Seven Topics on Today’s 1:45 Long Dividing Line

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and and our professional always -on -the -ball board operator in the other room.

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Many years of formal training to get all this working, and used to say more about how he could make anything work.

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As he's gotten older, he's sort of backed off on all that stuff. We had a friend who used to say, let it be said, let it be done.

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And we've sort of discovered that life really generally doesn't work that way.

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So it's best not to go that direction. I'm looking at my list of topics to be covered on the

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Dividing Line. Not going to get to all of them, I don't think, today. They multiplied as the day went on, but that's okay.

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Let's start with something. Yeah, since I'm going to have to play something, let's start with something other than what

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I thought I was going to start with. Last week, news broke that Brigham Young University had altered its honor code and removed any references to homosexuality.

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The assertion now is celibacy, in any situation, is the issue.

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The whole idea of homosexuality as an orientation has basically been abandoned.

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Just as long as you don't have sex. And so pictures of women kissing in front of Brigham Young and men kissing in front of Brigham Young, I think only one of those two would have bothered

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Brigham Young for other reasons. But the point is that a major change has taken place there, and I think it simply reflects a major change within Utah itself.

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The Senate in the state of Utah, I think, unanimously approved the changing law so that polygamy is legal in the state of Utah.

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It's not there yet, but it seems to be coming at breakneck speed. And really, one has to wonder what's going on in the great state of Utah in light of the lowered percentage of predominance of Mormonism within that particular state.

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It was once almost completely Mormon. Salt Lake is the least

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Mormon city in Utah. People are surprised by that, but you shouldn't be. Salt Lake's the largest city.

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That means the most out -of -state businesses and things like that are in Salt Lake City. If you want still super Mormon cities, you go to southern

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Utah and you'll still find cities there that are 95 percent Mormon or Mormon -ish.

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Because in southern Utah, you will find a lot of the polygamous groups. You should be aware of the fact that the

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Mormon Church does not want polygamy. It complicates their mainstreaming efforts.

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It complicates their being viewed as Christians, and that's been the shift in the perspective of the church over the past 20 years.

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And so they don't know how they're going to handle this. It raises all sorts of issues. But the fact of the matter is, the

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Mormon Church is struggling greatly in a way that I never expected.

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Once again, in admission of my short -sightedness, I assumed that if you have a gendered

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God with a physical body as tangible as any man's—flesh and bones, tangible as any man's—and hence with gendered organs that function, that the whole concept—and especially in light of the necessity of providing bodies for the spirits in heaven to be able to experience mortal probation—all of this just militates against any idea that a homosexual orientation would be in any way, shape, or form an appropriate concept.

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But at the same time, given the fact that they make

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Pelagius look like a doctor of grace, given

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Mormonism's just completely foreign anthropology,

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I suppose it makes some sense, because there is just such a completely fundamental different view of what regeneration would mean, what that would involve, the impact of sin upon the mind, a biblical anthropology and an

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LDS anthropology—very, very, very different things, because in Mormonism, God's an exalted man.

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So that's the starting place for all of this. So anyway, over the weekend, a

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BYU professor explaining the change to his class—the video was posted online.

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I'd like to listen to a few minutes of it. So you get a sense of what's going on on the campus of Brigham Young University in regards to this particular issue.

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And what I want you to listen for—and in fact, I'm going to cut this shorter. I'm going to move ahead here to about here or so.

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So I've skipped four minutes in. Just going to play like three minutes. What I want you to hear is the professor's assertion that this change represents

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Latter -day Revelation, that the Brethren—as he puts it, if you believe there are 15 apostles on Earth today, then their fingerprints are all over this, and therefore you have to accept this as Divine Revelation.

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And this, of course, raises the whole issue. Was the

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Honor Code two months ago not Divine Revelation? How does Divine Revelation change in this way?

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And now, Mormonism has had to deal with this for a long, long time. Even on this particular issue of marriage, for example,

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Brigham Young taught very plainly that it was a necessity to experience exaltation, and then it became a non -necessity.

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And so there's always been this tension as to how you define objective truth.

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And that, to me, is the issue. How can the Mormon Church deal with a culture that is in revolution on these fundamental issues, given the centrality of subjectivism to its own epistemology?

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And I think Utah is a test case. I think the current state of the Church is a test case along these lines, and a very, very interesting test case at that.

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So let's listen to what this professor had to say, and we'll make application from there.

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At USA Today, I look at Deseret News, which is owned by the Church, I look at KSL, which is owned by the

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Church, and it's pretty confusing, like, what does this mean? Can you date and be gay at BYU?

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Meaning holding hands, kissing, hugging, doing everything that straight students are able to do.

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Are you allowed to do that? Obviously, no one's allowed to break the law of chastity. No one's allowed to do any kind of sex.

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We all agree with that, but I'm like, whoa. So I called the honor code before my 8 a .m. class. I called honor code office.

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Now, I just stopped for a moment, and there's obviously, there has to be a fundamental distinction between sex as defined heterosexually and sex as defined homosexually, but that distinction is not functioning.

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This professor makes comments later on, I'm not sure I'm going to go that far, that demonstrate he is really a

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Mormon of the left, and there are many Mormons of the left. And I do not see what path the leadership is going to be able to chart to navigate the ever -widening gulf that exists between the

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Mormonism of the left and the Mormonism of the right, especially because the

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Mormonism of the right has history on its side, has pretty much every page of the

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Journal of Discourses on its side, basically has everybody of the general authorities up through Bruce R.

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McConkie on its side. So the progressives might want to go, who cares?

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And they can argue Latter -day Revelation, but what concept of Latter -day

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Revelation? How can you even come up with a coherent definition of it, really becomes the question at this point.

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I talked to one of their full -time counselors, and I specifically asked them that question.

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I said, look, there's a lot of miscommunication in the national news, on BYU campus and anywhere else, are gay students allowed to have the same ability to hold hands, to hug, to date, to kiss, to do whatever straight couples do?

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I asked that exact question, and the answer was, the Honor Code no longer prohibits that.

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That's the answer. That's the answer. Now notice the applause from the class.

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This gives you an idea of where the Z generation is.

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And if Mormon Z -Jenners are this secular in their worldview, where's

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Mormonism going next? Especially when they start taking positions of church authority.

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When do you have your first same -sex -attracted general authority, is the question that everyone's thinking about.

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Not everybody digs it. They even told me, they even said it would be illegal for us to try to kick somebody out because that is not written anywhere in the church handbook of instructions, which

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I just read you, or in the Honor Code anymore. But he said something different. He said,

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Jim, please, because I told him, I'm going to tell 1 ,200 students what you tell me today. He said, look at number three.

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Do you see number three? Respect others. In the past, my friends who are queer have had

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BYU students all the time make snipey comments calling them homophobic words or transphobic words.

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It happens constantly. I wish it didn't. Did you catch that? Transphobic words.

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So it sounds like this professor is interpreting the removal of specific prohibition of homosexual orientation expression as including transgender expression as well, which, again,

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I don't know how any theistic system at all can have room for the fantasy of transgenderism.

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I don't know. But I guess since it's not the real F -bomb, they think the other

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F -bomb isn't as bad. It's actually worse. Well, here's the deal. I've been told by two different counselors on two different occasions, if a gay couple is holding hands or flirting with each other or hanging out like any straight couple would, and you have a problem with it, and you whisper something under your breath or you say something to them or you crack a joke, they can report you to the honor code office and they will start a formal investigation of number three on you, the person who's being disrespectful.

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In the past, gay couples were afraid to say anything or gay kids were afraid to say anything because then they were afraid the honor code would kill them.

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So I'm just saying we need to be more Christ -like. We need to be more Christ -like now.

