A Little KJV Music, A Little Wild Leftism, then Trent Horne on Sola Scriptura

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00:30

Well, greetings. Welcome to the dividing line. Winter came back here in Phoenix for a while. So that's, that's pretty cool.

00:36

Um, and in fact, it's very cool. Um, outside of the moment, not going to last too long, going to be 70 or something by a

00:43

Saturday, but Hey, a few days of, uh, fifties and almost freezing at night. That's pretty cool. Um, lots of weird stuff going on in the world today, uh, like up in Iowa and, um, you know, that whole caucus thing.

00:57

That may be, this may be the last run for that. This, this could, this could be it. Uh, the Democrats sank it.

01:03

I, but I, I'm going to tell you something. I'm good.

01:08

I'm going to tell you something. If, if I were Bernie Sanders, I wouldn't be feeling overly loved, uh, by the democratic leadership.

01:20

I mean, isn't it, has it, wasn't it proven like pretty much completely that they are out to get him last time and kept him from winning.

01:27

Um, and so, Hmm, Hmm. Really makes you wonder, um, if, if they're feeling the burn too.

01:40

Yeah. Lighting the ballots on fire. Yeah. Uh, I mean,

01:45

Hey, you know, we, we all know Bernie's actually a commie. Uh, and, and so, and there are certain people that will be very upfront in saying that if he ends up winning the nomination.

01:55

So anyway, the reason I mentioned that is I had saved, um, back on January 31st, back on January 31st, way, way back

02:07

January 31st, I had saved the article where, um, uh,

02:14

Elizabeth Warren had told, excuse me, a crowd of supporters in Iowa, uh, that her potential secretary of education would be someone who's taught in a public school and that the nominee would also need to be vetted by a young trans person.

02:39

Quote, I'm going to have a secretary of education that this young trans person interviews on my behalf.

02:45

And only if this person believes that our secretary or secretary of education nominee is absolutely committed to creating a welcoming environment, a safe environment, and a full educational curriculum for everyone.

02:59

Will that person actually be advanced to be secretary of education? Now, uh, Warren appeared to be referring to Jacob, a nine year old transgender boy, which

03:12

I assume means as a girl that she spoke with during a CNN presidential candidate forum on gay and transgender issues in October of 2019.

03:26

So a nine year old, and what do you even say?

03:38

What do you even say? The fact is there is no one on the left that would even raise an eyebrow to say, you know, that might not be wise.

03:54

Nope. Can't do it. Can't do it. Can't say it. Got it. You just have to go. Great.

04:01

Wonderful. I'm progressive. This is, this is what we're facing.

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And yet we have people, we honestly have many Christians going, well, you know, you know,

04:15

I mean, if you're, if you're listening to all these words, so welcoming environment, safe environments.

04:28

Um, you, you, if you don't hear the critical theory, social justice, wackoism behind that, then you're not listening.

04:40

Um, none of these people care about a welcoming environment for like people who believe like every single person in the

04:51

U S government, uh, up until 20 years ago, um, every founding father, every president, every

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Senator, every representative, every judge, every Supreme court judge, um, everybody, um, they're all out.

05:07

And if you don't see the revolution here, then you're just not even looking. They've already, they've already removed your brain and put mush in its place and you'll just do whatever they tell you to do.

05:20

Um, but it, but, but we have a lot of Christians going, oh, no, no, that's, I'm not, not really sure.

05:25

It's a real problem, you know, with, um, with this worldview of transgenderism, homosexuality, changing marriage, you know, uh, uh, you know, it's there really anything in the

05:35

Bible that says there's not 135 genders. I mean, I don't remember seeing the 135 genders in the

05:40

Bible, you know, maybe it's maybe, you know, yeah. Yeah.

05:46

Yeah. And I don't know how you can't see the totalitarianism amongst these folks, but it's there anyway.

05:52

Um, so we've got wild and crazy stuff going on, uh, politically. Um, but there's always wild and crazy stuff elsewhere in the world.

06:00

So I thought let's start with something a little lighter that wasn't very light, but let's start with something a little lighter.

06:05

So we have, we have a musical selection for you today. Um, there are a couple of folks on Twitter.

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I, I don't know if like, they just have really cool jobs that allow them to sit around and watch hours and hours and hours of videos to find this kind of stuff.

06:23

I don't, I don't know. Um, but, uh, yeah, there's, uh, there's this, um, there's this, uh, yeah, some of them post just quotations from, uh, independent fundamentals,

06:45

Baptist preachers, and then sometimes you get a musical thing. Now I suggested this, uh,

06:51

I suggested this to, um, our music leader and I didn't get a real positive response, uh, unfortunately, uh, to this, but I think it,

07:03

I think it would go over great. And it, it, you know, it only requires one guitar. Um, and so I thought, but you need to listen to the words because the first part, you know, it's just, you know, just saying that grandma got it right.

07:20

Um, and, uh, you know, my grandma did I, my, my grandma died. Was that the year we moved somewhere between 74 and 78.

07:29

Some of you don't even have are going, wow, that's a long time ago. Um, but, um, you know,

07:37

I get, I get honoring your grandma and stuff like that. I think that's, I think that's cool.

07:43

Um, but then you need to listen to the first verse, which is done solo before the chorus kicks in and the kids who look like they're really into this, uh, help out less.

07:55

So let's, and at the very least, I think summer might be watching. So summer this there's, there's four kids.

08:01

There's four little kids here. Plus the three big kids, maybe, you know, a little family music thing.

08:08

Um, all right. So let's, uh, let's, let's, let's, let's enjoy this. Your good old time religion is still good enough for me today.

08:45

When they talked about the Holy Bible, she never wondered which one they met.

08:52

She knew that the old King James was the one that the Lord had said, no higher criticism or wondering which part was true.

09:04

Cause she knew that criticizing was something that only sinners do.

