Some Voices from the Past, the Importance of Biblicism

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Other than discussing some upcoming events (such as the debate in Pennsylvania), we took some time to listen to some voices from the past (Chrysostom, Jerome) and think about how things have changed. We also took some time to consider the definition of biblicism in the current controversy.

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Well, greetings and welcome to the Divine Line. We are back here in Phoenix, Arizona where it's only supposed to get up to 114 degrees today.
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It hit 119 the day before I got back. So, hey, that's... And like I said,
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I don't know if they just put it in there to mock us or to give us hope for the future, but one of my...
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well, actually two of my weather programs. I have more than one. It's saying that next week, we're looking at a
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Tuesday, as I recall, a high of 102 degrees.
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And given that 17 degrees cooler than it was just a few days ago, it's time to break out the coogies.
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It's just... It's going to be downright nippy. It's going to be down to like 80, mid 80s for the low.
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And we did set a new record. I mentioned I wasn't here. I missed it. I sort of feel badly. I was here for our all -time record,
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June 26, 1990. It's been 33 years since we set the all -time record at 122 degrees in the shade.
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And that week, it went 115, 118, 120, 122, 120, 118, 115.
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It was a nice little thing there. But anyway, 102.
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That'll end. It's supposed to be rain. And yeah, it'll be great. But my wife's a little miffed at me because the day after I left is when the heat started here in Phoenix.
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Up until then, June just wasn't even summer this year. It was just an extended spring. And it's just making up for it here in July.
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No big deal. But 114 today and down to 102 by next week.
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And I'm very, very happy about that. It's really not bothering me. It's not like I became accustomed to it or anything, but it's really not...
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You know, you live in Phoenix. If we didn't have July and August, everyone would live in Phoenix.
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That's because, you know, in January, you're running around in shorts, playing golf, or doing whatever you like to do.
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And it's, you know, 68 to 72 degrees, and everybody would live here.
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But there's beautiful places. The reason a lot of people don't live there is because of January.
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Well, for us, it's July -August. That's just how it is. But I was...
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I couldn't help but notice an email that came through.
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And it's from space .com. Now, I like astronomy, and very often they've got really interesting stories on...
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Well, ever since the James Webb telescope started functioning, there's just lots and lots and lots of stuff from that.
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And some of it's interesting, and some of it's just completely way out there. You have to remember, you must remember, that more than ever, people are slaves of narratives.
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They cannot see past the narrative that they are committed to.
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And we have no free press today. I mean, outside of individual groups and individuals on the internet, the mainstream media is nothing but a political arm of the left worldwide.
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And there isn't a scintilla of honesty. Can you imagine if we actually had a press, what they would be doing with the
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Biden scandal stuff? With the laptop, and the evidence of bribery, and millions of dollars, and...
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Oh, it would just be... It would be all over the place. But it's not. It's being covered by the compliant lackeys of the left, and they're the ones that have the media.
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So, sadly, and this is especially sad for me, because I can remember the moon landings.
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And I'm not like some of the interesting people out there that don't think we ever went to the moon.
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I remember the moon landings, and being just so incredibly proud of NASA.
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You know, I mean, Kennedy was assassinated, I think
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I was, let's see, I was 62? 63, so I was less than a year old.
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And, but he had challenged us, he had challenged the United States, to beat the
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Russians to the moon. And we did. And, so NASA was,
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I mean, look, I don't care who you are. You watch a
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Saturn 5 launch, and I know we have more powerful rockets now.
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But I'm sort of like, why shouldn't we? This was the 1960s. I mean, your phone has a million times the computing capacity of the computers that they had at that time.
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They're literally, if you ever watched Apollo 13, I love this one scene where they're trying to figure stuff out.
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And they're using something that almost no one below the age of 60 has ever seen in their life called a slide rule.
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Now, I don't remember how to use a slide rule anymore, but it was one of the things that I was taught to do in school.
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And, you know, geeks would run around with those things in their pockets, and you bet. And, I mean, what we accomplished back then, as a nation, was truly amazing.
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And so I was very proud of NASA. Now NASA's a propaganda machine.
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And it's sad. It's very, very sad. There is... They are front and center in the mythology of the climate crisis stuff.
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Which is, again... You're not a climate scientist.
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Yeah, that means I haven't been bought off. I haven't been purchased. I haven't been paid for.
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Why don't I trust the medical industry anymore? Because they're paid for. Bought off and paid for.
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Everybody knew, that has any medical training whatsoever, that what was going on during the pandemic was a huge and dangerous joke.
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But now we know very clearly. Oh, you still can't talk about it. I realize that. You still can't say anything about it in the vast majority of instances.
