Road Trip Dividing Line: California’s Secular Tyranny, Our Response, Some Taylor Marshall Tweets
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Did the program live on the road from Indianapolis this evening, looking at the amazing secular tyranny in California, then a discussion of the challenges we are all facing as believers in these changing and unique times, and finishing with a look at some Taylor Marshall tweets.
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- 00:30
- Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White. I'm coming to you live from somewhere outside of Indianapolis, Indiana, I think.
- 00:41
- A long trip today, I'll have to admit. It was, first appreciate my head feels like it's gonna split right down the middle.
- 00:50
- It's been a while since I saw my wonderful chiropractor and C1 and C2 in my neck have decided to go to different sides of the country.
- 00:59
- So that always causes some issues. But anyway, it is good to be with you and hopefully having an opportunity to talk about some important stuff will cause me to forget about all that other stuff, at least for the next hour.
- 01:16
- Real quickly, this coming weekend in Mannheim, Pennsylvania, please see the links at AOMN .org
- 01:24
- for the Gospel at War conference, the debate with Dr. Gregory Coles on,
- 01:31
- I'm just saying gay Christianity, it is the designation gay Christian, an appropriate designation within the body of Christ.
- 01:40
- And I think it's biblically appropriate, if I recall the specifics.
- 01:46
- In fact, come to think of it, where'd that go? Oh, there it is. Yes. Is gay
- 01:54
- Christian a biblically acceptable identity for a member of Christ's church?
- 02:00
- That's the specific agreed upon thesis. Obviously, I'm taking the negative on that.
- 02:08
- I've expressed the fact I'm a little concerned, simply because I think a lot of Christians are unfamiliar, a lot of believing
- 02:18
- Christians, conservative Christians, want to be submitted to the lordship of Christ, want to hold to the ultimate authority of God's word.
- 02:29
- But I think a lot of folks simply are not familiar with side
- 02:37
- A, side B arguments and developments over the past.
- 02:42
- Well, it's happened so quickly, and it keeps changing. And I don't even know how long this debate will be specifically relevant, given that no one would have even understood this thesis statement in the year 2000, for example.
- 03:04
- But it will be a challenging discussion. I want it to be one that is respectful, but is very clear.
- 03:15
- I want everyone to understand exactly what the issues are by the end of the evening. And so if you'll be praying for that,
- 03:21
- I don't yet know if it will be live streamed. Obviously, it will be recorded, and we will get it posted as quickly as we possibly can.
- 03:33
- But I don't know if it will be live streamed. I have a feeling it might be, just given that what
- 03:42
- I've been told is the location is a really good location. Lots of good tech, in essence.
- 03:48
- So we'll see. We will see. That's coming up. And then, of course, the next weekend, well, not even next weekend, next
- 03:55
- Wednesday, the pre -conference at G3 put on by GBTS, where I have a feeling
- 04:04
- I'm going to be in the minority. There's going to be five presentations along with mine.
- 04:13
- And then there's going to be a panel discussion. And I think that's probably going to be a mini -debate.
- 04:19
- But hopefully, it'll be a respectful mini -debate. And then on Friday morning,
- 04:27
- I think it's 10 .15. And of course, G3 is live streamed. I think you have to buy a ticket or something.
- 04:34
- Not a ticket to the thing, but to the live stream, I guess. I don't know. But 10 .15
- 04:39
- is my slot for my plenary presentation on the sovereignty of God over time, coming out of Isaiah chapter 41.
- 04:49
- So your prayers for all those things. My wife is coming to her first G3. I'm really looking forward to having her with me.
- 04:58
- And I'm sure a lot of you are going to be looking forward to meeting her as well. And then
- 05:05
- I'll be in Louisiana on the way back from G3 real quickly for a presentation on the reliability of scripture.
- 05:16
- And then back to Phoenix because the next weekend after that is our 40th anniversary celebration, where we're celebrating 40 years of God's faithfulness to us and using this ragtag group of people to be used to see many people come to Christ, many people kept out of false religions, many people brought out of them, many people kept from going into them, encouraging people to be doing that kind of work literally all across the globe.
