The Nature of Saving Grace, a Few Textual Variants, End of 2016

Greetings and welcome to the final dividing line of 2016, sort of has to be.

Well, you know, I suppose we could come in on a Saturday if we just really absolutely had to, but I don't think that's gonna be happening.

And we're glad that it is happening because just a few moments ago the modem was acting like it was mourning over all of the many stars that have died in 2016.

I'm not gonna work like 2016. But, you know, when you upgrade stuff, that's what happens.

It's just, you did not touch the modem. You touched everything that touches the modem.

It's all connected. It's all connected. So welcome to the program today.

We are going to keep it to, let's see, I think we started about 1 .24ish so we'll need to keep things to about an hour today or whenever.

So if I decide to pull the plug early, we'll pull the plug early. Not because of a desire to not do more.

I would like to do more. Had lots of things I wanted to do this week, but as you may know we were providentially hindered from being able to do those things.

So we will do what is wise as far as time is concerned.

So with that, I wanted to start off with a tweet that I was directed to.

Don't even start with the coogies. It's in the 70s in Phoenix today. You can't wear a coogie in 70 degree weather.

It just does not compute. But Dr.

David Allen tweeted today actually, this morning.

Okay, tweeted this morning. I'm assuming

C slash N means cannot and D slash N means does not.

So man cannot reject what does not exist. Both salvation and condemnation are conditioned on reaction to God's saving grace made possible through the cross.

Now part of the problem these days is

Twitter and only having 140 characters.

But both salvation and condemnation are conditioned on reaction to God's saving grace made possible through the cross.

Now, we don't have editors for Twitter.

What a job that would be. Has anyone offered themselves for that?

You just send your tweets through the editor and they make it actually work. Yeah, get rid of that thing.

It almost went in the trash. Almost went in the trash. It has to go.

It has to go. Yeah. That's because none of those Mormon books ever tried to sneak in here and make a cameo appearance in the background.

In fact, I didn't check. I need to. Okay, looking all right.

Looking okay. All right. We're good. We're good. All right. I'm going to start checking the backgrounds from now on.

I got my straw man here. I got my straw man. Two triples. Two triples.

Yep. Two triples. That still would be such an awesome place for a BorgCube refrigerator, but maybe someday.

Maybe someday. Anyway, having now been thoroughly distracted by what was going outside the window, if this was in a book, if this tweet was in a book, then

I would have some confidence to say both salvation and condemnation are conditioned on reaction to God's saving grace made possible through the cross.

So, what is the phrase made possible through the cross? What's it modifying? Is it the whole system of man being able to choose, or is it modifying

God's saving grace? It seems to me in normal human usage that made possible through the cross is saying that God's saving grace is made possible through the cross and that man's reaction to that saving grace determines either salvation or condemnation.

That would seem to fit the synergistic salvation system that is being promoted by the traditionalists.

If that is the case, the traditionalists need to understand why those of us who are really familiar with Roman Catholicism and have dealt with Roman Catholicism will be dealing with Roman Catholicism in 20 days.

The debate in Atlanta with staff apologist for Catholic Answers, Trent Horn, on pretty much this issue because when it comes down, you know, we're going to be debating the permanence of salvation.

You lose your salvation. I would point out that the synergist does not have much of a solid ground for taking a strong position on this subject.

If salvation is the synergistic cooperation of the human will and the divine will, upon what basis do you affirm the perfection of that work?

Because unless, are you going to say, as many do, that it is a synergistic free will system that gets you into relationship with Jesus, but once you're into relationship with Jesus, you can't get out of it.

You're stuck in it. It was your free will because God won't violate your free will.

He is a gentleman, you know. It's your free will to get into the situation. It's your free will to get into the relationship, but once in it, your free will is gone and you cannot lose your salvation.

I've met people that just didn't seem to see the fundamental contradiction that's there.

I don't understand why any synergist would affirm the perseverance of the saints or the permanence of the state of salvation, at least in this life.

In fact, it would seem to open up issues of the possibility of losing it outside of this life as well.