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But the news stories are filled with the stories that we all know what's going on.
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You can't talk about it, but it's... Everybody knows. Anyway, the climate stuff, we know beyond a shadow of a doubt, without question, that the
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Earth has been considerably warmer than it is today, in the past. It was considerably warmer from around 1100 to about 1250 to 1275.
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And then it started cooling again. Now, why is that? Well, ocean currents and solar cycles and how they interact with each other.
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And it's a complicated thing that unfortunately has nothing to do with us.
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And hence you can't make money off of it. And you can't panic people over it. It's how
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God made the world. And so we get to live with it and we get to adjust to it and learn from it and all the rest of that kind of fun stuff.
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But no, no, no, no, no. You can't make any money off of that. And you can't keep people in a constant state of frenzy and fear if it's actually just natural cycles taking place.
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So we know... I remember there was a... There's some beautiful places.
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Arizona is a beautiful state. It truly is. And there are amazing places to go.
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You need to realize when you hear about it being 119, it's hit 119 three times this summer so far.
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That's pretty darn warm. But again, not as warm as it was in 1990. When you go up, there's something called the
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Mogollon Rim. It's sort of a... I don't know. It sort of cuts across the state and you have to climb up it.
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And once you get up there, you're at much higher altitude and it's cooler. We used to...
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Before that fire about seven years ago, we had the largest ponderosa pine forest in the world was in Arizona on the
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Mogollon Rim. And then a lot of it got destroyed by a forest fire. But it's growing back and there are lots of really fascinating Indian ruins.
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Montezuma as well. Montezuma's Castle. There's a lot of history in Arizona.
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Meteor Crater. Fascinating place to visit as well. Anyway, I remember years ago...
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What happened to these tribes? Why were these places abandoned?
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And they were abandoned during that hot period where it was very warm here on Earth and it got warmer than they could survive given their situation.
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But that was hundreds of years ago. It had nothing to do with your SUV. It had nothing to do with carbon dioxide at all.
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Carbon dioxide is plant food. Plants love carbon dioxide. And in fact, if we got the carbon dioxide going down, we would be facing extinction as a race because you got to have food.
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We can handle the heat, but you got to have food. Far more people die of the cold than die of heat around the world.
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There's no question about it. But people don't think about that. They think that New York's going to be buried underwater and all the rest of this stuff.
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It's a bunch of baloney. It didn't happen during the warm period where it was significantly warmer than it is now.
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And it's not going to happen in the future either. But if you can get everybody to enslave themselves, literally to give up all their freedoms, all their liberties, all their ability to eat good food, all to serve the elites.
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The very same elites that were on Epstein's list, visited his island, that we'll never find out about.
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Major corruption on. I mean, we are living in a day of corruption.
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You want to see what happens when no one fears the judgment of God anymore? Just look around.
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Just the level of corruption. I mean, you know, what's really, sorry about this, but you know what's really sad?
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And I'll get back to that too. What's really sad is watching what's happening with our elected officials.
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I just happened a few minutes ago, something scrolled by on Twitter and there's
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Fetterman. Standing there with all the other senators in his shorts and his hoodie.
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You know, this man is not functional. He's not functional.
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Now, I'm sorry that what has happened to him has happened to him. But Mitch McConnell isn't functional either.
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And neither is Dianne Feinstein. And neither is Joe Biden. None of them are.
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And yet they hold the reins of power because we're not concerned about the nation anymore. We're not concerned about what's best.
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And we're not concerned about having people that can react to challenges. It's, we just have to have our votes there.
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And it doesn't matter what we have to do to get people in those positions. It is, it is the gasps of a dying society.
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There is no question about it. If George Washington and Samuel Adams and all the rest of them could look at what has happened.
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Could look at the waste. Could look at the corruption. Could look at the fact that that missile systems that we have given to Ukraine are being used by the
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Mexican cartels in Mexico against the Mexican government. How did that happen?
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Oh, corruption everywhere. They would, they'd turn over in their graves.
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They'd say, well, how long did it last before it got this bad? Guess we had a good run.
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Corruption, corruption, corruption. Anyways, all of this to say that I saw this email from space .com
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and it was talking about this study. You know, and like I said, they've got NASA climate ridiculousness all the time in this thing.
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And it was this discussion about the ocean currents. And that because of global warming, so because it's slightly warmed up, it's still much cooler than it's been in the past.
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But slightly warmed up, the ocean currents are going to stop functioning.
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And so the northern part of the world is going to become colder and the tropics are going to broil.
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Because the ocean isn't going to move the heat out of the tropics up to the north. How come that didn't happen when it was?
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Because see, these people don't even function on the basis of a realistic view of what has happened only in the past couple hundred years, let alone a couple thousand years.