- 05:49
- So we will be celebrating that the weekend that we get back. I happen to know that some friends are flying in from other places.
- 05:58
- Really surprises me, but that's pretty neat that we're going to be able to do that. And so yeah, lots of stuff coming up and we're keeping very, very busy.
- 06:10
- I have to comment briefly. I should never say briefly because it's a waste of time and it's normally untrue anyways.
- 06:22
- So the progressivist states, that's their terminology so I don't necessarily like using it, the communist states, and especially the center of communism in the
- 06:40
- United States, which is the legislature of the state of California. It's a mono party.
- 06:46
- If you want to see what mono party is all about, just look at California. Has passed a bill and sent it to Governor Newsom, who of course being the communist he is, will sign it with jubilation, fundamentally putting into law.
- 07:04
- And of course once you put this kind of thing into law, you're making law itself unlawful.
- 07:12
- But it will put into law as an instruction to judges that they are to take into consideration a parent's non -affirmation of their child's gender identity decisions in any legal cases that might involve custody, things like that.
- 07:36
- Obviously once you do this, then issues relating to medical intervention, the state coming in, you know.
- 07:45
- It is so easy to see these states, because Canada is doing the same thing, putting together a hotline that kids can call, my parents aren't affirming my gender and the state, you know.
- 08:02
- Now this isn't what they're doing in California yet, but this is laying that foundation. You've got to do it bit by bit, piece by piece.
- 08:10
- You're creating precedent is what you're doing. But judges in California are to take into consideration whether a parent's
- 08:22
- Christian or not, fundamentally. Because I'm sorry, this one isn't even hard.
- 08:29
- If you are supportive of the mutilation of your children as pre -teens or teenagers, you are not a
- 08:40
- Christian, okay. You're not. You don't get a thing about anything.
- 08:46
- You're not a Christian. You are rebelling against God's law. You're rebelling against Jesus Christ.
- 08:53
- You're rebelling against his teaching. And you are a slave of the world. You may have slathered on some religion, but you're not a
- 09:00
- Christian. You're still under God's wrath. Someone needs to tell you that rather boldly and plainly.
- 09:07
- And so if you are a Christian and you do not support this rapid -onset gender dysphoria, the fact that before 2010, this wasn't even a thing, wasn't even an issue.
- 09:25
- If you did not have the cultural, the YouTube, the TikTok, Facebook, all this kind of stuff, you wouldn't have hundreds of gender clinics and all the millions, billions of dollars flowing into this area as well.
- 09:46
- You wouldn't have it. Just wouldn't be there. And so it's a cultural disease.
- 09:54
- There are no masks to stop this. Well, you can stop it. You can stop it.
- 10:00
- And every Christian parent knows how to stop it. You homeschool your kids.
- 10:06
- You give them clear, disciplined examples of what it means to be servants of Jesus Christ.
- 10:16
- Husbands love their wives. Wives love and respect their husbands. You give them that example of what that looks like.
- 10:26
- And then you make sure that they don't have smartphones. You make sure you know who it is that they are getting together with, who their friends are.
- 10:38
- This is how you have to protect your children today, because we live in a world where this world wants to destroy every young man, every young woman, but especially every young woman, because it's part of the culture of death.
- 10:52
- And so they've got abortion to fix problems when the boys do stuff. But for women, it's better to just destroy their reproductive system so you don't even have to worry about it.
- 11:05
- So it's a culture of death. It's seeking the destruction of these people. It's succeeding.
- 11:12
- The Biden regime is 100 % sold out to it. So is Canada. It's interesting that certain countries in Europe are starting to go, you know, this may not be the best thing to be doing.
- 11:26
- It's almost shocking and surprising that there would be any restraint whatsoever there in Europe.
- 11:33
- But a few countries are going, oh, let's back off on this a little bit. It's really bad stuff.
- 11:42
- So what California is doing is saying, if you're a Christian parent, you will be judged against by the law of the state of California.
- 11:53
- That's just what it is. Of course, Newsom will sign it. I'm still thinking personally that Biden's going to blow up and drop out of the race and Newsom will swoop in.