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I still believe like grandma that you gotta be born again.

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That only the blood of Jesus can wash away your sin.

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Her good old time religion is still good enough for me today.

09:28

I still believe like grandma did. I'm gonna stick to the old time way.

09:35

Now it, it, it, it continues on to talk about how long skirts should be and, and, and stuff like that.

09:42

Um, uh, it, it's only, we're actually halfway through it. So yeah, but, but there you go.

09:48

I, I, um, like I said, I just thought maybe you'd, you'd appreciate, um, you know, like that criticism remark that criticism is only something sinners do.

10:03

And, um, so higher criticism is, is what higher, higher sinners do.

10:14

Yeah. So I guess lower sinners, Tim Bushong's calling right now.

10:25

Oh, okay. So he is these relatives or something.

10:32

He wants to, wants to say, Hey, no, that's, that's, that's not, no. Uh, yeah.

10:42

Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. There you go. Yeah. So, Hey, let's, let's not, let's not get too serious yet.

10:49

Um, somebody directed me to this. In the olden days, this would have been radio free

10:58

Geneva material, but not going to go there. I have actually some serious stuff to do today, but, um, uh, there is an amazing amount of stuff out there on YouTube and running around the various parts of the internet that it just stuns me how many times my own name comes up and, and I, and I'm just like, but I've never said anything even remotely like that.

11:31

Not, not, not even close to that. And yet, you know, like I said, if, if I believe 90 % of what

11:38

I read about myself on the internet, I'd slap myself every day. But, um, so this is one of those things where you can make a, a computer generated something.

11:50

Um, and here's, well, you just sort of have to watch it. Let's, uh, let, let, let, let's look at this.

11:57

God wants everyone to repent so that he can forgive everyone. The Bible says

12:02

God is calling all men everywhere to repent. JS, because God calls everyone to repent, doesn't mean that God wants everyone to repent.

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God wants most people to sin and go to hell. That is why he created almost everyone. God delights in the death of the wicked.

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It is for his glory. Only the few elect were created to sin and repent and go to heaven. That doesn't make any sense.

12:28

Why would God call everyone to repent if he doesn't want everyone to repent? God's ways are not our ways.

12:34

Who are you to reply against God? I don't think you are using those verses, right? Besides, the

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Bible says that he died not only for our sins, but for the sins of the whole world.

12:46

That doesn't mean he died for everyone. Whole world only means a very few people, the elect. That is not what it says.

12:53

Where did you hear that? James White and John Piper. They interpret the Bible for me.

12:58

I also idolize R .C. Sproul, Paul Washer, and John McArthur. Wayne Goodham's systematic theology was probably inspired by God.

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You deny what the Bible plainly says. You are adding to the Bible by saying that whole world only means a few people, only the world of the elect.

13:16

The Bible says God wants everyone to... Okay, so you get the idea. You just...

13:21

What... Well, if I put it this way, it's gonna be, what possesses people to do this kind of thing?

13:28

Well, okay, all right. But what's scary is not only do you encounter people who really do think that's what we're saying, but then because they hear other people saying that, then they'll...

13:44

They come up to me and they're expecting to meet a three -headed monster or something, and they start saying, well, don't you believe?

13:52

And I'm just like, where did you hear that on the internet? And it's stuff like this, where you just have somebody who either is completely clueless or massively deceived or something,

14:09

I don't know, to throw this kind of stuff out. But again, this one, interestingly enough, it's almost the exact same length as the song was.

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I could have let them both go, but you still have stuff out there. And as long as it's animated, that seems to catch people's attention.

14:27

But wow, there's a lot of bad, bad, bad, bad, bad stuff out there.

14:33

And yeah. So anyways, I do need to get to the important stuff today because there are so many vitally important issues and topics that don't get discussed today because they are foundational and so much of our conversation isn't on the foundational stuff.

15:00

It's up here someplace and we never get anywhere because we're always up here and don't see that the person we're talking to is on a completely different foundational level than we are.

15:13

And so if we don't dig down, if we don't think presuppositionally, if we don't listen to what someone's saying and see where the presuppositional differences between us are, well, that's why the internet is the internet.

15:29

That's the way it is. I mean, let me just give you an example before we go into the topic here. No, I was actually preaching during the

15:38

Super Bowl and during the halftime thing. I don't know exactly when it was, but I was either driving home or it was during a

15:46

Lord's Supper baptismal service or something. I don't know when it was, but I did not watch the game and I had no interest in the game.

15:54

What really bugged me is Twitter kept throwing this AT &T

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Saturday night super something at me. And I kept clicking on the thing and going,

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I don't want to see this ad. It threw it at me three times. Every time

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I kept saying, I don't want to see this ad because it was the same thing as the, as the halftime show.

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I mean, women, uh, barely, barely dressed at all.

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Nothing left the imagination, um, showing their various bodily parts to the camera, uh, on purpose and men dressed in homosexual bondage stuff.

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This is what AT &T thought I wanted to watch. Um, so, but I started hearing that night and the next morning about what had happened during the halftime thing and you, you couldn't avoid it.

16:57

I mean, there was pictures and there was videos and, and, and the whole nine yards and everyone has at least seen enough of it to know exactly what in the world was going on.

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Well, if you don't think presuppositionally, the conversation that's been going on is incredibly confusing.

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Um, if you don't, if you can't step back and ask the question, what's underneath what this person is saying, why is this person responding to this material the way that they are?

17:30

Why have I seen people who call themselves Christians who are literally talking about, um, if you, if you object to what took place during that halftime show, which was a hyper -sexualized soft core porn type presentation that objectified women 1000%, um, and all the rest of this stuff.

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Well, if you object to that, then you're a racist, um, because they are

18:05

Latina as if it would have been different if it was a

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Scottish woman or an English woman or a French woman or whatever. Um, and you, you hear that kind of thing and you need to go that.