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And of course, if you then go into all this other stuff, there's all people, all sorts of people who are doing the older stuff saying it's been 25 degrees.
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Hotter. In the past than it is now. Now that would be a lot.
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Okay. Okay. So, so a hundred and like a hundred and fifty degrees.
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Yeah, that's getting a tad on the extreme, on the extreme side. We might move.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think Canada would be significantly more populated than it is now.
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Yeah, we'd be like the Indians. They'd got out of here. Real estate here ain't worth much anymore.
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Let's, let's saddle up the pony and head on out. Yeah, that's what we would be. That was what we would be doing.
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Yeah, but the whole thing is so obvious because even climate scientists were saying, yeah, this is all based on models and not really data.
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And it's data that they've predicted and, and, you know, tried to project into the past and all the rest of the stuff.
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It is so patently designed to keep the panic alive.
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And they know because it was saying as early as 2025. Okay, let's say in 2035, we look back at these headlines and we laugh, but we shouldn't be laughing.
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We can look back at all these lies that have been told in the past and we don't hold anybody accountable for it.
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But we pay more and more and more of our income, our wealth, which is ours.
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That's a biblical principle. It's not a communist principle, which is why things are happening.
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But we pay more and more and more all for fantasy, pure, utter fantasy.
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And I look at the younger generation and they've just got glazed eyes. And I can understand why if you somehow survived the public indoctrination system, it's not an educational system anymore.
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Look at the results. Look at the math and spelling and literacy. Compare graduates in the 12th grade today with only 50 years ago, and it's not even close.
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It's not even close in the United States of America and in all Western countries. It's not even close.
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It's sad. It is so sad because it become indoctrination. Absolute indoctrination.
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I remember I was a precocious child and one of my character flaws, which there are many, was in school,
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I would try to get done first. I would try to get done first.
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I would race everybody else. And I've told the story before, I think, that one of the, and I did confess this to my parents.
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But, and I still have this, by the way, I have the report card from third grade,
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Mrs. McGee. Oh, she was wonderful. Mrs. McGee was a wonderful teacher. Bless her soul.
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And in the third quarter, I guess that's how we did it.
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Quarters. She had written a note that had said that I am a good student, but I tend to rush through to try to get done first and make mistakes as a result.
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Well, duh, really. But I was so worried about that that what
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I did is I stuck the report card in its sleeve and I just pull it out enough to where the signature thing was.
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And then I just, I waited until we were having to rush out the door to get to get to school. And I said, oh mom,
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I forgot to have you sign the, sign the thing. And I just handed it to her and she just signed it. And it was 20 years later.
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I think I showed it to her at least before she. Oh, yeah.
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Oh, yeah, she did. Oh, she had no idea. I had no idea. She trusted me. Yeah, and I, and I used it.
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There's no two ways about it. I did. And, but back then there was something called the
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Sullivan reading program. Does that ring a bell with you? They had these boxes.
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And you take these lessons out and you, you, you complete them. Then you put them back in. You'd go through the various colors and stuff like that.
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Me and this other kid, we race through those things. And I learned to read. Oh, did I learn to read?
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I learned, I, I learned to read so well back East in the Pennsylvania school system. There was no wokeness back then.
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We didn't have time for it. We didn't have time for it. We were learning to do math and to read and to do literature.
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Got a good education back then. Got a good education back then. Really did. Don't do that.
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Now, we don't do that now. And so the young people, they come along with these stories.
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Panicsville. Panicsville. The oceans are going to stop circulating heat because of my
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SU because of your SUV and that's why they're gluing themselves to freeways for crying out loud.
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It's a cult. It's a cult. Absolutely. No ways around way around it. Yes, sir. So we're near a school, right?
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A charter school. Yes. Okay. I don't know if you saw this morning out front.
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They have two really big signs. As you're driving by, the first sign is, we don't teach.
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Second sign said, CRT here. Well, I'm hoping the second sign doesn't fall down.
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That's what I was sitting here thinking is, well, it's two signs and we don't teach. No CRT here.
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No CRT here. It's like, okay, it's becoming a thing. It is. Well, yeah, the pushback is definitely taking place.
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And yeah, I would imagine that they're not probably real big in the
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NEA over here. And so yeah, they want the people that want to stay away from that stuff.
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And I think that's that's good. I'm glad. I'm glad to see it happening. I really am.
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So anyway, okay, let's get back to a topic that we were discussing last week before I finished up my trip.
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And by the way, that reminds me, do we have the graphic up yet?
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They're working on it now. Oh, okay.
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Well, yeah, we need to get that up as soon as possible because it's coming up pretty quick. The debate with Dr.