- 12:09
- I could not see how Biden could run in 2020.
- 12:15
- I really couldn't. The man is senile. There is no question. There is no argument about this. There isn't.
- 12:22
- It is as clear a fact as the sun rises in the east in the morning.
- 12:28
- It's just, there's no argument about this. He is a senile old man.
- 12:33
- This is elder abuse. It's insulting to the nation. Every person, whether Republican, Mitch McConnell, needs to step aside.
- 12:41
- No question about it. Feinstein, are you kidding me?
- 12:46
- Pelosi's running again? Fetterman, really?
- 12:53
- All these people, just an insult to the United States of America to have these people in office.
- 12:59
- It really, really is. And to run Biden again is just a slap in the face of everybody.
- 13:06
- This is the man who's bumbling and stumbling around overseas right now. Doesn't know where he's going.
- 13:12
- Doesn't know what day of the week it is. Talk about the destruction of the United States of America.
- 13:19
- I think back, and I played it on the program once because it was just hilariously funny, because he was so good.
- 13:26
- But I think back on when Reagan was in Berlin and it was after he had been shot, after the assassination attempt.
- 13:33
- I think I mentioned to you, I remember exactly where I was. Funny how that works. I was in guitar class my senior year in high school when
- 13:41
- Mr. Munoz. How did I remember that? Well, I can't remember. I'm supposed to get a target, but I can remember that.
- 13:47
- Mr. Munoz comes over the loudspeaker, Independence High School, and announces that the president has been shot.
- 13:57
- And so after that, you know, Reagan recovered. And he was over in Berlin and he was speaking and a balloon popped.
- 14:10
- So it was a pop. And he kept speaking for a second or two. And then he stopped and you could see this little twitch of a smile.
- 14:19
- And he goes, miss me. It's dead silence for a second.
- 14:26
- And then everyone starts laughing because they all got it. And he could poke fun at himself.
- 14:33
- And just the massive difference between Reagan and Biden.
- 14:38
- I mean, it's just the world respected Reagan. They laugh at Biden and Harris.
- 14:47
- Everyone laughs at Harris and appropriately so. So anyway, this is where we are.
- 14:56
- And look, you have to. As parents in the state of California.
- 15:04
- I don't I how can you have your children in the public school system in California, really anywhere anymore?
- 15:11
- I don't get it. I don't understand it. You're you're you're sacrificing them on the altar.
- 15:20
- And here comes here comes the regime. Ugly, very, very, very ugly.
- 15:27
- So pray for. You know, I say pray for California. In what way?
- 15:36
- Imprecatory Psalms. I mean, that's really almost the only place we can go. It is literally imprecatory
- 15:43
- Psalms. These are these are God hating people who are putting into law the fundamental destruction of everything
- 15:54
- God says is good. God will judge every nation that does this kind of thing. We look back and we see how
- 16:02
- God destroyed the Canaanite nations. And we talk about their sacrificing of children and all this stuff.
- 16:08
- They weren't doing anything worse than what we're doing today. You read about the results of transitioning surgery and they're not doing anything worse than we were doing back then.
- 16:20
- We're not doing anything. They back then were not doing anything worse than we're doing now. There we go. Get the tenses of the verbs put together.
- 16:29
- It's and we sit around going, well, God will judge. Yep, he certainly will. He certainly will.
- 16:35
- And it will be a righteous judgment. But the question always is and this is let me transition to my second topic here.
- 16:45
- I've been thinking about all of us for decades have been looking at what was happening.
- 16:52
- I mean, OK, we just had September 11th, right, 22 years ago. And 22 years ago,
- 17:00
- Algo knows this, Rich knows this, maybe three or four other people know this. But this is this is still up, you know, on the website, it's on Sermon Audio.
- 17:10
- In audio back then, we weren't doing video yet. But I at the time spoke of the necessity for repentance in the
- 17:23
- United States. God bless America with soul shattering, heartfelt repentance.
- 17:30
- That's the only thing that was the only God bless America I could sing. And so I have thought for years,
- 17:41
- OK, what if what if God brings his judgment to bear on this nation? What is that going to look like?
