Ukraine, Hyper-Calvinism, David Allen, Shawn McCraney, and More!

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01:34

And welcome to The Dividing Line on Tuesday, March 4th, live from Phoenix, Arizona.

01:40

I start off by thanking very much John Sampson for fighting off the hordes of wild -eyed

01:49

Calvinists who would have gone into various states of withdrawal over the course of the past almost three weeks.

01:58

And he fed them and kept them from rioting and causing various levels of cultural disorder, which

02:08

Calvinists are known to do. I'll be honest with you,

02:14

I only caught a few minutes of the first program during my, what was that, nine, ten hours in the

02:22

Charlotte airport before a seven -hour car ride to Fredericksburg.

02:29

This trip didn't start off the way that we really planned it, but we survived it somehow.

02:37

And lo and behold, the whole time we were there, we were thinking, wow, boy, it couldn't have come at a worse time. A few weeks later would have been worse.

02:44

I had no idea, even though, interestingly enough, I was standing in the MDiv office at Irpin Biblical Seminary pretty much after the president had fled and things were calming down, and one of the guys said, well,

03:01

I know what's going to happen now. I'm like, I've been learning a lot about Ukrainian politics over the past few days anyways, is

03:07

Russia will move on Crimea. First place I heard about it. Before it happened, everybody there said, yeah, yeah, this is, yeah, he'll move on Crimea.

03:18

And he has, and he has. So, lo and behold, there you go. So, John, thank you very much.

03:24

I was told by Little Bird, who I won't identify, that John was very nervous doing the program at first.

03:35

And I just sort of chuckle at that because I've, you know, three decades of this about, and I don't get nervous about it.

03:47

The only time I ever get even any tinge of anxiety is when we're going to try to do something wildly esoteric with our technology or something, and the whole thing's going to be dependent upon that.

04:00

But that's all technical stuff. It's not anything like that. So, I was, but by the time he got to the last one, you know, he was showing up 10 minutes before the program started, and he was, you know,

04:12

I'm an old hand now. So, many thanks to John Sampson for filling in during that time period, because I think a lot of people would have just sort of gone, well, why not get somebody, do something?

04:24

Of course, there's always the Wayback Machine, which some people listen to all the time, which frightens me tremendously, really.

04:30

Well, it does frighten me just a little bit when people do that all the time, but there are some who do that.

04:36

Anyways, I am in honor of my good friends in Ukraine.

04:41

I am wearing my Ukrainian shirt. See, this isn't a, I wore this, we did a sort of informal chat with all the

04:50

MDiv students on Monday, a week ago, last night, basically, and I wore this.

04:59

I had gotten it on a, well, some of you saw the tweet. I freaked my family out when I tweeted that picture from right at the barricades at Maidan.

05:13

Maidan is the independent square where all the violence took place, and I had no intention whatsoever of going there.

05:24

But we started driving, and things were suggested, and we were going to go to a

05:30

Mexican restaurant. I thought it'd be sort of fun to go to a Mexican restaurant, because I have told the story, it's sort of funny, the

05:37

Mexican restaurant that I went to in Edinburgh, it's sort of fun going to Mexican restaurants around the world and just going, so you really think that's

05:46

Mexican, huh? If it has a chip somewhere in it, it's

05:55

Mexican. The one going up to High Street in Edinburgh. Sorry. I'm glad it's there, but don't think

06:02

I'd be visiting again. Anyway, we were going to go to, I figured I'll add to my stories by going to a

06:10

Mexican restaurant in Kiev. And so what did we go do?

06:17

Oh, we were going to go see the Chernobyl Museum. It was closed. Everything was closed because of the violence and stuff. I didn't get to see any of the museums.

06:24

I was a good seer. And so we're like, okay, all right. So we're heading for this

06:30

Mexican place, and had to get some money changed. It's pretty much a cash society over there, and I could just tell that Nick, my translator

06:41

I was chatting with Greg White and Nick, and I could just tell Nick was not looking forward to this at all.

06:47

Nick really loves cheeseburgers. They're his favorite food in the whole world. And so I could just tell he did not,

06:55

I guess he'd been there before. I don't know. And he says he was just trying to save me, which, you know, maybe.

07:02

But there is a TGI Fridays in downtown Kiev. And so I'm like, that's fine.

07:09

That's cool. If you want, we want to go to, that's fine. Then we can get

07:14

Nick a cheeseburger. In fact, I'll get a cheeseburger in honor of Nick. Because, I mean, look, see this?

07:20

See, Nick? This is my grieving book in Russian.

07:27

And it was done and translated, printed, published in like three weeks by Nick.

07:33

In fact, I wonder if Nick put his name in here someplace. I hope he did. Translated by,

07:39

I don't see it, but he should have. But the whole thing, it's a lot of work. And we really had a good time at the grieving seminar.

07:50

Well, good time, if you can call it that. I mean, it's not exactly a subject that you can have a good time at. But as far as usefulness of it,

07:59

I mean, there's just never been anything like that in Ukraine. It's just not a subject that, you know.

08:06

And so now they've got a book on the subject, the only book in Russian on the subject, as far as we know.

08:14

And the videos are available. And let's just hope that there's not going to be a whole lot more call for that particular subject over the next few weeks and months in Ukraine, that there will be peace and that the

08:30

Lord would see fit to restrain the imperial desires of one Vladimir Putin. To reestablish the

08:37

Soviet Union, basically. And more about the Soviet Europe. I think he'd do it if he'd get away with it.

08:44

And who knows who's going to stop him. Anyway, so we went to TGI Fridays, but there's a touristy area downtown we went by first.

08:55

And that's where I got this shirt. And they bought me a...

09:01

Stupid me didn't bring a hat with me. You got a bunch of boxes heading your way in the video there,

09:08

Brother Pierce. I didn't bring a hat with me. It was cold.

09:13

It was really cold. And so in the touristy places, they had, you know, the Russian hats like in Hunt for Red October.

09:22

And so, I mean, literally, Soviet surplus from the old

09:29

Soviet days. Warm, furry, the hats with the thing on the front and all that stuff. They bought me one of those hats.

09:35

I've got some cool pictures. And I brought it home with me, obviously. I mean, it is warm. It is really warm.

09:41

And people like me need warm hats for some reason. I'm not sure why. But anyway, so after that, we head for TGI Fridays.

09:49

Well, little did I know TGI Friday is about 600 yards from Maidan. And so we turn down this road and I see it's just a whole lot of traffic.

09:55

And we get down there and there we are right at Maidan. And so I snap some pictures. By then, the violence was over.

10:02

Pretty much all that was going on were people running around taking pictures and doing the touristy thing. So, you know, big deal.

10:09

But it still freaked my family out that I did that. So we ended up going to TGI Fridays and had a nice dinner together.

10:17

And like I said, had a cheeseburger in honor of Nick. But then some guy started yelling in the restaurant.

10:23

And of course, I don't know what he's yelling. And so I certainly know what's going on. And well, he's talking about how now we're going to, you know, we're going to round up all the criminals that have been bleeding the people of Ukraine and put them in jail.

10:37

And everyone's cheering. And and we all went, I think it's about time we left. So we did. And so it was it was it was obviously there were periods of time while I was there.

10:49

It was very nerve wracking because the people around me are nervous. And we'd go to a grocery store.

10:57

And the grocery stores there are about a quarter to a fifth the size of what we are accustomed to with a quarter to a fifth of the choices.

11:11

And they were packed. The lines were all the way to the back of the building. And there was pretty much a run on food because people were concerned.

11:20

And then the next day, run on gas because everybody was being told that while the president was still in power, they were going to shut down the gas station so people couldn't drive to Maidan.

11:29

You get smaller crowds there and the violence would be lessened, et cetera, et cetera.

11:36

And so, you know, obviously, during each break in the class,

11:42

I was teaching the master's students, I was teaching church history, and I was a day late getting there.

11:47

So we had to rearrange the schedule and stuff, had to teach a little faster. But I was a day late getting there, primarily not due to weather.

11:55

It was weather that caused all the problems going out, getting to Fredericksburg and the good conference we had there in Fredericksburg.

12:04

And of course, let me thank the pastors of the church in Fredericksburg for driving 14 hours to get me there, seven hours down, seven hours back.

12:15

Don't know how they did it, but they did it. And but my delay was actually mechanical.

12:22

I was in Richmond getting ready to board the flight, big hydraulic leak, no plane to take its place, no way for me to make my overnight flight from Charlotte to London.

12:32

So I had to stay the night in Richmond and then fly to Charlotte and then finally got there a day late.