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Gregory Coles, author of Single Gay Christian.
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There's two other books. Can't remember the name. I had started one of the other ones. I'll be honest. I'm not sure I'm going to finish it.
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I may have to track it down in Kindle to just scan some of the and search for some keywords and stuff because so far this has just been stories, interesting stories, but I don't really have time to be, you know, you grew up in Indonesia.
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And so I now know all about the open sewer system in the city he lived in and that's great, but it's not really overly relevant to the subject that we're going to be talking about.
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So Dr. Coles, as far as I can tell, having read the first book and listened to some more recent, some more recent interviews, in the books, he lives in Central Pennsylvania, which is where the debate is going to be.
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But Chris tells me he's in Boise, Idaho now. So it has to have been a fairly recent change of location.
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So I think I said he lives in Pennsylvania on the last program and in all the books, that's what he says, but evidently there's been a recent change.
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So I'll make that correction. But what this debate is going to allow us to do,
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I hope, please pray toward this debate. What needs to come out of it is a meaningful discussion of what it means to be a
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Christian. And as far as I can tell, while Dr.
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Coles says he's committed to being a celibate gay Christian, when it comes to the key passages that define the issue of homosexuality, which are, it is directly addressed in scriptures.
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It's funny how many people say, Jesus never addressed homosexuality. And then there's only six passages.
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It's probably more than that. There was temple prostitution that was relevant to homosexuality in the Old Testament as well.
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But how many places is bestiality referred to? Or pedophilia?
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Or incest? Not many, but enough. And the number of places where homosexuality is referred to.
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Every time I've heard Dr. Coles address those texts, he's accepted the revisionist perspective on them.
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So I'm a little confused at that point. He does the quote from Ezekiel only through verse 49 in regards to Sodom and Gomorrah.
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He doesn't read verse 50. I mean, that's stuff that we refuted in the same -sex controversy over two decades ago.
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That selective citation. And seems to think that Romans 1 is probably about some of the
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Roman emperors and does some really odd stuff with Arson Acoites.
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Doesn't really allow the background of the Greek Septuagint to come to the fore.
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So, I'm just not sure exactly how that debate is going to unfold.
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Because to answer the question, should you use gay and Christian together, there has to be some level of agreement on whether scripture actually addresses homosexuality as a fundamental evil.
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He's likened his being gay to Paul's thorn in the flesh.
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And I see a massive difference there. A massive difference. There's that. That's highly problematic.
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Highly problematic. So, I've got a lot of preparation to do there. I want to make sure that I'm interacting with his particular position.
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If you put Gregory Coles in YouTube, a number of interviews will pull up.
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There was one from a Southern California church I listened to.
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A little over an hour in length. I think it was Q &A. It may have been a little bit less now that I think about it.
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Anyway, it was maddening to me. It was helpful for the things that Greg said.
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It was maddening that the pastor of this church, he could not have asked, he could not have offered pushback if he had tried.
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It was, I thought it was disrespectful to the audience.
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Just the way that he handled it. But anyway, you'll be able to find lots of that stuff there.
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So, I think this is a very important subject. So many churches are collapsing on this issue because they just don't know what the issues are.
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And I hope the issues will be very plainly expressed. So, that's
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September 16th, Mannheim, Pennsylvania. We'll have the graphic up as soon as possible,
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I hope. I am personally uncertain of how a person registers and things like that.
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What the relationship between the debate and the conference is going to be. I'm just not 100 % certain.
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So, hopefully the graphic will have that kind of information for you. So, you know how to do all those things.
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But I hope you'll join us for that debate coming up on September 16th.
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And, of course, I need to be able to get there. So, I dropped off the fifth wheel for some general maintenance.
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Rich has seen some stuff he's a little concerned about on the top of the unit. I'm sorry?
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Oh, great. So, they called and we do have a problem.
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What did they say the problem is? The top layer is peeling back.
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Great. The whole roof's got to be redone. Okay. And, can they do that or are we going to have to take it someplace else?
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So, we need it back in time for me to go to Pennsylvania for the debate, okay?
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And you might say, well, that's over a month away. That doesn't matter. When you're trying to get stuff fixed these days in the
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Biden socialist world, prayer is appreciated.
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We've got to get that taken care of ASAP. So, I'm just discovering this, learning this as we're going along.
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So, well, great. Wonderful. That's wonderful. What were we talking about?
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Okay, yeah, get your mind back on stuff. I taught church history in Germany this morning for the dear brothers and sisters in Frankfurt.
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And I just thought before we go on to some other things, sometimes listening to the voices of those who have gone before us is helpful and interesting.
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And here's, I just wanted to read this section for you.
