Presuppositionalism/Evidentialism, and then Apologetically Useful Verses

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White. We are live as we normally are. Of course, if you're watching it later, that's really an irrelevant observation. This afternoon, I was sent a video and I want to reveal it, review it fairly quickly with you.

I think it's somewhat important and helpful. Then we're gonna do something, well, I suppose we've done sort of things, a few things sort of like it in the past, but we're gonna go through some very practical apologetics texts for use with various groups.

And depending on how long that takes, we might take some calls toward the end of the hour. We'll see, should be able to judge fairly quickly. I think this video is only about, let me see here, it's four minutes and 54 seconds.

So we're not starting right at the beginning. So this is from the Liberty University Center for Apologetics and Cultural Engagement. That's when you know you've got some money. And it is Dr. Peter Williams, well-known fellow being asked a question about evidentialism and presuppositionalism and must be an American British thing, I guess.

Maybe Van Til's not as well known over there. I don't know, but well, let's take a listen and then I'll have some comments.

Things that I often get asked is, by people kind of getting into apologetics is what type of an apologist are you? Are you a presuppositionalist or are you an evidentialist? And I often don't really like the question.

I wonder what you think about that question. Maybe if you've described your own kind of apologetic style as well.

Well, I think that we all want to use evidence and we're all aware that people can have different presuppositions. And so there's a real place for both emphases. But what I find is that you've also got to think about who you are, what skills you have.

If you're a philosopher, you're probably gonna make a really good presuppositional apologist because you can constantly identify the presuppositions that people have. You can point them out and you can show how those are leading to false conclusions.

However, if you happen to be trained, let's say as an archeologist or as an ancient historian or something that more fits the sort of things that people call facts, whether or not that's a helpful term, but that sort of emphasis, then probably for you to spend all of your time talking about philosophy is not gonna be very good.

So I think to win someone over, you need to be talking about things that you've actually studied, you actually know about, and you share what it is to be a Christian from the perspective of those skills.

So I think I would start with thinking about what your skill set, your knowledge base is, and then building your apologetic style around that because there are a whole number of things that can testify to Christ.

So you're saying that there's evidence for both in the Bible? You seem to be saying that it's partly style, interest, rather than maybe a biblical case for one or the other.

I think that some of the strong forms of presuppositionalism which actually deny that a direct appeal to a piece of evidence and saying, and now you have to make up, you have to respond to that evidence, that's unhelpful.

Now, it can be the case that some forms of evidentialism say, here is the evidence, you are the jury. And that unfortunately enthrones humans and makes them feel that they're really looking down on God and they're allowed to decide whether God's guilty or innocent or whether the Bible happened and so on.

That's unhelpful. But part of it is to do with consistent emphasis. So for instance, Jesus in John's gospel will say how he receives testimony from John the Baptist and who is of course infinitely inferior to Jesus himself.

But he does that as an accommodation to people. So I think that it's possible to say it's legitimate to appeal to evidence and to ask a human to make up their mind about that evidence as an accommodation.

But if you're constantly doing that all of the time, of course, you are feeding them with the idea that they are in charge and that somehow God is in the dock and that's completely unhelpful. You mustn't let that happen.

But that doesn't mean you can't occasionally do that. So I do tend to mix and match because I think what you're trying to do is you're trying to win people over. God has given us evidence which may be used.

God's given us the ability to also show how the thoughts of humans are often based on completely wrong presuppositions and we need to expose that. So I do think that there is validity in more than one approach and I think you've got to feed into that, the question of your own skills.

So even if you are trained in history and not in philosophy, if you just constantly emphasise evidence as if it's self-explanatory, as if there is no twisted part of the human mind which actually is wanting to go away from God, then of course you are sending the wrong message ultimately.

But that doesn't mean that in a short conversation it's not a good thing to share some evidence and often you find doing that,.

You'll really pick someone's interest. Yeah, very good. And I know one of the things that, one of the angles you come out of this from is biblical studies. So in the next segment, stay with us and we're gonna ask him how biblical studies actually age in the task of the pontiff.

Well, we're not gonna be looking at that.

I've really been blessed by some of the stuff that Peter Williams has done. He's done some really great stuff but I was a little taken aback by this, to be honest with you, because that's not really what the issue between presuppositionalism and evidentialism is about.

Maybe it's, maybe as you fly from here to Heathrow, words change meaning and things like that. There is a bit of divide between the United States and Europe and England as far as what is emphasized in theology and theological terminology but, and he did say, and I was very thankful he did say this, he did point out that if you're, that there is a danger to allowing people to think that they can put, as he put it, put God in the dock.

