Open Phones Topic: Sola Scriptura!

Greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. It is a Thursday, just a programming note, next Tuesday, the program's going to be earlier, I believe, it's 10 a .m. our time, noon, Central, one, Eastern. Ah, man, I wish you would just stop this.

Time zone stuff. Didn't we, didn't the Senate pass something? Did they, did that just not, I don't know. Anyway, we're going to be talking with Cameron about Roman Catholicism on Tuesday, and it's 12 Central, whenever that's going to be.

I don't know, we'll figure it out. I'll have to arrange my day around that. But, and I would assume that some of the things we'll be talking about will be similar to what we're talking about today, but I decided let's just open the phones today, and we haven't done that for a long, long time.

It's sort of, it's not quite as easy while traveling to do open phone type stuff. And I've been gone for a long time, but we haven't done a lot, even when I've been here, for that matter, so. And last time we did it, Rich was all into, we gotta do it on Zoom and, you know, all the rest of this stuff, but we are going old school.

You have to dial a number. Some of you are not sure how to do that. We've had the same toll-free number. I don't know how long we've had this, but I mean, this thing, here, this is, there it is. This is how high tech we are.

I've had this thing taped to one of the microphone stands since we moved in here, definitely. So it's at least been 2006, and this very one. And I'm pretty sure this came before then, so I don't know, but 877 -753 -3341.

There you go, you got the graphic right there. Got four calls, okay, all right. So when we first, sort of like in debates, you know, when you ask for audience questions, you have to actually explain what the squiggly thing with the dot is.

So throw it out there, and we want to have the subjects be somewhat related, related to Sola Scriptura. And so we went through the first whole bank of calls and got one person that was actually calling on that subject, so yes.

So now, just because I want to make sure we don't have any rust in the system, because it's been so long since we've used it, or any barnacles in there, we're going to bring up the first caller kind of low.

So if he sounds dist, I'll bring him up to, you know, I just want to make sure that we don't blow anybody's eardrums out, you know?

Okay, but we should be starting with Josh, because he's calling long distance, right? Besides that, I'll go here to Josh, and I'm hearing myself, Rich, but anyway, it's not too bad. But we're going to Josh first, because Josh is in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Canada, and that means the Royal Canadian Mounted Police may be coming through his door at any moment and trampling him with a horse.

So therefore, we need to get to him as quickly as possible. So Josh, in Toronto, are you with us?

Yes, Dr. White, can you hear us?

Yes, my ear is bleeding, actually, but we're good.

Right, I think I can hear my voice back to me.

Yeah, you know, I don't know what the problem is with Rich, but you know, it's not like we haven't been doing this for 20 years, but you know, he keeps blaming the equipment, but the equipment has just been sitting here collecting dust, so, you know, what can I say?

Yep, I think it is, I think it is. But anyway, go ahead. Still there? Evidently, it says idle right now. It's gone. Maybe I shouldn't have made the comment about the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. It's ringing again.

Let's see if that, well, it was ringing. No, oh, there, there. Well, I don't know. All right, well, Josh tries to give us a call back. We'll see if we can get that. I have to, you gotta admit, what's freaky about that was that meh sound, because if you've, what was that 1960s thriller about nuclear war where, you know, one of our bombers got through on a, and so we had to drop bombs on, like, New York or something like that, and everybody had to be on a phone, and when the phone would go meh, that meant that that guy just got fried by a nuclear weapon.

None of you remember that, do you? It is real. In fact, I think it was, they turned it into a movie. I read the book, old school, actually read the book, sat there, pages, turned pages, it's old technology.

The Old Testament and New Testament Canon

All right, then, let's go to Ken in Houston. Hi, Ken.

Hello.

Yes, sir.

Yes, sir, I actually met you after the Tim Stratton debate when you were in Houston a couple of months ago. It was a great time.

Yes, I recall it well.

