote.

01:04:22

And so, you have to trust that Eusebius got that right. And there are times when he didn't. So, the point is, unlike Dr.

01:04:31

Wilson, and I mentioned at the beginning of the program, we've both taught for the same school.

01:04:38

We've both taught church history at the same school. Well, I'll take that back. I don't know what he taught at Golden Gate. I know he went to Golden Gate, got a

01:04:46

THM, but I don't know what he has taught at Golden Gate. But I've taught such things as systematic theology and development of patristic theology for Golden Gate in the years past.

01:04:58

So, my concern is that what I am reading here are the words of someone who had specialty in one area and then jumped into this area.

01:05:11

He even said in his initial interview with Leighton Flowers, I didn't know what these people believed until I started reading them.

01:05:20

I'm not sure how you get a THM and not know what the early church... I certainly knew what they believed. I had to read the

01:05:26

Book of Discipline from Qumran. That's how it's pronounced, by the way, Qumran. I had to read early church...

01:05:34

I mean, I don't know how you get a THM at Golden Gate.

01:05:57

I'm not sure how you get a THM at Golden Gate.

01:06:02

I mean, I don't know how you get a THM at Golden Gate. I mean, I don't know how you get a THM at Golden Gate. I mean, I don't know how you get a THM at Golden Gate.

01:06:07

I mean, I don't know how you get a THM at Golden Gate. I mean, I don't Gate. I mean, I don't know how you get a THM at Golden Gate. I mean, I don't know how you get a THM at Golden Gate. I mean, I don't know how you get a THM at Golden Gate. I mean, I don't know how you get a THM at Golden Gate. I mean, I don't know how you get a THM at Golden Gate. I mean, I knew that these movements influenced all sorts of people around Augustine or anybody else to whom he was writing.

01:06:28

That was a part of a general education in seminary and then made more fully important by my dealing with Islam, by my dealing with Roman Catholicism.

01:06:44

Oneness Pentecostals very often will point to Greek philosophical inputs that they claim have to do with the

01:06:54

Trinity, stuff like that. So I have raised strong objections to the incredible conclusions that I've read to you from this book because what they involve is the drawing of a straight line from Manichaeism to Augustine through 1100 years to Calvin.

01:07:30

What is completely missing here is any influence of Scripture. What you have is this amazing idea, and there's an appendix in here

01:07:41

I was just looking at that I'm going to be really having some fun with, that you have Manichaean interpretations,

01:07:50

Gnostic interpretations of certain passages. And we'll hear, it's actually in here in the audio, you will hear

01:08:05

Dr. Wilson saying, and if you look at the passages that the followers of Manny went to or that the

01:08:14

Gnostics went to, to talk about these things, they're the same ones that Calvinists use. As soon as I heard that,

01:08:20

I realized we're dealing with someone here who has no experience taking this message outside of a very narrow confine.

01:08:32

For example, oh wow, it's been over 20 years now. Over 20 years ago,

01:08:37

I debated one of the leading Oneness scholars, Dr.

01:08:43

Sabin, on the subject of the Trinity, and what is one of the standard arguments that Oneness scholars present?

01:08:52

Well, you are interpreting that biblical passage the same way

01:08:59

Rome does, and we know Rome's the whore of Babylon. Therefore, now, that's an invalid argument for a

01:09:08

Oneness person to present, because the validity of the interpretation is based upon the text that you are interpreting, not how someone else has interpreted it sometime in history.

01:09:18

I mean, the Mormons interpret certain verses of the Bible correctly, despite the fact they're polytheists.

01:09:29

And only the most fundamentalist of a mindset could ever give you a basis for thinking that my interpretation of every verse of the

01:09:39

Bible has to be completely different than every false teacher's interpretation of every verse of the Bible, because the assumption is that a false teacher will misinterpret every verse of the

01:09:47

Bible, but that's just the opposite of what they do. They will correctly interpret as much of the

01:09:52

Bible as they can, so they can use that as the hook to grab you for where they introduce their heresies.