18:23

No, that has, that has nothing to do. Why would someone think that way? What's what's at the foundation?

18:30

What, where are they starting? And that's why critical theory is so important is because it goes to the foundation and cracks that foundation and breaks that and breaks it up.

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So you can't, you can't have a foundation. You can't build a building on sand. Jesus told us that. Um, but once you break the epistemological foundation using critical theory, you got nothing left to build on.

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And that's, that's the exact purpose of these, these folks. So you have to think presuppositionally.

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And when you do, there are certain bedrock issues and you may believe the truth about certain bedrock issues.

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But if you don't know why you believe the truth about those bedrock issues, then you are a person living in a very dangerous world.

19:30

I can, I cannot tell you how many people over the years

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I have encountered. They'll call up here, they'll email, they'll get in touch with me in some way, shape or form.

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My dear brother in ministry, my wife, my husband, my children, whatever, they have gone off into such and such a religion and I just never thought this could happen.

20:01

And this is what they say converted them. And it's very often either an issue right one level above or it's that foundational, those foundational issues that we don't like talking about, that we don't like dealing with, we don't like preaching sermons on.

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But without those foundational beliefs, then our faith can't stand.

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And that's, all of a sudden, would you please come talk to this person as if once the foundation has come apart,

20:36

I can just come in and repair the foundation, rebuild everything. Generally, once the foundation goes, you get to rebuild the whole house.

20:44

And that's what you've got in situations like that. So I, people ask, well, why would someone who was raised in a church for 30 years of their life, all of a sudden do this type of thing?

20:56

Because in 30 years of their life, they assumed the truthfulness of this body of beliefs, but they weren't instructed as to why it was true or how they're related to one another.

21:09

You know, it's sort of like back east, doesn't happen here. Well, guess up north it does. But, you know, you get water in between things and then it freezes and thaws and freezes and that water can break rock as long as there's the cracks there to get it into.

21:27

And same thing when it comes with one's entire system of belief. And so I've talked to a lot of former us and it is the unwillingness or just simply not being taught to ever think presuppositionally, to see the foundations of argument, to see what is important about your own belief that is so important.

21:51

And that's why we deal with Sola Scriptura, because there are lots of people who will say, oh, yes, sufficiency of scripture.

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But what does that mean? What does that exactly mean? When you say scripture is sufficient, are you saying that there is a simple text to look at that will answer every question that we could possibly ask about the use of CRISPR technology in altering the human genome today?

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When we're talking about the sufficiency of scripture, we have to be very specific as to what we're saying.

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We have to understand why we're making the assertion that we're making. And a lot of people just don't.

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They just don't know why we believe it. They just know that it's foundational.

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And once they stop believing it, that pretty much means they're not a Christian anymore. And so they go off into, they go looking for something else to take the place of these foundational, these foundational truths.

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And so we have, for example, been looking at Jay Dyer's comments on Sola Scriptura.

23:07

I'm going to continue that. But last evening, yeah,

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I think it was last evening, my fellow pastor,

23:19

Jeff Durbin texted me and he said, please, please, please, please, please. And he sent me a URL. And once I clicked on it, it was about a 45 minute rebuttal of a portion or portions of a sermon that Jeff preached a few weeks ago at Apologia Church on Sola Scriptura.

23:46

I was there and was made reference to a number of times. And it was very, very, very much in line with what you would read in Sola Scriptura, Scripture Alone, you know,

24:06

Roman Catholic controversy. I've addressed this issue many times, done many debates on the subject.

24:15

Interestingly enough, mainly a long time ago, haven't done a lot recently.

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It doesn't mean that the issue isn't as important. It's just, it's nice to be able to move on from some of these things.

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And what is interesting to me, this was a rebuttal from Trent Horn of Catholic Answers. And so it differs a little bit from dealing with Eastern Orthodoxy and Jay Dyer's stuff.

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But it just strikes me that Trent does not seem to understand our position as well as people in the past did.

24:57

And I started thinking about people in the past. Well, who do you debate on these issues? Well, it's interesting.

25:03

A number of times, Jerry Matytix, former PCA ordained minister.

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Scott Hahn, didn't debate him, but he was quote -unquote reformed.

25:17

Not that we didn't want to, or that challenge is still there. But even

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St. Genes went to Westminster. And others like Patrick Madrid learned a lot about what

25:34

Protestants believe from Matytix. I'm not sure they'd admit this anymore, but Matytix and people like that, they came out of a reformed background.

25:43

I don't know how much exposure Trent Horn has had to any type of meaningful, consistently reformed theology.

25:54

And so it is interesting because, for example, Carl Keating's Catholicism and Fundamentalism was a very simplistic set of arguments because what

26:06

Carl was accustomed to dealing with was Jack Chick style, independent fundamentalist Baptist anti -Catholicism.

26:14

And the arguments that you're going to use there are not the arguments you're going to use against someone who's a graduate of Westminster Seminary.

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So when I fired up the video, I actually watched it this morning, it was focused only upon a certain portion of the sermon.

26:37

And Jeff and I are going to respond to this next week, but as an advertiser.

26:44

And because I was like, really? This would be so illustrative of why it's important to understand foundational issues so you can detect.

27:01

Rome has had many, many, many centuries to be involved in sophistry.

27:11

A lot of the people who convert to Roman Catholicism do so for advancement of their careers, things like that.

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But a lot of it's because, hey, I want to have a seat at the table.

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I want to be seen as a scholar. I want to be seen as philosophically advanced.

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And all this stuff about Jesus's righteousness imputed to me as my sole basis of relationship to God.

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And I'm willing to let that go for this more nuanced understanding type stuff.

27:50

And there are a number of people that we could name that have gone that route over the decades.

27:57

I mean, we, what? It's about 1980.

28:04

Man, I still wish we had the old stuff that we did long, long ago, prior to the late 90s, back in the late 80s.