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We need to make sure that we are respecting everybody. Now if you have a problem with this,

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I looked on Instagram and there's some people running around campus. They have a major problem with this. It amazes me because what they're saying is they don't have a testimony of the living apostles because if the living apostles are the ones who said this is what we're supposed to do, and you've got people running around saying that the living apostles are wrong, then who really is having the problem right now with their testimony?

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Now think about that. Two months ago they were on the side of the living apostles, and now they're not on the side of the living apostles, and it's on a substantive matter of sexual morality that, you know, if you've simply got the idea that what's right and wrong is dependent upon what the current living apostles tell you, and that there is no transcendent foundation to any of this, okay, then you just have to go with whatever you're being told now, and they can change it again next week, and they could make anything legal next week.

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But that's not, no, that's indefensible, obviously, but please notice the role of latter -day revelation, and it is not simply that Mormonism has a different doctrine of revelation.

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Anyone who's read Marvelous Work and Wonder by LeGrand Richards, which is not nearly as popular as it once was, I mean, when

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I first started talking to Mormons, you could assume that any person over 16, maybe 18, had read a

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Marvelous Work and Wonder. See, it was just that ubiquitous. It was given, if I recall correctly, he, didn't he do something with the publishing to where,

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I mean, not only was it super cheap to buy, but that every missionary or something had to be provided with a copy of it or something along those lines.

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Obviously, it wasn't trying to make money off of it, but the constant refrain of the book was

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Joseph Smith didn't learn this from reading the Bible. Joseph Smith didn't learn this from reading the Bible. Latter -day revelation. Latter -day revelation. So you've always had that concept of latter -day revelation, but at the same time, they, since Mormonism lived in Western culture that continued to possess a generally

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Judeo -Christian understanding of morality, there was capital to go on when they would interface with society.

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Now society is doing this, I honestly expected that Mormonism would toe the line.

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In hindsight, that was probably unwise. In the same way that I'm looking at major denominations that were conservative 10 years ago will not be toeing the line today or 10 years from now on these issues.

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This particular cultural shift, because it deals with mankind as creature, is going to truly demonstrate where denominations are in their commitment to an understanding of the world as created by God and mankind as created by God.

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And I think we're going to discover that a large portion of the people who've entered into our churches have become so religiously attached, have become so attached to the religious ramifications of Darwinism that they refuse to abandon those ramifications, but seek to simply join them to a

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Christian commitment when they come into the church. And we don't say anything about it, because we don't want to be backwards.

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But the fact is, if you're a Darwinist, you're going to view man differently than if you follow

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Jesus, who was not a Darwinist. And what we're going to be seeing over and over again is a willingness to redefine biblical categories to accommodate the culture because of a lack of fundamental commitment on the part of Christians to a very important part of the gospel message that has to do with man being made in the image of God and therefore accountable to God on that level.

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So, there you go. There's the BYU professor saying, hey, if you've got a problem with this, then you've got a problem with the apostles.

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And that is a very interesting perspective to take. It says a lot about the issue of Revelation and where Mormonism is and what the future holds for Mormonism.

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All right, let's talk a little bit about Christianity Today put out an article on the subject of polyamory, and my, how things change.

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Doug Wilson wrote a blog article about it yesterday, and of course, you're not allowed to appreciate what

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Doug Wilson says about anything on the part of those who suffer from terminal Doug Wilson derangement syndrome, and they are everywhere.

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I just muted someone on Twitter who has serious DWDS. And that's probably the best thing to do for your own sanity, because there's no reasoning.

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You can try, but there's a short circuit that ain't there. So, in an article yesterday, in looking at this

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Christianity Today thing, here's what Doug said under, are you serious?

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And I can just hear Doug reading this, so just transfer my voice into his voice.

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And isn't it, later this week, we're going to be recording another sweater vest dialogue. I may be sweating if I wear a sweater vest later this week.

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It's going to warm back up this weekend, but oh well, we'll keep the fan going and we'll survive.

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Here's the way it said, the authors of this little slap on the polyamorous wrist would want to defend themselves as having clearly disapproved of polyamory.

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And so they did, but there were numerous things off kilter about this technical disapproval. And so they did, but all we can say about it is, and so they did.

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And so they did, but notice this run up to their disapproval. And here's a quotation from the article. Another important pastoral step is to distinguish elements of polyamory that are in violation of God's will from elements that are simply culturally unfamiliar to us.

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When we want to lovingly call people to repentance, we should be precise about what needs repentance and what relationships or elements can and should be sanctified in Christ.

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For example, the notion of kinship and polyamory is a secular echo of the way scripture calls the church to function as a new family.

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In cultures that idolize individualism, but actually isolate individuals, polyamory's focus on relationship, care, and affection can have a powerful pull.

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And in churches that idolize marriage and the nuclear family, polyamory's focus on hospitality and community can be an attractive alternative.

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We can acknowledge that many of the elements that draw people to polyamory, deep relationships, care for others, hospitality, and community are good things.

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By the way, I forgot my water. I'm going to need some after this. I seriously will.

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But wow, that's... Doug didn't say this.

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I'm saying this now. But who was it that made the comment about Jonathan Edwards?

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That Jonathan Edwards is frightening for diabetics to read because Jonathan Edwards constantly referred to the sweetness of God, the sweetness of the gospel truth, and things like that.

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So sweet that a diabetic could be in grave danger of being overly sweetened or whatever.

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Well, that's the CT article I was just reading from. Wow. Okay, just to remind you.

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And in churches that idolize marriage and the nuclear family, I've been seeing a lot more of this recently.

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Idolizing marriage and the nuclear family. You know, the way that humanity continues, the first institution established by God amongst humans.

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So in churches that idolize marriage and nuclear family, polyamory's focus on hospitality and community can be an attractive alternative.

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That's why you engage in adulterous relationships. That's why you engage in fornication is for hospitality and community.

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We can acknowledge that many of the elements that draw people to polyamory, deep relationships.

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Really? This got published in CT. Deep relationships.

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Care for others. Hospitality and community are good things.

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Well, let me go back to Doug Wilson here. These are soft men writing soft words for a soft magazine published in a soft generation.

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All of it guaranteed to go down softly. Talk about oleaginous.

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Now there's Doug. Doug who obviously spends hours at night thumbing through the

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Oxford Dictionary in the dark. Oleaginous. Rich is looking it up.

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It's technically of an oily nature, but that means so it's slick.

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It's smooth. It goes down easy. Oleaginous. Yeah, there you go. We've all learned when you read

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Doug Wilson, you definitely get to... He doesn't just play word of the day.

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He plays paragraph of the day every day. Yes. Item two here is quite interesting.

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Exaggeratedly and distastefully complimentary obsequious. Example, candidates made the usual oleaginous speeches in the debate.

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Now see, I've always used obsequious. I've used obsequious a number of times. That's my favorite. But now I get to add oleaginous to obsequious, which means that pretty soon

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Z -Genners are going to figure we're speaking a different language. The word you've never even heard in your entire life.

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No, I had not seen oleaginous. But obsequious is one of my favorite terms to use.

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All right, back to Doug. They made sure that the only hard words here were aimed.

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They made sure that the only hard words here were aimed. I found a typo.

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It should be at those who idolize individualism and those churches that idolize marriage and the nuclear family.

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That would be your conservative church, champ. Still married your high school sweetheart? You idolater.

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You want your high school sweetheart's best friend from work to move in with you? You obviously care about pursuing deep relationships.

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Who writes this stuff? And that's what he said. Who writes this stuff? Good question.

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I don't know. And then my son -in -law particularly appreciated the rewriting of the text of 1

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Corinthians that was provided by the redoubtable Doug Wilson. It is reported commonly that there is experimentation, exploration, and self -discovery among you and such experimentation, exploration, and self -discovery as is not even common among the faith -deprived community.