In other words, in a future theoretical situation,

I suppose. But anyway, in this context of this tweet,

God's saving grace made possible through the cross. Now, this sounds like a statement of prevenient grace, not saving grace.

Evidently, in the mindset of Dr. Allen, it's all just saving grace, but everything is mere potentiality.

Well, it may save, it may not save. It's, you know, potential is sufficient.

And so, your eternal salvation is dependent upon your reaction to God's saving grace.

How can that be when so many people have never heard the gospel? I mean, none of this makes any sense before the cross at all.

It's just utterly non -applicable. But after the cross, there have been billions of people who have lived and died without ever having encountered the message.

And so, how can your eternal state be determined by your freewill reaction to a message you've never heard?

Why call it saving grace if it doesn't actually save in the case of those who do not accept it?

It actually condemns. Because you got salvation to condemnation, you have one thing of grace, how you respond to it determines which one you get.

So, if you get the condemnation, is it not condemning grace? But of course, the very phrase condemning grace wouldn't make any sense, would it?

Well, neither does prevenient grace, when you think about it. Prevenient, for those who are not familiar with this terminology, prevenient grace being the synergistic, well, the way

I described it years ago that stuck with a number of people, I noted, was it's the scotch tape of theology, not the gorilla tape, the scotch tape.

And I use the illustration of the fact that when I was younger, I was very impatient, still am for that matter.

But especially when I was younger and when I would make models, I bought a model, not for the joy of the process of modeling,

I wanted that plane, that tank, whatever it was, still wish

I had some of them. And I wonder if I'd be more patient now as an older person than I was back then.

I'd love to have an F4U Corsair, most beautiful plane ever made. And I had one, the blue, fought in the

Pacific, beautiful, beautiful aircraft. But when you're modeling, what do you have to do?

There has to be time, you have to be patient, you have to let things set, you have to let things dry before you can paint, before you can go to the next step.

I didn't want to do any of that. And so you glue it and then you tape it and then you move on.

Yeah, it led to some disasters. But tape was never designed to do that.

And grace was never designed to be, quote, unquote, prevenient. But prevenient grace is the mechanism that synergists use to do lip service to grace, but actually keep man in charge of all of salvation.

That's what prevenient grace is. And so when you make the statement that salvation and condemnation are conditioned on reaction, which must be man's reaction, obviously, on man's reaction to God's saving grace made possible through the cross, the

Roman Catholic hears that and goes, you're not far from the kingdom. Because you see, what did

Christ's death actually accomplish in the

Roman Catholic system? It did not accomplish the salvation of a particular people.

It did not. There is no way to affirm that within the

Roman Catholic system, which is why I was asking that young man who does the

Roman Catholic stuff. We were chatting a little bit. I really wanted to expand upon a tweet exchange we were having.

I just didn't feel up to it. Now I know why I wasn't feeling up to it. So we weren't able to pursue that. But I was asking him, he had invited me to mass, and I responded by quoting from Hebrews chapter 10, and he didn't get it.

He didn't see what the issue was. In the Roman Catholic's mind, the sacrifice of Christ on the cross merits the grace that you then have access to through the sacraments.

And so that grace may or may not save you because the sacraments are very much a synergistic system as well.

And the grace that Christ merited has been encountered by many people who will be in hell in classical historical

Roman Catholic theology. Because as will be affirmed, I assume by Trent Horne, you can be in what's called the state of grace and yet commit a mortal sin, lose the grace of justification, and if you stay in that condition, then you will be lost for eternity.

Again, only referring to historical, classical Roman Catholic orthodoxy here.

I doubt that the Pope actually believes this today, which is strange. But anyway, that's the idea.

So within Roman Catholicism, they can refer to saving grace because saving grace makes salvation a possibility rather than a reality.

It's a possibility through the sacramental system. And so Christ is a savior because Christ makes salvation possible.

