Road Trip Dividing Line #1!

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. Here we are out on the road, and this time it's the real thing.

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This isn't a test run. This is the beginning of a 3 ,800 plus mile road trip that will take me from northern

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Arizona through New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and Nevada.

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And the most intensive speaking period there will be in Moscow.

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I will be speaking at the Grace Agenda Conference. I think all of the plenary speakers are speaking twice at two different locations,

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I think. I am speaking, I'm preaching at Christ Church on Sunday. I am the commencement speaker for New St.

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Andrews at some point during that time. There's a men's breakfast somewhere. And the cross -politic guys.

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I'm really looking forward to being, I want to be in studio with Chocolate Knox. There are things for us to discuss.

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I'm looking forward to that. I'm not sure he is, but I'm looking forward. No, he is too. Come on,

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I'm going to have so much fun having crisp meat burritos at Taco Time with Chocolate Knox.

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It's going to be great. He may not like crisp meat burritos, but I do.

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Anyway, looking forward. I am going to buy. Rich will affirm this.

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Rich will confirm this, okay? About two months ago, we're in the break room at the office.

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And I pull out a new bottle of Taco Time taco sauce.

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Now, new in the sense I haven't opened it. But I looked at the sell -by date or use -by date or something like that.

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It was somewhere in late 2018, I think. And I used it because I figured this stuff is so hot, nothing can live in it.

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And it was fine, tasted great. I didn't have any problems.

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But that tells you how long it's been since I've been to a Taco Time where I was able to buy my bottles of Taco Time sauce.

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Because I need my Taco Time sauce. I have to have it. And, you know, I've had some friends go to Taco Time, and they were disappointed.

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And Rich will probably testify to that, too. Because when we used to go to Salt Lake City, we'd go to the general conference.

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Taco Time got renamed Taco Time Bomb by a lot of the guys in the group.

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And I'll let you figure out why that was. But I think this is a mental thing.

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And a lot of you are going, yes, we know. Everything's a mental thing. I think it's a mental thing in that those first years going up there to Salt Lake City and doing what we did and the missions trip.

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And, man, the first time you cross the border into Utah, it's like foreign missions work. And it still is.

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I don't know. I guess it was just the association of that with how special all that was.

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And I don't think Rich saw this, but Sunday night at Apologia Church, we ordained

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Wade Orsini and set aside Andrew Songkrant as the first deacon of Apologia Church, Utah.

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And Rich will get a kick out of this. I gave them, I gave

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Wade specifically, the mini triple combination that I bought

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May, I think it was May 18th, 1984 at the LDS bookstore,

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Deseret bookstore in downtown Salt Lake City. Now, Rich, you haven't seen what that bookstore looks like now.

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You would, well, you wouldn't weep, but it's sad. It's a shadow of its former self.

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That used to be such a cool place to go. Now it's just like, it's like a bad

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Christian store with all the bad trinket stuff and all the books are gone. It's ridiculous. Anyway, I bought it back then and I marked in there the changes in between the 1833 book of commandments and 1835

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Doctrine and Covenants and all this kind of stuff. And, but I gave it to Wade because he's going to be going up there and they're going to be doing street witnessing and Salt Lake and BYU all over the place.

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So why would I do that? Because I can't read it anymore. I would have to do the

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Jim Kirk, get out the old man glasses thing to even be able to start to read it and it would still be very difficult to do.

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And so I decided, hey, this thing still got years of worth in it. Yeah, yeah, I got years of,

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Rich is taking his phone and doing this. My arm's not long enough. And because I can see

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Rich, even though we aren't, we're, I don't know, a couple hundred, well, about 120 miles apart, something like that right now.

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Anyway, so I gave it to them to use in ministry to the Mormons up there in Salt Lake City.

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So I'm not sure how I got into that. I'm not sure where that was going, but we went off track.

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So here we are. And I want to, again, thank everyone who has made this possible.

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Oh, Taco, Taco time. Sorry, got back there. Took the brain.

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I'm at 6 ,500 feet right now, so not as much oxygen as normal. But, which is good.

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It makes you feel better. Anyway, so we're going to be up there in Moscow, and we're going to do cross politic, and we're supposed to record a man rampant and a sweater vest dialogue.

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I have a brand new sweater vest. I had to get a sweater vest just for this trip, because I left the other one at the office.

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But I have a brand new sweater vest for use in the sweater vest dialogue while we're up there. So I've lost track of how many times

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I'm speaking in Moscow, but it's going to be intense. And then

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I'm speaking in Las Vegas on the way back. And I think we've put together a listing.

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I was working hard yesterday to get rich that information as far as the churches on the way up there in Colorado Springs, Denver, and Boulder.

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So I'll be at Boulder Bible Church again. I've been there with Eric Ellis many, many times in years past. And Redemption Hills Church, I've spoken there a number of times,

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Marty and Bruce Nicolay, my Denver family up there.

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And so if you're in those areas, be great to see you and hope to do that.

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So thanks to everyone who's made this possible. Obviously, mostly to the man behind the controls here,

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Rich Pierce, you might say, well, he's just doing Zoom right now. Well, yeah, and that's sort of important to be able to do right now.

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But this would not have happened without Rich doing a bunch of stuff. For example, we are using a wireless signal here.

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Now, we will go through some of the detours that Rich went through in getting this to work, but it's working.

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That's the important part. And you can't see it. Well, yes, you can. Right behind me is my truck.

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OK, right there. Right there. And I don't know if I should tell the story, but I'm going to anyways, because I decided to on the way up here.

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I decided that if it got me here, I'd tell the story. Rich and I firmly believe we put it this way.

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We say this truck chose us. But actually, I think just God chose this truck for us,

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I guess is how it works. Because once we settled on this unit that I'm in, which is a beautiful unit, it's well,

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I'm in an RV park here. And I would say it's in the 40 percentile size -wise.