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And this isn't quite story time with Uncle Jimmy, but it's not because it's not long enough to be a story time with Uncle Jimmy.
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But here is a really interesting section from the man who would be identified as the
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Spurgeon of the early church. If you were to identify the man who was best known for his ability to preach, to proclaim, to use the language, and he was in many ways a martyr, martyr of politics, martyr of political power.
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He was literally kidnapped from where he was happily preaching and dragged to the capital,
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Constantinople. And forced to become bishop there. And the problem was he,
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I'm talking of course of John Chrysostom, and he wasn't called Chrysostom at the time. Chrysostom means golden mouth.
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But he just wasn't made for life in what we would call
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Washington DC. And he was just too pointed in making application in his sermons.
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And he preached a sermon about Naboth's vineyard and Jezebel.
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And it just so happened that the Empress had just taken a poor person's field.
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And people made the connection even though he didn't name names, they made the connection.
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Made an enemy. Eventually, there was a lot of complication in between.
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And a period of time when the people of the city were protecting him because the people in Constantinople came to love him.
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But eventually, he was exiled. And having been exiled, they decided to put him at the farthest reach of the kingdom.
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And they told the soldiers, do not show him any mercy. Do not protect him from the elements, anything like that.
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And they made him walk all this distance. Without sufficient, I mean, in the rain, in the heat, whatever.
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He collapsed and died at a younger age than I am now.
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So that's most definitely a form of martyrdom. His final words,
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God be praised in all. So here's a clip, a section from a sermon from John Chrysostom.
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And I just want you to hear the voice of another age, okay? Hear the voice of another age.
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There is nothing colder than a Christian who does not work for the salvation of others. You cannot use poverty as an excuse.
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The widow who threw in her two small coins will accuse you. Peter said, silver and gold have
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I none. Paul was so poor, he often went hungry and lacked even necessary food. And being lower class by birth is no excuse either.
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The apostles were obscure men from obscure families. Are you uneducated? That is no excuse.
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The apostles were illiterate. Are you weak in body? That is no excuse. Timothy was a person who suffered from frequent illnesses.
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Everyone can serve his neighbor if only he is willing to play his part. Look at the trees which bear no fruit.
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See how strong and majestic and smooth and tall they are. But if we had a garden, we would much rather have pomegranates and fruitful olive trees.
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The tall fruitless trees are pleasing to the eye, but they are of no practical value or very little.
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They are like people who are concerned only about themselves. Such people are fit for burning.
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At least the trees are useful for shelter and making houses out of them. Such self -centered people were the foolish virgins who were chaste, discreet, and self -controlled, but did not serve others.
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Therefore, they were delivered over for burning. Such also were those who did not feed Christ. Matthew 25, 41 -46.
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Christ does not accuse them of personal sins, adultery, swearing falsely, or anything like that.
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He merely accuses them of not being any practical service to others. Such a self -centered person was the man who buried his talent.
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His private life was spotless, but he never served his neighbor. How can such a person be a
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Christian? I ask you, if you mixed leaven with flour, but it did not make it rise, would it still be leaven?
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If a perfume did not fill a room with fragrance, would we still call it perfume? Don't tell me it is impossible for me to influence others.
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If you are a Christian, it is impossible for you not to influence others. Just as the elements that make up your human nature do not contradict each other, so also in this matter, it belongs to the very nature of a
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Christian that he influences others. So do not offend God. If you say the sun cannot shine, you offend him.
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If you say, I, a Christian, cannot be of service to others, you have offended him and called him a liar. It is easier for the sun not to shine than for a
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Christian not to do so. It is easier for light itself to be darkness than for a Christian not to give light.
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So don't tell me it is impossible for you as a Christian to influence others, when it is the opposite which is impossible.
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Do not offend God. If we arrange our affairs in an orderly manner, these things will certainly follow quite naturally.
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It is not possible for a Christian's light to lie concealed, so brilliant a lamp cannot be hidden.
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John Chrysostom homily 20 on the Acts of the Apostles.
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You know, I'm going to go ahead and do this. So there's a positive, challenging section from John Chrysostom.
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I read this one to just, you know, an hour and a half ago in Germany.
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Well, I wasn't in Germany, but my students were. I read this one, and I'll let you guess as to who it was.
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I will tell you right now it was not John Chrysostom, okay? It's not John Chrysostom. But listen to the view of the world that is embodied in these words, and compare and contrast it with where we are now, okay?
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I'm about to make a comparison between virginity and marriage, and I would beg my readers not to think
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I am condemning marriage when I praise virginity, nor am I dividing the saints of the Old Testament who had wives from those of the new who kept themselves from the embraces of women.