- 17:46
- Is it going to be just a sudden raining down of Chinese and Russian nuclear weapons and there's nothing left, everything that glows?
- 17:56
- Probably not, because, you know, that pretty much wipes out the entire world.
- 18:02
- And not only that, but both the Russian and Chinese economies are literally in worse shape than ours.
- 18:11
- So they're dependent upon us. I mean, China's dumping its treasuries. But still, they've got major, major, major, major problems.
- 18:23
- Algo just posted the link to yeah, you know, you know, Algo, thank you for that.
- 18:29
- I will I will repost it. And it's ironic that he did that within what, one minute of my having mentioned.
- 18:38
- It's a little scary. Sometimes I sort of look around. Where might he be?
- 18:45
- Anyway. What was
- 18:52
- I talking about before Algo threw me off the off the path there again?
- 18:58
- But anyway, the question that a lot of us have been thinking about for years is, well, what would the decline look like?
- 19:12
- What would the role of the church be during the decline? What would the impact of the decline be upon the church, inside the church?
- 19:23
- I've often said that a discerning, unified church is a blessing upon a nation.
- 19:31
- And if God wants to withdraw his blessings from a nation, could we have division in the church and backbiting and all sorts of stuff like that?
- 19:42
- Could that? I mean, God, by his grace, has to restrain our indwelling sin.
- 19:48
- I mean, that's a work of the spirit of God. So exactly what would it look like?
- 19:55
- And I really wonder if one of the real problems that we're facing right now is what it means to live in this kind of a judgment period.
- 20:15
- And it just seems like we are at each other's throats.
- 20:23
- It's so easy. Easy. So for example, some guy who calls himself a
- 20:28
- Christian nationalist yesterday started going after me. I think he's a troll. I don't think he's real. I don't think for a second he's real.
- 20:35
- He was dropping F -bombs on me and all the rest of this stuff. And I'm obviously not a Christian, but he's talking about an authoritarian
- 20:45
- Christian leader. Yeah. While dropping F -bombs. Right. Okay. And I'm like,
- 20:53
- I had never run into anybody like this. And it really strikes me that, like I said, he was a poser.
- 21:00
- He's a troll. He's not real. I don't think there's a real person behind that account that actually believes these things.
- 21:08
- But the the dialogue isn't happening.
- 21:15
- There is a willingness on all parts to just assume anything is slander, take everything as slander.
- 21:25
- There's no extension of grace. And I just think it would be helpful.
- 21:32
- And I hope maybe next, let's see, a week from tomorrow. That's when
- 21:38
- I get in. Or that's when, yeah, that's when I, no, a week from tomorrow is the pre -conference at G3.
- 21:47
- I'm hoping that this will happen then, at least briefly. I mean, there's only so much time.
- 21:56
- But could we agree on some fundamental basic realities? We are the first generation to face the situation we're facing.
- 22:09
- That's not, you know, nothing new under the sun does not mean that every single situation, you know,
- 22:16
- Paul never faced the issue of nuclear weapons, okay? It's application of principles that we have to do.
- 22:26
- Even during the Soviet Union, even under Mao, those repressive anti -Christian regimes did not have the technology that China has today, that we possess today.
- 22:48
- The church was able to meet in secret. It was dangerous.
- 22:55
- But I don't know how the church could meet in secret today with satellites, drones.
- 23:04
- I mean, everybody would have to leave their phones someplace else. You couldn't wear, well, this watch wouldn't do it.
- 23:11
- But I have watches that are, you know, Wi -Fi capable. And I've got something in my wallet that I would have to remember to leave aside because it tracks stuff.
- 23:25
- And we're all just tracked constantly. How would you find a place to meet secretly?
- 23:33
- Even if everybody stripped themselves of everything electronic, there are cameras on every corner.
- 23:42
- They know where your car is. You know, my truck's got, undoubtedly has stuff that's,
- 23:50
- I mean, I can, since I can do stuff with my truck on my phone by satellite.
- 23:58
- Sure, that's wonderful. Except that I couldn't go anywhere without the regime knowing where I'm going.