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Not that there is anything wrong with that. That one should have a deeply felt and deeply committed relationship with his father's wife.

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And yet you're judgmental over it and have not rather rejoiced that he who has done this deed might be called to repentance in a way that in no way awakens any sense of shame in any of the parties concerned.

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Shame is a truly destructive force arising from an idolizing of the nuclear family and white bread suburban values.

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And so truly I, even though absent in body but present in spirit, have made a non -judgy judgment already as though I were present concerning the one who has started to explore his yearning for authenticity.

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In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you're gathered together and with my spirit and with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, deliver this valiant and intrepid soul unto the one who was the very first to question arbitrary authority for the restoration of the flesh that his spirit may be saved in the day of the

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Lord Jesus. For the gloss restoration here, please see the seminal monograph by Catherine Tinkrey -Ross,

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PhD, Restoration as Eschatological and Therapeutic Hope, 2013.

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Yeah, there you go. Yeah, and this was an article if you want to look up called

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How to Fly Your Cast -Iron Kites. And you have to read at the end of the article to figure out what that has to do with anything, but it does.

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I guess this would be a good time to comment. On my way back from speaking up in Nevada this weekend,

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I listened on the flight to Unbelievable from last week, and you had two same -sex attracted men on the program.

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And so, you did not have a representative of the united Christian perspective through the year 1950 in the room.

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You had technically the side A, side B debate, which is in reference to whether Christian homosexuals must be celibate or not.

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And representing the no -they -do -not side as a minister was

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Brandon Robertson. Now, I looked, and unfortunately, I was unable to find it on our blog, but I am fully well aware of the fact that I have, in the past, on the program, played and responded to Brandon Robertson.

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I distinctly remember, again, and people mock me for this, but I remember where I was writing as I was listening to, not the 2018 stuff, this was before then,

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I found some stuff about his apostasy in 2018, but before that there was a program that he was on.

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In fact, I think he was, if I recall correctly, he was he was one of the people on a

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NRB panel with Michael Brown, probably 2017, 2016, somewhere back along those lines.

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So, it was within the past, I'd say, five years that I listened to Brandon Robertson being interviewed.

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And at the time, he was not taking the position that he takes now.

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And he said in this program that he has changed his views. I wanted to find it because that's exactly what

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I said was going to happen. I said at the time, there is simply no way that this man is going to be able to stay here.

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He's hanging in midair, and eventually, given the abandonment of a meaningful biblical view inherent in the interpretations he's giving now, this will lead inevitably to a further leftward drift.

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Just as we've seen in Matthew Vines and everybody else that starts off there, they move farther and farther and farther until now you listen to this program.

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And Robertson's view of scripture, inspiration, his attempted interpretation of various passages is so far out in left field that it's hard to even keep it on the radar map, shall we put it that way.

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And so, I was, of course, frustrated that there was no one there to represent what

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I would consider to be a biblical, sexual, and moral position.

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The other guy, at least, wasn't quite as far out as Brandon Robertson, but I would say he was basically where Brandon Robertson was five years ago.

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And so, now he's not coming from—he was a convert to Christianity, so it almost seems like people who have a church background apostatized faster than those that came into it and had to give up stuff.

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So, that could be just a general observation, give it whatever its weight is worth.

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I had thought about going back over the various texts, Brandon Robertson's interpretations of Romans 1, completely, completely missing the context.

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The utilization of homosexuality is an example. It was your standardized— well,

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I haven't engaged in idolatry, so this can't be about me. This can't be about loving homosexual relationships, blah -da -blah -da -blah -da -blah, things that we have dealt with on this program dozens of times before and demonstrated to be completely eisegetical and indefensible in a debate context.

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But it was a sad reminder that this movement, just as you have in the whole cultural situation right now, this movement destroys the foundations of faith, as it did with Brandon Robertson.

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Let's keep going that direction and look at something that I saw this morning.

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My daughter responded to this, and I took a look at the thread. This is from Allie Henney, who is the armchair comm.

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She's one of the witness people. Pass the mic.

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The old Ron, Jamar Tisby's group, the old Reformed African American Network, which is now just The Witness, and very plainly, very, very, very plainly, what you see is the continued leftward march of what once had some kind of Reformed Biblical hermeneutic involved, but is now 1 ,000 % woke.

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Just my response to this, snarky as it was, I think is accurate. I said, if you removed all of the social justice woke terminology from that diatribe, all you would have left are articles and conjunctives, conjunctions.

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So let me show you this. Listen, this is what Allie Henney said. Biblical manhood and womanhood are constructs of whiteness and inherently oppressive.

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Wow, so some of y 'all are really invested in your cultural understandings of the Bible. What a lot of folks call

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Biblical man -womanhood is nothing but culturally dictated ideas and norms that are loosely based on scripture.

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I bring whiteness into discussion because gender roles and performance, whether actual or aspirational, are based on white middle -class ideals.

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Even black people have tried to perform gender according to these ideas. Perform gender.

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Did you catch that? Perform gender. And yes, patriarchy goes beyond religion and ethnicity, but I'm speaking to a particular strain of patriarchy and misogyny.

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Again, whiteness, misogyny, patriarchy, it's all straight out of the

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CT handbook. And when you try to nail any of those terms down, try to get anywhere in saying, what does this mean?

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Why do you make this assertion? How do you defend this? You're not going to get anywhere. These are words that defend the narrative by being impossible to define in any meaningful fashion.

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And if you dare question that, then all you're going to get back is an amplification of the same words all over again.

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So if you say your definition of whiteness is incoherent, then you're a racist because of whiteness.

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And you say, but that doesn't make it coherent. Your whole emphasis upon coherence comes from whiteness and the patriarchy and colonization.

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That's the other big term you got to throw in there is everything's colonization now too. Um, and you cannot reason with this because none of the narrative terms, the framework can possibly be questioned because it's not truth that's being communicated.

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It's not truth that is the goal. It is the promulgation of the narrative. That is the all.

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There's no, there's no reason you can't, you can't argue with it. It's just, it's just the way that it is.

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And I can assure you that if the current front runner of the democratic party is elected president of the

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United States, you must understand. I was, I was mentioning to,

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I'm sure she's a fine sister. Someone basically said on Twitter this morning, this is just a distraction.

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I said, it's not a distraction. This stuff isn't just sneaking into our churches. It ran through the front door, waving flags and banging on drums and screaming the patriarchy, the patriarchy.

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And I linked to the, I think I'd call it 4 .4 part, but it's actually a five part.

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I even showed up in it defining things, not as an example of it. Hopefully, um, the five part video series, um, critical theory and the

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PCA. Uh, Duke Quan and, and these folks that are just, again, the definition of woke, um, woke to the thousandth percent.

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And I linked to it because I think if once you start, it's also useful just to hear people repeating the stuff, the same stuff over and over and over again, in whatever context they're speaking, it doesn't matter what subject it is.

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They can find a, a means or an excuse to promote, promote wokeness.

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Uh, if they're talking about anything, any biblical topic becomes a woke topic when you're woke, because when you're woke, you're broke.

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Um, and your hermeneutic and homiletics are gone. And so it becomes your overriding issue.

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So everything else has to be made to serve that. Anyway, um,

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I was pointing out that one of the reasons that we must be concerned about this and cannot view it simply as a distraction is because law is being made based upon this insanity.

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Critical theory is utterly destructive of everything that it touches. That's its design. It is meant to break connections.

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It breaks down epistemology. It breaks down the meaning of words. It creates chaos.

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That's its intention. That's what it was designed to do. Destroy what's there, get abandoned.

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In other words, critical, once critical theory accomplishes its task, then critical theory will be abandoned because now you have to build something new in its place.