28:16

I remember once we actually had a Roman Catholic priest in studio once.

28:22

I don't know if you remember that. With, I think, I think, was that with Bart Brewer?

28:29

Remember? Benny hooked us up with Bart Brewer. And I remember what the studio looked like and the whole nine yards, but I forget what station it was.

28:39

And I know we don't have any of that stuff anymore. But I wish we did because it would also give me dates.

28:48

It would be interesting to me now to know when I first started interacting with Scott Windsor via BBS and stuff on Roman Catholicism.

28:59

And because, just to mention in passing, my first two books were on Roman Catholicism. No one expected that.

29:06

They expected Letters to a Mormon Elder to be the first book that I wrote. Yeah. Yeah.

29:15

So that was, it was 87 when, wow. How do you remember that?

29:21

September 14th, 1987, huh? So if we, so if we Googled that, Rich is telling me that John Paul visited

29:31

Phoenix, September 14th, 1987. We went out to the

29:38

Arizona State University and passed out the tracks. Uh, yeah, he, what?

29:44

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right, right, right over, right across the street. Um, uh, we passed out, we, we wiped out our entire supply of tracks because the only tracks we had were, uh, printed on a dot matrix printer.

29:59

So this is before we got our first laser printer. WYSIWYG. You nailed it, huh?

30:07

September 14th, 1987. So, um, we had these, these tracks, which were actually quite literally hard to read.

30:15

But anyway, we went out and so we had started dealing with Roman Catholicism, probably about 86,

30:24

I'd guess then. 85, 86, somewhere around there. Yeah.

30:36

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, you think he's late?

30:41

Well, anyways, it was sometime in the late 1980s, middle of the late 1980s. We started dealing with, with Roman Catholicism and people did not expect that that would be the first thing that I published on.

30:55

We had been dealing with Mormonism from the beginning of the ministry. Uh, but immediately

31:02

I saw, and I'm very glad, obviously in hindsight,

31:07

I'm very glad the Lord did it this way. It is, it's one thing to see the errors of Mormonism.

31:12

It's another thing to see the errors of Roman Catholicism, where you have a Trinitarian system, um, but an authoritarian system.

31:23

You have to deal with the issue of authority. You have to start thinking very clearly on a presuppositional level.

31:29

And so that's, that's where we started. And that issue of sola scriptura was clearly the focus of the early

31:43

Catholic, the early Catholic apologists in the current movement. If you're, if you're thinking about St.

31:51

Joseph's Catholic communications, Catholic answers, people like that, that really had their origination around the same time period.

32:02

Um, that was their focus and it remains their focus. Now today, tough days, tough days.

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And I'm wondering if some of the attacks I'm seeing on sola scriptura aren't, at least from Roman Catholics, aren't due to the fact that this is sort of a defense mechanism.

32:19

Um, you literally have two Popes right now who plainly do not believe the same things and are in contradiction with one another on important issues.

32:30

The issue of priestly celibacy is right up front, but don't fool yourself.

32:38

Anyone who listened to and listens to Ratzinger, Benedict XVI, and then listens to Francis, how they handle scripture, how they interact with people.

32:56

Um, Francis's conversation with the little boy with the atheist father who had passed away.

33:02

Francis saying, who am I to judge about homosexuality? Francis this, Francis that. The reality is plain that the worldview, theology, understanding of scripture of these two men is widely divergent, significantly wider than you would see between myself and my

33:26

Presbyterian brothers by a long shot.

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And this is really troubling to the Roman Catholic position. It's really troubling because of the fact that for a few decades now, their whole thing has been, hey, sola scriptura, blueprint for anarchy.

33:52

Well, then what explains the anarchy you guys are experiencing? Because you don't have sola scriptura, you have sola ecclesia.

34:03

You have the ultimate authority of the church. And back in the eighties, what we were hearing from Roman Catholics all the time was we have the

34:12

Pope. If we want to know how to interpret a text of scripture, we go to the Pope.

34:18

I'm not hearing as much of that because I think most conservative Roman Catholics recognize,

34:26

I'm not sure what I'd get if I went to Francis. I'm not sure what kind of interpretation

34:32

I'd get, but one thing's for sure. Um, you all right? Oh, okay. I was sitting here filling time.

34:39

I just started thinking about those tracks and trying to find them. Oh, okay.

34:44

Well, I'm sitting here filling time because I can't start the video. Oh, well, I don't know where he, the guy just disappears.

34:51

You know, it's just, there's nobody out there. He could be out in the parking lot. He could be driving away in his vehicle.

34:56

I don't know what he's doing. Um, but anyway, um, so, so the, the

35:05

Roman Catholics are struggling right now. And to make the kinds of arguments they did in the 1980s against Sola Scriptura, um, isn't going to work.

35:17

But at the same time, they have to deflect from what's going on with, with the papacy.

35:22

So I wonder if some of that isn't what this is all about. So I'm just going to do one section because like I said,

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Jeff and I are going to do this together next week. Um, but I'm going to do one section because this one section made me go, really?

35:39

So what you've got is you've got Jeff being played at high speed, which

35:45

I don't, well, I guess I do know how to do that. I guess I have done that in a video. Anyway, uh,

35:50

Jeff's being played at high speed and then Trent's responding.

35:57

And so let's, let's just look at this one section. This is uh, 34 minutes into the, uh, the thing we'll cover the other stuff.

36:07

Like I said, next week, Lord willing. One note as a side note, uh, neither the

36:13

Lord Jesus or the apostles ever quoted from the Apocrypha with the divine formula of what does

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Scripture say? Anything like that. Were they aware of the Apocrypha? Of course they were. Did they quote from the Apocrypha at times?

36:26

Never with the divine formula. They saw it as sometimes useful historical information. The Apostle Paul even quoted from Eratosthes of Cilicia and Epimenides of Crete.