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So it's a little bit smaller than half, maybe. I mean, it's not tiny.

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I've seen some tiny ones. I mean, really, really tiny ones. But it's a little bit longer than when

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I came back from Pryor. My dear friend, Derek Melton, who hopefully is watching, had really helped me a lot with...

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He has a... I think his is a... What was it? A 26 -foot, Derek? I forgot what it is.

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Somewhere around there. But he has a pull -through. He was the one who explained to me fifth wheels and stability issues and all the stuff.

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You know, because I was a newbie and still am. But I'm getting un -newbied quickly. If you can get something like this in where it's set up properly before the rain hits without having damaged anything, you're starting to get some idea of what you're doing.

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Anyway, so I had gone back there and we got a good idea of what it was we were looking to get that would be long -term usable.

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And so one night, all of a sudden, Rich pops into... We use an encrypted...

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Everybody should be using an encrypted messaging service. And this link pops up and I click on it.

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And it's that right there. That's the truck it was. And at first,

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Rich is like, this is what we're looking for. This is the kind of truck we're looking for. And so I click on it and I start reading about it.

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So he starts sending me some others. And I click on one or two others, and I keep going back to this one.

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Because I'm reading it and I'm going, well, wow, it's got an external radiator on the transmission for extra heavy -duty towing stuff.

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And I'm like, ooh, I live in Arizona. And yeah, like even today,

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I was concerned leaving because I have to... If you go north in Arizona, you have to climb an extremely steep hill in the heat.

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And I've ridden my bike up that hill and I've passed broken down trucks and RVs and everything else over the side of the road that just could not get up that hill.

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It's one of the steeper hills that you will hit. And if it's hot, people will overheat very easily.

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And so I just wouldn't... I was stuck, Rich will tell you. I was just like, that's it.

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That's the one we need right there. And we started comparing the prices. And it was so much less expensive than trucks that had 15 ,000, 20 ,000 more miles on them.

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Because it was used, obviously. But it had low miles. And we couldn't understand why. And on the way, we said, okay, we're going to look at it tomorrow.

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And on the way down, Rich goes, you know, the only reason this is that low, the only reason it's possible is it's been an accident.

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So just be prepared for that. It wasn't. And we got it. And it just fits this unit like hand in glove.

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I don't even know how to explain it. But today, especially, it just... I had to pack everything into this unit for three weeks worth of stuff.

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So it's heavy. It's got a lot of stuff in it. It's not light. And here

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I am, having done some of the steepest climbing and going back downhill.

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No problems at all. They work together hand in glove. So I'm thankful. I think this is just, it's sort of like why

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I got married at 19 is because, and I explained this to Rich for a long time, because it took

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Rich forever to get married. And so we called him Rich the Tingle. I didn't.

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My son did. But that's because my son was like three. But anyway, I got married at 19.

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And I told Rich, I said, see, God just knew that I was too stupid to survive being a single.

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I couldn't do it. And so he gave me my wife. I just went from being a teenager to being married.

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I never had to be one of those poor single people that really have a rough life. So, yeah, there it is.

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So that's sort of along the same way. We weren't smart enough to know exactly what we needed to get.

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So God just sort of said, OK, here. Here's the truck. Here's the unit. Just go do it. That's basically what we've done.

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So here we are. And we are on our way. And again, thanks to everybody. When you give to the travel fund, that's 9 .3

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miles to the gallon. That's a big engine.

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It's powerful. It needs to be a powerful engine. But still, 9 .3 miles to the gallon. But that's climbing, like I said, a lot.

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It's pulling, I think we're right about 17 ,000 pounds between the truck and the units.

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Right around 17 ,000 pounds when you add it all up. So that's not too bad. My Buick LeSabre that I had in high school had a

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V8 350 in it and it got 12 miles a gallon going flat. Just go straight down the road.

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It's still only got 12 miles a gallon. So that's not half bad. That's not half bad at all. Anyway, so here we are.

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And I almost set up outside. It's beautiful out. But there's still a lot of development.

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And I've got the awning out. So I could. There's a picnic bench. I could have cleaned it off.

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All that stuff. We were running a little late on time. I do want to do that eventually. But there's still storms coming in.

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And once that rain started hitting the awning, that's all you'd hear. And so, yeah, that probably wouldn't be wise.

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But it is beautiful up here. Just surrounded by trees.

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That's just green trees. I'm so thankful to the Lord for this monsoon season.

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It's been great. Hey, I've been looking forward to this for a long, long time.

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I don't know if we're going to, you know, we might be able to work something out because Jason and I will be speaking together

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Tuesday of next week there in Colorado Springs at his church.

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And so maybe, yeah, we're going to have to see if we can't work something out to where I can move this camera back and he can sit there and I can sit here.

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Or we can sit outside or do whatever we need to do and have a live in -person dividing line with Jason Lyle.

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The world's smartest man. They don't have an IQ chart that can keep up with Jason. It's just that they don't exist.

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But Jason told me he was going to do this years ago because I raised it to him. Some of you, including

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Rich, have thought that I'm a complete goomba, a real weirdo, but starting in the 90s at some point, early 90s,

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I think, I discovered fractals. And I have been doing fractal art for years and years and years and years.

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I have probably over a thousand fractal images that I've done. The older programs took longer to do.

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It was more manual. There's a program available on iOS right now called Frax that is astonishing.

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If you just want beautiful images, you don't necessarily want to do all the manual stuff because I get the feeling

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Jason does the manual stuff. But Frax for iOS, for iPad, iPhone, you can create some of the most incredible, beautiful fractal art in that.

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It's just gorgeous. But he told me he was going to be doing this because I brought it up to him. And it took a while, but there it is.

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Fractals, the secret code of creation. If you haven't seen his presentation on this, he had an older one and then he had some technical problems with that one.