12:37

And I've never had so many travel problems in one trip before in my life.

12:43

And I guess I just had been very blessed the rest of my life. And I caught all up in one trip.

12:49

I didn't have any problems coming back, so I can't really complain. I really can't complain that much. So anyway, during breaks in the teaching, people would be huddled around computers and they'd be watching live feeds and the death toll was going up.

13:07

And sure, there were some times there it was pretty nerve wracking. But then once the president fled, there was sort of a relaxation and going in and out of Kiev airport,

13:20

I didn't see any soldiers. I didn't see any guns. It was just life is normal, basically.

13:30

Whether that's the case now or not, I don't know. But really awesome opportunity.

13:36

I really hope that Russia's aggression will be contained and that life will be able to continue on as normal in Ukraine, because I really want to get a chance to go back there.

13:58

Every time I get to teach overseas, it is really encouraging to me.

14:03

The students want to learn. They're interested. I mean, like I said, we had that little get -together where the students could just ask me questions on anything instead of just church history, and we could have a conversation.

14:14

Of course, Nick was my translator again. And of course, Nick and I work really well together because Nick has listened to every dividing line.

14:22

Nick is the Russian algo. He really is. I mean, every time

14:27

I just happened to run into him, I'd listen to what he was listening to, and it was me. He's listening to the

14:34

Wayback Machine. So there were lots of times

14:40

I would give an answer to a question, and I could just tell his response was considerably longer than what

14:46

I had actually said. And that's because he was providing the extra background information that would help them to understand, because he's heard all my stories and all my illustrations, everything else.

14:55

I don't even know why they brought me over there. I think he could have just taught it on his own, actually. But that's how it works.

15:03

So it really helps when your translator knows you. And some of you can see

15:08

Nick translating for me. We posted the video of the Sunday morning sermon that I did at the church where Greg White pastors, and Nick was my translator there.

15:19

And you can see how that works. Of course, while I was teaching the class, he was doing it live in another room, so I didn't have to stop and start, which helped a lot.

15:29

But even when we had to do the start -stop thing, we just worked really well together. Sometimes you can really work well as a translator, sometimes you can't.

15:36

Sometimes they step on you, they start, they don't know when you're going to finish. He knows my cadence so much. He knows exactly when

15:41

I'm going to break and things like that. So it works really, really well. And so that was really cool.

15:49

So we had a great time there. Like I said, we did the grieving seminar over the weekend.

15:57

Some of the times I was most nervous, to be honest with you, was when we were traveling, like we went to the church, because there were still a bunch of goons and thugs on the streets.

16:08

And they had roadblocks, and they're standing there with baseball bats. And they're not official anythings. They're just thugs.

16:14

They're just goons. And they think they're special now that they did what they did. And you just don't meet their eye, just go about your business.

16:25

And I twice ate at McDonald's while in Ukraine. It's the only fast food restaurant in McDonald's, in Ukraine, in McDonald's.

16:33

That makes sense. And it's one of the few places you can go to get a meaningfully inexpensive yet edible, tasty, tastes just like here.

16:48

I've only been to a few places that it didn't taste like here. Italy was one. But Ukraine, if you had blindfolded me and put that double cheeseburger and french fries in front of me,

17:00

I wouldn't have been able to tell any difference whatsoever. And that means those places are constantly packed, just packed.

17:09

It's amazing the business they're doing there. Because they're the only ones. There's no Burger King. There's no Taco Bell. Domino's just came in.

17:16

I did see some Domino's had come in. There's no Taco Bell. There's nothing like that. And so these places are just making gangbusters.

17:24

But I'll have to admit, I was sitting at a McDonald's as we were going to the airport as I was leaving.

17:30

And I'm looking at these apartment buildings. And I mentioned to Greg, I said, man, I've just noticed the construction around here.

17:41

I mean, the Soviets just... And he said, well, yeah, they're all prefab. And so you've got these 10, 12 story tall apartment complexes.

17:51

And each apartment is a prefab unit. And so they bring it in and they spot weld it in place.

17:58

Well, you look at them and the lines do this number and this number.

18:03

I mean, remember when that huge earthquake hit Kazakhstan and tens of thousands of people died.

18:11

It's because you shake those things and they just fall down like a house of cards. And that's where most people live.

18:19

Housing is incredibly expensive in Kyiv. It's ridiculous. And so multiple generations live in these little...

18:27

They've got little teeny tiny spaces. And wow, I personally would have real difficulty living in a place like that.

18:37

I really, really would, especially at the top. Then again, if you're at the bottom, it just all falls down on top of you anyway.

18:44

But oh, it was pretty strange.

18:49

But anyway, great time. I really look forward to getting a chance to go back. Like I said, the students just never got tired of asking questions and they just want to learn.

19:03

And so I so much want to go back and teach apologetics and maybe some stuff in textual history or things like that.

19:11

They've got good, solid men there. I've met most of the staff and just good, solid folks.

19:18

And pray for them. European Biblical Seminary, it's part of the masters groups. They're closely associated with EBTC, European Biblical Training Center.

19:26

I remember I interviewed Christian Anderson and the guys just a few months ago. And so they do a lot of things together.

19:32

And so who knows? Maybe I can work something out to where next year when

19:39

I'm in Zurich, I can go from Zurich to Irpien again. Maybe that's the way to do it. Cut down on travel costs and things like that.

19:46

I don't know. We'll see. But I just really, really, really enjoy the opportunity. And for you who are listening and you go, well,

19:54

I don't see how that's directly related to your ministry. It is. Obviously, everything I teach,

20:00

I teach with an eye to apologetics. Not in the sense of trying to insert apologetics into a subject that it's not supposed to be there.

20:09

But when I teach church history, obviously, I am emphasizing its importance in apologetics today.

20:15

For example, how many times have you heard me say, people come up to me and they say, what classes did you take in college that have, in Bible school, that helped you, equipped you most to do the type of work you do where you will go on a national radio program or something like that and just take questions?

20:31

Just wide ranging apologetics questions. And my answer is always the same.

20:36

And I bet you Algo knows the answer. And I bet you Nick knows the answer. And then we have a Norwegian guy who claimed to be the

20:42

Norwegian Algo or Finnish or Swedish or something like that. I guess each nation is now vying to have their own

20:48

Algo, which is interesting and frightening at the same time. But the answer to the question is

20:57

Greek and church history. Greek and church history. So obviously, one of the reasons that I think

21:05

I can make the subjects that I teach interesting to people is I make the apologetic application.

21:11

And so what we're doing is we're taking what we do here and we are taking it across the world.

21:18

And obviously, it's one thing to listen to a podcast. It's another thing to actually be able to interact with me in class and to have that kind of intensive situation.

21:28

And so we're just taking it around the world. I need to translate that for the less educated.

21:38

Greek and church history and a lot of it. You took a lot of it.

21:44

I'm turning a fan on here. You keep talking. Okay. Well, I'll keep talking. And we're glad to have you back, even though you can't hear a word

21:50

I'm saying right now, I'm sure. Of course, I have no earthly idea what you just said, but that's okay. Yeah, see how it is.

21:56

What's the temperature going to be today? Almost 80 here. Almost 80. Even though it's cloud cover.

22:02

And a lot of people who are listening today are shoveling snow and fighting frostbite.

22:07

But the neat thing about it is that in summertime, it doesn't frostbite you.

22:13

It doesn't. No, it can actually kill little children in cars in 12 minutes. Well, that's anyway.

22:20

Yeah, we won't talk about that. In fact, I just violated the Chamber of Commerce rules. They were not supposed to mention things like that.

22:27

Well, I wasn't aware of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't get the memo. It's okay. Anyway, so what

22:34

I was saying was, basically, I do see that teaching, even, you know, okay, grieving seminar.

22:43

Yeah, I know, a lot of people aren't even aware that I wrote a book on grieving. And it still amazes me that the guys over there, that's what they wanted to do.

22:52

But see, they knew what was pastorally needed in that area.

22:58

And, you know, in conversing with some of the students afterwards, sometimes by translation, sometimes they knew enough

23:05

English to talk with me, we really provide something important there on a pastoral level, too.

23:12

So I hope you'll continue to support the ministry in that way. And obviously, right now,

23:18

I can't say much about this, but while I was over there, it was either right as I left

23:24

Ukraine. Yeah, it was right as I left Ukraine, because I answered the email on my phone.

23:30

But that phone bill is going to be fun to see. I answered the email on my phone in the

23:37

Frankfurt airport, I think, if I recall correctly. It's hard to remember. Anyway, because I went from Kiev to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to London.