And if you're not familiar with English law, being in the dock is the place where the person answers the questions and so it could be the accused even. You know, Lewis wrote that book and a lot of folks over here didn't quite understand why God was sailing.

But anyway, and so he did say that and that's a very important aspect of this but there really wasn't a definition. And what was surprising was that, well, you know, if you're primarily into philosophy then you could be a good presuppositionalist.

I'm just like, here in the States it's just the exact opposite. It's the philosophers who are the evidentialists and it's the exegesis biblical theology people that emphasize presuppositionalism because this is a theological issue.

And if I were asked this question, I would want to define terms and I would want to say, look, the first thing to recognize is your apologetics is not something that you have tailored to you. I mean, it almost sounded like apologetics here is like a suit you would wear, okay?

And so, you know, I might go to Joseph A. Banks and try to find a jacket that goes particularly well with my bow ties so it has a little more room up top so my little bow ties don't get squished by the collars of the jacket or something.

That's not what apologetics is. And it sounded like what Dr. Williams was saying was, well, you sort of got to look at your skill set and if your skill set is strong over here then you're probably gonna be an evidentialist and over here you could be a presuppositionalist.

No, there is a, it's fundamental truth that apologetics flows from your theology. It is a theological issue first and foremost. And in this instance, if you believe that God has spoken with clarity, if you believe that men are unapologetus without an apologetic, to quote directly from Romans chapter one, that the unregenerate man is suppressing, katakanto, holding down the knowledge of God as exchange the truth of God for the lie, you have the twisting of the creator-creation relationship.

If you believe the anthropology of Romans one and first Corinthians one and two, and well, a number of other passages we could come to here. If you believe all of that and take it seriously then that's going to determine you're apologetic.

You are, the whole idea of dealing with the presuppositions is simply a recognition of the biblical teaching of who God is and who man is. And the evidentialist doesn't start there. The evidentialist does not start with a recognition that the lost man is unapologetus, that the lost man's thinking has been darkened by his rebellion and therefore is not never, cannot ever be in a position of neutrality to examine evidences that are to be given to him.

He's already suppressing evidence, to give him more evidence, he's just going to suppress that too. And so it's a theological issue. It's looking at what the Bible teaches about man. And of course, from another perspective, it's just taking seriously the apostolic approach.

You just don't find the apostles setting man up as the final arbiter of all things. You don't find the apostles, and there were plenty of people in Paul's day who exalted philosophy in the mind of man and all that stuff, plenty of people.

You just don't find the apostles bowing down to that and going, well, okay, we'll try to, I'll try to convince your almighty free will and your great mind that is untouched by sin and rebellion. That's just not how the apostles did it.

You just don't find any examples of that. So the issue is, are we as Christians going to recognize there is no neutrality? If what we believe is true, then every breath the lost person takes, every beat of his heart, every exchange of oxygen across the cellular barriers in his brain that even allows him to think, the electrical impulses that allow the functioning of the synapses and all the rest of that stuff in his brain, all of that points to a creator and all of that comes from the hand of God.

And we cannot pretend that that's not the case. We cannot go, well, I'll lay that aside for now. Hopefully we'll get back to that. I'll reason you to that point. It's not possible. There is no neutral ground.

Any fact that is a fact is a fact because Jesus made it a fact. And I am not gonna be the one who is going to pretend that those are not Jesus facts until 27 arguments down the road, where finally somebody goes, hey, wait a minute.

If you're telling me this Jesus is who you say he is, then you were lying to me 27 arguments back when you said, let's pretend that there's a neutral ground. Yeah, I was, pretty cool, huh? I don't see how that's possible for a Christian to do that.

And so presuppositionalism is just simply allowing God to be God and the Bible to be the Bible and theology to be theology and apologetics to be determined by the meaning and the content of Christian theology itself.

If we believe the radical teaching of scripture, that Jesus Christ is the creator of all things, if we recognize that man is his creature, that man is fallen, if we recognize the creator-creation relationship, the absolute necessity of the radical work of regeneration to change the heart and mind of man, to take out that heart of stone, to give the heart of flesh, if we recognize all that, it's going to determine how we do apologetics.

Just that simple, just that simple. It's not a suit that you go, I'm 32, 30 and once in a while, 31. And so we'll go with this color and that. And now that I shaved my head, then we don't have to worry about the hair color.