And fundamental to the Reformation and fundamental to the Reformation understanding of the gospel was that Rome had completely missed this, had completely missed this issue and was completely eviscerating, taking out the very essence of what grace actually means.

We have, we had, we'll have again a tract titled

Grace Plus Works Is Dead. Isn't that what it's titled? And we designed it primarily for the

Mormons, but it's really usable for a large number of people. And it emphasizes that statement where Paul is talking about if it's by grace, it'll no longer work.

So there's grace, no longer grace. And by the way, that is a very interesting textual variant.

Do you have that tract out there? Let me show folks that.

And that reminded me of something else I wanted to do if we have time to do it. And if I'm simply allowed the time to do it, let's just put it that way.

And whether I'll be allowed the time to do it is completely beyond my control. Ah, yes.

Thank you very much. Oh, we did cool backgrounds on those. Yeah, this was, this was, yeah, yeah, this is, this is a neat track.

Font's too small, but it was a neat track. Yeah, I know.

I was, I was young back then. I was young back then. But here's, here's the, here's how it folded up.

Here's Grace Plus Works Is Dead being meaningless. And then when you open it up, we, we screened in the back.

Chorus, Pistis, Dikaiosune. Isn't that cool? Grace, Faith, and Righteousness in the background.

And each of these panels, what is grace? What is faith? What is righteousness? Explaining what each one of those words is.

And yeah, here we go. Paul himself explained in his letter to Romans chapter 11, verse 6, it is by grace is on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace.

The Greek readers of this verse long ago understood that what Paul was saying, his argument is based on the very meaning of the word grace. Since grace is undeserved kindness that is given wholly without reference to the recipient's works or merit.

And since God offers man salvation by his grace, then obviously the idea of basing one's relationship with God on one's works is to miss

God's plan. Trying to mix works with God's free grace doesn't work. The two terms are mutually exclusive.

And what's significant about that, if you go to Romans 11, 6, there's a textual variant there.

And what reminded me of this was there's a guy on Twitter, Murray Fullerton, watching

Protestants fight about authority, whatever. I could just retreat that with watching

Roman Catholics fight about how to interpret the Pope's most recent wacky statement. What's this guy's name here?

Don Quixote. Last thing he said about an hour ago was, no,

James, I just have a final authority in all matters of faith and practice. What's your final authority? So it's King James.

But he was talking about how we're making God out to be a liar in Mark chapter 1.

And of course, someone made reference to me. That's how I got stuck in the conversation. But there's a textual variant in Romans 11, 6 that is theologically relevant.

What do I mean by that? Well, if you look at Romans 11, 6, you will see in the

King James version that there's a fairly lengthy addition at the end of the, well, there are words at the end of Romans 11, 6, we don't have in the

New American Standard. New American Standard says, if it is by grace, it is on the basis of works. Otherwise, grace is no longer grace. But the

King James, based upon the Texas Receptus adds, and if by works is no longer of grace, otherwise work is no longer work.

So there is a, in the Texas Receptus, there is a double statement made.

If it's by grace, it's no longer based on works. Otherwise, grace is no longer grace. And if by works, it is no longer of grace.

Otherwise, work is no longer work. And I could find a way to interpret the longer reading in an orthodox fashion, but I think it completely misses the point.

And that is there is something in the very nature of grace that when you mix the idea of merit into it, destroys it by nature.

And I don't think that there is something about work that has the same parallel to it.

That's why that longer reading, I think, has relevance.

And that is a very interesting reading.

Part of it was found in Vaticanus. It's been added into Sinaiticus.

And it certainly has a wide range of, well, it's pretty much all minuscule support.

There's a couple of enceals. But it is not found in P46, the original

Sinaiticus, Alexander's CDFG, P81. Yeah, that's a very weak reading in the

Texas Receptus at that point. I'm not going to bother to ask our ecclesiastical text friends what they would do with that.

But anyway, this idea of grace as something that is merited and earned and then dispensed, or in this case, something that is called saving grace, but actually doesn't save, but it becomes something you respond to.