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And so he did another one later on. It's available on YouTube. The book is out now.

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It's beautifully done. You'll love it. Absolutely love it. I wanted to make sure you knew

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Fractals. You go to biblicalscienceinstitute .com

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and you can order it straight off the thing. He doesn't charge nearly enough for it.

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He really doesn't. You can get it rather cheaply, especially for how beautifully it's printed.

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Get a bunch for Christmas presents. Give them away for crying out loud.

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Need to get support for Jason Lyle. Now, real quickly, let me share this screen with you.

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I'm sure some of you remember that last year, probably

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October or so, I started talking about the fact that what's going to happen. Given the motivations behind the global powers that are active in our world today, and this isn't conspiracy theory, this is on the basis of their own published books.

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The lockdowns, followed by masking, followed by vaccines, would be followed by a way of being able to continue the fear and the panic and the control.

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I said, it'll be COVID -21, COVID -22, whatever it's called. Well, now it's called the

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Delta variant. And the head of the World Health Organization just said that we may only be one or two mutations away from a variant that will defeat the vaccine.

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Which, given that the vaccine is, I mean, just ask all the Democrats from Texas how effective the vaccine is.

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Now, have you noticed how the goalpost changes every two weeks? Actually, sometimes it's every two days.

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But for a long time, it was flatten the curve and then it was keep the ICUs from being overwhelmed and don't destroy the health system and all the rest of this fun stuff.

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And now it's, well, we don't want anyone to get a really bad case. You know, this type of stuff.

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It's always moving. And so here you have fully vaccinated people and they get

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COVID -19 and they spread it around. Well, let me show you.

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Oh, and now the new narrative is this, that if you don't get vaccinated, you're the one creating the variants.

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That's the new thing. Vaccination helps to stop the variants.

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That requires you to be an ignorant idiot as far as medical science is concerned.

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Think about for a second, folks. Those of you as old as I am, remember how often erythromycin would be prescribed to your kids.

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I remember for my kids, if they had any kind of ear infection, any kind of nasal infection, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, erythromycin, erythromycin.

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You know that it's become less and less useful because most everything is now able to handle erythromycin because of over prescription and overuse.

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Right. So how can me not getting a vaccine create variants?

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That's not how it works. So this is a lie. And they already know that if you can convince people to wear three masks, if you can convince people that when a fire breaks out, you go ahead and put out the regular thing that says cotton masks won't help you too much because the smoke particles are small enough to get through the cotton mask.

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And then you go, are smoke particles smaller than a virus? No, the virus is smaller than smoke particles.

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So so they expect you to just just go with whatever lie you're told. And we have and we've accepted it and we've bought into it.

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And so you've got the Karen cult in full swing. You've already figured out, wow, the vast majority of people will just go with it.

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They will whatever we tell them, they will believe it. This is awesome. This is great. We've got it. And so that's what they're doing now.

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And what they're saying is if you don't get the vaccine, you're the one creating genetic variants, which is absolutely absurd.

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But now check this out. Just saw this one. This is this is exciting. NBC News citing unnamed officials aware of the decision report.

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It comes after new data suggests vaccinated individuals. This is about the masking stuff.

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Vaccinated individuals could have higher levels of virus. And infect others amid the surge of cases driven by the

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Delta variant of the coronavirus. Now, I don't know about you.

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But that sounds to me like the opposite of what they've been telling us. That vaccinated individuals could have higher levels of virus.

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Well, I'm starting to wonder personally. There was a lot of discussion back during the development phase.

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Once the mRNA technology came out, that this is bypassing important elements of the human immunological system.

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Including the production of T cells and things that that make the immune system what it is.

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And I'm wondering if that's not what we're going to see here. They don't care.

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These are the same people that want four and a half billion people will disappear off the face of the planet.

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So they're not really worried about it. But I'm really wondering. I'm really wondering if that's if that's what's coming.

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So yeah, here's. Yeah, here's. Wait a minute. I was telling you off the top of my head.

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Here's here's the thing. Per the WHO and common sense, the longer people around the world remain unvaccinated, the higher the risk of a more dangerous variant emerging.

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You may think your vaccination status is a personal choice, but it affects the safety of everyone. Do the right thing. Get your shot.

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Okay, that's just simply blather. That that is that is viral, virologically, scientifically blather.

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But I bet you I bet you that's probably was taken from a bot anyways, because I am convinced that Twitter is primarily a world of bots.

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They're just all over the place. All right. Let's get to this. And then I'm looking forward to getting some

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Calvin today. So this needs to be addressed. This is a clip that came out from Jarvis Williams.

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Dr. Jarvis Williams teaches at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. And back in twenty eighteen, when most of us woke up up till then, we had been just happily living our fat, dumb, happy lives.

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And then in twenty eighteen, it's like, whoa, what's going on here? Michael Fallon had been living the nightmare for a number of years before that.

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But this was recorded in twenty eighteen. So this was before there was a pushback and there was before there was a reaction.

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And it does make me wonder, those who heard this, didn't they?

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Didn't it? Didn't it set off alarm bells? Even as I hear this, I sort of go, huh,

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I wonder why I didn't. Well, I haven't heard. I didn't hear this. But if I had heard this in twenty eighteen, what would

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I have thought about it? I'm not sure, to be perfectly honest with you. I have a whole lot more background now than I did then to be able to consider it.

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So I'm really not sure. But let's listen to what

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Jarvis Williams said here. And I don't think

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I can. Well, I can I can stop and start it, I think, but I can't bring myself back.

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But who cares? No one needs to see me anyways. So share sound.

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I'll make sure that it's working here. And let's let's listen to what

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Jarvis Williams had to had to say. White supremacy is an ideological construct that believes that whiteness is superior to non whiteness.