Nah, it's not looking at yourself and going, well, I think my skillset would fit into this realm. No, no, no, no, no, no. Apologetic methodology flows from your theological commitments. And there's nothing more painful for me than when I go out and I listen to people speaking and it is just so painfully obvious that they have developed their apologetics from watching YouTube, reading some books, and there is this chasm between their theology, the church they go to, what's taught there, and how they do apologetics.

And it's just a matter of time until they run into somebody that's bright enough and sharp enough to point that out. And while you may not be impressed with a lot of the atheists you've listened to, and I should have cued this up, I forgot to do it, could have illustrated this from a audience question in the debate that took place at the Bonson Conference over in California last week, over the weekend, I guess.

Jeff Durbin and Saiten Bruggenkate were involved and the pastor of the church who was hosting it, I don't, sorry, I don't remember his name. They were the Christians and there were these three atheists that I'd never heard of before.

In fact, most of the advertisements had been some atheists. So they had a debate on the existence and attributes of God, which was basically a free-for-all. But those particular atheists were not reflective enough to be able to identify the contradiction between a person's theology and their apologetic methodology.

That those guys weren't, but there are some that were. There are some out there that can point that out. And so you may get away with it for a while. You may just blissfully get along with, you've got your apologetic over here, your theology over here.

The one did not arise out of the other. And so there's this chasm in between, but eventually you're gonna run into somebody that's gonna cause you to look right down that chasm and go, oh, I got a problem here.

And if you're in a public situation or something, well, that's not good. That's not good. So I, like I said, I was all taken aback by Dr. Williams. It did not strike me that maybe Van Till has been something that he has read or encountered or done any work.

I don't know. I don't know. He's done some great, great stuff. But I was, like I said, taken aback a little bit by that particular thing. Now, what I wanna do, I decided to do this a couple days ago and I'm not really 100 certain why.

Just thought, well, let's do something new on the program today or something we haven't done for a long time. I don't know. What I wanna do is I want to look at some particularly important apologetic texts.

Okay, that's an artificial term in and of itself. Biblical texts that have specific relevance to importance to particular groups that we might be dealing with. Just a verse that you might want to write down, maybe you might wanna make sure it's memorized, something that you can bring up at a moment's notice.

And these would be verses that would be helpful to you, relevant in the conversation with people of these various groups. And they aren't necessarily the first ones you would necessarily think of with each one of these particular groups.

But just texts that I'd like to go over them. It's sort of like, if you've never seen the 100 verse memorization system, which man, I still remember writing that thing on a compact portable, which was not very portable.

Let me tell you this, if a singer sewing machine's portable, then the compact portable was portable, but it wasn't drilled into a wall. So in those days it was portable. But I think, in fact, I think my vision has still been permanently damaged, six inch green screen.

But anyway, the 100 verse memorization system for dealing with Mormons, for example, it's on our website. A lot of people have used it over the years and it's only slightly dated, only because Mormonism's going, these days.

But basically it is a listing of verses. And it's not just, okay, here's 100 verses to memorize that are relevant to Mormons. It's, here's the verses, here's how you want to use it. Here's what the possible objections are.

Here's the context you want to offer. A lot fuller than you would get just from a listing of verses you frequently find in books. So with that in mind, first one, let's see, what group shall we go with first?

Let's go with Roman Catholicism first, shall we? Roman Catholicism, Romans 5 .1. Romans 5 .1 would be the verse we'd look at today in regards to Roman Catholicism. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now it's nice and short, might be one you already have memorized possibly, but what is its specific relevance? Well, if you understand Roman Catholic theology, at least historic Orthodox Roman Catholic theology, these days, who knows, you know, Rome's definitely fallen upon tough days as far as that kind of thing goes.

But if you understand the historic Roman Catholic understanding, you are initially justified by baptism. So baptism is a sacrament that places you in the state of grace. But you can lose that position, not through the commission of venial sins, because they don't destroy the grace of justification, but through the commission of immortal sin, which does destroy the grace of justification.

And then you have to be re-justified. And so you have to go through the sacrament of penance, and you have to be sacramentally re-justified and brought back into the state of grace to where you're a friend of God.

And at least historically, and I know, I know, it's quite probable that the current Pope is most definitely an inclusivist, maybe even a universalist, who knows. But in historic Roman Catholic teaching, if you die outside the state of grace, then you will go to hell.

Purgatory is not a second chance stop. It's not a second opportunity. You have to be in the state of grace when you die to go to purgatory in Roman Catholic teaching. And so this text was the text that I asked Mitch Pacwa about in our first debate, a debate which we could watch on YouTube if Scott Butler of San Diego would ever release it from the dark tombs that he has hidden it in.