I thought it was our response to the gospel. Even in classical synergistic context,

I thought it was our response to the gospel that matter.

I was looking at the picture that just was posted on Twitter. It's got me in the background and there's an

F4U Corsair sitting in front. And I wonder if that has the folding wings or not.

Mine didn't, but there were carrier versions of the F4U. Anyway, I shouldn't have

Twitter up there right there. I have to start putting that over here or something. But this is sort of the natural place.

Well, I don't know. Now think about it. If I put my Bible software right there and that stuff down here, that might actually help the ease with which

I am distracted. We will have to consider that in the future. Anyway, point being,

I looked at that and I was struck once again with the fundamental differences that exist between monergism and synergism and how things end up being completely redefined.

God's saving grace is what brought about my reaction to the gospel, which was to embrace it.

Because without that saving grace, I would always reject it. And it was not some prevenient grace.

If it's saving grace, then it must save. And saving grace cannot result in condemnation.

So all of that being said to be made possible through the cross, all of that once again illustrates the connectedness and the consistency of the synergistic systems and the vast chasm that exists between them and monergism and,

I believe, a consistently biblical perspective. I don't know how a synergist would engage the debate that we were going to be doing in January.

Don't know. Too many holes in that boat. Too many holes in that boat.

And I'm awful glad that it's the gospel as found in Scripture that can truly provide a response to what

Rome has to say. And I think 2017's going to be a year where, once again, all of us are going to be forced to think very carefully about why we are not

Roman Catholics. And I believe that the tribe of those who do not follow

Rome knowingly, purposefully, properly is going to get smaller and smaller.

Many people don't follow Rome solely based upon taste, predilection, tradition, whatever.

But I think in 2017, you're going to see more people forced to deal with the issue.

And at least the definitions of that community will be made more clear.

We will be forced, just as we are being forced, to clarify why we do not embrace homosexuality, why we do not embrace transgenderism, why these things are fundamental denials of the

Christian faith. How do we do that? We do that by defining the Christian faith, by clarifying the

Christian faith, by understanding its foundations better. The same thing here. You may have a good book knowledge of why justification is so important.

You may, in your head, realize in justification, we are declared righteous before God.

There is the great exchange, the imputation of the righteousness of God, the imputation of our sins to Christ, all the things related to that.

But hopefully this year will make that much more personal, much more something you've chosen on the basis of a real understanding of the issues to embrace, rather than just, well, this is my tribe, and that's your tribe, and sort of go from there.

Sort of how, when you start getting into the playoff period, all of a sudden, people find themselves fans of teams that no one ever knew.

I didn't know you liked that team! You know, that type of situation. For me,

I'm not really a fan of almost anything anymore, as far as professional sports goes.

So I'm free to watch a year and go, yeah, that team's doing really well this year. Like, this year,

I would really like to see those two rookies get something done. I think it'd be great.

I think the story would be great. The problem is, two years from now, they might be in completely different uniforms.

That's what, to me, just sort of makes the whole thing like, meh, who cares? Because I'm more interested in the persons than what the uniform is.

I'm confused. Is James' belief of once saved, always saved? What do you mean you're confused,

Ben? I mean, I don't like that phrase. I don't believe in getting your ticket punched and you just go to heaven.

But how could anyone not realize that I'm taking the yes, a truly saved person cannot be lost position in the debate?

The Roman Catholic ain't taking that position. So who gets to take that position?

Well, I take that position because Christ loses none of his sheep. If I believe

Christ saves his particular elect people, what other position can I take? So anyway,

I wanted to address that. All right. There was something else.

Maybe it wasn't. Okay. All right. Speaking of text covariance, back to the fellow on Twitter who says that I am calling

God a liar or making God a liar. This is another one of those many conversations where I was dragged in by someone else when you get tagged in Twitter and stuff like that.

And here is a... Yeah. Okay.

You know, I could actually, now that I think about it, I'm not sure what in the world this is going to come up as now that I think about it.

Oh, wow. Apple time machine extra.