23:47

And there's an opportunity that I really...

23:52

There's some folks in a Southeast Asian country that really would like me to come.

23:59

There's millions of Muslims. They're not radicalized Muslims. There's no sharia there.

24:06

But that means there's a lot of conversation. And this particular missionary had attended a debate between two imams and two pastors, and the imams chewed up and spit the pastors out.

24:18

They're just not prepared in that land to deal with Islamic apologetics. They want me to come, and they will bring pastors in from all over this nation for intensive training on dealing with Islam.

24:30

We could have such a huge... We could have an impact that would impact millions of people that we could not get through the computer, could not get through the net.

24:39

And so I want to do that.

24:44

I have no idea what a pointer is in desktop. Sorry. So there's nothing that says capture audio or not capture audio.

24:52

That's it. So I don't know what a pointer is. So you'll have to explain to me what pointers are at some other point. Anyway, I've got lots of other things to be addressing.

25:03

Lots of stuff has happened. But once again, thanks, John Samson. Thanks, the guys there. By the way, I should mention this.

25:10

I had a very interesting opportunity while we were in Fredericksburg. I was speaking on a number of different issues and topics briefly on each.

25:24

And we had to sort of cut it back a little bit because, well, I couldn't exactly start speaking on whatever the morning was that I got there because we had gotten in at five o 'clock in the morning after driving all night.

25:39

And so after one of the sessions,

25:46

I forget which one it was, right at the beginning, this fellow walks up to me and I look at his name tag.

25:55

And I forget how he introduced himself to me, but it took me a few moments because we've had more than one

26:01

Pierre in the chat channel. There's been a non -Mormon Pierre, and then there's been the

26:08

Mormon Pierre, our favorite caller, our favorite Mormon caller, Pierre, was there.

26:15

And he attended the sessions. All the sessions took copious notes. And on Saturday afternoon,

26:23

I believe it was, when we had lunch, there were a bunch of channel rats there. Channel rats are the regular participants in our

26:30

IRC chat channel. And so we had a table. We all got together at this table. We invited

26:36

Pierre over, and he had lunch with us, and we basically talked about Star Trek. But that happened to end up being the conversation of the day.

26:45

But anyway, so we got to meet Pierre, and it was nice to get to put a face with the voice and to have some conversations about what's going on in Mormonism.

26:56

And yeah, we did talk about Paklids. We did talk about Paklids. And so that was interesting as well.

27:04

So an amazing trip. I don't think I've ever been gone for half a month before. That's not easy on me.

27:11

Ten days is about where I'm comfortable. But as long as I can get there in one piece, and I've certainly learned to travel better.

27:21

And if you all help to get me there, then I'm more than happy to do the ministry work, even in some interesting situations, ten miles away from revolutions and things like that.

27:36

So anyway, that was a great time. All right, let's press on. We have many, many, many, many things to discuss.

27:44

I'm looking at my pocket feed here, and I've got other things up on the screen. I guess

27:49

I might as well go with something entertaining at the start. Well, not really the start.

27:55

I gave you a half hour rundown there. But I'm getting the feeds, getting the tweets.

28:03

That's what I don't have up. I don't have Twitter up. There might be people saying important things in Twitter.

28:11

And is that... How about a new window for Twitter? Oh, there it is.

28:17

Just took a while to come up. I've seen the tweets concerning the

28:24

New World Bible Version's world premiere trailer. And I think it's a little bit entertaining, honestly, because at one point, as you're watching it, you see where the world premiere was, and it was in one of these teeny, teeny, tiny little

28:41

King James -only churches, where they're meeting in a strip mall, and they've got a room about the size...

28:49

Yeah, I think it was right about the size, maybe a little bit smaller than the classroom I was teaching in, in Ukraine. So there's the world premiere, and there's 28 people there.

29:02

I mean, it's like, okay, there's your world premiere. And I thought so.

29:10

Somebody told me, someone on Twitter says, you ate at McDonald's?

29:15

Not smart. Actually, it's one of the safest places in the world to eat while traveling. The Mexican restaurant in Kiev probably would not have been smart.

29:26

But McDonald's, nah. They're going to give you... It may not be healthy food, but it's not going to be domain -filled food.

29:35

And that's the important part while traveling, is you can... I'm already dealing with the extra calories

29:46

I picked up over there. Because by the way, Ukrainians love chocolate.

29:52

Oh man, I could not believe the amount of chocolate just laying around.

30:01

They had these truffles in the MDiv office. What am

30:06

I supposed to do? How can I resist this? They had dark chocolate and milk chocolate at the grocery stores.

30:16

There's no peanut butter. There's just a couple little choices of honey.

30:23

Three or four different kinds of cereal. Very limited choices there.

30:29

But chocolate? Oh my. I rivaled anything I've ever seen here.

30:35

I mean, just rows of this kind of chocolate. Oh, they love their chocolate. And one of the little thank -you gifts they gave me when

30:45

I left. Other than that, they actually made me a Ukrainian bowtie.

30:51

They had this thing ordered up. They had to bring the cloth in from outside of Ukraine. But I actually have a

30:57

Ukrainian bowtie that has the little Ukrainian nesting dolls on it. And so I've got a Ukrainian bowtie now.

31:06

But anyway, one of the gifts they gave me was two packets of these chocolate truffles to take with me.

31:14

I'm doomed. I'm doomed. So I did a 70 -mile ride yesterday.

31:21

Gonna do 80 tomorrow. Start getting rid of all that stuff. I was running.

31:27

I ran around the seminary. I almost got myself killed. I forgot to tell them that I wanted to go jogging around the seminary.

31:36

And so I got up early in the morning. And I go out and I go jogging. And then I tell them about it later. They're like, really?

31:42

Yeah. You didn't have any problems? No. You just a must miss. They must have just put away the guard dog then.

31:50

Because they have a guard dog that they release around the seminary at night named

31:56

Malish. Malish means babe in Russian. And so thankfully,

32:03

I just missed running into Malish that first day. And so I let them know when I was going to jog after that.

32:11

Because I did not want to find out how fast I could run with Malish nipping at my heels.

32:18

So that was fun. That was real smart. But I'm getting easily distracted here.

32:24

Anyway, and now Winter wants to say that I'm saying important things.

32:29

That's nice to know. I have no idea why that's important. But anyhow.

32:34

Okay, so do we have the YouTube feed there? Okay. Now, you can go just put in New World Order Bible Versions trailer.

32:43

And you can go watch all. Well, let's just go ahead and watch the whole thing. While Rich runs and grabs me a cup of water that I forgot to get.

32:54

But I'm going to go ahead and back it up here. I'm going to try to back it up here. Come on, come on.

33:02

Okay, let's go ahead and watch the whole thing. And now what you want to do is watch the editing.

33:11

Because we already saw. Remember the first trailer that came out? And how they tried to make it look like I was saying something that I wasn't saying.

33:18

It was very purposeful. You know, very, very intentional on Anderson's part and the producer's part.

33:26

That's exactly what we expected. You know, so watch this.

33:34

My face appears once. Listen to what's being said right as I appear.

33:42

And you'll see what this whole film is going to be about. Creative editing.

33:49

To try to communicate things without actually having to prove things. That's the essence of the conspiracy theorist.

33:56

And if anything, this is just going to be one wild, Illuminati, every conspiracy theory you've ever seen all put together into one thing.

34:09

But here's, I guess I need to plug this in. There we go.

34:14

Here's the three -minute trailer. Here we go.

34:23

It was powerful. It was dynamic. It covered every base. I really liked it.

34:29

It really taught the history. I did not know all that about history. It was really good.

34:35

I came all the way from Tucson to Phoenix to watch this. Yeah, I wasn't going to miss this. It was really good.

34:41

The last part where the people are grabbing the Bibles, you know, crying, just brought me to tears.

34:47

So it was really good. Even somebody who's been King James only for decades is still probably going to learn something from this.

34:53

They're at least going to get, you know, kind of like it was for me, maybe a more profound appreciation for what they really have and what the

35:02

Bible really is, that it really is God's word. If you know any other Christians that read any other kind of Bibles or other versions of the

35:09

Bible, I would highly recommend getting this in their hand and giving them an opportunity to look at all the evidence and then they can judge for themselves.

35:18

And I didn't know that all the changes were strategic, that they took away from, you know,

35:23

Christ deity. They took away from the blood. They took away from all these key doctrines. And I think that the film does a real good job of explaining that, that it's not just a difference in opinion.