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For the Old Testament saints lived under one covenant that was suited to their times, but we live under another, we upon whom the ends of the ages have come.
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While that old law remained, increase and multiply and fill the earth, and curse it is the barren who does not bear children in Israel, all the people married and were given in marriage, leaving father and mother and becoming one flesh.
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But then the apostle's voice sounded forth, the time is short, and he added, from now on even those who have wives should be as though they had none.
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Why? Because he who is unmarried cares the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the
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Lord. But the married man cares about the things of the world, how he may please his wife.
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There is also a difference between a wife and a virgin. The unmarried woman cares about the things belonging to the
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Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit. But the married woman cares about the things of the world, how she may please her husband.
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What then are you making such a noise about? What are you fighting against? It is the chosen vessel
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Paul who says these things. He is the one who says there is a difference between a wife and a virgin. The unmarried woman cares about the things of the
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Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit. Behold the purpose of the virgin life, to be holy both in body and in spirit.
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But she who is married cares about the things of the world, how she may please her husband. Do you honestly believe there is no difference between these two?
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On the one hand, the virgin who surrenders her days and her nights to fasting and prayer. Now, on the other hand, the woman who makes herself ready for her husband's return, plastering her face with makeup, rushing forth to greet him, gushing with terms of endearment.
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The virgin modestly conceals the beauty bestowed on her by nature, making herself seem less attractive than she really is.
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But the married woman gazes at herself in the mirror, painting herself trying to acquire something more than her natural beauty, really she is offering insults to her creator.
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And then from marriage comes screaming babies, noisy servants, children demanding your words and your kisses.
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You get all anxious over money and trying to protect yourself against loss. Here is a band of cooks girded for an assault on the meat with their knives.
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They're a gang of dressmakers humming with gossip. Then a servant announces that the husband and some friends have arrived.
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So the wife flaps about like a bird all over the house, looking to see if the sofa is smooth, the floor swept, the cups crowned with flowers and the dinner ready.
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Now tell me, tell me honestly, where in all this can you find any thought of God? And those are the happy homes.
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In others, you have the drums banging, the pipes squeaking, the lute twanging, the cymbals clashing.
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Where, I ask you, is the fear of God in all this noise? Then the so -called friend who lives off others drops in and boasts and flows with evil gossip and takes delight in judgmental comments on those who are not present.
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And then the half, it looks like they had social media back then too. And then the half -naked slave girls come in to flaunt their flesh and seductive dances before the lust -consumed eyes of male visitors.
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What does the unfortunate wife do? She either takes pleasure in it all and her soul perishes, or she is offended by it and thus provokes the anger of her husband.
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And so come quarrels and then follows divorce. And if you can discover any household that is free from these things, but they are as rare as gold, even so the management of the household, bringing up the children, the needs and desires of your husband, watching over your servants, alas, alas, how all these things distract your mind from God.
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Now, I just invite folks who, you know, today, most of the conferences you go to will talk about Christian homes and Christian marriages and covenantal families and building for the future through your children and your grandchildren and the encounter with God that comes from the family challenges and relationships and production of life and all the things that come from that.
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And here you have a voice from the past saying, well basically devaluing all of that.
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He starts off by saying, I'm not, I'm not, what was the terminology that he used?
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He's not condemning marriage. But he's certainly saying that it is a much lower calling than virginity and a life of contemplation.
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Obviously, this individual has been deeply influenced by the monastic movement and the vast majority of writers from the third century onward are likewise deeply influenced by the monastic movement.
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That can't help but massively influence your view of men and women and sexuality and the value of women, the value of family.
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And yet this became, this is the warp and woof of the great tradition.
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This is, this is the medieval church. Even though this is prior to the medieval church, it obviously has its roots in the patristic period, the early, earlier church.
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This writer was writing probably around 390 to 400,
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I would say. This is a brilliant writer. He is a brilliant scholar.
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He's one of the most important scholars of the early church. And yet, no matter what we do, we have to be able to recognize fundamental imbalances primarily related to the influence of monasticism.
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This is Jerome. This is Jerome, the great scholar of the early church.
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One of the few people in the early church who could read both Greek and Hebrew. He was writing concerning the perpetual virginity of the
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Blessed Mary, chapter 22. His attacks upon Helvetius basically made it so that for the rest of, up until the
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Reformation and through Reformation times, the Reformers didn't want to really deal with the Marian issues because it was such a hot topic and it was just so damaging and it was, it was just considered to be pious, to honor the virgin mother.
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The reality was Jerome was laughably wrong in his argumentation on the subject and extremely condescending and cruel in his writings against those that disagreed with him.
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But that view of the family, of the children, and you know, he says, he says that they are, that a household free from the things he listed is rare as gold.