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And their desire is that they would then have the political authority and power to rebuild society without, this is a war on Western culture and values.

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This is a war on the leftovers of the Judeo -Christian worldview. This is so you can build a society based upon Darwinism.

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That's what it is. And there are many useful idiots on the

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Christian side that are going, that sounds great. Not knowing that you are voting for your own destruction.

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So laws are now, I mean, look at New York, look at San Francisco, look at any place where you have one party rule, look at California.

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What you're seeing, those laws that we go are so, what are these people thinking?

42:30

This is what they're thinking. And if Bernie Sanders is elected president of the

42:40

United States, that will be the green light for a massive flood of this stuff to head our direction.

42:52

And you, please do not be naive. Expressions, totalitarianism,

43:03

Brooks, no criticism. Look at any quote unquote socialist or communist nation.

43:10

The only difference between socialism and communism is how many guns the people have in comparison to the government.

43:17

Okay, so once the socialists gather up all the guns, only the socialists have the guns.

43:23

And the people don't, now they're communists. It's really the only difference. You vote socialism in, and then you shoot communism out is how that ends up working historically.

43:35

Just look at history, just look at what's happened. But people don't look at history, they don't care.

43:41

Anyway, if Bernie Sanders is elected president, you must understand that because the legislative branch of the

43:54

United States government has become essentially non -functional for quite some time now.

44:01

Power has accrued to the executive branch to keep things functioning. So executive orders, executive orders is how a lot of stuff is getting done now.

44:12

And the problem with that, of course, is once Bernie Sanders is president, he gets to use that too.

44:19

And so every advancement that people have been going, yay, yay, yay, you know, about Planned Parenthood, abortion, etc, etc, reversed first day.

44:31

First day. But going far beyond that will be the fundamental ending of any type of liberty in the expression of countercultural ideas.

44:49

I .e. what we're doing right now. The utilization of hate crimes laws, the granting of the government the ability to look into man's heart and judge based upon some legislated or totalitarianly defined basic concept of what's good and evil.

45:18

What happened in the UK last week? We mentioned briefly that NHS can deprioritize bigots and people guilty of hate speech and providing medical care.

45:30

Okay, that's what I'm talking about. Could never happen in the United States, right? Yeah, that's why they're making such strides is because we do think it could never happen in the

45:42

United States, but it can. And I mentioned yesterday, and I'll just be brief with this.

45:49

There are a lot of you out there. There are a lot of you out there that just really think that it is impossible that Bernie Sanders could ever be elected.

46:05

And you remind me very much of the mainstream media and all of Hillary Clinton's fans in 2016.

46:14

Impossible. Donald Trump can't be elected. There's a lot of things that could happen between now and November.

46:24

A lot of things could happen between now and November. And, you know, coronavirus.

46:32

I'll be honest with you. If things go as they've gone in the past two months from now, we'll be going corona what?

46:43

Remember bird flu? SARS? I remember all this stuff. I mentioned this morning, something's off on this.

46:52

Something is not right about this. Because if you look at the percentages from the numbers that are being given, regular flu is just as fatal.

47:02

So what's going on here? There's something missing. Either the numbers are way off, or there's some reason why they're not providing meaningful mortality and survivability numbers.

47:18

Because the numbers, as they're being published right now, say 96 .5 % survivability rate.

47:25

But that's not even telling us, are we talking about people who have other pre -existing conditions?

47:32

Are we talking about a 20 -year -old? Are we talking about a 40 -year -old? It may partly be because we don't know, because the

47:40

Chinese don't want to tell us. But I don't know, there's something not quite right with all this, and I don't know what it is.

47:51

Well, and I was going to say, we'll find out someday, but I'm not even certain about that, to be perfectly honest with you.

47:59

But the point is, I said something yesterday, and a lot of people were like, ugh. But how do you pray?

48:10

How do you pray about this? Because a lot of us just want to think, well, it's obvious that this man is wrong.

48:23

He's evil. He's doing wrong things. He promotes abortion. And so obviously,

48:30

God wouldn't want him to be president. Yeah, well, every single

48:36

Roman emperor up until Constantine, and maybe even him, promoted all sorts of godless things, too.

48:42

But God put them there. And the real question is, why should

48:49

God not afflict a nation that is so bathed in the blood of its offspring?

49:01

Why should he not afflict us with a leader like Bernie Sanders that will destroy the economy and take away all the stuff that he's given to us, set us on the road to Venezuela?

49:17

We haven't been thankful for that stuff anyways. So why shouldn't he? I mean, just on a simple basis of justice, how can you say that that would be unjust of God to do?

49:32

Now, of course, as America goes, there goes the world. And, you know, anybody with a few brain cells that can do math knows that Bernie Sanders' proposals are so laughably impossible to actually put into practice that he should be simply laughed off the debate stage as a crazy old man.

50:03

But that's how the communists have always done things. They create the strife between classes, which is what critical theory, social

50:15

Marxism is supposed to do. That's now in place. And then they tap into that with promises that they then never, ever, ever, ever fulfill.

50:26

Because they can't be fulfilled. They never could have been fulfilled. They were empty lies from the start.

50:32

But that's... Go to Eastern Europe, people.

50:39

Look at the history. We've got a lot of history to look at, but no one wants to look at it.

50:44

Well, because it's never been done right. Yeah, yeah.

50:51

Okay. Let's get to something really important here toward the end of the program. Well, not that what we've been talking about hasn't been important.

51:03

Last month, that was only about, it was only right around a month ago. Seems a lot longer than that.

51:14

Last month was G3, and I think my sermon there is finally up.

51:25

I didn't, I haven't looked. It's supposed to be, or will be soon. I know it's available on the app, let's put it that way.

51:35

The sermon from Isaiah 6, which I then preached in New York that weekend, and then did a longer version at Apologia when

51:44

I had a sudden fill -in situation. A little bit after that,

51:50

I had about 15 more minutes at Apologia than I did at G3. Anyway, so the stuff on Isaiah 6 is available in various formats.

52:00

But the next morning, so that was the

52:06

Friday? Yeah, I spoke

52:11

Friday morning. And so Thursday night,

52:18

Derek Thomas preached. I was not there. That's when we recorded the cross -politic episode with Omaha and myself.

52:30

And Doug Wilson, and then the rest of the crew. Which is very interesting. So I did not hear

52:37

Dr. Thomas's presentation. The next morning, someone came up to me after I spoke.

52:44

So when I preached, we went to the post -Tenebrous Lux table, and I was just greeting folks.

52:54

This is what we did on this trip. We did a lot of talking to people, and taking pictures, and signing books, and doing stuff like that.

53:02

Anyway, and one brother said, I wanted to ask you about something that Dr.

53:09

Thomas said last night. And I said, well, I wasn't here. He said, well, he said that Jesus didn't remember being

53:16

God. What do you think about that? Now, I didn't hear it.

53:23

And so my response was, well, I didn't hear it.

53:29

I hesitate to comment on it, because I'm sure there was some type of context that would ameliorate what you're saying.

53:40

Because Jesus says in John 17, 5, glorify me with the glory which I had in your presence before the world was.

53:47

And I've come forth from the Father. And he has a clear, not only messianic conscience, but divine consciousness as well.

53:59

And so I said, I am aware of the fact that Europeans tend to have more of an emphasis upon a gradual growth in messianic consciousness in Christ than Americans do.

54:21

I said, but I really can't comment on it, because I didn't hear it. But I would certainly affirm that Jesus was fully aware of his divine origin and identity.

54:35

Well, over the next few days, especially on social media, there was quite a buzz about this particular sermon.

54:46

And there were some people that wanted immediate action, and there needed to be immediate statements made, and things like that.

54:55

And I'm like, until you can actually listen to it in context, what are you supposed to say?