Yes, sir. My question was tangentially related, a little bit more related to the canon, and I apologize for that, but I have been dying to get a good answer to this. Who in particular can I look to, or in what time period in church history would I be able to look into, to point to and say, this is the same Bible that I have right now, Old Testament and New Testament?

Well, it sounds like what you're asking is someone who would reproduce a list of books identical to what you would have right now, and there would be two different answers because there are two different Testaments.

And so if you were to transport back to about the time, the translation, the Greek Septuagint, initially, the first translation, anyways, first books that were translated, about 200 years before Christ, and you were to go to the temple, you would find that they had laid up in the temple a certain set of books that would make the hands, would profane the hands.

In other words, the books are holy, the hands are not, so it would dirty the hands to touch them, and you would discover that the books that were laid up in the temple 200 years before Christ were the same books that you have in your Old Testament canon today.

Now, they were identified as 22 or 24 books, but that's because, for example, the Minor Prophets were considered one, Lamentations was frequently connected with Jeremiah, et cetera, et cetera. And so for the Old Testament, I'd highly recommend, if you really want to dig into stuff like this, Roger Beckwith's rather difficult to read, but very useful book, the Old Testament canon, New Testament Church.

And so what you have there is you have somewhat of a paradigm, you have the Jews had recognized that the bath kohl, the voice of God, had ended amongst the people, that there were no prophets any longer.

And about 200 years down the road from that, you have the laying up of these books in the temple, so that by the time you get to the time of Christ, Christ, of course, is quoting from all over what would be known as the Old Testament canon.

And you don't have any arguments between the Lord and his interlocutors concerning the nature of the canon. So if you look at the timeframes after the death, birth, and resurrection of Christ, they're very similar.

Now, you don't have a temple to lay books up in, but you have significantly more literature that gives us an insight into the life of the churches and the teaching and preaching of the churches. And so what you would find, for example, around, and the dates depend, but most people would say around 190 to 200, you have what's called the Muratorian Fragment.

Unfortunately, its name is descriptive, it's a fragment. And so it's not complete. And so we don't know everything that it had and contained within it, but it seems to give us a large majority of what we would have in the New Testament.

And as you look at the books that are quoted from across the Christian world, you find a tremendous amount of unanimity. So in other words, you might find local areas, like in Rome, where a book might be popular that isn't ever mentioned by anybody outside of that area.

So there are a few books that obtain some level of authority amongst small groups of people, but not across the whole church, such as Epistle of Barnabas or Shepherd of Hermas or something like that. But by the not fully late fourth century, about the seventh decade of the fourth century, you have Athanasius, when he sends out his 39th Festal Letter to announce to the churches what the date of Easter is going to be, which was a big controversy for literally hundreds of years.

It still is, actually, in Eastern churches with the new calendar, old calendar stuff. But anyway, when he sends out that letter, he rather unremarkably, it's certainly not with fanfare, it's not, I am creating the canon or anything else.

He's just, he lists the books of New Testament because there were books that were circulating. The Jews, not the Jews, the Gnostics were circulating weird books, like the Gospel of Peter and weird stuff like that.

And so it's like, and by the way, this is what I'm gonna be doing, the celebration of the resurrection. And by the way, just so that everybody is clear on this, here are the books of New Testament, and they're exactly what you have today.

There wasn't any council, and you can go on YouTube, and there are hooded monks running around in smoke-filled rooms, I'm not sure what they were smoking, but in videos, voting on Gospels, and none of that ever happened.

It's just, it's pure theater. It was the same kind of rather quiet process that you had with the Old Testament canon. No angels came down from heaven, no golden indexes. It was a rather passive project where the people of God recognize they don't have the authority to define these things, but God certainly has the ability, if he's going to inspire his word, to let his people know what it is, and he does so through the community.

It's a passive thing. So that would be, it has to be a two-part answer because there's a huge difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament, especially in the fact the Old Testament, you're talking 1 ,000 years for its writing, whereas the New Testament, you're looking for less than 100.