01:09:58

If you're not familiar with dealing with false religions, things like that, you might not be aware of that, but that's the reality. So, what is really missing is any acknowledgment of the fact that the vast majority of us who hold

01:10:17

Reformed theology have never read a word of Manny, and the idea that our exegesis—now,

01:10:29

I will—you can go and compare myself and Leighton Flowers on the subject of exegesis.

01:10:37

You can do that in our debate, you can do that by looking at his book that he put out based upon the title of my book,

01:10:45

The Potter's Freedom, The Potter's Promise, I think it's called. Compare the exegesis. Everyone that I know of that's done so honestly can see the fundamental difference that exists there, and we have gone over numerous times, we've gone over the choice meats, we've gone over numerous things where we—when we delve into the text of Scripture, well, there's a reason why in Radio Free Geneva we start off with one of the quotes in the theme song is my asking, because this came up in the debate, my asking

01:11:21

Leighton Flowers, are you using the same methodology of interpretation to derive your answers here that you derive in looking at the resurrection of Jesus or the deity of Christ, something like that?

01:11:32

And he goes, uh, no. I use the same method of exegesis for everything, and that's the key, that's the point.

01:11:43

So, there's no recognition that the vast majority of Reformed exeges—the idea here is we just all go to Augustine and go, what should

01:11:55

I believe? The vast majority of us who don't do church history have only read portions of Augustine, City of God, Confessions, something along those lines, have not read all of Augustine, and hence cannot be influenced by him.

01:12:17

The thesis is, well, he takes

01:12:24

Manichaean interpretations, Gnostic interpretations, whatever that means, whatever that means.

01:12:31

I have yet to find interpretation. I now have his own book, so maybe there's a whole section on the exegetical methodology of the

01:12:40

Manichaeans. I'll look for that. I don't expect to find it, but you'd have to, what you'd have to do is you'd have to demonstrate that there was a specifically identifiable Manichaean exegetical process, and that somehow, that Manichaean exegetical process was transferred lock, stock, and barrel from someone who didn't know almost any

01:13:08

Greek and did not know Hebrew over 1 ,100 years unchanged, and was inserted like a

01:13:15

USB drive into the brain of John Calvin. Okay, and Lutheran's wingly for parts of things too, but we can't get into all that.

01:13:28

It's directly inserted in John Calvin who just goes, Manichaean interpretation, and starts writing his commentaries on the

01:13:37

Bible. Now, no one in history believes that happened. It's impossible, so you immediately have to go.

01:13:48

There are so many things that would have to be established along this line that no one's even attempted to do.

01:13:57

One other thing, Dr. Wilson did make the statement in the interview that no one else has come up with this.

01:14:05

Now, that worries me. I'm not saying that there are not things yet to be discovered.

01:14:11

For example, when Granville Sharp recognized the complex of five, six different rules that we call

01:14:21

Granville Sharp's rule in Greek grammar today, that had not been known by the

01:14:26

King James translators, and they were brilliant guys. They were brilliant guys, but yeah, things can still be discovered, and we can use computers to come up with a recognition of patterns in the

01:14:36

New Testament and stuff like that in regards to grammar and the particular use of prepositions in a particular situation, things like that.

01:14:43

Okay, there are things like that. Do you have any idea how many books, how many doctoral dissertations have been done at Oxford, let alone

01:14:51

Cambridge or anyplace else, on Augustine and Calvin? Thousands, thousands.

01:15:00

No one in their life could read all of them, and this somehow is, he's the first one to figure this out?

01:15:10

It seems to me that the primary focus of the dissertation, and I know enough about dissertations to know they have to be focused, is to demonstrate that Augustine redacted and edited a couple of his books, about four of his books, after engaging in the

01:15:34

Pelagian controversy. Now, I'm not even going to argue that because it's completely possible and also completely irrelevant, irrelevant as far as the dispute is concerned.

01:15:49

That, I think, was the catch for the dissertation. This is what I'm going to look at.