35:33

It's not just, you know, updating the language that the changes that the NIV and all the new versions make are strategic changes that, you know, only

35:41

Satan could be the author of that. Christians today need to understand that God's word is available to us today.

35:47

There's no reason to be confused. There's no reason to doubt whether or not what you're reading has been preserved for us today, or to think that man has corrupted

35:56

God's word, or that you can't truly understand or have what

36:01

God has intended for us today because it's there. And people need to understand this because there is an attack on the

36:08

Bibles that are going out there. The devil is the author of confusion. He's trying to confuse Christians. He's trying to confuse people who aren't saved into just throwing up their hand and saying, well,

36:17

I don't know what to believe anymore, because there's all these different Bibles out there, who's to say what's true and what's not.

36:24

And I believe that this documentary, this film, can prove to people without beyond a shadow of a doubt that the

36:30

King James Bible in the English language is God's preserved word for us today. I just want to get into my

36:35

Bible. It just made me appreciate what I have in my hands. And I was so thankful for this film that it made me, you know, be humble and realize, you know, what's happened to get this

36:47

Bible in my hands. And so I definitely love and cherish this Bible more, and I just want to get into it more. So would you ever use a

36:54

New King James version? No. Never use one of those

37:00

Bibles. Never. So there you go.

37:13

The new Bible version's world premiere. Of course, that was Anderson's daughter that I think, I think that was

37:19

Anderson's daughter, I don't know. She was with Anderson, so I assume so, who was saying, I'd never use a

37:24

New King James. That's sort of sad, you know, to see the young children having, you know, so many falsehoods crammed in their heads.

37:31

But the strategic element, of course, was right as the guy is talking about the devil attacking the

37:38

Bible. Who do they put up? Me! It's like, come on. You know, they said that they're going to put out the entire conversation, and we will see.

37:48

They don't, we will, obviously. We have it on audio. But it will be very interesting to see how all of this gets put together and what portion of the dialogue that we had will actually end up appearing anywhere.

38:06

But it is rather interesting to see that, and well, we'll see how it goes.

38:14

Now, let me give you a heads up on what we're going to be looking at on Thursday.

38:24

On Thursday, a little programming note here. On Thursday, I'm going to be joined by Pastor Jason Wallace from the

38:33

Orthodox Presbyterian Church up in Salt Lake City. And Jason and I are going to be discussing a situation developing in the

38:42

Salt Lake Valley with Sean McCraney. Now, I first ran into Sean McCraney, well,

38:51

I didn't run into him. When I went up to Salt Lake the last time, which was years ago, to do something with Jason and the church there,

39:01

I was on their television program. They have a television program there. And across from where their set was, was

39:09

Sean McCraney's set. And I was like, wow, what's that? And they were just telling me about this former

39:16

Mormon, and he has an interesting TV program. And that's all I really remembered. And so some of you will remember, what was it, about a month and a half, two months ago?

39:29

I did a Radio Free Geneva where I responded to some of the things that Sean McCraney said against Calvinism on his program.

39:36

Now, up to that point, I'm still thinking, this is just a former Mormon guy, evangelical, orthodox, but anti -reforms.

39:45

He's gotten hold of some bad information, reading the wrong authors, hasn't really been challenged to think about it.

39:51

So I approached him just as a fellow Christian, you've really thought about this, so on and so forth.

39:57

And some of you may recall, I know we were already doing the video at that point, because I remember looking, and so was

40:02

Sean. So anyway, shortly after that,

40:07

Jason contacted me and said, Sean's been going through a little bit of a theological evolution, shall we say.

40:15

And evidently over the past few weeks, that evolution has accelerated rapidly.

40:24

So that a few weeks ago, once Jason responded to some of the things that Sean was saying on his own television program, where Sean was attacking churches and began to say he doesn't like the term

40:38

Trinity, and we shouldn't use the term Trinity, and et cetera, et cetera, and denying an eternal hell, and just starting to, you know, sort of do the off into NaNa land stuff.

40:53

The result of this has been some very interesting claims by Sean McCraney.

41:01

I had listened to Sean McCraney's anti -Calvinism stuff, but had never gotten around to responding to it, until Sean wrote into, he contacted us, and said,

41:15

I hear that Brother White's going to be responding. I'd like to dialogue. Okay, so I wrote back and said, hey, my first emails to him were like, hey, good on you for standing up.

41:28

I'll tell you what, I'm going to, let me respond to what you said in that video, and I'll give my position, and then we'll find a time for you to be on, and unfortunately, that was right at the time where all this other stuff was starting to happen, and my emails to Sean have gotten a little bit odd, and well, let me,

42:00

I actually had this queued up, so I'm going to switch gears here, and go ahead and play something for you here.

42:11

I tried to start communicating with Sean a little bit, and I offered to come up there, and we could debate on these issues.

42:21

I offered to send him my book, The Forgotten Trinity, things like that, and his responses were a little strange.

42:32

They weren't like the first email where he contacted me, and wanted to dialogue with me, and I was like, well, I don't believe in debate, and maybe later in the year, we can have a dialogue, and all that kind of debate versus dialogue stuff, which really has no meaning at all, but anyway, finally,

42:53

I get an email from Jason saying, by the way, Sean McCraney has just made the claim that between 342 and 343

43:02

AD, Christians killing other Christians, this was during the

43:09

Aryan resurgence after the Council of Nicaea, more Christians killed other Christians over the concept of the

43:16

Trinity between 342 and 343 than the Roman Empire had ever killed of Christians in the entirety of history, and I'm like, what, seriously?

43:28

And he says, do you have any idea? Jason asked me, do you have any idea what he's talking about? And I'm like, no, but I'll ask.

43:34

So I wrote to him. I wrote to him, I think from Ukraine, or traveling to or from,

43:43

I just don't remember. I'd have to look, but I get a response back that says,

43:50

I pray for God's best for you. I don't like your methods, and I'm never gonna respond to you again, and doesn't provide any of the documentation

44:00

I asked for, anything like that, I'm just never gonna talk to you again. Because I wrote, and I remember when

44:07

I had written to him the first time, he went on the air, read my email, and mocked me for that, for pretending to be kind.

44:15

And then, so I write and ask for documentation on a claim, and I'm never gonna talk to you again. I don't like your methods. It's like, okay, wow, what's going on with this guy?

44:25

I just sense so much anger and confusion in this man.

44:31

I want to try to think the best. I want to try to still be one who says, if you all of a sudden wake up one morning and realize that you are really spinning out of control, and that the future is not looking good, and that you've completely lost your way,

44:49

I would like to think you would find in me someone who could give you some direction, maybe some assistance here.

45:00

Especially because one of the things I heard in, well, he criticizes all of his critics for not being involved in reaching

45:11

Mormons. He can't criticize me for that. I was doing that before he was. I was up there at General Conference before he was.

45:20

He may have still been a Mormon for all I know when I first went up there. Maybe he walked by me as a Mormon while I was up there.

45:26

He can't even start to go there with me. So when he starts saying, well, we shouldn't use the word

45:32

Trinity, it's a stumbling block to Mormons, I go, excuse me, wrong direction to go.

45:40

I will cut you off on the knees on that one because you are completely wrong, and let's talk about it.

45:47

But unfortunately, he doesn't even want to do that. Well, what happened was, I don't know what the date on this was. It was within the past month.

45:54

But what happened was there was an invitation sent out to Jason and some of the other pastors to come to have an open door of dialogue with Sean on his program.

46:05

So they get there, and a guy stands up and says, welcome to Inquisition 2014.

46:13

Inquisition. Here are the accusers. And amazingly,

46:20

Sean actually defended this tactic as being fair, and everybody knows it wasn't.

46:28

It's really beyond question. But I actually have a clip from this.

46:34

Actually, I have the whole thing cued up here. But I just want to give you, after Jason had a chance to speak, he didn't even know he was gonna be doing this.

46:46

It was completely off the top of his head. So he was talking about the biblical evidence for the pre -existence of the

46:53

Son, as the Son, and things like that. But I'm just gonna play a section here, just to give you a taste of McCraney and his response.

47:03

I will play it at 1 .2, so it'll be a little bit faster than it was, which may make it sound a little bit stranger.

47:08

I don't know. But again, time is time. So listen to this portion of McCraney's response to the three pastors that had brought criticism against him.

47:20

It's not personal, but that's how the king uses me in the book of Job. God responds to Job's complaints and insights.

47:28

And he asked him in the last chapters, where were you when I did this, Job? Where were you when I did that? Do you know when this happened,

47:34

Job? How about when that happened? How did you, do you know how I created the wild goat, Job? How about the power of Leviathan, Job?