36:33

These are pagan poets and prophets. It's not saying that they are actually inspired, but in Scripture, when the apostles are appealing to something is true, they say, what does the

36:42

Scripture say next? Okay. So that's where he paused. So let me just summarize.

36:49

Um, Jeff specifically said, I don't have time to unpack this. It's not my intention to do something on the

36:57

Apocrypha or the issue of Canon, but you just need to understand Roman Catholic apologists believe that Canon issues are their ace in the hole.

37:08

They are their go -to argument to shut anybody down. And I think they believe this primarily because they've never been primarily because most of them have never had pushback from the other side, from someone knowledgeable enough to go, you can't do that because you're asking questions that your position actually doesn't answer.

37:29

So why are you doing this? Um, and so they will go to it because they know that even if you do understand the history of the

37:42

Canon, the theology of the Canon in a debate, like if, and I've had this actually happen in situations where I was literally going to have 60 seconds.

37:55

I've had Roman Catholics raise the issue of the Canon and expect me to give a full orbed, uh, explanation of the origination of the

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Canon in 60 seconds. They can't do that without just simply going, the church tells me so.

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Um, which is a incredibly simplistic response, but, but this is, this is where they've, they've gone over and over again.

38:22

Well, how do you know Matthew wrote Matthew? Go back to 1993 when

38:30

John Paul came to World Youth Day. That was 93 in Denver, right? Was that 93 or 94?

38:37

93. And listen to, and in fact, I think if I recall correctly, since we've been in this studio, so since somewhere in 2006, uh, 2006, when we moved in here, right?

38:51

Okay. Somewhere along that line, I remember reviewing the debate that Keating and Madrid did with the two fundamentalist guys where they dodged me and did that debate.

39:07

They said, you go debate somebody else. And then they, they said they weren't going to debate while the Pope was there. And then once my, my debate with Jerry was scheduled, all of a sudden they found time to do a debate.

39:17

Um, and we went over the arguments they used. And I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that one of the arguments that was used was, how do you know

39:27

Matthew wrote Matthew? And the reason I remember that is because of the abysmal response that was given is because it says at the top of the page is a

39:35

King James version of the Bible, the gospel according to Matthew. Um, and that's all they had because the poor guys didn't know anything about canon issues or any of that kind of stuff at all.

39:47

So very common to throw that stuff, that, that kind of stuff out there. We have debated this issue.

39:54

We debated Gerry Matitix at Boston college on this. We did one with Gary Machuda on Long Island.

40:01

Um, we have responded to these issues and we have pushed back.

40:13

And of course, one of the, one of the questions that I, that I developed right after the debate with Jerry Matitix was the white question about how a believing

40:23

Jewish person 50 years before Christ could know that Isaiah and second chronicles were scripture because it puts the shoe back on the other foot and requires the

40:33

Roman Catholic to be coming up with specific, um, answers and responses to these things.

40:39

So the point is that we have the apocryphal books and Jeff simply mentioned in passing the fact that there is a fundamental difference in how the apostles treat the intertestamental literature over against the canonical literature.

40:58

Now you have your microphone up, so that must mean something. So the debate you're referring to occurred, yes, summer of 1993.

41:07

It was Pat Madrid and Carl Keating versus Bill Jackson and Ron Nemec. Yes. Remember that?

41:13

Yep. And so it was the Bible only in Denver, Colorado. And like you said, it was real interesting that you had put the, the challenge out there.

41:22

Oh no, no. We had, we had, we had challenged Keating Madrid to debate in Denver and they said, we don't feel it would be appropriate to debate while the

41:30

Holy Father is visiting. Why don't you debate Jerry Matitick's? Because the split had already taken place.

41:38

I think Jerry was already moving toward a Sedevacantist traditionalist perspective. Anybody who wants to see the other side of that or hear the other side of that, that debate is up on our

41:48

Sermon Audio channel in the Roman Catholicism section, not this one, but I just Googled it.

41:54

Yeah. The Roman Catholics are putting that, you know, MP3 out right and left for people to listen to, but you can hear the entire, what was it, two nights you debated

42:03

Jerry. Well, Jerry and I did set over seven hours on the papacy during that time. Yeah, on the papacy. First at Denver Seminary, the second night at that Presbyterian church.

42:11

Yes. Where John Denver was buried. That is on our Sermon Audio channel in the Roman Catholicism section. Okay. That one is, but did have, did you search for, if you look for Nemec, N -E -M -E -C at aomin .org,

42:26

is there a link to a dividing line where I reviewed that debate?

42:31

I don't think we were doing dividing lines in 1963. See, I remember it pretty clearly. Yeah. I'll look.

42:37

I'm pretty sure I did. It's painful to review, but I'm pretty sure

42:43

I did. So anyway, okay, so there's, what

42:50

Jeff has said is the apostles deal with the canonical scriptures as they were understood by the

43:02

Jews in a different way than they do what we call the Apocrypha or what the

43:07

Roman Catholics call the deuterocanonical books. They never cite those books by saying, thus sayeth the

43:14

Lord, or it stands written, or any of the standardized phraseology that is used in that fashion.

43:21

This is a true statement. So how do you respond to this? Well, let's, I want you to,

43:28

I want you to listen to what Trenthorne says, especially if you are an elder in the church, because one of the requirements, according to Titus chapter 1 and 1

43:42

Timothy chapter 3, is to have the ability to refute those who contradict. It doesn't mean you have to be an apologist.

43:48

It doesn't mean you have to have read every book on the Apocrypha, but there should be a desire to be able to protect the sheep.

43:58

And so I don't want you listening and then just going, well, it's gonna be interesting to hear how to respond to that.

44:05

My challenge for anybody in the audience is, how would you respond? Before I respond to it, how would you respond to what

44:16

Trenthorne says? Because I, my personal feeling is, if you're thinking that way, then you will remember what

44:27

I say for a longer period of time with more clarity than if you're not thinking that way. You want to have these things available in your mind, in other words, so here is the response from Trenthorne.