01:15:55

Okay, but that has nothing to do with the theological conclusions that Reformed theology is

01:16:06

Manichaean interpretation, because anyone who knows anything about Manichaeanism, there is, when you have multiple

01:16:16

Jesuses, when you have a dualistic situation where matter is evil, and yet, in the

01:16:28

Christian faith, matter is made by God and it's good, and you have propositional revelation and all of creation is the glory of God, there is such a worldview chasm that exists that to leap over it with assumptions makes

01:16:47

Evel Knievel look like a wise guy. And yet, that's what we have being touted.

01:16:54

That's what we have being touted. One other thing I keep saying, I had a bunch of people on Twitter, why won't you just debate him?

01:17:03

Just do it. Just do it now. Now, right now. And I'm just like, okay, let me see if I understand what you're saying here.

01:17:13

I haven't actually started to put anything on the screen and say, okay,

01:17:20

I've read a few things, but I've talked about going in -depth, and I'm going to be going in -depth. And some of you are going to be bored by that, but I hope a lot of you will stick with me because this is, if you've enjoyed my church history lectures, you're going to find this fascinating.

01:17:35

You're going to find this very helpful. What you will learn as we respond to Dr.

01:17:41

Wilson will help you in analyzing anyone's utilization of church history to see if they are being fair, to see if they're being accurate.

01:17:56

This is important, and it's necessary. So I was going to go off on a tangent there, but I'll hold it for another point in time.

01:18:06

It's important, and it's necessary to look at those particular things. And so those of you who are trying to get, you got to do this now, or you're just a big chicken.

01:18:15

Yes, McFly, you're a chicken. Yeah, I'm sorry, but I can't even fly anywhere right now.

01:18:28

I'm already going to have to reschedule two full debates, two important discussions. I'm hoping that the second half of the year, which was going to be one of the busiest of my life, will still happen.

01:18:41

But I may be rescheduling all of that, too. And you think right now, before I've even laid out my case,

01:18:50

I've got to somehow run off and do this right now? Your priorities are really messed up. So those of you who've been going, you will never debate, why don't you just hold on?

01:19:02

Why don't you just wait until the case has been made? Think about that. Think about that.

01:19:08

Now, shall we start with something? Start with something. Yeah, right. One thing we need to understand is that when we go into the scriptures, we are faced with the task as believers of dealing with a corpus of literature called the

01:19:40

Bible. It's a corpus of literature. It's just one book. It's one book as far as its author is concerned in the supernatural realm, but it is a collection of multiple different books written by multiple different men over many, many, many centuries in multiple languages.

01:20:01

And central to Christian theology is presenting a coherent view of the

01:20:14

God who speaks in these books that takes into consideration how he was acting in time and space, the people of Israel, conquest of the land, the kings, the prophets, the great nations to its north and south that were constantly marching armies through its borders, and the prophecies of the coming one.

01:20:41

Then the fulfillment of those prophecies, the accomplishment of redemption, and the establishment of the body of Christ.

01:20:51

That ecclesia in the New Testament is the kahal of the

01:20:57

Old Testament, the assembly. And that assembly is then tasked with going out and proclaiming the lordship of Jesus Christ across the world.

01:21:09

How do we present one consistent understanding of God in light of everything that is presented to us?

01:21:21

Unfortunately, many believers in the United States are canonically challenged.

01:21:29

They do not honestly believe that the

01:21:36

Hebrew scriptures are as inspired or as relevant to their life as the

01:21:45

Greek New Testament is, and hence are uncomfortable with so many of the things that the

01:21:54

God of the Old Testament does. So in many a church, you have people sitting there going, well, you know, the

01:22:00

God of the Old Testament is a God of wrath, and the God of the New Testament is a God of love. This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of God in the

01:22:12

Old Testament and the nature of God in the New, both. And there is a consistency, a beautiful harmony and consistency that exists in the revelation

01:22:21

God gives us of himself, and then the fullness of that revelation in the incarnation of Christ and the outpouring of the

01:22:28

Holy Spirit. But because so many of our people do not read the prophets, the teaching of scripture that God is personal, and that God is holy, and that God has just wrath, and is the judge of all the earth, and that he raises up nations and tears nations down, he raises up rulers and tears rulers down, that the people are considered as dust in the scales in comparison to his power and might.