55:02

And so over that period of time and since then, in talking to other people,

55:15

I've put together an idea of what was said.

55:21

And then day before yesterday, or maybe it was last week, because day before yesterday would be

55:30

Sunday, so that wouldn't be it. It was last week. When G3 put the sermons on the app, there was a statement made.

55:41

And Dr. Thomas's sermon was not posted as it was preached at G3.

55:48

The statement basically said that the sermon walks the line of what

55:56

G3 identifies as a canonic theory. Canosis is the term used in Philippians chapter 2.

56:08

When it says Jesus emptied himself. And so there are, as I mentioned, numerous, especially

56:18

European, it's not limited to that, but seems to be somewhat more of the prevalence there,

56:25

European theologians who strongly emphasize that Jesus was fully dependent upon the

56:34

Spirit. And what they take that to mean is fully dependent upon the

56:43

Spirit, and hence had to learn to believe.

56:50

So the Spirit would reveal to Jesus through the scriptures who he himself was.

56:59

And so he had to believe what was revealed to him as to who he was over against the evidence of what he would see around him, of, you know, walking along the seashore or whatever else it might be.

57:19

So the idea is a presentation of Jesus who is, you know, part of his struggle is to accept and have faith that he is who it's being revealed to him by the

57:36

Spirit through, from the Father, Mary, so on and so forth. And I guess that was the connection to the sermon, because the sermon had to do with the transfiguration.

57:51

And so, especially the thing that struck me there is when you look at the transfiguration, that is not, that has never struck me, does not strike me now,

58:10

I think I could make a very strong argument against the idea that what you have is a

58:16

Jesus who needs to have his faith reassured by hearing from the

58:23

Father that he is the beloved Son. There's just so much in the transfiguration account that militates against that.

58:36

Jesus has already told the disciples right before this event that there are going to be some of them who see something, so Jesus knows this is coming.

58:49

And there is no statement on Jesus' part that, oh,

58:54

I thank you, my Father, because you have increased my faith in who

58:59

I am. The conversation with Moses and Elijah is based upon the utter confidence and certainty of the accomplishment of the cross itself.

59:19

And so, there's just, I just simply say, if that was the application being made, then

59:29

I'm just left stunned at that interpretation of the transfiguration events, let alone the baptism events and any situation where the

59:42

Father speaks from heaven or, there are a couple places in the gospel narratives that describe these things.

59:49

And in none of them do you get the idea that this somehow is meant for Jesus' benefit to increase his faith.

01:00:02

That seems to be an extremely problematic interpretation. Now, the fact is that we tread here in the same type of area that we are in when we talk about perichoresis, the relationship and interpenetration of the divine persons in the

01:00:28

Trinity before creation itself. When we talk about the relationship of the divine persons, not as revealed in salvation, not the economic

01:00:39

Trinity, where the Father takes one role and the Son another and the Spirit another in the accomplishment of redemption.

01:00:45

That's pretty straightforward. When we're talking about the divine persons in eternity past, we have a pretty limited amount of divine revelation, and we are dealing with something that is absolutely unique and hence cannot be compared to anything else.

01:01:08

And so, we can't use analogies without immediately introducing impurity into the analogy. Not impurity as in sin, impurity as in connecting that which is completely unique to that which is not completely unique.

01:01:23

That's the impurity, the corruption of analogy. Same thing we talk about the incarnate

01:01:31

Son. Most of you who have listened to debates down through the years with Muslims and others who reject historical

01:01:46

Trinitarian belief are aware of the fact that this is one of their primary areas of approach, is to raise speculative questions about how the divine and the human can be related in Christ and use that as their primary apologetic.

01:02:11

So, if you can't answer every speculative question about an utterly unique individual, an individual about whom we are given much revelation but not in a speculative context, then your position is supposed to be lost or whatever else.

01:02:35

Most Christians have invested what little time they may have even allocated in this subject to speculation rather than any time of serious exegetical concerns or reading a good solid systematic theology on the subject.

01:03:03

So, as a result, most Christians don't have a formulated understanding of the relationship of the divine and human in Christ in regards to self -awareness, the messianic consciousness, the divine consciousness.

01:03:31

And I do not believe that we are intended to have an exhaustive capacity to answer every possible question in this area.

01:03:42

That's what the Gnostics wanted to do, that's why the Gnostic Gospels exist, but the

01:03:48

Orthodox Church resisted that temptation. It certainly seems to me that at age 12, and this is the only insight we're given, the only insight we're given, and therefore you could only go so far with it.

01:04:04

You just have to be so, so, so careful at this particular point.

01:04:14

But it seems that Jesus, at age 12, what 12 -year -old says,

01:04:22

I must be about my father's business. He's in the temple, he's astonishing the teachers, and I must be amongst my father's business.

01:04:37

Now, 12 and 13, you know, that's right before becoming a son of the commandment, Bar So, the point is there is clearly a consciousness there.

01:04:55

What does that mean about growing in grace and knowledge? And so, you do have the

01:05:04

Gnostic atrocities, mutations, abominations, you know, the child

01:05:14

Jesus who's making clay birds so that he can get away with, because by the way, the whole clay bird thing that ends up in the

01:05:23

Koran, the story as it's found in,

01:05:28

I think it's the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, I think that's where it is.

01:05:37

The whole background of that is that this was on the Sabbath, so he uses special divine power to turn the birds, the clay birds, into real birds so that he can short -circuit the prohibition of working on the

01:05:53

Sabbath, because what did I make? They flew away, so I wasn't forming anything.

01:06:01

And, you know, striking his playmates dead and striking people blind and just a terror, so much so that the people in the community come and ask

01:06:09

Joseph to leave. That is an abominable view of Jesus that, again, ends up in the

01:06:17

Koran. It's just horrible, and that's where the

01:06:25

Gnostics were trying to speculate about what a young Jesus would be like.

01:06:32

So, we're only given literally a matter of words, and so someone might say, well, then who can object to Dr.

01:06:44

Thomas's conclusion? Well, I am sure that Dr.

01:06:51

Thomas confesses that Jesus has eternally existed as God, that the divine second person was specifically actively involved in his entering into human flesh, made himself of no reputation, did so voluntarily in the eternal counsel of God, all of these things.

01:07:19

The liberal kenosis concept is that Jesus, in essence, divested himself of not just the prerogatives of deity, but basically of deity itself, so that he was a perfect man who was totally dependent upon the

01:07:42

Spirit of God for all things. And by the way, that's foundational to the

01:07:50

Bethel -Reading theology, to Johnson's stuff, where he makes connection to us being able to do the things that Jesus did, because Jesus was fully dependent upon the

01:08:01

Spirit. As long as we're fully dependent upon the Spirit, then we can do everything Jesus did. That's why they're sitting there singing songs to a dead baby to get the baby to rise up a few months ago, because if you're in the

01:08:13

Spirit like Jesus was, you can do what Jesus did. So, that is a very, there's entire books that present that perspective.

01:08:28

They tend to be on the left -hand side of the spectrum and somewhat European. That doesn't mean that I can find

01:08:35

Americans always follow whatever Europe does, unfortunately. We both export and import when it comes to that kind of stuff.

01:08:45

But certainly, I would say the majority of conservative biblical theology has eschewed the extremes of the canonic position and would say that it was the exercise of divine privileges and prerogatives that was laid aside so that the

01:09:12

Son could accomplish the mission of being the

01:09:18

Messiah, of being the one that brings about redemption. And that is not a situation where you can then basically say

01:09:30

Jesus didn't remember what it was like to be in heaven. But there are people who obviously would take that position.

01:09:40

How, then, he becomes confident of this?