Well, I don't think it's that. Apple Bluetooth extra. Yeah. These are things I really need to be sending across.

Yeah. Almost everything says extra, extra, extra. Oh, okay.

That's what it is. TweetBot.

Let's see if it's TweetBot. Item slash zero. You're not getting anything from me.

What? Did it change? Y 'all change IPs again? 0 .107.

0 .107. I'm sending... Yeah. Everybody can hack.

Something tells me that having the last two numbers of the internal thing is not exactly going to do it.

How about there? There's a main window. Do you have the main window? I'm good.

So it's his fault. Okay. Ryan is saying it is Rich's fault. But I promise

I am sending it. And obviously, these are things to do before the program starts,

I suppose, but it's always worked in the past. It just doesn't seem to be working right now.

I'm listening to voices across the thing there. Well, while they're looking for it...

Oh, good grief. That's certainly not anything close to it. All right. Let's do this.

Can you zoom in on the middle? Just give you the whole screen.

And that way... Now there's the channel. Everybody can watch. Everybody in the channel, say hi.

See this over here, folks? This is what I'm looking at. Okay. So here's the channel over here.

These are... Everybody in channel saying hi. Here's a tweet bot up here.

And you can see in the background, there's my car out there. So there's someone walking by my car out there, but they're doing the lawn.

But this is the thing here I'm supposed to be looking at. I didn't know if you'd want to zoom in on it. But you see, there's a written in red from some modern translation.

Because down here, in the King James, as it is written in the prophets, behold,

I send my message before my face, which is provided by the way before thee. This is probably New American Standard or something like that up here.

The beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ. That doesn't sound like... No, it's not

New American Standard. It's some other thing. But just as written in Isaiah, the prophet, look,

I'm sending forth my messenger. And written in Isaiah, the prophet says, nowhere, should be nowhere,

W -H -E -R -E. Nowhere in Isaiah will find this, it in Malachi 3 .1.

If you're going to write in your Bible, maybe you're not writing in English. I don't know. It's hard to say.

Anyway, so there you've got it. And this was added. This was included in a little tweet from Don Quixote.

I'm not sure Don Quixote knows that we're talking about this. And someone basically said, well, take a look at what

James White said about it. And there's a whole section on this where I give...

I quoted D .A. White. Instead of in the prophets, the B Aleph text and the

English versions have in the prophet Isaiah. Though Mark 1 .3 does refer to Isaiah 40 verse 3, this verse 2 is found in Malachi 3 .1

and not Isaiah! The way it stands in these false texts, it makes the

Bible out as false and in error. Peter Ruckman is even more direct.

Using origins corrupt septuagint, remember Ruckman who passed away this year, used to teach that the

Greek septuagint came from origin. Eusebius, Augustine, and Jerome conjectured that the quotation which followed was from Isaiah the prophet.

Having made this conjecture without reading Malachi, all of them changed the verse from thus it is written, the prophets, to thus it is written,

Isaiah the prophet. The reader will find this Bible, he used something else, but I'll use the term error, preserved in the

RV, ASV, RSV Catholic Bible and 95 % of all the new Bibles. In answer to the question which is correct,

Ruckman writes, well, if you're a conceited linguist who thinks that he can sit in judgment on the scripture, you will go to books written by Trench, Driver, Gesenius, Delitch, A .T.

Robertson, Casper, Gregory, Diceman, Nestle, Westcott, and Hort. If you're a Bible -even Christian, you will turn to the book.

It is amazing when you've sort of been away from reading

King James -only -ism for a while, you come back to it, just how in -the -face, conceited, arrogant, and cultic it really is.

I said, I note again the circularity of Ruckman's position. We were asking a question about a reading the Bible, whether it is in Isaiah the prophet or in the prophets.

Ruckman says, if you're a Bible -believing Christian, which means for him, if you believe only in the KJV, you will turn to the book, i .e.

to the KJV. So how does one know the KJV is right? Because the KJV says so, of course. Later in the same work, he refers to this passage as a famous scholarly boo -boo and says, quote, here are the only

Bibles that maintain the correct reading, which a sixth -grade pupil could understand are Tyndale Young, the Geneva Bible, the

Bishop's Bible, and the AV 1611, end quote. Why are KJV -only advocates certain the prophets is the only possible reading?