01:23:23

Because people don't read Isaiah 40 through 48. They don't read sections from Hosea or Zechariah or Zephaniah or the beautiful sections in Jeremiah about the sinfulness of the heart of man, and because that has been put on a secondary level, you can get away with some very surface -level theologies.

01:23:55

And hence, the vast chasm that between the God of scripture and the deities of some form within Gnosticism, within one of its later children,

01:24:14

Manichaeism, the vague concepts of deity in Greek philosophy or in Stoicism, we don't see the vast chasm that exists between them, and we don't feel that.

01:24:35

And what you need to understand is that when you're reading Reform Theology, when you read

01:24:40

Calvin's commentaries, what is driving someone like John Calvin is the foundational belief that there is a personal

01:24:53

God who has revealed himself by his covenant name in the Old Covenant, and then as Father, Son, and Spirit in the

01:25:03

New, and that everything is wrapped up in the demonstration of the glorious grace of that one true

01:25:15

God. That's why he created, that's why he revealed, that's why he created man in the context that he did and gave the

01:25:25

Evangelium and did the entire work of redemption and joined an unworthy people to himself in the sun.

01:25:36

All of these things utterly unknown, utterly unknown, and cannot be known in Gnosticism or Manichaeism.

01:25:47

Why? Because they don't have the right God. They don't have a God that's even semi -similar to this.

01:25:53

Once you're a dualist, once you have a good God and an evil

01:25:59

God, once you have multiple Jesuses, whatever of the many variations we're talking about here, and even

01:26:05

Manny had different perspectives during his own life, but none of that can even come close to dealing with the

01:26:14

God that Calvin's dealing with. Can't. And it didn't. And hence, what is the primary source of input for Calvin's theology?

01:26:29

Is it Manny? Or is it the Hebrew Scriptures and the Greek Scriptures? Anyone who says it's

01:26:35

Manny, I don't even know what to say to you. This doesn't even get close to trying to prove that thesis.

01:26:45

Doesn't even try. And yet concludes that Reformed Christianity is

01:26:51

Manichaeism. Careful thinkers should be the first ones to go, whoa, the big thing called the

01:27:03

Grand Canyon, I don't care how far back you get your run started on that one. You try jumping that and you're going to go splat.

01:27:09

You might go splat 10 feet farther down the wall than somebody else does, but you're going splat. And that's what this thesis does.

01:27:16

It goes splat. Because that is a chasm that cannot be bridged.

01:27:25

So, we need to start with the recognition that the

01:27:31

God that we're talking about is personal, the creator of all things, that he created the creation good, that just because something is physical does not make it evil, and that while mankind is the gracious recipient of the blessings of God and is central to the demonstration of his goodness and his grace and his mercy and his power and his justice and everything else, it's not about us.

01:28:13

It's about him. Personal triune deity, which you do not have in either

01:28:23

Gnosticism or Manichaeism. You don't have it underlying any of the conclusions of Stoicism.

01:28:30

They have none of that. And so, everything that flows from that, such as what the meaning of faith is, who man is, what the image of God is, what resurrection to new life is, what regeneration is, if you use those words as defined within the triune theistic system of Christianity and then just pick them up and bring them over here and drop them into Manichaeism, you are engaging in grossly fallacious argumentation.

01:29:20

So, if you say Manichaeism believed in the sovereignty of God and the necessity of regeneration before faith and that faith is a gift from God, without recognizing the chasm of definitional difference between what each one of those words meant, you cannot simply take the

01:29:51

Christian concept of regeneration and move it over here. It's not possible. Manichaean interpretation of Scripture makes, apologies to some of you in the audience, makes

01:30:06

Mormon interpretation of the Bible look solid, okay? But if you're not familiar with Manichaeism, then think about Mormonism for a second.