So it's a much faster situation in that context.

And I understand that. If I could ask, would it be an accurate statement than to simply, would this sentence be accurate, that Athanasius defended the Trinity using the same Bible that we have today?

Yes.

The same canon?

Definitely, definitely. Now, the only argument someone, if they're just trying to be argumentative, might try to throw out would be the nature of the Septuagint at that time, because there is, all the manuscripts we have of the Septuagint today are Christian in origin rather than Jewish in origin.

And so there are some questions as to what was contained in some of the Septuagint manuscripts, but yes, as far as his defense of the Trinity and stuff like that, he's not quoting from anything other than what we'd be quoting from today.

And it sounds like the aliens are landing in Houston.

I understand it. Well, thank you. Thank you for your time.

I appreciate it, sir. Thanks, Ken. All right, God bless. Yeah, that is the one advantage to Zoom, I guess, is, you know, you got that. We never got, we never, I'm a little concerned that we now have a political prisoner in, in Canada.

You know, we chuckle, but I'm not sure we should chuckle at all about that. So, anyway. All right, let's talk to Frank in New Jersey. Hi, Frank.

Hi, James.

You're taking my call, so my question, I didn't, I don't know if Rich told you, but I didn't know that this was a specific topic, so I need a moment to think, but I remember your debate. I think it was with Jerry Matitick, I can't remember, but it was about Scriptura and you were asked did the apostles preach the Sola Scriptura and you said no.

And at that time, I wasn't as well understanding in all the theology that I've learned from you, but I've been thinking about, like, the gifts were given to the Church to authenticate the Scriptures. So how do we know when that switched over to Sola Scriptura?

Okay, and I, you broke up, but I'm assuming what you said was you're referring to did the apostles function on the basis of Sola Scriptura? And when I said no, what I meant by that is, obviously, when you find the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, you're talking about a definable Scriptura to begin with.

And he was talking about during a period of divine revelation. So you can't function. And in a Roman Catholic debate, that's irrelevant because Rome, at least technically, not so much functionally over the past number of centuries, but at least technically agrees that revelation has ceased and that the New Testament documents were written by apostles and that the office of apostle ceased in antiquity as well.

Excuse me.

So in essence, there is a agreement that what we're debating today is the situation that exists today. And that is not a situation where revelation is going to be continuing. Now, obviously, that's very different than debating with a Mormon who claims continuing revelation.

Well, Mormons who used to claim continuing revelation is really not so much a vital part of Mormonism today. So your question would be, all right, if that's the case, then when does that become the experience of the church?

And obviously, the technical answer to that is when the last apostle dies and there's no more divine revelation to be given or to put it, I think, in a better, a less man-centered way, when the spirit completes the revelation of what the triune God wants the church to possess for the rest of her experience.

So God knows when that is. That actually is related to the difference between canon one and canon two, if you're familiar with that terminology that I've used a number of times in talking about the canon is known by God, which is an artifact of revelation, and canon two, the recognition, the passive recognition, which obviously takes place over time on the part of the church.

So canon one is known as soon as the last, whatever it was, we don't know what it was, but the last inspired revelation was provided. And then canon two would really, I think, come in a similar fashion in both the Old and New Testament.

And that is that while there may have been periods of time where there were, as I mentioned to the last caller, in regards to the Epistle of Barnabas or Shepherd of Hermas and like that, there may have been, and we don't know about this because we're talking about a much earlier time period, but there may have been maybe some writings of some prophets that we're not aware of that in his hometown, somewhere in Israel, there were Jews who believed that those were scriptural, but it never became something that all the Jewish people as a whole ever viewed as being scriptural.

So there may have been a period of time like that. It's too far back for us to have any knowledge of that. But then over time, you have this recognition that encompasses the entirety of the community in all places.

And you have the same process going on there in about the same period, amount of time. And so it's a discernment process. And of course, it's a communication process because we look back and we communicate instantly.