44:42

This is a separate debate on the inspiration of the Deuterocanonical books of Scripture, but it goes back to a point

44:48

Pastor Durbin was making earlier about, oh, where's the canon of Scripture? Who decides it? Did the church decide it? How do

44:53

I know? And he never answered the question, but really, for Pastor Jeff and most Protestants, they know the canon of Scripture because their pastor and their parents told them this is the

45:02

Bible. That's their tradition that they've inherited. So I would just say, which tradition has a better historical pedigree?

45:08

Pastor Durbin is saying the apostles and Jesus never quoted from these Deuterocanonical books. Here's what

45:14

Bruce Metzger, a Protestant author, writes, Nowhere in the New Testament is there a direct quotation from the canonical books of Joshua, Judges, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Obadiah, Zephaniah, and Nahum.

45:29

So there's lots of Old Testament books that are not quoted in the New Testament. That doesn't mean they're not inspired. So the

45:34

Deuterocanonical books are not directly quoted by saying this is the Word of the Lord. If that means those books are not inspired, you've got to throw out a dozen books from the

45:42

Old Testament as well that Pastor Durbin and other Protestants believe in, like Joshua or Esther or Ecclesiastes.

45:49

All right, let's jump ahead here to the end. Okay, that's the only section I'm going to cover. We're going to leave all the rest for Jeff and I to do next week.

45:59

So how do you respond to that? I didn't look up Metzger. I've heard the quotation in the past, so I didn't bother to look it up, but I'm not going to question its accuracy.

46:10

That sounds about right. So how do you respond to that? It would be hard to answer the question if you did not have certain background information that is extremely important and helpful at this point in time.

46:32

The argument does not, first of all, the response does not take into consideration the fact that the

46:39

Jews themselves, in fact, that the apocryphal books themselves, recognize that they exist in a different class from the

46:50

Tanakh, the Torah, the Nevi 'im, and the Ketuvim. One of the reasons I think that Roman Catholicism gets away with these really weak canon arguments, aside from the fact that it takes time to actually discuss the historical aspects of these things, and hence in social media, you know, who has the time or who even has the space in some context, is that most evangelical

47:19

Christians, let's be honest, have an abysmal knowledge of the history of the

47:25

Old Testament. Most seminary graduates have an abysmal knowledge of the background and historical context of the

47:37

Old Testament. It's just, when you look at what modern seminaries emphasize, when you can take your entire

47:48

Hebrew requirements in a 13 -day Jan Term class, that gives you an idea.

47:56

And I know, I know, I went, I, even in my days back in the 80s in seminary, and I took the

48:06

Old Testament backgrounds classes and the New Testament backgrounds classes, I looked around and I saw that my fellow students were bored out of their minds.

48:17

They were bored out of their minds. Why? They didn't see the importance of it.

48:23

I was already involved in apologetics. I was eating it up. This is why I was here. But they weren't.

48:30

So it's sort of like, well, is this going to help? How's this going to help me in ministry? Okay, I get it.

48:37

So here's the issue. The apocryphal books themselves, one or two of them, make reference to the threefold canon that already existed when they were written, the law, the prophets, and the writings.

48:54

And so what you need to understand is that you have this distinction and those books that he's quoting from are a part of a body of texts that had been laid up in the temple 200 years before Christ, that were already laid up in the temple during the writing of some of the apocryphal books, most of the apocryphal books.

49:22

They were already in a different category. And this would have been a category that would have been known to the people of the day.

49:31

Those intertestamental books did not make the hands dirty. They were not considered to be holy in that sense.

49:39

The handling of these other books, and for example, Obadiah, Nahum was mentioned. Obadiah and Nahum are a part of the minor prophets.

49:46

The minor prophets are considered one book. If you look at how the

49:51

Jews counted the books, the reason they come up with 22 or 24 is all 12 of the minor prophets are considered to be one book.

49:59

And then do you roll Lamentations into Jeremiah? What do you do with Daniel?

50:05

There are other ways of relating those books to where you'd get either 22 or 24, but there were 22, 24.

50:13

There's no way to put the apocryphal books in there. They were seen as a separate body of texts.

50:23

So, when the apostles quote from Jeremiah, but if they don't quote from Lamentations, Lamentations was a part of the

50:35

Jeremiah scroll. It was laid up in the temple. That's the case of all these books.

50:41

They were a part of a corpus that was known to the Jewish people and laid up in the temple and were numbered as part of those 22 or 24 books.

50:49

None of these other books were. So, these other books were known to the disciples, but they were not cited as scripture by the disciples.

51:02

So, this is a body of texts, intertestamental literature, versus a body of texts that were laid up in the temple.

51:12

Now, I recognize unless you go to a fairly narrow number of churches, you've probably never heard anyone preach on books being laid up in the temple, but that's part of the

51:28

Old Testament background that is extremely important at this point to be able to understand.

51:35

And so, the argument that Jeff was making was not that the

51:42

New Testament has to quote every book of the Old Testament to make every book of the

51:47

Old Testament authoritative. That wasn't his argument. So, to rebut that by saying, well, there's books you accept that weren't quoted is to miss the point.

51:56

The historical point is the Jewish people differentiated between the corpus of books, that is the law, the

52:05

Pentateuch, that is the prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, that is the writings.

52:13

They recognized those and laid them up in the temple long before the days of Jesus and literally during the period of time when the intertestamental books are actually being written, which then make reference back to what they already knew as the law and the prophets and the writings.

52:35

So, it becomes significant because it is Rome that is telling us that these books, well, even

52:45

Rome, did you hear the term they used? That's not a term that you and I normally use. We refer to the Apocrypha, if we even know what the

52:52

Apocrypha is, let alone ever read it. They use the term deuteronomical. What does that mean?