Because he's not happy about how the first two debates we did in San Diego went. Or if someone would just like to drop huge amounts of money on us, maybe he'd finally let us buy it from him or something.

But anyway, you can at least listen to the audio. In the cross-examination, well, it wasn't even a cross-examination period back then. I didn't know what I was doing. This is the early debates, very, very early on.

And this was the Q &A where you had one minute, was it one minute to ask, three minutes to answer, two, one minute to redirect. I forget exactly how it worked out. It was 19, January of 1991, if I recall correctly.

Yeah, January of 91. Here's an idea of how long ago that was. These are like my second and third debates, grand total. So I asked Mitch Pacwa, I laid out the situation, laid out the scenario. The Jesus identified as the greatest commandment that we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

And if breaking the greatest commandment isn't a mortal sin, then what would be? I mean, how could breaking lesser commandments be a mortal sin while breaking the greatest commandment is not a mortal sin?

Doesn't make any sense. And I then said, basically, before your head hits the pillow this evening, you could break this commandment and commit a mortal sin. Therefore, in light, Mitch Pacwa, speaker of 12 languages, of your knowledge of the Hebrew language and what peace is in Hebrew, and everybody knows what peace is in Hebrew, it's shalom.

This is a salam in Arabic, shalom in Hebrew. You know that a temporary ceasefire is not shalom. There is no shalom in Israel today. If you have to be armed anywhere you go, if you're always looking at anybody around you, concerned that they may start stabbing you, that's not shalom.

Even if you make it to where you're going without seeing any violence, that's still not shalom because shalom is a wellness of relationship. The wellness of relationship. If you can become the enemy of God before your head hits the pillow this evening, that is not shalom.

So in light of that, Mitch Pacwa, and it took me obviously less than this amount of time to explain the background. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

How can you say that you have, Irene is the Greek term, but we all know what's behind that, it's shalom. How can you say you have peace with God? Now, very briefly, he answered, but sort of in a roundabout way.

I redirected the question. And if you listen to the audio, you hear silence, then you hear, and then you hear Mitch Pacwa say, I don't know. Now that's something that gerrymantics would never do. But that's why I really like Mitch Pacwa and respect Mitch Pacwa.

Because I don't believe the Roman Catholic system can give you peace with God. And I think there is a recognition of that. Now, there are two things that you need to know about Romans 5 .1. And the more we know about the texts, the more study we've done about the texts, the more we can place the text in the flow of the argument.

The more weight it's going to carry with most people we're talking to. They can tell when we're just, you know, looking in the back of our Bible to some list we wrote down when some guest speaker was speaking in our church.

And, well, what about Romans 5 .1? It's not going to, not going to get you far. Two things to know. First of all, in the original language, δικαιοθέντες οὐν ἐκ πίστεως, δικαιοθέντες is a participle. And I've mentioned to many people, I really love participles.

Now, for most people, it makes me very odd. I do not like infinitives. I've mentioned this before. Very strange. I did really well with participles in Greek. Did not do really well with infinitives. Even after seven years of taking classes and then I don't know how many years of teaching it, infinitives are still a weak area for me, syntactically speaking, primarily.

But participles, I've always, always loved participles. And this is an aorist passive participle. And when you have an aorist passive with a present tense verb, which is what we have here, ἔκυμεν, the point is that we have peace having been justified.

Not looking forward to possibly being justified or being justified concurrently, but it is something that precedes the action of the main verb. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God.

So justification is something we look back upon. It's not something that we are trying to gain right now or something we hope to gain in the future. In Romans 5 .1, from Paul's perspective, justification is something that is a, I'm not going to say finished work because that starts getting into a perfect tense or something like that.

No, but in our experience, it's something we look back upon. We have been made right with God. And if you look at Romans 3 and 4, it's by grace, through faith. But there's a textual variant. There's a textual variant.

Now, again, this is an unusual webcast, unusual program. There aren't too many places where people are going to be talking about verses to use in talking with Roman Catholics and then throw you the curve of introducing a textual variant.

Well, the fact of the matter is it's there. And Catholic Answers knows it's there. So if we're going to prepare you properly, then we've got to prepare you properly. That's all there is to it. It can't take the easy way.

Can't take the easy way. The verb ecumen we have, there are two possible readings to that verb in the manuscripts. Man, I did not know why the link on this one doesn't work. I've fixed the link on my other one.