47:40

In chapter 39, God, in his questioning of Job, perfectly describes me. Did you know that?

47:46

He perfectly described Sean McCraney. It's true. He says in Job 39, five through eight, asking

47:52

Job, who has set out the wild ass free? Or who has loosed the bands of the wild ass?

48:00

Whose house I have made the wilderness and the barren land his dwellings. He scorns the multitude of the city.

48:06

He neither regards, neither does he regard the crying demands of the driver. The range of the mountains is his pasture.

48:13

And he searches after every green thing. That is our God describing a wild ass, Sean McCraney.

48:19

And that is how he has made me. Don't like it, freaking turn the channel or go to another church. I don't care.

48:24

I don't care about your thoughts on your YouTubes. I don't care. I care about people and coming to know the truth.

48:31

You care about being right. I'm not right on anything. 90 % I'm wrong, but I care about people and truth.

48:37

Okay, now I'm outlining this because I typed this out in an email to Sean this morning.

48:47

And I said, you do realize this string of words has no meaning, right? Let's listen to it again.

48:53

I'm not right on anything. 90 % I'm wrong, but I care about people and truth. What does that mean?

49:01

Can someone tell me what that means? I'm not right on anything. 90 % I'm wrong, but I care about truth. Now, I think what his supporters probably say, well, you know, he was getting emotional.

49:13

He was speaking too quickly, whatever. But those are nonsensical words. You cannot be concerned about truth when you're not concerned about accuracy.

49:22

Which is one of the reasons I said, look, if you're going to stand in front, and this was, he made that claim about Christians killing

49:28

Christians in this Inquisition 2014 thing. Just look up Inquisition 2014,

49:34

Sean McCraney on YouTube. You can watch the whole thing. It's two hours long. And I said, look, how can you claim to be interested in truth when you make claims like this?

49:47

And then you won't back them up. I mean, I've taught church history. The first class

49:52

I taught after seminary was church history. Just got done teaching church history. I know a little something. It's not where I live.

49:58

You know, there's all sorts of esoteric issues where you could, you know, I'd go, I don't know, I haven't heard about that.

50:03

But as far as the broad outlines go, and especially the Aryan resurgence, and especially that time period,

50:08

I've done a little reading, done a little publishing, and I'm just like, what are you talking about?

50:16

But you can't refute a claim when you don't even have what the source is. Sean McCraney said, I'm no scholar. I'm no theologian.

50:23

Okay, then we can't take you for it. What's your source? He won't say. He won't say. Unless, and I suppose

50:31

I should do this. This is the musical interlude. Uh, where is

50:37

Gmail? There it is. Oh, but was that, there is one problem in having two primary email addresses.

50:50

And that is, which one did I send that from? I don't see it in this.

51:00

So it's probably my Yahoo one, which may be a lot tougher to get up. But anyway, that phraseology means nothing if you're not concerned about truthfulness and accuracy and all the other things related to it.

51:19

It's just irrelevant. So I actually typed that particular thing out and sent it to him.

51:28

Let's listen to some more. In the church today, we aren't accustomed to wild asses. At least not from the pulpit or on TV.

51:38

Our more refined brothers want to corral them and put saddles on them and tell them how to think and believe and what words to use and what creeds to adopt so they can fit in and feel safe and protected within the confines of man.

51:50

But the wild ass response is always the same. Nay, I don't care one whit for your collective beliefs, your group think your most popular

51:58

Christian pastimes or your Christian culture. But I do care about you. And I care about your LDS family and friends who are in this state.

52:04

And I care about the cult and the control it has on these poor people. And I care about people who are deluded.

52:09

And if you as my brother or sister enjoy or believe such things, it's okay with me. I don't care. I love you the same.

52:15

But rest assured, if man is behind it as a favored position, I will most likely challenge it and in the end probably kick and buck against it.

52:22

The way I see it, my king and his kingdom are not of this world, even the world that's called Christian. Flowing from this general yet somewhat unconventional approach to the faith comes unusual methods.

52:34

Methods that are not understood methods that are not appreciated or readily embraced. Those who know and love me, except my idiosyncratic ways with great patience, but even they are greatly challenged by them.

52:44

But try and remember, most of the methods extend out of the Mormon Christian debate and my refusal to please men.

52:50

This brings me to the final M of our mission. Almost everyone involved in the face -to -face ministry that we do, know that we seek to worship

52:57

God in spirit and in truth and in truth to bring all to a saving knowledge of the

53:03

Lord Jesus Christ through this media ministry to grow in our ability to walk in faith and love by studying the scriptures verse by verse instead of entertaining people and to manifest these things in and through Christian action.

53:13

Few of my accusers have ever witnessed any of these endeavors. My accusers sit back behind their keyboards or behind their cameras and they make statements of judgment upon a brother because he makes one thing.

53:24

He says, listen, I don't like the word Trinity. I don't even accept the word Trinity. I believe God manifests himself in fire and smoke and in flesh.

53:32

And they called it modalism. They didn't even have a chance to understand what I meant. The attacks came. That's what this is about.

53:38

So I could be heard from you and it could be put on film and the people who are watching all over the nation and parts of the world are able to hear that I love the

53:46

Lord Jesus Christ and he is my God and King and I'm not a modalist. I just don't believe Jesus' name was

53:52

Jesus in the beginning. I don't think anywhere in the Old Testament we see the father called the father or we see

53:58

Jesus called the son. Okay, let me stop right there. This is why

54:04

Sean McCraney needs to do some reading. He needs to chill out and be willing to learn because he doesn't know what he's talking about.

54:16

What do you mean? And he said earlier, this is my big thing. Jesus was not

54:21

Jesus from eternity. Jesus' name was not Jesus from eternity. What?

54:27

What are you talking about? Are you saying the son was not the son?

54:34

The father was not the father? Now, again, if he'd take the time and I finally got it up.

54:39

You all who are watching, I don't know what you had showing up there but I finally got to it and Sean did respond to me this morning.

54:46

It's one line. Thank you, James. We want nothing to do with that. I asked him again. I asked him again.

54:55

Here's what I said. I'm listening to the Inquisition 2014.

55:01

Wow. Who is the loon in the audience yelling at you? We're going to hear that in a second. There's some loon that starts yelling at him.

55:08

Then I said, why do you have such animus toward Jason? You can't see it, but I sure can. And this is a quote.

55:14

Go ahead and smile, Jason. You're lucky I'm a Christian, end quote. That's going to come up here in a second. Really? Oh, no,

55:21

I do not have that set up. You don't need to put up my email thing. No. I said, as a passionate defender of the biblical doctrine of the

55:28

Trinity, I have to ask you something. You said the main thing with you is that you do not believe Jesus was the name of God in eternity past.

55:34

To quote you, quote, I just don't believe Jesus' name was Jesus in the beginning. I don't think anywhere in the Old Testament we see the father called the father and Jesus called the son, end quote.

55:42

So we just heard that. Sean, who on earth has ever taught that Jesus' name was Jesus in the beginning? What are you talking about?

55:49

Is it possible that you are ignorant of the doctrine you are now denouncing? Is it possible you are reading inaccurate and errant information?

55:55

And what is more, if you were reading bad stuff, how would you know? Who in your life could warn you so that you would hear the warning?

56:03

I'm really wondering. You wrote, I'm not right on anything. 90 % I'm wrong, but I care about people and truth.

56:10

You do realize, Sean, that that line of words is meaningless, yes? Error is not truth. If you're 90 % wrong, then you are 90 % untruthful.

56:17

If you care about truth, you will especially be concerned about the accuracy of your statements, especially those made in public.

56:22

So I'll ask you again. You said in your presentation that more Christians were killed by other Christians between 342 and 343 than have been killed by the

56:28

Roman Empire. Please document this. Please do not demand that the rest of us enshrine you as the ultimate authority in church history, which is what you are doing if you think about it.

56:37

Please document your claim, thanks. Finally, I am listening to all the encounter with the pastors, as well as your two presentations on God.

56:45

I will have those done before Thursday, when I will be joined by Jason Wallace to discuss this evolving situation on the dividing line.

56:51

Then I will start responding to your claims and providing biblical refutations of your errors. Of course, you would be welcome to participate.

56:57

Just let me know when we could arrange to have you on, James. And his response, just received, Thank you,

57:03

James, but we want nothing to do with that. There it is. That's all there is to it. So I did seek to respond to that.

57:18

And so there you go. So I don't even know,

57:25

I have no evidence from this, that Sean McCraney even understands the doctrine that he's saying is wrong.