The argument is that since part of Mark's quotation is from Malachi, Mark couldn't have written in Isaiah the prophet, for this would be a mistake by the inspired writer.

Even though Mark 1 -3 is from Isaiah, the preceding section is from Malachi, hence it must be in the prophets.

It is quite certain that some scribes early on in the transmission of the New Testament text had the very same thought, not because they were

KJV -only. In fact, the reason why our scholars are so confident the proper reading is in Isaiah the prophet stems partly from this very fact.

It is much easier to understand why a scribe would try to help Mark out, so to speak, and correct what seems to be an errant citation, than to figure out why someone would change it to Isaiah the prophet.

But as in so many instances where a scribe thought he had encountered an error in the text, the error was, in fact, the scribes, not the texts.

The problem here with the KJV -only argument is simply one of ignorance. As the common citation forms at the time of the

New Testament's writing, we have at least two instances recorded for us by the apostles where a conflated citation of two different Old Testament prophets is placed in the name of the more important or major one.

First, in Matthew 27 .9, Matthew attributes to Jeremiah a quotation drawn primarily from Zechariah.

We note in passing the KJV has Jeremiah at Matthew 27 .9, and hence we must make reference to this phenomenon of citing a conflated

Old Testament passage by the name of the more major of the two authors to explain this. Now, I stop right there.

What has been my statement for decades now? KJV -onlyism is wrong because KJV -onlyism has to use different standards for the

KJV than it does for any other translation. In Matthew 27 .9, the KJV has a conflated citation.

And to make heads or tails out of what that text says, you have to recognize that when you have a conflated citation, it was common to take the greater or better known of the prophets.

Some people have theorized, by the way, that in the days when you had scrolls, that you would take the name of the first major prophet in the scroll.

So you'd have an Isaiah scroll. If you had any of the minor prophets later on in the scroll, you wouldn't name the whole scroll after the minor prophet.

You'd name it after the major prophet. And hence, this had something to do with the origination of this methodology of citation.

Because again, the assumption, the part of people like Waite and Ruckman and then their modern internet disciples that just simply repeat what they say is anachronism.

And you just assume that people have had books the way we have them today.

And so it'd be easy to cite such and such a book. But that wasn't the case.

You had scrolls. And if one of the minor prophets is deeply embedded inside a scroll, it would take you quite some time to be able to get to what that minor prophet said.

And so how did you cite things?

It wouldn't be cited in the same way that we cite things. You can get to Habakkuk. It may take you a couple seconds to find them.

You might need the old table of contents or the thumb indexing or something. Today, it's just you look at your screen, you find

H -A -B and you tap that. Well, that's all anachronism. That's not how things have happened in the past.

And so these folks will take this thing, they don't even recognize and have never been challenged and will never be challenged within the

King James only movement. Within King James only churches. Oh, somebody will preach on Matthew 27, 9 and they may even give the proper explanation as to why it says what it says there.

But no one will even think to go, well, wouldn't that be relevant over at Mark 1, 2?

Not allowed to think that way. Not allowed to think that way. Also, we find, he took his glasses off and can no longer read.

Also, we find the very same attempt by later scribes to change Jeremiah to Zechariah at Matthew 27, 9, though in this case, their attempts did not become the majority manuscript reading.

And I stop once again just simply to go, if it had, would that change anything?

Given how people will defend Revelation 16, 5 and stuff like that?

No, because the circularity of the King James only mindset. Whatever ended up in the King James is the final authority.

How it got there, whether it's consistent, doesn't matter. The other instances here at Mark 1, 2 through 3 were a conflated reading combining

Malachi 3, 1 with Isaiah 43 is cited under the single name of the more major prophet Isaiah. This was, as we said, common practice in that day and we cannot fault the apostolic writers for using the conventional means of expression.