52:58

Well, deuteronomical means secondarily. There's even in that language a necessary recognition of a bit of a lack of equality, which is interesting in and of itself if you ask the serious question about what makes a book scripture.

53:23

We're going to be talking a lot about Theanostas and how central that is to the doctrine of soul scripture because I got the distinct feeling

53:31

Trenhorn has not read any of my works on this subject and certainly not read Reformed works on this subject.

53:38

I could be wrong, but if he did, he wasn't showing that in the comments that he was making, maybe because he didn't recognize the really close relationship with Jeff and the fact that most of what

53:53

Jeff was saying, he will tell you himself, learn from me, and it's come straight from the debates and things that we've done on the subject of soul scripture.

54:03

It just struck me a little strange, but we'll get into that. The point being that historically, just on a historical level, you can make an extremely strong case against these books, and Trenhorn knows they were not declared infallibly as canon scripture by the

54:28

Roman Catholic Church until April of 1546, 1 ,546 years after the birth of Christ.

54:36

See, the problem with that is if you try to make the argument that the church can't function without the church's ability to define what is scripture, then what was the church doing for 1 ,500 years?

54:51

How did it function? You wouldn't really even need a canon, but obviously the church functioned with a canon, even as there were people who had questions.

55:06

Jerome, Melito of Sardis, Rufinus, and I'm just going off the top of my head here.

55:11

I've got an entire presentation. It's probably over 20 years old, but still quite relevant.

55:20

These are all early writers. Let's put it this way. There was a direct correlation between how much an early church father knew of Hebrew and the

55:34

Jewish people and the Old Testament, and whether they would or would not accept those books as canonical.

55:40

The more they had connection to the Jews, interaction with the Jews, the less likely it was that they would accept.

55:46

For example, Augustine accepted the Apocryphal Books because he thought they were in the Hebrew canon. He was wrong.

55:53

He didn't read Hebrew, so he didn't know. So he made an error based upon historical ignorance.

56:04

Pope Gregory the Great, the first of the great medieval popes, plainly said that the most important books of the

56:16

Apocrypha are the Maccabees. He said they're not canonical. He didn't know anything about some apostolic tradition that said they were canonical.

56:24

There was a continuous stream, I would argue the best biblical stream, through the history of the church up to the time of the

56:37

Reformation, that rejected those books as canonical. Roman Catholic saints that rejected those books as canonical.

56:46

As most people know, it was Cardinal Cajetan who interviewed Luther in those early years when you've got trouble boiling in Wittenberg, and you've got the

57:00

Heidelberg situation, and all that stuff going on in the mid to late teens of the 1500s.

57:09

It was Cardinal Cajetan who interviewed Luther, who in his published commentaries on the

57:16

Bible said these books are not canonical. So all the way up to the time of the

57:23

Reformation. Now Luther tapped into that stream and rejected the

57:29

Apocryphal books. Once that became well known, then in April of 1546,

57:35

Council of Trent, rubber stamps. I mean, this was not a council where there are a bunch of really bright, brilliant guys sitting around having serious conversations about these issues.

57:48

This was what Rome says this, therefore, the Pope says this is what we're going to do.

57:54

A lot of politics in those days. Anyways, Rome says April of 1546, these books are canonical.

58:03

So there's a serious, serious problem there. And if we had more time to go into it, and I wanted to get to J.

58:12

Dyer today, but it doesn't look like I'm going to, sorry. There's serious question as to whether the canon as it was presented at Trent differs from the canon as it was represented by some of the earlier councils, the more primitive councils such as Carthage, Hippo, so on and so forth.

58:35

That goes back to how you identify certain of the

58:40

Apocryphal books and other books and how they're related to one another. That gets very, very complicated, but a good case can be made.

58:47

They didn't even quite understand what had been considered canonical back then in the final dogmatic canonization of those books at the

58:58

Council of Trent. And here's one other thing to think about. I really wonder where Pope Francis would come down on any of this.

59:10

Because I've read a fair amount of modern, not a fair amount,

59:16

I've read enough modern Jesuit theology to realize that you have to have a pretty conservative view of the authority of the church to even have the idea that the church has the right to establish canon.

59:41

And you have to have a pretty conservative view of inspiration to do the same thing.

59:48

I don't think Francis has any of that. John Paul did.

59:55

Benedict certainly does, despite all the German liberalism that would be very much a part of his experience.

01:00:04

There was still, at least on his part, ain't no

01:00:10

Jesuit. Let's put it that way. But I have a feeling that in their more honest moments, these guys probably sit around at the

01:00:20

Catholic Answers headquarters and go, what if Francis does this? I think there might be a file, contingency file.

01:00:32

We need to activate Plan 1A -B.

01:00:38

No, it's not Harry Carey. It's not slicing their wrists. No. I really think they probably have to sit around going, what if he does this?

01:00:52

They can't just be reacting as stuff is happening. And so I really honestly wonder if Francis would have a theological worldview basis for saying that the church in 1546 had some kind of special authority to establish the canonical acceptance of these particular books.

01:01:19

And it might go either way. It might be, no, it didn't have the authority to do that. And that means there might be other books that we could gain spiritual nourishment from and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

01:01:31

It could even open the floodgate even more. Who knows?

01:01:36

Or it can go the other direction that we need to be careful about setting things up as scripture, the word of God.

01:01:44

Who knows? Liberals have done weird things. And the fact is Francis is a liberal. And he comes from that background.

01:01:54

He simply, simply does. And you just have to deal with it. I just wonder how it is that these guys can listen to Francis and can read the milieu out of which he comes and not just go, wow, he is way, way out there.

01:02:14

He is way, way out there. Because he is. I know what they're doing. If you want to know how they do this, this is how it works.

01:02:20

Remember when I debated Roberts and Janus in Florida on the infallibility?