57:33

Because what does he mean that Jesus' name wasn't Jesus in the beginning? If you mean his name given to the incarnate person, the second person in Trinity who becomes flesh?

57:46

Okay, that's one thing. Are you just simply saying he wasn't always the Son? Well, then who is the Father? Now, obviously, if he had read my book, then he would know that I make the argument that the revelation of the doctrine of Trinity is found between the

58:00

Testaments. That the term Father in the Old Testament is primarily used of God as Creator. It's not a relationship term.

58:06

You do have that interesting text in Proverbs about who is God, who is his Son. So maybe there's some prophetic understanding of what's going to come, but the real revelation of the doctrine of Trinity comes in the

58:21

Incarnation, the Son, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. So I don't even know what the objection is.

58:27

It doesn't make any sense. And he doesn't seem to be willing to learn and to listen to those who would actually very much like to help him, if he'd be willing to.

58:38

Except in Daniel, we're not even sure of that. Never. It wasn't talked about that way. There was hero Israel.

58:44

There is one God. He became flesh. His word became flesh. His breath is the Holy Spirit. I believe in one

58:50

God. That simple thing of then saying it's possible that the influence of heresy that it came from the

58:57

Sumerians and the Babylonians and influenced the thinking at Nicaea. Remember, they talk about all the great guys at Nicaea, the bishops who came together.

59:04

Who did they come together under? A guy named Constantine. For what purpose? To try to come in and capture and package up God and use him to control the masses.

59:17

No, that really wasn't their intention whatsoever. I know that there's all sorts of websites say that, but it is indefensible.

59:25

It would be indefensible if Sean would be willing to sit down and talk about it. These were men who 12 years earlier were willing to give their lives for their faith.

59:37

You're telling me, Sean, that 12 years later, they're like, ah, whatever the emperor says, we're good with it.

59:46

Yeah, 12 years ago, we're willing to die. Yes, some of us are minus limbs and eyes from the torture we received under the

59:53

Roman rule, but hey, whatever the emperor says. Right? That's your position? Seriously? Wow.

59:59

Okay. Don't expect me to believe it. Don't expect anybody who knows anything about history to believe it. Don't expect the

01:00:06

Mormons who check out your information to believe it either. So see, Sean, if you really care about the

01:00:12

Mormons, you will stop in your tracks right now and go, Lord, I've called myself a wild ass out of the book of Job, and maybe that's exactly what

01:00:23

I am, and I need to be tamed. I need to get some wisdom here, some patience here, and back up the truck.

01:00:35

Because evidently, I took the wrong exit somewhere, and now I'm bouncing down some road leading toward, my friend, a cliff.

01:00:43

That's where you're going. Some of us are trying to warn you. Jason's been trying to warn you, and...

01:00:52

I'm not saying the bishops were far afield. I essentially agree with almost everything the Trinity says. I just don't like the word.

01:00:58

Let's get rid of it from our vernacular, at least in this state. So here's some official remarks, and we'll go to eat.

01:01:08

The terms Trinity and the creeds that attempt to describe the term Trinity are man -made, so I reject them. On these grounds alone, and for the reasons

01:01:14

I have stated, I do not believe any Christian has the right to demand that another believer receive such man -made terms or creeds, or demands us to receive anything else.

01:01:25

If the Holy Spirit is within us... Now, did you catch that? Oh, you didn't catch it? Well, some guy yells out in the audience,

01:01:32

You're an idiot, Sean. So this is where things... The wheel's gonna start falling apart.

01:01:38

He ignores it. And that's why I asked in the email, Who is the loon in the audience?

01:01:44

Because you don't do that. Who was this guy? I rebuke you.

01:01:50

Yes, what he's saying is wrong, but that's not how you promote truth and show error.

01:01:57

That's why I didn't support the guy that got up in an Ergon Kanner meeting and start yelling and screaming.

01:02:03

It's not how you do it. The truth requires a certain level of mature behavior.

01:02:11

You know? Hello? If the Holy... Mary, don't get involved with him.

01:02:17

Mary, do not get involved with him. Mary, Mary, do not... Mary, Mary, Derek, please remove my wife from her, from him.

01:02:29

Come eat, come eat lunch with us sometime in the state. Come sit down at a restaurant to hear how people are.

01:02:34

You think you can sit behind your computers and you can laugh at the things that go on. Go ahead and smile, Jason.

01:02:40

You're lucky I'm a Christian. I'll tell you that. See, there you go. So evidently, Jason smiles about...

01:02:46

Now, who's he talking about when he talks about people behind a computer? He's talking about Jason. So Jason smiles and says, You're lucky

01:02:51

I'm a Christian. I can tell you. That was a threat. That was a physical threat. And that's why I asked the question,

01:02:57

What's the source of this animus? Here's the people that are trying to help this man are the ones he's lashing out against.

01:03:04

The most, which will help me to explain why we're even talking about this, because nobody outside of Utah has any idea why this is going on.

01:03:15

But let me make the application. I think it's enough. I wasn't planning on even playing that much.

01:03:23

But let me mark this so I can... Good old audio note taker so I don't miss that.

01:03:30

So there's just a part of it. So Jason Wallace will join me.

01:03:35

And what we're going to do is we're going to talk about this situation. And you may be asking why. And I'll tell you why.

01:03:46

When Joseph Smith started teaching wild, strange, weird stuff in the 1830s, most people looked at him and ignored him.

01:04:01

Thought he was... I mean, there were so many people like that. And to be honest with you, 99 % of the people who go flying off the rails end up in a pile of twisted steel someplace and the sands of time cover them over and that's it.

01:04:17

But sometimes you have a Joseph Smith and sometimes you have a

01:04:24

Russell and a Rutherford. You know, if a Smith can end up with a Young and a

01:04:30

Russell can end up with the Rutherford, how many millions of people can be influenced thereby and by that blinded from the truth?

01:04:42

Do we have the start of a cult in the Salt Lake Valley? I don't know.

01:04:49

I hope not. I'd like to think the best of this man. I mean, right now he's giving me lots of reasons.

01:04:56

If I was one that just very easily just dismisses somebody, you know, people are like, you are, think about it, folks.

01:05:04

The facts are just the opposite. I mean, think about the

01:05:10

Ergen -Kanner situation. Remember, I ran into Kanner back in 05 and we had that whole mess in 06.

01:05:20

And that never led me to go, this guy's just a fraud. I bet you he's not even a true

01:05:26

Muslim. Never crossed my mind. I forgot about him. It just, it's just sort of like, no, there isn't, you know, you'd see something about him.

01:05:35

And there's that guy that's a really, you know, doesn't like perform theology because of his

01:05:41

Muslim background. You know, what a shame, you know? And, and even when Muhammad Khan contacted me and started pointing to all his videos,

01:05:52

I didn't immediately jump on the bandwagon. And when he contacted me and said, you know that Ergen -Kanner has claimed to have debated

01:05:58

Shabir Ali, I knew that wasn't true. But what was my response? Immediately believe him? No, my response was challenging to document it.

01:06:05

And he did. So here's, here's a guy, you know, he's a former

01:06:12

Mormon. Here's, first of all, what happens when you do not follow biblical admonitions in regards to the form of the church.

01:06:24

He thinks he's wiser than the Holy Spirit. Now he would never say that, but by his actions, he's demonstrating that because the scriptures tell us how the church is to be organized and you need to have the elders and here's what the church is supposed to do.

01:06:38

And God has the right to determine these things. He has the right to define his worship and we don't get to come along and say, well, because we're free in Christ, we get to ignore all that stuff.

01:06:51

Doesn't work that way. And so here you have, and I've, I've seen this happen so many times, a former cult member, former cult members should never be allowed to be seen as experts on their former religion for at least a decade after their conversion.

01:07:17

Leave them alone. Let them grow. Let them mature. Don't push them into quote unquote ministry to their former religion.

01:07:27

I can't tell you how many people I have seen who were pushed into that and they never grew.

01:07:33

And as a result, it's the parable of the sower and the seeds and the soils.

01:07:42

I'm thinking about one guy, he was involved in quote unquote ex -Mormon ministry here in the

01:07:47

Valley of the Sun and he ran into a horrible book against Christianity.

01:07:54

Blown out of the water. Atheist today. Atheist today. See, it happened too many times.

01:08:02

And here's another example. Here's another example. No root. No stability.

01:08:07

Blown about by every wind of doctrine. When you get somebody out of all these groups, don't ask them to spend their time talking about that group.

01:08:16

Give them a full orbed education in the Christian faith.