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OK, now I'm just going to leave him there. Just listen. OK, white supremacy is a construct that thinks that whiteness is better than non whiteness.

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OK, I don't know what whiteness is and I don't know what non whiteness is. I really don't.

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And we've actually gotten to the point now where what's being taught is, well, you you know what whiteness is.

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And you promote white supremacy because of it, but you may not be able to enunciate it.

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The illustration is going to give is going to illustrate why I say this is balderdash.

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OK, this whole whole idea of whiteness. I can

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I can assure you, I can tell you without question, I have spent 30 years teaching church history.

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And a person's race or ethnicity was always just simply one factual piece of data that in no way, shape or form influenced my thinking about anybody.

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And so I just I just utterly reject this idea. It's it is it is absurd.

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And I don't even know what what what in the world would non whiteness be? I have no idea.

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I. But the illustration will show you. Let's let's listen. So then how this shows up in part is it shows up in curriculum.

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Right. I'm a seminary professor and in theological education, it's it's you're hard pressed to find many evangelical institutions that have a regular requirement of black and brown authors.

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And often what happens is whiteness becomes the standard by which all good theology is judged.

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You know what I'm saying? Amen. OK. And he got an amen from somebody there. I have taught as long as Jarvis Williams has and probably longer.

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And I can simply tell you that it is absurd to assert that you choose your curriculum, you choose your reading on the base of the skin color of the authors.

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I chose when I assigned books, I assigned them on the basis of the usefulness to my students, given that, especially, especially when you're teaching a seminary, you know, you're you're teaching students who are under a tremendous amount of pressure.

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And you know that they have an extremely short period of time to be able to do reading.

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So you want to you want to give them the best reading that they can get in a short period of time. You don't you don't think about the race of the author.

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You do not think, well, I need to have a rainbow colored author list.

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That's baloney. You need the best authors that cover the material in the most accurate and consistent fashion.

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It's a meritocracy. It has nothing to do with with ethnocentricity or anything else.

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You do the people who do the best work. That's all there is to it.

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That's all there is to it. The idea that anyone would even know what whiteness would be in regards to authors and things like that is just absurd.

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And to say that whiteness becomes the standard. I've never seen it.

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Not once I've never seen it. I am seeing right now the exact opposite happening.

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To where color is becoming the standard rather than content, research, consistency, depth, use of sources.

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All that's now become irrelevant. It all has to be color. Whatever color it is. So I find this extremely problematic, extremely, extremely problematic.

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So that if it's right theology, it's written by a white scholar who is contextualizing that theology for white audiences.

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And so one of the things we see is, and hear this very, very carefully. There's racism by intent and there's racism by consequence.

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You can have racism operating in a context where is there are no individual racist.

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And that in part is the way in which white supremacy works in a socially sophisticated way.

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When you have whiteness as the priority and when folks work and operate in such a way with curriculum, with economics, or with policies.

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To maintain and to posture and to privilege that whiteness. And then to require those who are nonwhite to culturally colonize to whiteness.

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Okay. I think it is important to see that here you have a Southern Seminary professor who in 2018 is using every single

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CRT buzzword there is. Colonization, whiteness. It's the whole shoot and match.

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It's the whole nine yards. He's comfortable with it because there has been no backlash yet. Now the backlash has come and now people are going, wait a minute.

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This does not fit within a Christian paradigm. In any way, shape, or form. In any, and I don't care what nation you're in.

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In any academic setting, I want the best scholarship. I don't care about ethnicity.

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I don't care. I want the best scholarship. And we're now abandoning that.

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And that's exactly what's being said here. Is to abandon the meritocracy.

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Meritocracy is a good thing. It's an appropriate thing. It's a proper thing. It's a godly thing.

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God has made men to differ. He has not made all men equal. Or we'd all be the same height and have the same amount of muscle and the same amount of fat and the same

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IQ and we don't. And we all understood that. I was raised understanding that God gives you certain gifts.

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And there are certain gifts he doesn't give you. And therefore, you do not become jealous.

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You do not covet that which God does not give to you. We now live in a world where covetousness is the greater good.

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And what a horrible thing that actually is. I'm sorry.

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I didn't. Americatocracy.

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I have no idea what Americatocracy. There is no such word as Americatocracy. Meritocracy is a term you can look up in a dictionary that says that you are advanced and given positions based upon merit, accomplishment.

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The Army, Navy, and Air Force has always been the greatest example of meritocracy.

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That is, you want the guy who does the best job flying the jet aircraft.

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Which we now have lost that to. So, you want to have rainbow -colored people flying the jet aircraft.

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No, no. Meritocracy. Merit. That's what you got going there.

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So, this is amazing to see this coming out of a professor at Southern Seminary, but here it is.

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So, here we go. So, then we think about reconciliation and ethnic hostility.

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The solution is not more black and brown faces in white spaces who colonize to whiteness.

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The solution is fundamentally, yes, the gospel, the cross, the resurrection, right?

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The blood of Jesus, but also dethroning white supremacy in all of the forms in which it shows up in Christian spaces, folks.

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Because when Jesus died to disarm those principalities and powers, one of those principalities and powers,

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I would argue, is white supremacy in all that it entails. So, feel that tonight.

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White supremacy is not just violence or KKK or lynchings. It is also the belief, directly or indirectly, that whiteness is rightness.

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And everything has to be judged by that. Okay. Whiteness is rightness.

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I don't know anybody who believes it. I've never seen it happening in academia.

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I believe the assertion it's happening in academia is foolishness. And this is simply a cover for bringing in this type of neo -Marxist ideology that destroys any possibility of actual unity.

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When I traveled the world, when I traveled the world, now I travel the world, now I travel the

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United States in a RV. But when I traveled the world, it didn't matter where I went.

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What united us had nothing to do with ethnicity. This is what really angers me about this.