- 24:07
- So how would, we are facing not only challenges along those lines, but we are, even in the
- 24:18
- Soviet Union, I subscribe to some interesting Twitter feeds, like a
- 24:27
- Cold War podcast and stuff where they post images from the
- 24:32
- Cold War and stuff like that. And I know most of you were not alive during the Cold War, but I certainly was.
- 24:39
- And it was a major part of my upbringing to be thinking of those things.
- 24:45
- And even then, the Soviets had to deal with the deeply embedded religiosity of the
- 25:00
- Russian people, the Slavic people, orthodoxy, things like that. They had to deal with the family.
- 25:11
- They had to deal with traditions. And they struggled to do so.
- 25:17
- They struggled to do so. They weren't able to really develop a completely new vocabulary.
- 25:23
- They certainly tried to break the connection between generations and families, and they did, but it was really, really challenging and hard for them to do.
- 25:35
- That has been already done by the public indoctrination system in the
- 25:40
- West. That's already there. They don't even have to worry about that anymore. We are looking at the next generation as already perfectly prepared.
- 25:57
- They've been preparing the environment, I think is the term that I've heard used. They've been doing it for a long time.
- 26:05
- And so they have the tech, the environment's prepared, and their main weapon now is all the forms of secularism.
- 26:15
- Secularism and any form of liberty -providing, freedom -providing government are incompatible.
- 26:28
- Now, I know the Europeans think, oh no, no, no, no, no. It's the reality.
- 26:34
- There's nothing within the secular worldview that will function as a break, as a barrier to keep that from becoming the tyrannical, totalitarian, dystopian fulfillment that all those books have foreseen and that we're seeing taking place right now.
- 26:58
- There's nothing in the system to stop it. And secularism is fundamentally incompatible with the
- 27:08
- Constitution of the United States. I mean, the Constitution of the United States was not written by secularists, and it was not written by people who could have foreseen secularism.
- 27:21
- Even the deists that were involved recognized the importance of public morality and what the origin and source of that was for the vast majority of people.
- 27:35
- So we're facing stuff we've never faced before, and so anybody who claims to have all the answers as to exactly how to answer all the questions is a fool.
- 27:47
- And it's frightening to me. But at the same time, we do have to be willing to ask uncomfortable questions.
- 27:57
- And I think for people of my generation, there's a hesitation, a real hesitation to allow for some of these conversations to take place.
- 28:18
- I was raised, soaked in the myth of neutrality. I was raised in a time where fundamentally the fundamentalist church was at peace with the government.
- 28:30
- They're not gonna bother us, we're not gonna bother them. And there was no thought through understanding of what it would mean for us to speak prophetically to the magistrates.
- 28:50
- It just wasn't there. And so things have changed, and we've got to think these things through, and we've got to show some stinking grace.
- 29:05
- Someone may come up with an idea, you've never heard it before, and the instant knee -jerk reaction is, shoot them!
- 29:13
- And it's like, whoa, wait a minute. So let me just point something out.
- 29:23
- There's nothing to go back to. We can't go back to anything.
- 29:32
- There's, we're past that now. We're past that now. And so constantly wishing for the olden days, it's too late.
- 29:46
- Have you seen the younger generation? Have you seen Gen Z? Have you seen what they believe? See what they say?
- 29:54
- There's no going back. So what are we supposed to do now?
- 30:01
- It is a perfectly valid question to ask, all right, secular democracy, as it's being described right now, secular democracy has gotten us a real mess.
- 30:28
- It has gotten us abortion on demand. It has gotten us genetic manipulation, has gotten us euthanasia, especially in Canada, but don't worry, it's coming here.
- 30:43
- It has gotten us a sexual revolution that is destroying people right, left, and center.
- 30:55
- And we can no longer just sit around and go, well, but we have to, you know, we have to respect everyone's differing opinions.
- 31:06
- I don't respect opinions of people who want to mutilate my grandchildren.
- 31:12
- Don't respect them at all. And there are things
- 31:18
- I'd be willing to do if they try to do that, that you just simply have to be willing to do if you have any morals or a backbone at all.