01:09:47

Or, I mean, I really wonder if Dr. Thomas takes the position that when

01:09:53

Jesus, now remember, remember, this is important to remember. We're talking here, we're having this conversation within the realm of people who have a high view of scripture.

01:10:12

The people that I read in seminary who took a canonic position would not have believed in inerrancy.

01:10:19

So, they would not believe that you can actually, in a consistent fashion, harmonize the

01:10:33

Carmen Christi of Philippians chapter 2, the discussion of Jesus' birth and temple visitation,

01:10:41

Luke 1 and 2, and anything else. And then especially

01:10:48

John and John 17. Liberals don't feel and don't have a basis for being able to harmonize those things.

01:10:59

They are, and this is the terminology they use, they are left in tension. That's their way of saying they are contradictory.

01:11:08

Okay? And so, that's not a possibility for Dr.

01:11:15

Thomas. I do not believe. But that's where the people at Fuller that I was reading many, many moons ago, that's where they are.

01:11:27

So, it's important to keep in mind. So, when I say Dr. Thomas couldn't be there, I'm assuming, I think quite correctly, very high view of scripture, and hence, a commitment to a coherence in what is taught between John and Luke and Matthew and Paul, there is a coherence.

01:11:53

The majority of the books that present this concept do not believe that's possible and don't care.

01:11:59

So, it's important to make that observation that really confuses a lot of people, a lot of lay people who've not gone to seminary and been exposed to those other ways of thinking, run into these things and just do not understand how could someone come to that, because you're assuming that people have the same commitment you have to the divine coherence of Revelation.

01:12:21

And I'm trying to communicate to folks in my church and by this podcast, if you believe in the divine consistency and coherence of biblical

01:12:34

Revelation, you are in a small minority. You're in a small minority, not just in the world, but amongst people who call themselves

01:12:43

Christians. You're in a small minority. And I know that may be troubling to you, especially those of you who were introduced to the faith by argumentation from people who use majority scholarship arguments.

01:13:01

The majority of scholars say this. The majority of scholars say that. Well, once you buy into that, how do you avoid having that turned around and used against you, is the question.

01:13:17

Yeah, that's the problem. That's the problem. So, anyway, to make a long story short,

01:13:25

I'm very glad that a statement has been made and I would agree that it was best to not post those statements.

01:13:41

But at the same time, I think it is important for believers to be made aware of what the issues are.

01:13:52

This is a particularly challenging area. It requires the respectful restraint that used to epitomize

01:14:06

Christian theology but that is almost completely absent from Christian social media.

01:14:14

And what I mean by that is we are talking about an area that requires bringing together a number of threads of divine revelation.

01:14:25

And even then, all we can do is draw the barrier of truth, as in a couple of other areas in Christian theology, that says we can't so much tell you what's inside it as we can describe what's outside it.

01:14:47

Because of the uniqueness inside it, our language fails us. The Incarnation is absolutely positively unique and therefore there's no analogy.

01:14:59

And so we can't talk about how the God -man grows. But we can draw a line around it and we can define the hypostatic union and we can say this is why that's important and therefore if you say this, this, this, this, and this, you're going outside of that and now you're going into error.

01:15:21

So Apollinarianism, Nestorianism, Eutychianism, all the rest of that kind of stuff, you can say that's outside.

01:15:29

And there are people who are very, very, very uncomfortable with the reality that in something that would seem to be so central, that there is a limitation of how far we can go in the definition of those things.

01:15:50

That has been the situation from the start. There's never been a time when it was different and unfortunately, rather than accepting that reality and saying

01:16:05

God is under no obligation to reveal any more than he has chosen to reveal and I will adore his wisdom in stopping where he stopped, the tendency of human beings is to go one or two directions.

01:16:17

Agnosticism, well, if I can't know that, then I can't know anything, I'm going to throw it all off. And on the other side, you end up with Fundamentalism, where you are told what to believe, don't think about anything else, and if anyone thinks differently, you're anathematized immediately.

01:16:35

So those are your options. They're not pleasant options. The best thing is to stay right there in the middle and realize that God gets to determine what he's going to reveal, how he's going to reveal it, and he asks us for our obedience and faith.

01:16:58

And could it not be that one of the beauties and glories of the eternal state is that some of these things will be things that we will then be given the tremendous honor of exploring, but outside of the realm of the mockery of unbelievers, so that it can be completely honored as to what the

01:17:26

Son actually did for our salvation? Might there not be things that in this fallen world, just God says that's for later?

01:17:38

Trust me, believe me. Live in the light of the empty tomb. Those are some possibilities that we can consider.

01:17:51

So, wow! I look back over the list here, and that is a lot of stuff.

01:18:02

There is only two items on my list I did not get to. One is just sort of an ongoing thing that I just want to keep regularly doing.

01:18:10

The only other thing I didn't do was talk about Boko Haram in Nigeria right now. Just pray for the Nigerian saints.

01:18:16

Boko Haram and a couple of other groups are just ransacking churches, coming in during worship services, blowing people up, kidnapping people, shooting people, beheading people.

01:18:29

It's just, it's horrible. And it is, again, the militant form of Islam that takes on old tribal factionalism there in Africa.

01:18:46

Tribalism, remember folks, the African slave trade originated with Africans.

01:18:53

They couldn't have done it without other people to buy, but it was Africans capturing other

01:18:58

Africans. And a lot of that was tribal, and there is still a tremendous amount of tribal warfare in sub -Saharan

01:19:07

Africa. And so, introduce religion into that, and especially a religion that has militaristic aspects to it, and things get ugly.

01:19:22

And so, there are Christian believers who are dying very regularly there in Nigeria.

01:19:28

It's a failed state. There's no real functional government to be able to control these things, and yet God still has his people there.

01:19:39

And it's our duty and our privilege to pray for them. So, now I covered that too.

01:19:44

So, there you go. That was a wide variety of stuff. A few tough things, few challenging things, but hopefully very useful things to you.

01:19:54

Lord willing, we will be back on Thursday. Yeah, be back on Thursday, Lord willing.

01:20:00

And who knows what will have happened between now and... Oh, there was one... I did forget one thing.

01:20:10

You got 10 minutes, don't you? Yeah, okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I forgot something. That's because I didn't write it down.

01:20:18

See there? There you go. I thought something else that I said would remind me to do that, to do this, but I didn't.

01:20:29

Oh, no, it's right there. Never mind. There was a...

01:20:38

Oh, unfortunately, I didn't get it queued up, but let me see if I can find it real quick here. There was a meme.

01:20:47

Here it is. Okay. Rich is getting a deep seat in the saddle.

01:20:58

I have it up full screen if you'd like. Oh, you don't even want to put it up there? You don't even want to put it up there?

01:21:05

You're scared? Oh, okay. Are you scared, Rich? So, Toby Sumpter discussing the application of theonomy,

01:21:14

G3, and right away they come back and say, so you think that a man and woman who are caught in adultery should be stoned?

01:21:20

You think that a rebellious son should be put to death? And first of all, we say, well, yeah, it's in God's word. It's good.

01:21:25

It's God's word. Now we need to talk about how to apply it exactly. And then the information is given that Toby Sumpter is a co -host of Cross -Politic

01:21:32

Program and is Doug Wilson's associate pastor at Christchurch, Moscow, Idaho. Sumpter was a featured speaker at the 2020

01:21:38

G3 conference session topic, Identity and Politics. I think that was a breakout session, so I'm not sure if that's a featured speaker, but I could be wrong about that.

01:21:46

Anyway... What? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. This is

01:21:51

Christine Pack, and I've even seen dispensationalists going, yeah, so what's the point?

01:22:02

The point, first of all, is that there are certain people who anything that's associated with Douglas Wilson is just automatically bad, and everyone should just know that, so don't even go there.