01:30:19

When we talk about Joseph Smith interpreting a particular passage of the Bible and you wonder, how did he, what?

01:30:28

Celestial and telestial and terrestrial levels of glory and what? How does he get any of that?

01:30:35

Okay, you see it's because he has a different starting point. He's not using meaningful exegesis of the

01:30:42

Scriptures. Well, Manichaeism is even beyond that.

01:30:50

So, we see how between Mormonism and Christianity, words change meaning. That's why we've been teaching this for decades, that you have to understand the difference in the meaning of the words or you will never communicate with the

01:31:03

Mormon person. Well, even more so, if you take words that have a meaning over here and pretend, you can just simply move them over here and go, look, they're the same thing.

01:31:17

That is naive on a level that is stunning to me and should be stunning to everybody. It should be stunning to everybody.

01:31:24

Will we see that happen in this book? Yes, we will. Yes, we will. We'll document it. So, I didn't expect all the other stuff to put us way behind.

01:31:35

So, tomorrow, normal time tomorrow? Yes, no, maybe?

01:31:42

You're looking down. What are you looking at? Something is going on.

01:31:48

I am reading a headline from ABC 15 that says that the governor of the state of Arizona has just issued a stay -at -home order for Arizona.

01:32:04

Governor Ducey gave in, huh? Goes into effect Tuesday at 5 p .m. Wow. I didn't think the

01:32:15

Republican governors would give in. Stay at home, stay healthy, stay connected order is what it's called.

01:32:22

It promotes physical distancing while also encouraging social connectedness.

01:32:28

Yeah, yeah, social connectedness. Correctedness. Yeah, until the internet crashes and then no one's going to know what to do.

01:32:41

I'll have to look that up. Yep. Folks, this can't last.

01:32:50

This is absolutely positively the recipe for civil unrest and rioting.

01:32:58

That's what's going to happen. These people start thinking. People will panic when they can no longer afford to buy food.

01:33:08

They will panic. This is unbelievable. Unbelievable.

01:33:14

Well, we voted them in. We get what we get. Anyway, all right.

01:33:20

So, hopefully, we'll still... Yeah, there's only two of us.

01:33:28

They can't get us for that until they clog the roads up. Yeah, except the people that cook the food have to.

01:33:43

It doesn't make any sense. It is absolutely irrational. Stunning. So, Lord Willow will be here.

01:33:51

We've actually been thinking about this. So, we have... Are you to the point where if worst comes to worst?

01:33:59

Okay. So, folks, no. I've made arrangements where if we had to do something like what we just did with Michael, except better...

01:34:09

Good right, without a phone. Okay. Then I can actually stream to YouTube from my home with you on Zoom or whatever, and we can do it that way.

01:34:22

Still need to work out some audio issues, but at least bare bones, we could make it go forward, and at least with Zoom, you know you can do presentations and all the other stuff that we like to do here.

01:34:33

So, we've been prepared for contingencies. In some strange, bizarre ways,

01:34:39

I kind of look back and go, you know, and we didn't have this in mind, but we've prepared for contingencies for a while.

01:34:47

So, pray for one another, folks. Be reminded that we serve a

01:34:53

God of hope, a God of mercy, a God who is there. And this was no surprise to him.

01:35:01

And while our message to our neighbors who are not believers needs to be, you know, you can't live the way we've been living in the societies, these societies, for all these many decades, and not have that come back on us, all of us.

01:35:21

And so the answer to that is, repent. Repent.

01:35:28

Change your ways. Stop promoting all of this wicked silliness of 20 million different genders and men walking around wearing dresses, calling themselves females.

01:35:40

But nobody, but no one will even make that connection. We have to. No one will make the connection.

01:35:45

We have to make the connection. They're afraid to. We have to tell them, this is the judgment of God, and it's deserved.

01:35:51

Well, it is deserved. All right, well, Lord willing, we'll be back tomorrow at two o 'clock our time, 5 p .m.

01:36:01

Eastern Daylight Time. Who knows what will have happened between now and then? We'll see.