I mean, for crying out loud, for the vast majority of the history of the world, the idea that you could be sitting in a place called New Jersey, literally talking to me, and there are people in South Africa listening to you and me talk concurrently at the same time would have been considered witchcraft.

I mean, just it's not possible. So I would imagine that those processes technically could have gone much faster had there been modern means of communication and things like that. There just weren't. And so you have very similar timeframes between the two.

So the answer would, interestingly enough, go along with the recognition of canon one and canon two and the timeframes involved with those.

Right, so by canon one and canon two, would you, that's like the theological view of it and the historical view of it.

Well, canon one is the canon as known by God. It's an artifact of revelation. It's not an object of revelation. It's when God is the one who inspires scripture, it is unique since he inspired more than one book but did not inspire all books.

Then the canon comes into existence simply by the exercise of divine power. It's a necessary reality. And hence, when the last book that he intends his church to have is given, then that canon exists and it's known perfectly to God.

Excuse me. I'm gonna have to put the cough drop, which is not a cough drop, but it's the mute. You have to put it closer so I can grab it. And then canon two is the passive recognition of what God has done by the church, which is analyzed by history, by, well, the books that were laid out in the temple and the commentaries of the Jews and things like that with the Old Testament writings, early church fathers in the New Testament.

When it comes to recognizing scripture as authoritative, you know, the Catholic church will say that it was deemed scripture rather than passively accepted.

Well, but you gotta be careful there because a fair, sharp Roman Catholic knows that there are numerous instances, well, from the earliest writings that we have. In fact, hey, Frank, I'll use your phone call as a reminder to let people know that we're just now announcing that last weekend in September, actually it goes into October 1st, I believe, I will be teaching early church history at Grace Bible Theological Seminary in Conway, Arkansas.

And this will be one of the topics that we will be addressing, obviously. And we will be looking very carefully at those early writings and from the earliest writings we have, whatever they are, whether it's Clement, whether it's the Didache, you've got Ignatius, you've got the Epistle of Diognetus, all of these are soaked in the recognition already of authoritative New Testament writings.

And that's before there is anybody in the city of Rome who could even be anachronistically thought of as a Pope because the monarchical Episcopate doesn't develop in Rome until about 140. And so well before even anybody in Rome thought their bishop was somehow superior to everybody else, you have New Testament scripture functioning as New Testament scripture.

And Rome, of course, does not then give us a quote-unquote dogmatic definition of the canon of scripture until the 16th century. So you can't go that direction and there are Roman Catholic apologists that know that.

So they're much more nuanced in their way of expressing that.

Yeah, so after the Reformation, Rome declared or dogmatically defined the Apocrypha, the scriptures. So how would they, like, if it's always been scripture, how would they, like, are they saying that, you know, from the beginning of the church, it was seen as scripture, but now we're just making the declarative enunciation towards that?

Well, they didn't bother to say that. It's similar to saying that the church universal has always understood Matthew 16 and 18 the way that the First Vatican Council did. Well, it's just a lie. It's just not true.

The documentation is, remember, the entire papacy would not exist today without a mountain of forged quotations from the early church. So Rome has not had to deal, think about it. I'm not trying to offend my Roman Catholic friends by making this parallel, but it's a very valid parallel.

Up until around mid, probably about 2005, that area, the Jehovah's Witnesses were able to control the knowledge of the history of their movement amongst their own people very effectively because there wasn't something called the internet.

And so they were able to publish just outrageous statements in their publications because their people didn't have any way of really finding out one way or the other. And so through the history of Rome, it was only about 12, 14 years ago, I debated a Roman Catholic attorney on Long Island, and he used a forged citation from Augustine.

And so, I mean, the ability to identify these things is really, really, really, really modern. We didn't have the ability to do these types of things in the past because we didn't have the technology, but now we can.

And so it's important to recognize that anybody today knows that Melito Sardis and Jerome and Gregory the Great, and all the way up through Cardinal Jimenez, the cardinal who interviewed Luther, they all rejected the apocryphal books as canon.