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And just look up Jerome and Paula and what happened in that situation. Just a woman who became a widow, a beautiful woman who became a widow and then basically defaced herself, tried to make herself as ugly as possible because from her perspective, her beauty was a stumbling block to holy men.
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Not a gift from God, but a stumbling block. Got rid of, she gave all her money away and indebted her family.
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We see fundamentally unbiblical behaviors because of the imbalance.
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And every one of us who's Reformed, we look at this type of thing and we don't realize we have, our ancestors have already applied the biblical correction.
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Now, in perfect balance? No. Do we, do we ignore to our own detriment some of the emphases of the early church?
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Do we, what, what would most of the believers in this time period think if they came into our churches about how we dress?
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Especially about how women dress. Do we even think about modesty any longer?
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Does it, does it even cross our minds? I live in Phoenix in the summer. Okay, I get it.
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119 degrees is hot. But still,
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I am often left wondering, do we even hear the plea for modesty?
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But when we make corrections, when we, when we test the traditions that came down to us and reject so many of them, on what basis do we do so?
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On what basis do we do so? You can't be a Baptist and stand in the great tradition.
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You're not a part of that. Oh, but I can in regards to this, that. Right, but you need to understand that the theological conversations, even on the doctrine of God, took place in the context of an absolutely shared commitment to how you become a
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Christian. And it was by infant baptism that washed away the stain of original sin and justified you before God.
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And we reject that. And we have good reason to, because the apostles didn't believe it.
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But what do you call a commitment that says there is only one ultimate source of divine authority to tell us what is definitional of the
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Christian faith? What is dogma that must be believed de fide, by faith?
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What's the source of that? What's the source of that? There is a dispute going on amongst us, and it is all over how to define a word.
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Everybody, everybody claims to be biblical. Everyone claims to be biblical.
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All right. So I'm going to go with my, sorry,
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Jeffrey, but I'm going with my Oxford King James, the first Bible I read all the way through.
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Wow. Couldn't do that anymore. Okay. All right.
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Yep. Okay. Marked up. What a wonder, and bought with my own money.
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I got a job as a sophomore in high school. Biblical. Biblical.
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What does that mean? What does it mean to apply the ultimate standard of this to everything and to say that nothing, you know, we have people telling us today that you must embrace
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Nicene Orthodoxy as the lens through which to read this.
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So that reverses the source of divine authority for the
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Nicene Creed. It makes the Nicene Creed an ultimate authority necessary for this to function as scripture.
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And I say, I've always said from the start that the value and indeed authority of Nicaea is due to its being derived from and consistent with what is here first.
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The authority flows through this to the summary statement.
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If the summary statement becomes necessary to interpret this, then the summary statement is the ultimate authority.
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Okay. I've never varied from that. Not once. Not once.
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We all have our developments in theology over time. But that is not any place where I've had any development.
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And I can't because it is absolutely foundational and definitional.
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That's being biblical. But think about that. Biblical is very, very close in form and function to biblicalism.
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And when I test Rome's traditions by scripture, that's biblicalism.
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When I test Eastern Orthodox traditions by the Bible, that's biblicalism.
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And by the way, I need to get together, we need to get the other studio ready to roll because we need to have,
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I mentioned last week, Brother Wallace on to talk about the failure of Eastern Orthodoxy video that he's put together.
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It's very, very helpful. And also have Tobias Riemenschneider on to talk about his book as well.
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So I'd like to try to do two. I need to get in touch with them to find out when they can do it, but hopefully try to get those done next week.
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We're being biblicalists when we analyze and hold under the authority of this all these other things.
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Now evidently, there are people who believe that you should not use any language that's not found in scripture.
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Now I don't know how you do that. You can't answer questions in other languages by just repeating even an
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English translation of the Bible. That's not possible. I don't run into these folks.
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Maybe they're just all over the place. But I understand that there are people who are uncomfortable with the development of systematic theology rather than just simply quoting
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Bible verses. Okay, I've run into those folks. I've taught for enough years in enough different churches that there are people, well, yeah, it's getting a little deep for me.
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I'm not sure about the use of terminology that I don't find in scripture. But I don't see that as some massive assault upon the church.
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And so on the last program, I mentioned
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Pat Avendroth saying, Biblicism is cultic.
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And he sent me an email, and he's on vacation, so he said he'd send me the comments that he made when he gets back.
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And I'm like, okay. But basically he explained that his statement was in the context of people who were using
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Biblicism to attack covenant theology. Dispensationalists who were using
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Biblicism to attack covenant theology. And I just go, okay, look,
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I know we all have those conversations, but here's the problem.