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You need to start getting angry about this because, hey, Jarvis Williams got passionate there.

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Well, let me get passionate. I've told the story the first time

37:20

I visited Irpin, which is a suburb of Kiev in Ukraine. And I'm going to miss getting to visit there.

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The first time I visited, we went into a chapel service.

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And we're singing songs, interestingly enough, songs that I knew the tunes to.

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I knew what the songs were in English, but they were being sung in Russian.

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And if you've ever watched almost any Cold War movies, there will be these strong Russian anthems and these strong Russian voices singing.

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And I could not help, as I sat there, but to think about my upbringing and the fear that I once had of what

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I was hearing right now. These were the enemies. My nation had and still has nuclear weapons aimed at these people and they at me.

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And here we were singing the same songs about the same faith.

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Had nothing to do with our ethnicity, had nothing to do with our language. What united us was our common standing as believers.

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And we recognize it's the same spirit, the same gospel, the same worship. It can look different.

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It can sound different. But it's the essence of it that brings the unity.

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This vague, undefined, absurd idea of whiteness is rightness.

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What does that mean? Darkness is something, is wrongness? Really? Seriously? Thoughts never crossed my mind.

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I don't know whose mind it has crossed, but it's not crossed my mind. That kind of divisiveness needs to be called out for what it is.

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Because he talked about, oh yes, it's the gospel, but we need to dethrone white supremacy and whiteness.

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What is it? What you're saying just simply doesn't happen. Look, let's challenge these folks to make a case.

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Here's the case you'd have to make. Show us where there's curriculum and textbooks that are far better.

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And everybody knew they were far better by non -white persons.

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And yet they would not be used because they were non -white persons. Show us where that is a standard, regular experience.

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I've never seen it. I've never seen it. It would never have crossed my mind.

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When I was teaching at a Southern Baptist seminary, not that Southern Baptist seminary, but another one, to have ever hesitated in the slightest to use a book that was written by someone who was not white.

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And I'll be honest with you. I'll be straightforward with you. I have no earthly idea what the ethnicities of almost any of the authors of the textbooks

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I assigned were. And I don't care. It doesn't matter. It simply doesn't matter.

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So I was pretty astonished by that. All right. I think it was only last

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Thursday. Yeah, it was only last Thursday. In fact, I think it was the last dividing line we did now that I think about it.

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We had a debate with Jake Brancatella, the Muslim metaphysician on Trinity and Tawhid.

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And generally down, well, it's been over 30 years now since I did my first debate.

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Generally, we don't spend a whole lot of time going back over stuff.

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Maybe in the first few years, maybe when we were younger. Earlier on, there was a little bit more of that because so much of the stuff wasn't live streamed.

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So it would take time to get out videotapes and stuff like that. There was no YouTube. In fact, when

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I started debating, there was no internet. That's how long ago that was. And so there probably would have been more of a tendency to do some discussion.

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But especially now that stuff is live streams like that, we generally do the debate and move on.

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Some of you on Twitter may know that there was some back and forth that went on that was really disappointing to me.

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I won't go into it. You can go look for yourself and decide for yourself. It's pretty easy to see what was going on.

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But to make a long story short, there were a couple of references that were made during the course of the debate.

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In regards primarily to church history issues, specifically to Calvin, Gregory of Nyssa.

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And you'll recall, I challenged the

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Calvin reference directly and wasn't given a citation.

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Maybe Jake didn't have it with him. I don't know. But he didn't give the reference, at least during the cross -examination.

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He may have looked up later. So it came out on Twitter. He gave the reference on Twitter.

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And so I looked at the material. And let me just give you a little history here.

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Here is a bound edition of the Institutes. It's not the full

43:55

Institute's first three books. Once you get out the four books, the binding, it's really hard to do.

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Anyway, real long story short, the reason I had this made many, many years ago. And I forget when this was.

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This probably could have been late 80s. Now I think about it. It was.

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It was probably 87, 88, maybe 89.

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I forget, around there. But we had a bookbinder guy who was a

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Jehovah's Witness. And so I got a bunch of stuff bound just simply to have opportunities. What an excuse.

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That was an excuse. But that's why we were doing it, was to have opportunities to witness to this guy and introduce him to stuff and things like that.

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And this is not actual leather. This is faux leather, but it's lasted a long time. And I don't remember what years it was.

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It would have been right around that same time period. We actually started doing some institute studies during weeknights, sometimes at my house, my apartment, sometimes at the office that we had over on 16th

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Street. I think we had even done some when we were on Camelback. I don't remember. But a small group of us would get together and we were working through the institutes.

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And it was really enjoyable. Calvin's Institutes, I have said many times, the ink smudges.

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The ink smudges. And what does that mean? Well, most of you have never dealt with printing or even old style photocopiers and stuff like that.

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So it might not really communicate anything to you. But when you do offset printing, my dad was a printer for years and years and years.

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We even had a printing press in our house. And you had to have just the right ink, the right amount of ink, to have it print properly, but then dry quickly enough not to transfer onto the next sheet that fell on top of it.

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And if you had too much ink going on the rollers, you'd get smudging. And so you'd pick something up.

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And if your hand touched on the printing, it would smudge because it hadn't had a chance to dry yet.

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And so when I say that the ink smudges on the Institutes, what I mean by that is it's like it's been freshly printed.

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There is a quality to Calvin's writings as a whole and to the

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Institutes in particular that is, in a sense, timeless.

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That is, even though he addresses so many issues of his day, he does so in a fashion to where, for example, when he talks about fanatics in his day, man, it has a lot of direct relevance to the charismatic excesses that we see today.

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And especially in his defense of the Trinity, the deity of Christ, it's just not dated.

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And I know I don't have that ability. My writings are not... There's going to be nobody describing anything that I write 400 years from now or 450 years from now that is going to say that the ink smudges.