The error exists when modern readers try to force the ancient writers into modern standards of citation and notation.

We see then that Mark was quite accurate in his original wording and had no need for editorial assistance from later scribes or from King James only advocates.

And so I noticed that the other Christian that was attempting to deal with this

King James onlyist, quite rightly, just sort of threw up his hands in despair fairly early on and said,

I'm just, I'm not going to waste my time with this type of stuff.

And I fully understand why that is. I've certainly gone through that myself and experienced it.

You have a good life, friend. I'm not getting started on onlyism silliness. And yeah, that's unfortunately very much the way things go.

So there you go. Two different textual variants talked about there that are rather relevant.

By the way, have you heard the soundtracking yet on Sheologians? You have not.

Yes. We've been, we've been trying to get through the results. While I was lounging around, you're in here working.

Well, I, yeah, I was, yeah, I was, uh, taking, taking it, just decided just to have, have a few days to, uh, play with the, play with the phone and, uh, donate a lot of blood.

Uh, that's, it's always fun. Uh, that, that, that's great. So you haven't heard, uh,

Ryan, did you hear it? Oh man. Yeah.

Yeah. Well it's Sheologians.

Um, yeah, I'm, I'm not sure if you could understand it, but, um, but, uh, yeah, it's my daughter's webcast.

And I remember the first time that I heard them doing this was, um, oh, thanks

Jason. Thanks Jason. I hadn't even thought about that. I don't think, I think, well, yeah.

Oh no. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. All right.

Let's see here. Yeah. Actually the, the, the, uh, audio jack is, is plugged in.

Um, well, we'll see. We'll see. Yeah.

So, uh, let's see here. I had all this on my, um,

I had my Mac with me when I went in to do some recording with, um,

Summer and Joy. And so when she informed me that, uh, we were going to do soundtracking,

I'm like, okay, well at least I can, I can defend myself here because if you're not heard it, um, what they do is they play a song.

And then as you're listening to the song, they go back and forth describing what's going on in the song, um, rather imaginatively, you know, just based upon how it's being sung and, you know, stuff like that.

And it's called soundtracking. So this is, this is a glorified version of, uh, Would You Rather?

No, because to this day I have no earthly idea what Would You Rather is supposed to mean.

I understand Would You Rather. I don't. I do. I don't understand why you wouldn't. You should.

I don't. No. Yeah. It's, but soundtracking is much more creative.

Okay. Yeah. Ryan and I are going to have to come up with some good Would You Rathers and... No, no, you're not.

Uh, that I, I draw the line there, but, um, so they've done some songs in the past and, and as I've listened,

I've thought to myself, you know, that's something I could never do. Uh, because it's, it's very fanciful and stuff like that.

And, and so when they said I had to soundtrack, the first thought that crossed my mind was, okay, um, at least what

I can do is I can make it a song that's going to be tough on Summer. Um, so I've got,

I've got half a chance and yes, yes, yes.

Yeah. Because she can't stand John Denver. Just can't. Oh, neither can you.

Well, um, so they plugged my

Mac in and, uh, this is, this is a song I, I chose. Uh, Oh, that's come on.

Do you not have this up? All right. I had it there. And then when

I double clicked it, it just went, there we go.

Why is nothing working? My fault. We are, we are working on a

Mac computer. Please stand by. No, uh, audio is on.

So this is, this is what we played. And so they, they started off and, uh, it's called sweet surrender.

And, uh, so you're, you're, you're supposed to go along and, and, uh, describe what's, what's going on.

Well, the funny thing is Summer starts going presuppositional apologist on John Denver and starts accusing him of a theistic moral deism and which, which actually given he got into Est and he got into all sorts of wild, crazy, weird stuff, but you couldn't necessarily tell that from this song, but it ended up being it's it's five minutes, five minutes and eight seconds long.

So it, it, at one point she was like, and how long does this, does this keep going? Is that 26 more seconds?