01:08:22

Ground them in service and ministry. Because if you don't, you're, you're dooming them to either a stunted

01:08:35

Christian life or to no Christian life at all. And so, do we have a cult starting there?

01:08:45

Don't know. We'll talk with Jason Wallace about it. We'll play some of these clips.

01:08:51

We'll respond to some of the things that have been going on. And like I said, I've, I've let,

01:08:57

I've let Sean know. Sean thinks that anyone who does this is just attacking him. Just attacking him.

01:09:03

He is in full on irrational, emotionally based defense mode right now.

01:09:08

He does not realize that the people who are showing him the greatest love are the people who are warning him.

01:09:16

You're going down the wrong road. He considers that an attack. It's not an attack. In any way, shape, or form.

01:09:25

So there you go. So there you go. I had one other clip to play and then had all sorts of articles to get to.

01:09:33

Not to get to a lot of them because I've been going along. But at the, nah, lunch is coming pretty soon.

01:09:41

There's gonna be an orchestra playing in the background called My Stomach. If we don't wrap it up at the jumbo length.

01:09:54

One of the things that we've got queued up for Radio Free Geneva is David Allen's presentation on the atonement. Now, almost every particular element of Allen's presentation was rather thoroughly responded to in the new book,

01:10:11

From Heaven He Came and Sought Her. Whatever book he's writing on this subject,

01:10:17

I really hope he thoroughly attempts to interact with the many citations of his statements in that book.

01:10:27

There are a number of places where people just basically use him as an example of, and what we don't want to do is say this. So I hope he will interact with that because he's writing on this subject.

01:10:39

Now, it's funny, I'll get it queued up eventually. I'll find this. I remember where it was in the road yesterday, but that's not gonna help me find it very quickly here.

01:10:48

It's right in this area. If I just had three or four minutes, I could have found it easily. Funny thing was, he basically indicated that he's only been studying this area since about 2009.

01:11:03

When did he identify me as a hyper -Calvinist? 2008. 2008. And toward the end of his presentation, he starts talking a lot about how it's necessary to accurately represent people and to not attribute to them positions they do not hold.

01:11:22

He said it more than once. Right at the end of his presentation, listen to what he says here.

01:11:29

I get a little tired of people who every time somebody like me comes along and says, you know,

01:11:35

I don't think it's that way, according to Reformed theology, and then a Reformed person says, you don't understand

01:11:42

Calvinism. I want to, let me put this on record. I am not a

01:11:47

Calvinist because I don't understand Calvinism. I am not a Calvinist because I do understand Calvinism and I think there are aspects of it that are unbiblical.

01:11:56

There's a difference. Right. So, again, but in the process,

01:12:01

I want my Reformed brothers and sisters to be fair to me, but I want to be fair to them. I want to define them properly as they define themselves.

01:12:08

And what I'm trying to do tonight, what I was trying to do tonight is show that if you're going to hold that position, here's the position. I did not misrepresent the position of limited atonement tonight.

01:12:17

Now, there are going to be many Calvinists who are going to disagree with what I argue is entailed by their belief.

01:12:23

That's totally different. That's fine. Bring it on. Let's have that discussion. That's no problem. But it's one thing to say you don't understand

01:12:31

Calvinism, you know, and that implies you don't understand it. You know, bless your heart, if you did a little bit more, you would.

01:12:37

And then you would see it differently. You see, that's almost, that's kind of a condescending way to carry on a discussion. Let's give each other the benefit of the doubt and assume that we do understand until we make a statement that's clearly contradictory to the position of the other side.

01:12:50

Then they can say, hey, David, you know, you kind of messed up on that one. And then I'll be happy to backtrack on that one. But we do need to treat each other fairly.

01:12:57

Let's, we need to cut out this drive -by shooting stuff. You know, all Calvinists don't believe in atonement and all non -Calvinists, they don't believe in the sovereignty of God.

01:13:04

You see, this is the kind of stuff that doesn't get us anywhere. Let's have a discussion. Let's have a civil debate or discussion.

01:13:10

Amen. Fine. Let's do that. Dr. Allen, you have in print and in recording misidentified me as a hyper -Calvinist.

01:13:24

Phil Johnson, from whose writings you derive the definition, has said you were wrong.

01:13:30

I have pointed out you are wrong. In light of your own statements, I call upon you to publicly apologize and withdraw the footnote from the book that you've written, contributed to, and correct the error.

01:13:45

And I think the best way to do that would be in conjunction with a debate. You have written an entire commentary on Hebrews.

01:13:53

You're writing a book on limited atonement, or on the subject of the atonement. Therefore, I would think you would be in the perfect position.

01:14:04

It would not require you extra study, etc., etc., to arrange a debate at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, where you have a position of great authority on these very issues, specifically on the issue of the atonement, election,

01:14:19

Calvinism, what you call Biblicism, which is a term that has no meaning, because we all say we're

01:14:26

Biblicists. Therefore, if you use a term that does not describe your position, it's really a meaningless term. Whatever term you want to come up with, some form of synergism.

01:14:37

But I stand ready to accept the retraction of your false statement regarding me, in light of the assumption that the statements you have made in this recording from Liberty University are truthful statements.

01:14:57

If they're truthful statements, you don't like drive -by theology, then you will withdraw the drive -by you've done on me more than once.

01:15:06

And if you'll do that, we will change the Radio Free Geneva theme, and remove that drive -by shooting, that drive -by theology that you did there, and do so happily.

01:15:18

So I'll just wait. And I know we have plenty of people who listen at Southwestern, and so I would ask you to communicate my invitation in light of Dr.

01:15:29

Allen's own statements, to withdraw his erroneous identification, and to communicate to Dr.

01:15:35

Allen our willingness to arrange in the future a debate at Southwestern, or at a location of his choice there in Texas, if a

01:15:43

Southwestern would not be his first choice, on the subject of the Atonement, and specifically the intention of the

01:15:50

Atonement. What was the intention? In fact, if you'd like to make it an extremely focused debate, in light of your being an author of an entire exegetical commentary on Hebrews, I will be teaching a class on the exegesis of Hebrews in September of 2015 in Zurich, Switzerland, and therefore it would fit very well with my schedule to be even more specific, and that is to debate the doctrine of Atonement, and the intention of Atonement, and the effect of Atonement from the

01:16:26

Book of Hebrews alone. I'd be more than happy to do that. So those are options for for Dr.

01:16:34

Allen, and I would encourage those in the Dallas area, and those who listen at Southwestern, to communicate to Dr.

01:16:43

Allen my invitation to do so, and the fact that we will be responding to Dr.

01:16:48

Allen's presentation on Atonement in future editions of the

01:16:54

Dividing Line here, and I hope that he will have the opportunity of listening at that particular point in time.

01:17:01

So there you go. I was glad to get an opportunity to say that, and I want to join that with an article that demonstrates the error of Brother Allen in identifying me as a

01:17:15

Hyper -Calvinist, because I was pointed to an article this morning, and at first I just sort of dismissed it, because, well, here's the first two sentences.

01:17:24

James White insists that most of the Arminians who he knows are inconsistent. He has never bothered to explain just precisely what they're inconsistent about, but he does insist they're inconsistent.

01:17:33

I stopped right there and closed the window, because that's a lie, and everybody knows it's a lie. No honest person could utter those words.

01:17:40

I have explained the inconsistency more times than I can count in print on the program.

01:17:46

This person knows it, so automatically I have a problem. But the person on Twitter said, well, you know,

01:17:52

I need to look. So I did, and lo and behold, it's by a Hyper -Calvinist. Hyper -Calvinist by the name of David Bishop at cornbreadandbourbon .wordpress

01:18:03

.com. And it's just all about why Arminians are all going to hell, and that no amount of inconsistency on Arminian's parts can save them.

01:18:13

It's the old perfect theology from the beginning, Hyper -Calvinism. I do not like Hyper -Calvinists.

01:18:20

I have never met a gracious Hyper -Calvinist in my life. I have never met an honest

01:18:25

Hyper -Calvinist in my life. Anybody who draws the circle that tight tends to be pretty nasty, and they can be that way.

01:18:35

There is a guy on YouTube that's pretty along those lines. But here you have the very essence of Hyper -Calvinism, the demand for absolute—because see,

01:18:50

Hyper -Arminians and Hyper -Calvinists are one and the same. They're Hyper -Rationalists. They don't even follow through the ramifications of their own belief.

01:19:02

For example, one of the reasons I really dislike Hyper -Calvinists is because they don't really believe their Calvinism.

01:19:07

If they believe that they are dependent upon the Spirit of God to open their eyes, to begin to understand these things, and they know that it didn't happen at one fell swoop—they did not get perfect theology at one shot—but then they demand it for others.