Yeah.

And so there was a very clear tradition that goes all the way back to the earliest period. And then there were others who did, and it was primarily because, were you dependent upon the Greek Septuagint?

Did you have access to the Hebrew canon? It depended on your knowledge of those particular things. And so at the Council of Trent, there's no internet. So you can say what you want, and you can make claims as you want, but you can't do that as much today.

So it's a different world that we live in than they did back then. And so today, a Roman Catholic apologist, you'd have to ask them, how do you deal with the reality that people like popes specifically said, Second Maccabees wasn't scripture, not part of the canon?

How do you deal with Jerome's testimony? How do you deal with Melito Sardis? These guys, these are the guys who actually had access to the Jewish canon itself. And how do you know that the council fathers at Trent, knew more than all they did?

Because there's no evidence they did. So anyway.

So I was wondering, I think it's very important, but I feel like this is kind of dismissed, and especially with the current pope, they're supposed to be the vicar of Christ, but they say a lot of things that contradict what a Christian would say.

Yeah, can you imagine if the canon was dependent upon Frankie? Oh, that would be pretty, that'd be pretty wild. Yeah.

Yeah, we have the same name, but I was actually born Catholic, not practicing, but I was in the world, but that's a different story. It was just a cultural thing. But so I feel like a lot of times I just, they watered down that hard line of, okay, well, he didn't say it, you know, as like without authority, like thus says the Lord or something like that.

Right, right.

I'm like, so it's the only Christian when he prefaces his statements by saying that? Like, you can't, I don't know how you could do that, because it would be anathema by Rome anytime in history.

Well, real quickly, because we've got other callers to get to, but the whole concept of papal infallibility to me is one of the most worthless dogmatic assertions, because when you really press on it, as we have in the debates we've done on the subject, what you discover is you can never know if what the Pope is saying is infallible until about 40 years later after both you and he are dead.

So what good is that? I mean, you can't know. So if Frankie says something about, you know, who am I to judge about homosexuality or something like that, obvious that's not meant to be some type of dogmatic definitional thing.

But the point is, how do you know? Does he have to use that specific formula that's set out? And even then, the fact of the matter is, if you can explain away the fact that for 400 years, every single Bishop of Rome that took the chair of Peter anathematized Honorius as a heretic, and yet Honorius is one of the infallible Popes, if you can figure that one out, you can figure anything out.

That's just all there is to it. There's that, yeah, that's the way it is. So anyway, Frank, thanks for your phone call from New Jersey today. Hope that was helpful to you. And all right, God bless you.

Bye-bye.

Sola Scriptura and the Regulative Principle of Worship

All right, let's see here. Looks like Ryan has been on hold the longest. Hello, Ryan.

Hello, Dr. White. Thanks for taking my call.

Yes, sir.

I think we should probably first pray for our friend Josh and his equestrian encounter. He could be in a world of hurt by now.

Well, that poor lady that had the equestrian encounter was in a world of hurt. So yeah, poor Josh. I mean, that squeal did sound a little bit like something really bad happened. So yeah, we're definitely praying for Josh.

Anyway, oh, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. What, Rich? Oh, he's texted you a couple of times? Are you certain that that's not the Mounties texting you with his, according to Rich, he's texted a few times.

He's having trouble getting through. And I'm just like, are you sure that's not the Mounties texting you? I mean, how would you know? I have no idea, you know?

Sounds like big brother to me.

It does sound like big brother to me. Anyways, Ryan, well, I noticed I don't have a location for you. So how do I know you're not big brother, hmm?

Sure enough, I am in Washington, just a couple of hours away from Moscow, where they debated Pastor Wilson a couple of weeks ago. That's where I'm hiding out.

Well, that is, you're hiding out amongst the enemy, because Washington State, I'm gonna tell you, when the big one hits, Washington and Oregon are going with California and they're gonna float off to China.