Okay. And we continue up. It, uh, it ended up being, it ended up being pretty classic.

There's no, no twist about it. We ended up having discussion about addiction, drugs, um, when the cops pull you over all sorts of stuff, uh, all, all out of, out of, uh,

John Denver's sweet surrender. So that's the current, that's the current edition of, uh, sheologians, which came out just today and, uh, you lost me play

John Denver. I have no earthly idea.

Uh, Oh yeah. Whatever, whatever. All right.

Well, uh, a little bit early here, but I'm not going to try to, uh, uh, bring up anything else.

Um, I, one thing, wait, don't start the music. Don't start the music. One last thing that I did want to mention, obviously last program of the year,

Lord willing, I, I really need to emphasize that phrase, Lord willing, um, next week should be fairly normal.

I said that last week too. Um, you, you never, I was reminded yet once again, by, uh, this week that, um, as James said, uh, do not say

I will go do such and such, but if the Lord wills, I will go to go do such and such because he is in control of all things.

Um, but you may have noticed that you have not received in your inbox, uh, this week or last week of the week before that, um, any notifications from Alpha Omega Ministries saying that if you don't give toward such and such a drive that we're having here at the end of the year, then we're not gonna be able to do this.

We're not gonna be able to do that. We're not gonna be able to do the other thing. Um, we don't have a mailing list that we send a bunch of stuff out to, and we don't have an end of the year fundraising drive.

And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the people who do those things. I'm just saying you haven't heard that from us, but I just have to remind folks that the reason you haven't heard that from us is not because we're sitting around, uh, on piles of money and, uh, don't have any needs.

Uh, we do. It's just that because of what we do and how we do it, we don't talk much about that.

Other than the once in a while, just remind everybody, uh, or people who are new to the program and have always wondered, why do they never talk about money on that program?

Yep. We are a nonprofit corporation and we are dependent upon you folks, uh, to keep this program coming and to keep the lights on and do the things that we do.

We've got a lot of traveling. Um, there's a travel fund out there that really needs assistance, especially with South Africa coming up really quick.

Are we talking a lot about that next month? Certainly. But, uh, next month travel to, uh, back

East and I'm not just going to G3. I'm doing a number of other things, a lot of things, uh, that, uh, need your support and need your assistance.

Um, so here at the end of the year, uh, there's lots and lots of very, very worthy folks are doing great things.

Uh, just want to let you know, we could use your support as well. It's up to you before the

Lord, how you do those things. Your, your local church absolutely has to come first. Uh, we are not a church.

Don't, uh, don't send us something that was supposed to be given to your church or anything like that at all. Please don't do it.

Uh, but if you enjoy what the program, uh, provides, what it brings, want to see us doing more in the future, continue to address these issues.

I know that we're going to be facing some tremendous opposition, uh, even in the next matter of weeks.

And so we'll need you to stand with us in, in every way, which includes the practical way of, uh, keeping the funding going and keeping the, uh, the ministry operational.

So, um, just want to make sure people understand that, uh, the reason you don't hear from us, uh, the things that you often hear is we just feel that this kind of work requires, uh, less of an that type of thing, uh, because of some of the, uh, issues we have to address and we want to do so with the, with the most integrity.

So it is the end of the year. If you want to help us to be able to, uh, press forward in 2017, uh, that'd be very, very appreciative.

We would be appreciative of it as well. Um, I appreciate all the prayers for me this past, uh, this past week.

Um, uh, we didn't make any big deal out of it through the ministry and how like that, but we did get word out to certain groups and individuals, and I very much appreciate, uh, the prayers of God's people along those lines, uh, and, uh, continue to need that.

That is not actually a completed, uh, situation. There's, uh, still a little bit, uh, down the road about a month from now to, uh, sort of finish, uh, all of that up Lord willing.

Uh, so, uh, prayers in that area, uh, appreciated as, um, as well. So thanks for watching and listening to The Dividing Line today.

As I said, our, our intention is to be back with you on, uh, next Tuesday, Lord willing, we'll see you then.