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Not that anybody by that time would even know what ink smudging was. But anyway, there are very few people that have that ability.

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And Calvin did. That's just... It's just a blessing of God. And so when

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I first started reading the Institutes and I especially encountered

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Calvin's discussion right there at the beginning of the knowledge of God, the knowledge of man, it was truly...

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This was a period of time when I was really starting to imbibe deeply Reformed theology and see its beauty and its importance.

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And it was really, really important to me.

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And so, especially Calvin on the Trinity was really neat because early on,

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I began realizing that a lot of Christian writing on the Trinity... Well, first of all, there hadn't been much

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Christian writing on the Trinity since the 1800s at that time.

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That's why my book was called The Forgotten Trinity. It's because there just wasn't that much being written.

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And that which was was so academic and dry and formal and dispassionate.

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Calvin has passion about this subject because he recognizes this determines how we worship

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God. In Reformed theology, the object of your worship needs to be known to you.

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This is one of the things that's very different between Christians and Muslims. So Richard, we got a good stream going?

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It's holding on good? All right. Excellent. Good. Because I'm probably going to go past top of the hours, if that's all right.

49:54

One of the differences between Christians and Muslims is Allah is, in essence, ineffable, unknowable, would never condescend to enter into direct communion with his creatures.

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There's such a difference between how Christians come to have knowledge of God and his role in that and how much

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God desires us to know him in a way that it did come out in the debate, because one of Jake's arguments was, well, you can't know the

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Trinity outside of special revelation. I say, you better believe it. That's exactly right. We are completely dependent upon special revelation for a knowledge of the

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Trinity. That is not an argument. That's not an argument against. That's an argument for. And the only way you can make it an argument against is if you have a completely non -Christian idea of not only the beauty of Scripture, but the central necessity of Scripture.

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And this was always a part of God's intention and God's decree. So knowing

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God and knowing his nature and knowing his being and recognizing that in the

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Scripture, we are given insights that we do not deserve to get. Every time I'm going to be preaching on John 17 when

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I'm up at Redemption Hills Church in Littleton. And when you think about what

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John 17 really is, inter -Trinitarian communication. Have you thought about the privilege of us little teeny creatures getting to listen in to the

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Father and the Son in communion with one another? Same thing with Philippians 2. There are those texts that just astonish me when

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I think about what God has given to us and, sadly, how little we appreciate what we have in those texts.

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But for Calvin and Reformed theology, knowing who God is, is central to worshiping him aright.

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And Calvin, unlike many theologians in the academy today, recognized, and I'm not sure if it was because of his interaction with Servetus.

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By the way, our brothers up in Magna, Utah, Jason Wallace and the crew,

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Rich reminded me to link this because I'll never remember, put out a video last month about Servetus.

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I haven't had a chance to listen to all of it. But I did just happen to stumble across one part that even

52:57

Jason said, I knew you probably weren't going to like that part. I guess, for some reason, Jason doesn't like the movie

53:03

The Radicals. I didn't see why. It's on my list to get to.

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Hopefully, with all the driving I'll be doing, I'll have the opportunity of getting to it. Because I love the movie

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The Radicals. But he put out a video on Servetus. And I, years ago, literally read every book on Servetus that was available in the

53:28

Phoenix Public Library and by interlibrary loan from the Phoenix Public Library. I did a bunch, a bunch, a bunch of reading on it on the subject of Servetus and things like that.

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Maybe it was because of his interaction there and with some others that Calvin realized, or maybe it's just because of his deep, deep immersion in patristic sources.

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Because he, his first book, which he wrote really before his conversion, was from the same classical time period.

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So he was a widely read scholar in that time period. I think it was on Seneca, wasn't it?

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I think it was. Anyway. But for some reason, the

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Institutes really go in depth in a defense of the deity of Christ and in such a way that Calvin was warning that certain trends in post -Nicene

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Christology went a compromising direction, went the wrong direction, in essence.

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And so what Calvin emphasized was that the sun is autotheos, autotheos.

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God in and of himself. And as we'll see in the very same paragraph that Jake focused upon,

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Calvin says that pertaining to the divine essence, pertaining to the very being of God, the sun is

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God ase, of himself. It is only in the

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Trinitarian relationships, which are timeless and hence logical priority, not temporal priority, that the sun is from the father.

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But the sun is autotheos, which I brought up in the debate. The sun is ase in regards to ontology, which was my whole point, and Calvin substantiates that.

55:36

But I realized, given that that was brought up, that this would give us an opportunity to do some really neat reading.

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Some story time, not really story time with Uncle Jimmy, but some really neat reading.

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And so I want to look at some sections from chapter 13. It's a long chapter. Chapter 13 of book one of the

55:58

Institutes. And tie this together with some of the stuff we get back to Gregory.

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And look at what, because we haven't finished Gregory's description of the sun, let alone gone into Gregory's description of the spirit.

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But it's just neat stuff. And you can't see this, but this was the text that I was using when we were doing those

56:23

Institute studies. And so there's marking absolutely all over the place in different colors.

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And so it gives me an idea of where we stopped. And we were somewhere in book two before we got hijacked, basically.

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But I'd recommend to anyone, to everyone. Well, I recommend everybody the reading of the

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Institutes. This seems to be turning.

56:59

It's looking out the door. The door is open, beautiful day, beautiful afternoon, evening outside.

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I guess it's because I hit the table and the tables, the table has to go up and down to become a bed. Everything in an

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RV has to become a bed at some point in time so they can advertise, I can sleep 27 people.

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And when it really can't sleep more than four, but at least not with sleeping anyway.

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But I'd recommend reading the Institutes. And if just on theology proper, book one, of course you get into book two and you've got that incredible chapter on prayer, which is a chapter right before predestination election, which is interesting.

57:43

But when you get into chapter 13, which is specifically titled, huh, interesting.