01:02:26

I think the infallibility of the Pope debates were the same year because I debated

01:02:31

Staples first. So I debated

01:02:47

Tim Staples and then a few months later I debated Roberts and Janus. And they don't defend the infallibility of the

01:02:57

Pope in the same way. Very opposite. One of the things that St. Janus said, because Staples had to defend the infallibility of each of the

01:03:09

Popes that I raised questions about, Honorius, et cetera, et cetera. St. Janus is like, he might not have been a

01:03:15

Christian. Might have been a heretic. And I'm like, oh?

01:03:24

But both of them would have agreed. But it doesn't matter. Well, St. Janus, the idea was he doesn't have to be a

01:03:31

Christian. He's still not going to teach error as the Pope. God will keep him from doing that.

01:03:39

And so what it all boiled down to with both of them, honestly, was if the Pope teaches error, he wasn't speaking as the

01:03:47

Pope. And how do you ever know that? You don't.

01:03:53

You don't. You do not know when the Pope is speaking infallibly or when he might be leading you astray.

01:04:01

Honorius led people astray on monothelicism. Or William Lane Craig wouldn't agree with that.

01:04:07

But that's a whole other issue that we'll get into at another point. But he led people astray, but he didn't lead the church straight because he didn't teach it as formal dogma.

01:04:17

And even if he writes letters promoting it, well, that wasn't formal enough.

01:04:23

That's when I really came to understand that papal infallibility is meaningless. It is absolutely the most meaningless, empty dogma ever proposed by anyone.

01:04:36

Because you can never know in this life whether the Pope is speaking infallibly or not.

01:04:42

Because once he's dead, he can get reinterpreted. That's what the problem is right now, is that poor

01:04:51

Francis, he'd like to reinterpret the guy who came before him, but he ain't dead yet. And he's still writing books.

01:04:58

And that's the problem. That's a big, big, big, big, big, big, big problem. You raised your microphone.

01:05:05

So I've been doing a little digging while you've been talking here. And the discussion that I think you're referring to, you discussed in April of 1998 when we were blogging before blogging was a thing, by the way.

01:05:19

And it can be found, if you search on our search engine down at the very bottom of the page, put in the word mirror, mirror.

01:05:29

Mirror, mirror? You referenced it in Mirror, Mirror, the Decline of Catholic Answers.

01:05:35

Oh yeah, I do remember that. There's also one that actually came before that where you refer to this a little bit in your rebuttal of the white man's burden.

01:05:45

Oh yeah, oh yeah. I made reference to them, but... But that's all

01:05:51

I can find at this point. But you go into a good bit of detail here in the middle of Mirror, Mirror. Yeah, but no,

01:05:56

I remember, I really do remember in this room before we did all this stuff, going over that.

01:06:06

Maybe we did it as just a side thing from when we did the whole thing with Patrick about...

01:06:14

Patrick and I had done the Veneration of Saints and Angels debate, then he did a bunch of stuff on his own radio program about it.

01:06:22

Right. And I'm like, okay, if you're going to talk about it, then we will too. And we went through all of it. But you're sure it was here, not in the garage?

01:06:29

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah, believe me. Yeah, it was in here. It was in here. So anyway, that's neither here nor there.

01:06:36

Just give you an idea of just... we've been doing this for a long time. Very, very, very, very long time.

01:06:42

But I wanted to respond to that and use that as a foundation for pointing out that there's a lot behind these issues.

01:06:59

So if you understand something about what's called

01:07:08

Second Temple Judaism, there's a lot of stuff out there on that that you have to be really careful of. But if you understand the context of Second Temple Judaism, and what the

01:07:18

Jews believed, and what their canon of scripture was, yes, you will find argumentation.

01:07:26

But if you push hard enough, you're able to find really solid stuff in that area.

01:07:33

And that allows you to be able to recognize bad arguments when those bad arguments are put forward.

01:07:40

But remember, this is an argument being put forward by a Roman Catholic. And so very, very often,

01:07:49

Rome's apologists will put arguments forward, as some people do against Roman Catholicism as well, that their own system does not provide them the foundation for making that argument.

01:08:02

That's why I have so long attempted to argue that if you're dealing with Roman Catholicism, if you're dealing with Mormonism, whatever it might, it must be, you have to be consistent with the arguments that you're using.

01:08:16

You have to, you can't take an argument using it as somebody else. And if it's turned around against you, if it's equally effective, then you probably shouldn't have used that argument.

01:08:26

And there are lots and lots and lots of horrible books out there, or tracts for that matter, that do that kind of thing in regards to Roman Catholicism, Mormonism, whatever else it might be.

01:08:35

We've tried to avoid that over the years and seek to be consistent. May not have been perfectly successful in that, but it is always a goal that is ours.

01:08:47

So like I said, it's a, it was a 45, about 45 minute response here.

01:08:58

Yeah, we've done a portion of it. We're going to do the rest of it, Lord willing, next week.

01:09:05

If Jeff's not feeling real well right now, so please pray for, he's got to, he's got a very, very busy weekend coming up with the

01:09:12

Oklahoma abortion stuff going on. So he's got to be, he's going to be there.

01:09:17

So he's got to travel. And I filled in for him yesterday, our day for yesterday.

01:09:24

It is Tuesday. Yes. On Sunday. And we'll be preaching again this Sunday as well.

01:09:32

So he needs to be at a hundred percent. And obviously if he's traveling and coming back, if he's not a hundred percent,

01:09:38

I'm not sure that we'll be doing this at that particular point in time. Not that I'm concerned, but when you travel, it takes it out of you.

01:09:45

It really does. So we'll see. Anyways, we'll be continuing on that. And I will continue with more

01:09:51

Jay Dyer stuff in the future. I did have it queued up. I just went a little bit long and what we did there. So maybe next time we'll do some of that as well.