01:19:19

They're inconsistent. They're self -contradictory. They're hypocritical. And yet, what is the allegation thrown at me all the time?

01:19:30

That I'm one of them. Well, then why are they attacking me? Because I'm not one of them. And they know it. They know it.

01:19:39

It is fascinating to see that kind of thing. By the way,

01:19:47

Nick pointed me to an article from February 11th.

01:19:57

Let's see. What is this about? Do we have a

01:20:03

Hyper -Calvinism channel here? I'm not sure. You don't think so?

01:20:11

Okay. Well, obviously, whatever P .H .T. is saying sounds a little bit odd to me.

01:20:17

If pathetic dorks like me get avoided, James White must be avoided like the plague. So, sort of wondering where they're coming from.

01:20:25

I would assume that the ops will take care of keeping the channel clean.

01:20:32

Anyways, Nick presented to me a—or gave me a link. Um, I didn't realize this, but guess who went to the

01:20:41

Olympics? Guess who went to the

01:20:47

Olympics? There's an article from February 11th, 2014. God bless Putin for his stand on gays.

01:20:53

American preachers march on Sochi. And who's their leader? Who else would it be?

01:21:01

I love these pictures. Um, the bald man with—who will never, ever, ever be able to dress right.

01:21:09

Ruben Israel! Yes, indeed. Ruben Israel. I don't see, uh, some of the other, um, guys that were—oh, nope.

01:21:16

There's another one that we're used to. Yeah, yeah. Oh, oh, you want to see the pictures. I'm sorry.

01:21:22

Uh, dee -dee -dee, dee -dee -dee -dee, dee -dee -dee -dee, crossover. No, I don't want crossover.

01:21:30

Okay, I gotta go there first, then go back to Windows. This thing is not the easiest thing to use. And I think this is

01:21:37

Safari. Yeah. You got it now? Okay, see, there's—there's

01:21:45

Ruben. Uh, God bless Putin for his stand against the sin of homosexuality. God considers such to be an abomination.

01:21:52

Matthew 21, 43. There's Ruben. And then we go down here, and I recognize that guy right there, uh, from Salt Lake City.

01:22:00

There's a cop standing around wondering what in the world's going on. Who are these people? And, uh, yeah, there's some more guys at, uh—that—that one

01:22:10

I've seen before, uh, somewhere. Uh, those things must travel well. Uh, so yeah, but there's, um, uh, there's

01:22:18

Ruben Israel and his guys there at Sochi, um, once again making

01:22:23

Americans look really good. Um, certainly God does, um, consider homosexuality to be an—an abomination.

01:22:32

There's—there's no question about that. But once again, there is a way to present these truths that Scripture tells us about.

01:22:40

And, um, having—having been hit in the head by one of those signs in the past, uh,

01:22:47

I know that the motivations of those standing there are not the motivations provided by Scripture.

01:22:52

That's, of course, uh, the problem. So, uh, widescreen, please. Oh, please, there's lots of, uh—you did it eventually?

01:23:01

Okay, all right. Oh, cle—uh, thanks. Yeah, okay. Yeah, so, uh, there you go.

01:23:08

So you—you want to keep that up or something? Uh, you know, one last one to get to here in the last few minutes, uh, of the program.

01:23:16

Um, John Begay put up another excellent article. He writes a lot of excellent articles. This one called

01:23:23

The About Face the Roman Catholic Church Has Made on the Subject Religious Liberty is Abundantly, uh,

01:23:28

Clear. And, uh, he's talking about, uh, some articles, uh, that, um, demonstrate the tremendous change that has taken place in the history of the allegedly infallible

01:23:43

Roman Catholic Church in the subject of religious freedom. There is no question about this. I'm sorry. Anybody who can look at the—at the history of the

01:23:50

Church, uh, all the way up to the Papal Syllabus of Errors, all the way back to the time of the

01:23:57

Inquisition, back to the time of just, you know, Trent and, uh,

01:24:03

Florence and—you have to check your brain at the door.

01:24:09

You have to say, oh, great successor of Peter, tell me what to think. Um, you—it's just what you have to do to get past the simple reality that there was a time when

01:24:22

Rome taught that to be right with God required you to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.

01:24:28

And if you rejected the claims of Rome, um, you were not right with God and you were not the heir of eternal life, and, um, that there was not to be religious freedom.

01:24:43

When the Church—and I've been harping on this for a long time. You can find articles I did back in the early 1990s on this particular subject.

01:24:50

You can just—you can—you can put the Church, uh, the

01:24:56

Church's statements right here, where, for example, a indulgence is granted, uh, to, uh, crusaders who would take the sign of the cross and destroy the heretic, uh, destroy the infidel, and compare that with, um, with Vatican II, which actually goes so far as to say that the, uh, the

01:25:22

Muslim adores God along with us. Uh, if you can't see that there is a 180 -degree difference between those positions, then you're just not honest with yourself.

01:25:37

You're self -deceived. You're doing anything you can with history, with the facts of history, to maintain a particular position, and you're not really open to any type of meaningful, truthful dialogue on the subject.

01:25:53

Um, it's just—it's just not possible. I mean, uh, the links are provided here. You can—you can look for yourself, but these aren't—these aren't the only ones.

01:26:01

These are not the only places. I mean, you know, I—I remember asking Robert St. Genes—I don't know how he would answer this question anymore, to be perfectly honest with you—but, um, years ago,

01:26:13

I asked Robert St. Genes about these statements, where you can take the

01:26:19

Church from years ago, and the Church from now, or the Pope from now, and clearly, massive contradiction.

01:26:29

And his response was, well, only the Church gets to define what it meant then and what it means now.

01:26:35

So as long as the Church says, no, no, we—no contradiction, then you just go, yes, sir, great pontiff,

01:26:42

I bow before thee. Um, so in other words, you can't exegete the texts of the

01:26:49

Church. You can't—you can't go back to Trent and go, okay, who was it

01:26:54

Trent? What did they believe? What did they write? What did they say this meant then? Doesn't matter.

01:27:01

Doesn't matter. It's irrelevant. Don't—don't do that kind of historical stuff. That doesn't matter.

01:27:07

Once you have an infallible authority, the infallible authority tells you what to believe, tells you what those things meant, even if that would never have crossed the mind of the people at that Council then, even if you can line up Popes for a century before and a century after that all said the same thing and do it fairly, it's irrelevant.

01:27:31

It's irrelevant. Because your infallible authority says otherwise. It makes me wonder, while I was gone, the

01:27:43

Pope sent a video greeting to a bunch of WordFaithers. Pirate Christian Radio did a real spoof on that by providing a translation of the tongues speaking that Kenneth Copeland allegedly did, praying for the

01:28:01

Pope, and it was absolutely hilarious. But, of course, watching these

01:28:10

WordFaithers just grovel at the feet of the Roman Pontiff tells you a lot about the fact that they don't have a clue of theology.

01:28:19

But then again, there's some big names I could name amongst evangelicals that are constantly going, wasn't that an insightful thing the

01:28:27

Pope said? The Pope can say all sorts of insightful things. He still calls himself

01:28:33

Holy Father, an Alter Christus, and the Vicar of Christ, which are all terms of the

01:28:39

Trinity. And he uses them himself. Oh, we don't have to worry about that. We all just need to get together.

01:28:47

You just got to love ecumenism. Actually, it just makes you sick, ecumenism does.

01:28:54

So anyways, I actually got to most of the things there. Didn't get to all of them, but got to most of them.

01:29:00

And I actually tried to tie them together in somewhat of a meandering thing. So anyways, please pray for my friends, for believers in Ukraine.

01:29:11

The church I go to the first weekend of December, the pastor there goes to Donetsk.

01:29:19

Donetsk is in the far eastern portion of Ukraine, and hence, in grave danger right now.

01:29:26

I'm sure he's very concerned about what's going on there, because he's been building a seminary there and training people for long periods of time.

01:29:35

And so pray for peace, pray for restraint upon evil men, and we certainly will be joining in those prayers.

01:29:45

Again, like I said, on Thursday, I'll be joined by Jason Wallace. We'll be looking more closely at the situation with Sean McCraney up in Salt Lake City.

01:29:55

If you'd like to see Jason attempting to reason with Sean, look up Inquisition 2014,

01:30:02

Sean McCraney, and you'll be able to watch what happened there on Sean's television program.

01:30:08

That'll give you a lot of good background. So thanks for listening to The Vying Line today. It's great to be back, and we'll see you on Thursday.