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I just happened to notice a, well, okay.

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Let me just give you the title here. Then I'll go back to a note that I had written in the margin there.

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So chapter 13 in scripture from the creation onward, we are taught one essence of God, which contains three persons, one being of God, three persons.

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So here is the being person distinction. It is central to Christian theology, central to Calvin, Calvin maintains it.

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And the in section eight, I just happened to see this.

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So that's section eight. I made two notes in very fine, very fine lead.

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I seem to recall the super fine, fine point lead pencils that I would use. And the funny thing is, even though I can just barely make it out, the font that I wrote in is so small,

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I could barely read it. That's funny. Here, section eight, the eternity of the word.

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Here are some dogs bark out who, while they dare not openly deprive him of his divinity, secretly filch away his eternity.

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They say the word for the first time began to be when God opened his holy mouth and the creation of the universe, but they are too reckless in inventing a sort of innovation in God's substance.

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For as the names of God that have respect to his outward activity began to be attributed to him after the existence of his work, as when he is called creator of heaven and earth.

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So piety recognizes or allows no name, which intimates that anything new has happened to God in himself.

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For if there had been anything at adventitious, the passage of James would fall to the ground, that every perfect gift comes from above and descends from the father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow of change.

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Therefore, nothing should be more intolerable to us than to fancy a beginning of that word who both was always

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God and afterward was the artificer of the universe. So I had written immutability.

01:00:01

So therefore nothing should be more intolerable to us than to fancy a beginning of that word who both was always

01:00:09

God and afterward was the artificer of the universe. Now I just might point out, this is relevant to the assertion that, well,

01:00:16

Calvin believed that the son's not a say because he has his beginning with the father. Well, that's not what he says here, is it?

01:00:24

This comes before that. This is foundational to that. And he says the word was always

01:00:29

God and did not have a beginning. Okay. But they think they're reasoning shrewdly when they avert that Moses by narrating that God then spake for the first time, hence thereby that there had been in him no word before.

01:00:46

Nothing is more trifling than this for, because something begins to be manifested at a certain time. We ought not therefore to gather that it never existed before.

01:00:54

Indeed, I conclude far, far. Otherwise the word had existed long before God said, let there be light and the power of the word emerged and stood forth.

01:01:01

Yet if anyone should inquire how long before he will find no beginning, nor does he delimit a certain space of time when he says, father, glorify thy son with the glory, which

01:01:10

I had with you before the foundation of the universe was laid, nor did John overlook that overlook this because before he passes on to the creation of the universe,

01:01:19

John one three, he says that in beginning the word was with God. And notice this, this is my, my note in the, in the column is

01:01:28

Calvin on Ain. Ain is the imperfect form of I, me that is used by John, the prologue over against the genital, which is used of all of the created things, but not use the logos until the logos becomes flesh.

01:01:43

Therefore we again state that the word conceived beyond the beginning of time by God was, has perpetually resided with him by this, his eternity, his true essence and his divinity are proved going from John one, one.

01:01:57

So just happen to notice the column note there. All right.

01:02:03

So if we look at the sections, you'll notice that there are sections on the divinity of Christ in the new

01:02:10

Testament witness to the apostles. Divinity of Christ is demonstrated in his works.

01:02:16

The divinity of Christ is demonstrated by his miracles. Then the divinity of the spirit is demonstrated by his work, express testimonies for the deity of the spirit.

01:02:27

And then we come to section 16. That's where I want to dig in and we're not going to get, be able to get too far. It's already, we're already an hour in, but very thankful that the connection is held really well and we've been able to do this.

01:02:39

And it's encouraging that on this first day where I was up early this morning and working hard and little nervous, it's encouraging to be here.

01:02:51

Section 16. So this is a subsection 16 of chapter 13 of book one.

01:02:58

The subtitle is oneness. Moreover, because God more clearly disclosed himself in the coming of Christ, thus he also became known more familiarly in three persons.

01:03:07

But of the many testimonies, this one will suffice for us for Paul. So connects the three

01:03:13

God, faith, and baptism as to reason that from one to the other, namely because faith is one that he may thereby show

01:03:21

God to be one because baptism is one that he may then show faith also to be one. Therefore, if through baptism, we are initiated into the faith and religion of one

01:03:29

God, we must consider him into whose name we are baptized to be the true God. Indeed, there is no doubt that Christ willed by the solemn pronouncement to testify that the perfect light of faith was manifested when he said, baptize them into the name of the father and of the son and of the

01:03:44

Holy spirit. For this means precisely to be baptized in the name of the one

01:03:50

God who has shown himself with complete clarity in the father, the son, and the spirit.

01:03:57

Very important point. Hence it is quite clear that in God's essence reside three persons in whom one

01:04:04

God is known. I have a little fan on the floor blowing at me and it's drying me out.

01:04:15

Hard to read. I can't reach it from here. I kick it away. Indeed, faith ought not to gaze hither and thither nor to discourse to various matters, but to look upon the one

01:04:27

God, to unite with him, to cleave to him. From this then it is easily established that if there are various kinds of faith, there must also be many gods.

01:04:37

Now because baptism is the sacrament of faith, it confirms for us the unity of God from the fact that it is one.

01:04:43

Hence it also follows that we are not permitted to be baptized except into one God because we embrace the faith of him into whose name we are baptized.

01:04:51

What then did Christ mean when he commanded that baptism should be in the name of the father and of the son of the Holy Spirit, except that we ought with one faith to believe in the father, the son, and the spirit?

01:05:01

What else is this than to testify clearly that the father, son, and spirit are one God. Therefore, since there is one

01:05:08

God, not more is regarded as a settled principle. We conclude that word and spirit are nothing else than the very essence of God.

01:05:17

The Aryans used to pray most foolishly when, in confessing the divinity to the son, they took away the substance of God from him.