01:22:12

But outside of that, I do wonder why there are so many people who are completely embarrassed by what is found in the pages of the

01:22:25

Tanakh, the Torah, the Nevi 'im, and the Ketuvim, what we call the Old Testament. They're just completely embarrassed by it, and seem to forget the second time in chapter 3, verse 16, when

01:22:38

Paul said, all scripture, passa grafe, theanoustas, all scripture is

01:22:43

God -breathed, that the only scripture Timothy would have understood him to even be making reference to was primarily the

01:22:50

Greek Septuagint, which included both of the texts that Toby mentions here.

01:22:56

And there could be all sorts of other texts that are mentioned, you know, mixing fibers and working on the

01:23:04

Sabbath day, and just a billion things that could be thrown in there from the

01:23:10

Holiness Code, for example. And so, I pointed out that starting in 2014,

01:23:19

I preached 38 sermons. They're still available at the PRBC Sermon Audio website.

01:23:26

I think we've downloaded them, should there be a problem with that. But they're still on Sermon Audio, and the first two or three sermons,

01:23:38

I said what Toby Sumter said. I played the

01:23:44

West Wing thing, because, you know, I was focusing primarily upon how do we deal with the homosexual argument that we are picking and choosing what we're going to gather, because we believe love your neighbor as yourself.

01:24:00

That's from the middle of the Holiness Code. And there are some people who say, well, the only reason we believe that is because Jesus repeated it.

01:24:09

That's, sorry, that's not how the

01:24:14

Apostles functioned. The Apostles did not go, all that stuff is irrelevant now, we've got to repeat it for you actually to believe it.

01:24:23

That is, as popular as that may be, that is way out there.

01:24:29

Way, way out there. And so, this raises, and I just kind of grab it, and I'm sorry,

01:24:38

I forgot. This raises, right up there at the top, the bugaboo word, theonomy.

01:24:50

Back about, I probably wish I had grabbed it, because it would have the copyright in it. Somewhere in the 1980s, maybe early 90s, a book came out called

01:25:03

Theonomy from Westminster Seminary, which was a response to Bonson, Rush Dooney, and that group at that time.

01:25:16

And basically, what was communicated to me as a young theological student, relatively young theological student at that time, was this is bad stuff.

01:25:28

This is bad juju. Don't drink that bad juju. And as it was presented to me, it was presented as people seeking to take the entire

01:25:43

Mosaic Code without interpretation, without context, without recognition of fulfillment motifs, ceremonial laws, and the whole concept of Israel at that time, now

01:26:04

Western culture this time, taking all of that lock, stock, and barrel, and bringing it into the modern context, so that you're, and I saw people yesterday, the critics of theonomy, doing this, so that you are to stone your five -year -old when they throw a fit, when they don't get their toy.

01:26:29

That you're to take them to some, I guess, local theonomic elders at the gate, and then he's to be executed.

01:26:42

And given that I didn't know anybody that was in that camp,

01:26:48

I was just sort of like, well, that's pretty weird, but it seems far -fetched to me, and I've got other things to be doing.

01:26:56

And I did have other things to be doing. So, there are still people who have that idea.

01:27:04

Now, on the other side, you have the observation about the origination of the word.

01:27:12

What does theonomy mean? What does it actually mean? What does the word mean? It means the law of God.

01:27:20

And yeah, so that means Paul said, just good, the law is good if it's used lawfully, and we establish the law, and he said all those good things because he was talking about the fact that the law points us to Christ because the law shows us our sin.

01:27:37

But then there's all those places where he quotes from and establishing that ministers should receive payment and be supported, quotes from that same law again, and seems to believe the

01:27:53

Corinthians should have understood that having your father's wife thing was bad because it said so in the law.

01:28:02

So, you've got theonomy, and you obviously have a lot of varieties.

01:28:09

I mean, most American evangelicals in our culture today would view the view of the law found in Reformed confessions as theonomic because we're under law, we're under grace.

01:28:33

And therefore, if you even talk about uses of the law, the third use of the law, anything like that, to them, that's theonomy.

01:28:43

So, if you honor God's law in any sense like that, then you're a theonomist.

01:28:50

That's obviously imbalanced, but that's due to the fact that there's a tremendous amount of antinomianism in American evangelicalism.

01:29:02

Tremendous amount. It's just that didn't come from the Puritans. That's a reaction against the

01:29:08

Puritans, and it's a cultural amnesia of who the Puritans were and what they believed. So, if you don't have theonomy, what do you have?

01:29:20

There's only two choices, theonomy or autonomy. Because if you've looked at two words, theonomy, law of God, autonomy, self -rule.

01:29:33

So, if you step back from issues of moral law, specific theocratic rules to the nation of Israel, ceremonial law fulfilled in sacrifices and things like that, if you step back from those necessary discussions that, let's be honest, most people avoid them because they just don't want to do the work.

01:30:02

There's a lot of work there. There's a lot of work there, and there's difficult passages.

01:30:11

I did not enjoy preaching the sermon I did on the text, I think it's in Deuteronomy, didn't look it up before I got started here, about cutting off a woman's hand if she grabs a man's genitals when they're fighting, when two men are fighting.

01:30:28

But I did, because I actually happened to believe 2 Timothy 3 .16. For most people, that law is solely for Israel, irrelevant.

01:30:41

The only reason to read it is so you can get through the Bible and say you've read the Bible cover to cover.

01:30:47

That's the only reason to read it. Other than that, it just has no meaning. You should not ponder it, you should not consider what it was communicating then, and there's nothing, nothing for us at all in the vast majority of what's found in those books.

01:31:03

Just nothing. It's just your Bible could be lighter, and you'd never miss it, is the attitude of many people.

01:31:12

But here's the problem. The only other option is autonomy. What else is there?

01:31:19

Because if you don't have theonomy, there you've got a vacuum.

01:31:26

What am I talking about? I'm not talking about justification, I'm not talking,

01:31:31

I'm talking about the simple question, does the Word of God tell us how we are to live?

01:31:38

Does it give us, is it sufficient? How then shall we live?

01:31:44

Does the scripture give us answers, guidelines, principles, insights, or does it not?

01:31:55

I would say the vast majority of American evangelicals would default to something squishy like, well, sure it does.

01:32:08

The Spirit guides us to think upon biblical principles. Now, most of those folks would be cessationists, and they start getting a little charismatic at that point, but how squishy can you get?

01:32:24

Because what principles are you supposed to be thinking about? And most people have just never thought it through, and so what you end up with are philosophical perspectives.

01:32:40

Can we just be honest for a second? I've been in Bible studies in large

01:32:46

Southern Baptist churches where the Constitution, the

01:32:51

Bill of Rights, was much more of an interpretive grid for what God could and could not do than anything written by Moses.

01:33:03

That's a fact. That's a fact. Because if you don't have

01:33:09

God's law to express God's intention as to how we are to relate to one another, you've got a vacuum, and something's, nature abhors a vacuum, so something's going to flow in there, and what's going to flow in there ends up becoming the screen that people then use to read the

01:33:32

Old Testament and get rid of the stuff they don't like and read the New Testament as well. So, how does this then flesh out?

01:33:43

Well, today, as we are seeking to interact with a world that is intent upon self -destruction, the destruction of the self as created in the womb, when you profane marriage, when you profane sexuality, when you profane children by either murdering them in the womb or then perverting them at age six with sex hormones, this is all—what does all that have in common?

01:34:24

Destruction of life. This is the culture of death. This is how the culture of death expresses itself.

01:34:30

So, people keep saying, you need to provide a positive alternative.

01:34:37

Okay, where are you going to get that from? Well, the

01:34:42

Roman Catholics say natural law. Natural law. We're made in the image of God, so there's a natural law.