But the two possible readings are ecumen, which means we have, and it is in the normal way in which verbs express their actions, called the indicative. And that's why the third letter in the word is an omicron.

Now, one of the signs of the subjunctive mode in Greek is the lengthening of what's called the thematic vowel. And so a number of manuscripts, including the original hand of Sinaiticus, the original, well, Alexandrinus, and the original hand of Vaticanus, all of which were corrected.

And maybe, well, Sinaiticus' first corrector changed it to the indicative. That may have been in the scriptorium itself. That could be very, very early on. Second hand of Vaticanus changed it from the subjunctive to the indicative.

So that could have been later on. I'll admit I have not read much that gives me a lot of information as to the dating of the hands of the correctors of Vaticanus. I've read a lot more about Sinaiticus than Vaticanus at that point.

Anyway, the point is there's some, there's some strong external evidence for the subjunctive at Romans 5 .1, including manuscript 1739, a few others. 1739, the only reason I mention it is it's about a 10th, 11th century minuscule, but we can tell that it, along with 1881, are copies of very early 3rd or 2nd century manuscripts.

They have extra weight in light of their readings, even though 1881 has the indicative here. So what's the point? Well, you could make an argument that it should be the subjunctive. And one possible way that you could translate the subjunctive would be let us have peace with God.

But in all probability, the subjunctive there should be translated more along the lines of let us be at peace with God, recognizing that we have been justified. Now, what's interesting, and if you have a little book called The Roman Catholic Controversy, the coughing you hear from the other room is Brother Pierce, who seems to be dying.

I'm not sure what is going on there. Do I need to do CPR? It's looking pretty bad in there. There is a, somewhere in here, there, man, my eyesight has really gotten bad. But somewhere in here, there is a rather extensive discussion that I included in the end notes regarding the textual variant here.

And what was interesting was it was very easy for me to quote a number of Roman Catholic textual scholars in support of the indicative reading at Romans 5 .1. It's in the book somewhere. Trust me, you can look.

And the vast majority of translations have taken it that way, even though the external evidence would favor the subjunctive. And mainly they say, given what Paul has just said, and even Roman Catholic scholars recognize this, given what Paul has just said, there's no reason for the subjunctive.

And it does seem that both Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, there are hearing errors. And even though I, utilizing Erasmian pronunciation, say Ekumen and Ekomen, the Omicron and the Omega probably were not differentiating their pronunciation in ancient Koine Greek.

So it'd be very easy to mix up the two. So again, even Roman Catholic sources go with the indicative at this point. It doesn't massively change the possible range of translations, but you should be aware of it in case you run into someone who attended a Tim Staples conference once or something like that, I suppose.

So there's a verse on Roman Catholicism, Romans 5 .1, justification is something we look back upon and we have peace because of having been justified. Now, how about Mormonism? Yes, how about Mormonism?

Let's look at Isaiah 44, 24. Isaiah 44, 24. I'll be a little bit faster on these because I've still got, I want to do Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Oneist Pentecostals, Secular Humanists, Gay Affirming Christians, and Arminians.

Arminians would be really unhappy about that, but I'm not making a direct equivalency for crying out loud. Isaiah 44, 24. Someone in Twitter asked, Mormonism is declining? Well, yeah, actually. Basically, their numbers are very weak and Mormonism is a ship without a rudder.

It's sort of going, I don't know what's going to happen with it. It's fascinating. Isaiah 44, 24. Thus says Yahweh. Always remember, I know 99 of the people in this audience already know it, but for the 1 that don't, L-O-R-D, when the O and the R and the D are in capital forms, even though the font's smaller, are still in capital forms.

That's the English Bible Translator's way of letting you know that the underlying Hebrew term is Yahweh, the Tetragrammaton, Yod-Heh-Wau-Heh. Very important to keep that in mind if you're hearing me preaching on the Holiness Code right now.

Generally, when I'm going through the text, I will say, Thus says Yahweh, your Redeemer, and the one who formed with the womb, I, Yahweh, am the maker of all things, stretching out the heavens by myself and spreading out the earth all alone.

This is just a description of Yahweh. Description of Yahweh as the one creator of all things. There are numerous descriptions like this. Is this one particularly useful? It's particularly useful because if you know what Orthodox Mormonism teaches, and again, I say Orthodox Mormonism, then you know that there was a statement put out by the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

What year was it? 1907? Somewhere around there. I used to have that memorized. It was around the turn of the last century. Why don't you look up a statement of the First Presidency, Jehovah, or something like that.