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Covenant theology is at its best when it is fundamentally expressed from scripture.
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Okay? When you're demonstrating from the Bible that God has dealt with his people in a covenantal context.
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Now, my criticism, and I love him more as the years go by, but my criticism of Calvin and his covenantal theology regarding infant baptism is that's where it stands out to me.
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Is in Book 4, that's the one place where he leaves his standard way of doing things.
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And he has to, because no one before him believed exactly what he believed.
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You could point to maybe some Bollinger and some others.
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Zwingli said a few things, but in the exact form that he places it, it's a theological novum.
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That's been one of my arguments when you listen to my debate with Greg Strawbridge. That was what I said. This is new.
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This isn't the ancient church or anything like that. But the best expressions of covenant theology are expressions that are rooted in scripture.
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And the dispensationalists cannot limit themselves to just biblical terms to express much of their eschatology and everything else that comes along with it.
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And so, I just don't see that. What I see is the constant danger of scriptural sufficiency and sola scriptura being compromised by those who should know better and having their churches and their denominations move away from an open confession of the sufficiency of this divine revelation to a subservience of this to something above.
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I've seen it happen over and over and over again. I see the results.
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And I see that as far more dangerous, far more dangerous than a spat over eschatology where one side says, well, you're using too much non -biblical language.
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Okay, well, suggestive in turn, but let's make sure that whatever language we're using, it's drawn from here.
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That's where it's got to come from. And then in the end, we are always affirming the sufficiency of this, even if in this fallen world, we don't end up coming to absolute agreement.
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That's hard for some people to live with. We want to be able to banish all doubt and all arguments.
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And that's not where we live in a fallen world. At least not yet.
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If there's a massive work of the Spirit of God, okay, that can change. But right now, that's not where we are.
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And so, my concern is we're attacking a term, biblicalism, which is...
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And who is it that's getting to define these things? I reject Matthew Barrett's straw man argumentation, straw man definition.
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I reject Roman Catholicism's redefinition of sola scriptura.
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That's where biblicist and scripturalist, evidently, first started getting used in English, were by Roman Catholics who were mocking sola scriptura.
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Well, they don't get to define these things. That's not the source that we should be looking to.
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And what's a greater danger? A limitation of vocabulary in Facebook debates with dispensationalists?
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Or the fundamental frontal assault on the sufficiency of scripture coming from Roman Eastern Orthodoxy and progressivism and everything else?
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I don't understand the motivations. I really don't.
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And it just seems to me that most of the people that have these motivations have not been the people who have been dealing with the people converting to Rome that I have for years and years and years and years.
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And that's going to start all the, oh, swimming, the diver stuff. So tired of all of that stuff, especially when we see people doing it.
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We see people doing it. It's not normally the people who do the teaching that result in this.
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It's their students. They listen and they put two and two together and they go,
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Hasta la vista, we're on our way. And it's like, if someone had just warned us, someone would have just told us.
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So for me, the issue is the sufficiency of scripture. In fact,
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I need to go home this afternoon and complete writing an article for the next
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GBTS seminary journal on the sufficiency of scripture in apologetics.
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Because if there's any place that people are tempted to abandon the sufficiency of scripture, it's in apologetics.
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That's huge danger. Huge danger. It really is. So anyways, didn't even get to what
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I had, but hey, we will keep that queued up and be ready to get to that on the flip side.
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I wasn't going to read all that stuff, but I thought, eh, why not? I've got it sitting here. Let's take a look at it and go from there.
01:03:59
All right, thanks for watching the program today. I don't have to be trying to bring up programs to play music, hit buttons to stop recording.
01:04:08
I got somebody else to do that. But he knows, and he didn't pop off today, but he could have, because he's already taken one of the cameras from the
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RV and made it the rich cam. So he's got a 4K camera and one of the lights from the
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RV, so he can look good. He did pop in.
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He did make a comment, but he just didn't do all the stuff, turn everything on and all the rest of that kind of stuff.
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So I'm sort of thinking that someone's feeling a little threatened, because I had to do a bunch of programs on the trip where I had to do it all.
01:04:56
I had to record it and then upload it, and I had to do all the stuff with YouTube and the website and sermon audio.
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And I just think someone's going, well, if he can do all that, then what am
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I going to do? So all of a sudden I come in and here's the first time
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I've ever had a light. I recognize that light. I've seen it before.
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And that camera, I think I've seen that camera before too. Got to put it somewhere. That's a good place to start.
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Sure. Okay. So I may be back in the future or you never know.
01:05:44
The next dividing line might be featuring Rich Pierce and Rich Pierce and just only
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Rich Pierce. You never know. You never know what's going to come. So Lord willing, we'll see you next time.