I'm just trying to warn you right now. Unless you're in the eastern part of the state, then you might be okay.

I am an hour and 58 minutes from Moscow. So that tells you how eastern I am.

Okay, that's close, man. If you pray, maybe the Lord will let you stay. Anyway.

My question revolves around Sola Scriptura and the sufficiency of Scripture, and does affirming those types of doctrines, does it necessitate affirming the regulative principle of worship?

Well, obviously, the relationship that exists between the regular, let's make sure everybody's understanding what in the world we're talking about, or they're all gonna tune out. The regulative principle of worship is the concept, and this is why it's related to the question, is the concept that God's word determines what is pleasing to him in worship, and therefore, you have to have a biblical foundation, a biblical basis for what you do in worship.

And that's a theological conclusion that frequently requires looking at how worship was handled in the Old Testament. There will be examples from the Old Testament where strange worship was rejected by God, and then that has to be mediated through looking at the New Testament, and the, I guess what we would call, what seems like evident divergences between some of the churches in some of the issues related to worship there.

And so part of the relationship then is, is it God's intention to provide in the canon of scripture a sufficient amount of revelation, nature of revelation, to provide that regulative principle, and how strict could that regulative principle be?

This was a major area of debate at the time of the Reformation, because, to be honest with you, the issue had languished from an exegetical perspective for at least 1 ,100 years maybe, probably, at that point in time.

And obviously, at the time of the Reformation, part of the issue you have to deal with is there were, you had the Radical Reformation, and the reality that the Reformers were attempting to balance between that Radical Reformation and the tendencies toward radicalism even amongst their own people.

And so you have someone like an Ulrich Zwingli, who himself is an accomplished musician, a tremendous musician, but he adopts the idea that that instrumental music is not to be used in the churches. And so, during all of that, and it's difficult for us to analyze some of these things, partly because of a lack of information, partly because that information isn't necessarily all that accessible to us, it was really an attempt on the part of the Reformers to make application of Sola Scriptura, which had become the formal principle of the Reformation, but at the same time to avoid really ecclesiastical and liturgical anarchy, I guess would be the way to put it.

I can't help but mention, I told a story when I preached from Luther's pulpit in the Castle Church in Wittenberg in 2017. I told the story of what had happened in that very room when the Lord's Supper in both forms, so the cup and the bread, was offered to the people and that they had surged forward and that there had been such a, the place was filled because the people had been kept from the cup for hundreds of years, and so the idea of partaking in that, they so wanted to do that, and yet there were people who were scandalized by that, seeing people partaking of the cup, and so where is the tradition, because no one's scandalized today by, everybody in my church partakes of the cup, and so that was a very challenging period of time, and one of the questions that all of us who are Reformed have to ask ourselves, I'm not, don't know where you are, but I'm just speaking for myself, how easy is it for the decisions that were made in a very different context, that being the Reformation and the decades or centuries, century after that, how is it for the, is it possible that the decisions made then can become a new liturgical tradition, in the centuries after that, that just simply can't be examined anymore because it has been enshrined in confessions of faith and in liturgical practice and all sorts of things like that, and yet when you look back at the Reformation, you realize, man, they were facing some tough stuff, I mean, could I have gone as far as they did, would I have been as bold as they were, or is it possible there are some things that they should have gone farther, but look, in their experience, this is what people had done for 1 ,100 years, I mean, people were just starting to get away from the concept of anachronism back then, where they thought that everybody had always dressed like they dressed and done things the way they did, because that's all anyone knew, all of that's pretty fascinating, and so when you get to the regulative principle of worship, obviously, it's a desire, first and foremost, to recognize that, biblically speaking, God has always been the one to define his worship, and what's fascinating to me, now, I'm not an expert on principles of regulative worship, Scott Anuel at the seminary would be the guy to talk to, he's our worship and liturgy guy, and he's really, really good at it, but just as I think about it, the one thing that really strikes me along these lines, and this has nothing to do with Sol Sculptura, but that's okay, I'm talking about it anyways, is the fact that the worship that is seen in Isaiah 6, moves seamlessly into the worship in Revelation 4 and 5, with, obviously, the vital reality of what has happened in the incarnation, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, now you have the Lamb before the throne, but the point is that the book of Revelation is telling us that what was pleasing to God in worship in heaven is still pleasing to God in worship in heaven, and we now have a greater participation through our union with the Lamb, that's an amazing thing, but that doesn't result in some massive change to where worship is, well, whatever we feel it should be, so for me, I think that there does need to be, if we want to have balance, it needs to be based upon the reality that God has revealed what his worship is to look like, that doesn't mean it's gonna look the exact same in every single congregation, but there should be a strongly biblical foundation because our tendency is to get man-centered, our tendency is to lose balance and to lose connectedness to the fact that worship on earth is supposed to be reflecting what's going on in heaven, that's my contribution to that, take it for what it's worth because I don't claim to be any kind of expert or anything like that on that particular subject, it's not something I've read a bunch of books on, things like that, so there you go.