01:34:52

Okay, that's not helping Rome out real well right now. They are pretty squishy on stuff, but okay, you got your argument.

01:35:02

Is there anything maybe in the holiness code that might be relevant?

01:35:08

You know, that loving of neighbor, the honoring of the old, justice in how you pay your servant.

01:35:17

Wow, there's a whole lot of stuff in there. There's a whole lot of stuff in there.

01:35:23

Was it good when God said it then? When did it become ungood? Because I understand that when we're talking about laws that establish sacrifices that are fulfilled in Christ, yeah, but loving your neighbor didn't get done away with.

01:35:44

And the Christian employer still needs to honor

01:35:49

God by fairly paying his employee today. And Paul didn't mind saying, don't muzzle the ox while it's threshing.

01:36:01

Why would he do that? So, it just seems to me that people get all, you know,

01:36:10

I presented in my sermons my understanding that the penology of the law had specific reference to the people of Israel.

01:36:30

It does reveal what God thinks about the severity of certain sins, but that it is the positive expression of the holy will of God in his law that remains a vitally important resource that is inspired of God and that to abandon that and to stop looking at that and to constantly repeat the we're not under the law, we're under grace, we're not under the law, we're under grace, which is out of context and a completely different arena, has led to the vacuous, shallow responses that the church has given to the cultural collapse around us.

01:37:22

So, are you a theonomist if you say God's law is just, God's law is good,

01:37:28

God's law was never meant to justify, God's law shows us our sin and it shows us our sin because it accurately and to this day continues to reveal

01:37:36

God's holy character to us. Does that make you a theonomist?

01:37:43

You're certainly not an autonomist because human autonomy is central to the current culture's destruction of itself.

01:37:56

It is the very expression of autonomy. Maybe we should rethink where we've gone here and realize there's an entire spectrum of truth sitting there that we tend to ignore, not because the apostles told us to, because they didn't, but because tradition has told us to.

01:38:27

So, here's the issue. If you dare even raise the possibility, there are certain people that just go into flames instantly, right at that point.

01:38:42

You can't, now we need to talk about how to apply it exactly. No, you can't.

01:38:50

How dare you? Yeah, well, I think what

01:38:55

Toby was saying is what I said in my sermon series. I covered all those.

01:39:03

I covered both of those texts. They're related, but they're not exactly the same spot. And we had, we were profited by thinking through the seriousness of the penalties, the relationship to the people of Israel, and then what that means to us today.

01:39:28

So, there are tough texts. One of the toughest texts I've preached on, sorry to be going so long.

01:39:35

Well, the toughest text I preached on was the text about how the people of Israel are to be absolutely, deathly opposed to idolatry.

01:39:48

So much so that if the wife whom you love, the mother of your children, whom your heart is attached to, says to you, let's go after other gods.

01:40:02

Come with me to secretly worship other gods. What does the scripture say? You're to take her before the elders and you are to be the first one to cast the first stone.

01:40:23

The idea today is that was then, this is now.

01:40:30

So, is what you're saying that the ancient Israelite was to be so committed to the worship of Yahweh that they would expose the closest person to them in this world if they proved to be a traitor to the covenant made with Yahweh?

01:40:56

But a follower of Jesus doesn't have to worry about that level of commitment at all.

01:41:04

That's too much. Is that we're saying? Is that you are saying?

01:41:10

Are you seriously comfortable with the idea that our commitment to the lordship of Christ should be less than the believing

01:41:22

Jewish person's commitment to their following of Yahweh and their abhorrence of idolatry under the old covenant?

01:41:32

I thought the new covenant wrote that law upon our hearts. Thought about that?

01:41:41

Hmm. Interesting. Folks, there's stuff to think about. And when people shut that discussion down immediately because they have some derangement syndrome where somebody

01:41:54

I detest said that once, so I'm not going to listen. That's sad. That should not exist amongst reformed people.

01:42:01

Just shouldn't. But it does. It does. It does. Wow. So, oh, hi.

01:42:09

Hi. What you doing over there? Itching. Did you, did you, did you get, did you get the, put, put the, put the, put the thing in here.

01:42:17

Well, I can hear you. You know, uh, first of all, the, the word theonomy is thrown in there and was thrown around this morning as a rigid, unmovable, uh, system of thought that just wants to put all these people to death.

01:42:37

Yep. And yet, if you look at the first example that he brought up there and as you presented it, we're looking at the law, the law, the law.

01:42:46

Okay. Let's look at that first statement just a little bit differently. So you think that a man and a woman who held back the price of their land shouldn't be struck dead by the

01:42:59

Holy Spirit. Oh wait, that's not in the Old Testament. That's, that's true. Okay. And then you think that a rebellious son should be put to death.

01:43:06

Wait a minute. Have we read Romans 1 lately? A deserving of death. Yeah, I know.

01:43:13

But yet, of all. Yeah. How did, how did, how, how are the people in Romans 1 supposed to know that those who commit such things are deserving of death?

01:43:23

Yeah. That would be the law. Uh, but then of all of the rigidness that is presented in this statement, that's just so immovable.

01:43:32

Now we need to talk about how to apply it exactly. That's the one thing I noticed on the social media stuff going on this morning that that was not up for discussion.

01:43:42

Nope. Nope. This man bad, this man evil. He's connected to somebody who's even more evil.

01:43:49

And we're not going to talk about any of this stuff. And yet again, we have the same examples in the

01:43:57

New Testament. So it's time, Mrs. Pack, to get out your razor blade and start cutting those verses out of your

01:44:06

Bible, including the New Testament, a lot of the New Testament. Yeah.

01:44:12

I, uh, do you know what this is going to mean? I know, but you know what?

01:44:18

Just so everybody understands, I'm not a theonomist, but I do recognize— Then what are you?

01:44:24

Well, as I said this morning, uh, first of all, I, I said it there in the one place, how one is to understand

01:44:31

God's law in a New Testament environment is no easy task. No, it's not an easy task. You said it just 10 minutes ago.

01:44:37

No, it's not an easy task. Okay? The man of God neither shrinks from it or runs headlong into it.

01:44:43

So throw the labels around like rocks when the honest man stops to observe and seeks to understand them.

01:44:50

No, I, I agree a thousand percent. And that's where I want to be. But, but if we're, if, if someone's going to put a gun to your head,

01:44:58

I'm going to be a theonomist, not an autonomist. Well, yeah. Then I simply demand the right to define what

01:45:04

I mean by that. Yeah. And I think that's all he's saying there at the end. We need to have a conversation.

01:45:11

That is all he's saying. I know. I know. I know. Dogma. I hate it. But I, but I, but I just, I just think,

01:45:18

I just think that the conversation needs to be had and the knee -jerk reaction against the term needs to stop.

01:45:27

Just needs to stop. Let's talk about what that means. Can we, can we agree with the apostle

01:45:34

Paul that the law of God is good if it is used lawfully?

01:45:44

If, okay. If the law of God is good, if it is used lawfully, would he be allowed to explain what using it lawfully would be on social media today?

01:45:57

No, Paul, no, no, ban, ban him.

01:46:03

It's just, yeah, that's, that's what would happen. That's what would happen. Anyway. Okay. So there you go.

01:46:09

Um, poor, uh, uh, you know, it was meant to be a gotcha meme and actually it's allowed us to discuss some things and hopefully make some, some advancements there.

01:46:22

So, wow. I went a little longer. That's all right.

01:46:27

That's all right. So at least I know everything that we had, we talked about on the program today and I'll be able to accurately enter it into the blog article description of it.

01:46:36

So we can find it 20 years from now, if we're still around 20 years from now, we can find it in prison.

01:46:42

20 years. Remember we talked about that? Yeah, there you go. That's, that'll be great. Thanks for watching the program today.