It's in my books somewhere. It would certainly be in Isamor and my brother. But there is a statement from the First Presidency specifically identifying, because this isn't what Joseph Smith taught. Pretty obvious Joseph Smith had a different view of this, but the official position is that Elohim is God the Father, and Jehovah is his firstborn son, Jesus.

Jehovah is how we slaughter Yahweh in English. It's not a possible translation or pronunciation. I'm sorry? 1916? 1916 for the First Presidency statement. Okay, I knew it was somewhere back in the early part of the last century.

From the end sign? Okay. So anyway, in Orthodox Mormonism, Elohim and Jehovah are separate distinct gods. Now, there's all sorts of verses that demonstrate this is ridiculous. Anybody who can read the original language knows that Elohim and Jehovah are not separate gods.

Joseph Smith couldn't. No, the early Mormons could. One of the problems that Mormonism has today is they now have Hebrew scholars and any Hebrew scholars reading that are going, I mean, what's it like to be a Hebrew scholar at BYU?

And to read what Joseph Smith actually said and go, this guy was clueless. He has no idea what he's talking about. What? What on earth? So, the point is, in the Mormon temple ceremony, even to this day, in the videos they watch, Elohim sends Jehovah down to organize pre-existing matter into the earth.

And he does so accompanied by Michael. So, Jehovah is not alone. He's sent by Elohim and he's accompanied by Michael. But what does Isaiah 44, 24 say? I, Yahweh, am the maker of all things. Stretching out the heavens by myself and spreading out the earth all alone.

Now, we used to have these really cool shirts. This was back in the day. This was a long time ago. We called them the Witnessing with the Word T-shirts. And they were this really cool color fade. And I mean, this was 1980s, man.

This was 1985, I'd say. 85, 86. I don't know. I don't know. Well, okay. All right. So, 1980s anyways. And I remember once I had to get up early in the morning. I drove to Salt Lake City, General Conference.

Had to get up early in the morning, go to the airport like two o 'clock in the morning to pick up somebody at the airport. Tony, remember? And I was wearing one of these Witnessing with the Word T-shirts.

And so, this was before 9 -11, obviously. So, you could actually go to the gate and wait for people back in the good old days when traveling was fun. And we had Isaiah 44 -24, Isaiah 43 -10, Deuteronomy 6 -4.

And then we had some New Testament texts like Colossians 2 -9 and stuff like that because it was for both Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses. And this Jewish guy comes up to me and starts talking to me in Hebrew.

But while he's doing so, he's reading it and his eyes go down and he sees the Greek. And all of a sudden, he sees the Alpha and Omega. And oh, was he offended that we would have the Hebrew scriptures on a shirt?

Oh, he didn't want to talk to me much after that. He didn't want to talk to me at all. But the point is that the text says, Jehovah says, that he did all these things by himself and all alone. So, who's right?

Was it Elohim sending Jehovah down in company with Michael? Or did Jehovah get it right in Isaiah 44 -24? That's the question we would have for our Mormon friends. Now, another text right in that same area is Isaiah 43 -10.

Now, I forgot to mention this, but in my debate with Ayub Karim just a couple weeks ago, well, in fact, what, two weeks ago tomorrow, in his opening statement, he quoted Isaiah 43 -10 and said this was his favorite Bible verse.

I was excited. I was excited. Isaiah 43 -10, you would think that would have been the verse I would have listed for Mormons, because, but what I love about Isaiah 43 -10 is the fact that while Jehovah's Witnesses know the verse, and yeah, I mean, it's relevance for dealing with Mormons is clear.

Before me, there was no God formed. There shall be none after me. The last portion of the verse is the one that we normally end up quoting to Mormons. That's the eternal law of progression right in half.

But Jehovah's Witnesses get their name from this verse. This is where their name came from. You are my witnesses, declares Jehovah. So there it is. Isaiah 43 -10, that's where the name came from. You are my witnesses, declares Jehovah, and my servant whom I have chosen.

She may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me, there was no God formed. There will be none after me. Now, if you've listened to the debate I did a year and a half ago up in Denver with the Open Theist fellow, you heard me explain the relevance of this particular text.

Because Jesus quotes this text in John 13 -19, and he does it in the context of telling the disciples about what is going to happen in the future, specifically in regards to Judas. Well, that's the context in Isaiah 43.

Jehovah says to his people, I'm going to tell you, you're my servant who I've chosen. You may know, believe and understand that I am he. It's in all the context of predictive prophecy, what's going to be happening in bringing Cyrus and all the rest of this stuff.