Well, the humility with it, too, just one quick clarification, you said everybody in your church partakes of the cup, I listened to a debate with you and Pastor Wilson in Moscow a couple weeks ago, I'm pretty sure not everyone is partaking of the cup.

Well, obviously I meant Communicant members.

I'm just messing with you.

Communicant members, yes, yes, that's true. Yeah, does all really mean all? There you go.

Well, yeah, I think you were too friendly with Pastor Wilson, if it's any consolation.

Well, and the first thing that I said to almost anybody that I talked to in the days afterwards to my friends, fellow elders, was I said, if I'm gonna be criticized, it will be for the fact that we were too collegial with one another, but I was gonna say this anyways, and Grace has given me the opportunity of doing it.

I said this after I spoke at Grace Agenda last year in Moscow. And again, I spent a full week in Moscow. I was with pretty much everybody up there, but I did get, again, to spend a fair amount of time with Doug and talking with Doug.

And I need to repeat what I said last year so that people can hear this and understand this. And I think people will see this, especially when they see the Man Rampant episode that we recorded, the two sweater vest dialogues we did, where for some strange reason, we're wearing the exact same sweater vest and shirt.

It's really weird. That's because we recorded them back to back, obviously. But Doug Wilson is who he is at all times. There are no errors. I sat at taco time eating crisp meat burritos with Doug Wilson, and he's exactly as he is on Blog and Mayblog when he's doing Man Rampant, when he's preaching.

He is who he is all the time. And I think that's important. People are sometimes surprised that I try to be that way, too, that I don't put on airs, that I cut up and have a sense of humor, as does Doug, for that matter.

He normally does it through his massive vocabulary, but he is exactly who he portrays himself to be. He lives a very frugal life. He drives the same old beat-up pickup truck. I'm a little concerned, given that every November they burn something, that that pickup truck may be destined for the afterlife in the future, too.

But anyway, so the response of one of my fellow elders was it was exactly the way that it needed to be. And I felt that way, too. But anyways, I appreciate you watching and listening, and I hope that was all very useful to you.

It was, sir, and I did appreciate the attitude and the spirit that you guys modeled for Christians on how we can engage one another about these types of issues. So thanks for all that you do, Dr. White.

I'll let you go. I know you got a call.

So thank you. Thanks, Ryan. All right, God bless.

All right, bye-bye.

Cessationism, Revelatory Gifts, and Sola Scriptura

All right, all right. So I think probably we get these last three, and we, well, I don't know. Let's just get the last three. I don't want to have people holding on forever. So let's talk to Taylor in Ohio.

Hi, Taylor.

Hi, Dr. White. How are you?

Well, I've got a cough that doesn't want to go away, but other than that, I'm doing pretty good.

Good. First, no, thanks for taking my call, and thank you for your clear teaching and pointing us to Christ. It really is always encouraging to listen to you.