01:05:24

A like madness tormented the Macedonians who by spirit wanted to understand only those gifts of grace poured upon men.

01:05:31

For as wisdom, understanding, prudence, fortitude, and fear of the Lord proceed from him, so is he the one spirit of wisdom, prudence, fortitude, and godliness.

01:05:39

And he is not divided according to the distribution of gifts, but however diversely they are divided, yet says the apostle, he remains one and the same.

01:05:48

So you have the section on oneness. Then this is followed in section 17. And the key section is section 19.

01:05:54

That's why we're getting the context. Context always helps. Section 17, threeness.

01:05:59

Again, scripture sets forth a distinction of the father from the word and of the word from the spirit. Yet the greatness of the mystery warrants us how much reverence and sobriety we ought to use in navigating this.

01:06:10

And that passage in Gregory of Nazianzus vastly delights me. By the way, I'm going to kick the fan out of the way here.

01:06:19

There we go. Felt good at first, but my eyes are dry.

01:06:26

My eyes are dry. I'm not going to sing that. This is where I was first introduced to this quotation.

01:06:34

That has meant so much to me. From Gregory of Nazianzus. Listen to it.

01:06:43

I hope it blesses you the way it's blessed me for decades now. I cannot think on the one without quickly being encircled by the splendor of the three.

01:06:56

Nor can I discern the three without being straightway carried back to the one.

01:07:03

I have seen that quoted by many people. This was the first place I had seen it. When I first read this.

01:07:11

So it's coming up on about 86. So it's been what about 35, 35, 36 years.

01:07:18

I cannot think on the one without quickly being encircled by the splendor of the three. Nor can I discern the three without being straightway carried back to the one.

01:07:28

And I would simply say, that's what scripture does for us. That's what scripture does for us.

01:07:35

It provides us with that balance. And the fact of the matter is until the spirit of God draws a person to desire to have that balance, they will never have it.

01:07:50

They will never have it. Let us not then be led to imagine a

01:07:56

Trinity of persons that keeps our thoughts distracted and does not at once lead them back to that unity. Indeed, the words father, son, spirit imply a real distinction.

01:08:05

Let no one think that these titles whereby God is variously designated from his works are empty, but a distinction, not a division.

01:08:15

A distinction, not a division. The passages that we have already cited show that the son has a character distinct from the father because the word would not have been with God unless he were another than the father, nor would he have had his glory with the father were he not distinct from the father.

01:08:34

In like manner, he distinguishes the father from himself when he says that there is another who bears witness to him.

01:08:40

And with this agrees what is said elsewhere, that the father created all things through the word.

01:08:45

This he could not have done without being somehow distinct from the word. Furthermore, it was not the father who descended upon the earth, but he who went forth from the father.

01:08:56

The father did not die, nor did he arise again, but rather he who had been sent by the father.

01:09:03

I pause just to note that there seems to have been a point in time in the debate where Jake expressed some kind of surprise that I had so clearly said, for example, it's not the,

01:09:20

I've said for years and years and years, probably having unconsciously stolen it from Calvin. I must be on a tilt.

01:09:32

I'm actually not. But anyway, I probably unconsciously stole from Calvin that we have to make these distinctions.

01:09:40

We have to be able to recognize it was not the father who became incarnate. It was the son. It was not the spirit who was crucified.

01:09:49

It was the son. It was not the son who entered into the disciples on Pentecost. It was the spirit.

01:09:55

Distinctions are made biblically, and there is no question of this, none whatsoever. But as Calvin himself will point out, the fact that they're all identified as Yahweh really is the way of understanding what's going on here.

01:10:10

Nor this distinction have its beginning from the time that he assumed flesh. But before this also, it is manifest that he was the only begotten in the bosom of the father,

01:10:18

John one 18 for who would take upon himself to assert that the son did not enter into the bosom of the father until he descended from heaven to assume humanity.

01:10:27

Therefore he was in the bosom of the father before and beheld his own glory in the presence of the father. Christ implies the distinction of the

01:10:34

Holy spirit from the father. When he says that the Holy spirit precedes from the father, he implies the distinction of the

01:10:40

Holy spirit from himself. As often as he calls the spirit another as when he announces that he will send another comforter and often elsewhere.

01:10:50

And so that takes us to section 18. And so I'm thinking that unless there is an objection from the powers that be that tomorrow afternoon, is there a project is good tomorrow afternoon.

01:11:14

We can pick up with 18 and hence get into 19, which is where the key assertion is made.

01:11:22

The citation from Calvin that I believe misrepresented Calvin and his position and its relevance to the debate.

01:11:33

And we'll get to that on the program tomorrow. Assuming I don't get run over by a truck.

01:11:42

I do have a 100 kilometer bike ride to do tomorrow. I have at least one book on Islam to finish up on that ride and another one to get started.

01:11:52

Not, not books. I'm writing on books. I'm reading. Obviously I don't write on the bike.

01:11:58

I can do sermon prep on the bike, but it's, it's study and things like that you can do while pedaling away out there and and so hopefully everything will work as well tomorrow as it did as it did today.

01:12:12

And I'm pretty excited about this and excited about what the future is going to hold.

01:12:21

And so, again, thanks to everybody who's made this possible. And now, Rich, here's, here's gonna be the real challenge.

01:12:29

Here's gonna be the real challenge. At some point on this trip, we're gonna have to have you in the, in the, in the office and we gotta find a way to do phone calls.

01:12:43

Gotta find a way to do phone calls. That, that's, that's, I mean, it's one thing to have people on zoom, you know, and to have conversations.

01:12:51

That's, that's great too, but we've got to, we've got to find some way of doing phone calls in the future while we're doing this as well.

01:13:00

So we'll, we'll work on that technology. Rich is always looking for new challenges, right?