- 31:30
- And so if it is true that secular thought is a fundamental denial of everything that Christ said was good and right and just, if he, everything when
- 31:47
- Paul says was true and honest and just and lovely and pure, secularism is the opposite of that.
- 31:56
- So can we just be neutral toward it? Can we hope that it'll just leave us alone?
- 32:03
- Ask anybody in California. No. So what are we gonna do?
- 32:11
- Now, from my perspective, the only way, I mean, secularism, once it gets to a certain point in a society, once all the holds are off, will destroy that society and take as many people with it as it can.
- 32:28
- So I suppose you could say we can just sit around and let it take itself out.
- 32:35
- But then you have to be thinking, well, what are you gonna do after that? I mean, if we're not all glowing or they haven't used bioweapons, a new variant of COVID or something, there has to be something to be rebuilt.
- 32:50
- There has to be somewhere to go in the future. And of course, if your eschatology is, no, there's nowhere to go in the future.
- 32:56
- It's just all gonna be wrapped up and that's it and we all go to heaven and that's the end of that. Well, then you don't really have to think too much about this,
- 33:04
- I guess. Just ride it out best you can. But when secularism fails, what's next?
- 33:18
- What's next? Have we thought through a
- 33:23
- Christian understanding of government and freedom and life and the value of human life?
- 33:36
- Have we thought that through well enough to be able to say, here, here's where you go. And the thing that's concerning me is there are some people think you can do that with some type of authoritarian leader, some non -Catholic pope or something.
- 33:59
- In fact, I was, I need to wrap this up and get to the other topic here because it's fascinating. The Catholics are having the same conversation.
- 34:08
- They mock those of us having the conversation on this side, but man, do they have a history. Oh, so is that what you need?
- 34:16
- I mean, sort of silly for the Catholics to be doing this right now with Pope Francis, who's sold out to all this stuff anyways.
- 34:23
- But it's humorous, really. But still, these are vitally important questions and there should be freedom to go, well, has anybody thought about this?
- 34:40
- Without everybody just jumping down everybody else's throat in the process. And it seems that on all sides, that's if anyone suggests anything that's different than anything
- 34:48
- I've thought of before, this is like, could we chill and go, hey, we're all facing something new.
- 34:59
- There were no classes in seminary when I was in seminary on this. And I don't think there still are.
- 35:07
- It's easy for us to sit around and go, yeah, yeah. By what standard? But there needs to be a working out of what that means to say by what standard without, you know, the firing squad in the morning for anyone who comes up with an answer.
- 35:27
- Well, you know, we were asked about this. Nope, that's all wrong. Boom. You're gone. Oh, sorry.
- 35:32
- I shouldn't have done that. Did that show up on? Oh, good. It didn't show up on this camera angle because they literally kicked a kid out of school recently for doing that.
- 35:42
- He made a made a finger gun and he went boom. And, uh, you know, if you showed the teachers today what our playground looked like in 1972 somewhere, they would lose their minds.
- 36:05
- But anyway, neither here nor there. Okay, so I'm really hoping that we're going to see some advancement in maturity and allow for people to hold other views.
- 36:26
- And it would help if everybody would say, well, you know, this is tentative. I don't know.
- 36:32
- None of us have been here before. But I thought about this, this and this. Okay.
- 36:39
- Take the good, interact with it, go. But have you thought about this? Oh, yeah. I really hadn't thought about that.
- 36:45
- Isn't that how we grow? Isn't that how it's supposed to work? I'd like to see that happen. Personally, I really do.
- 36:51
- Okay. All right. So, um, last, oh, the past week or so, somewhere around there,
- 37:04
- I have, I'm not sure how it popped into my feed and stuff, but I have seen, um, and had some interaction with a
- 37:17
- Roman Catholic by the name of Dr. Taylor Marshall. Now, um, his own
- 37:25
- Twitter thing says, husband, father to eight children, philosopher, best -selling author, professor, 550 ,000 subs on YouTube, Christ is
- 37:35
- King, my YouTube channel and link. Okay. Um, and I obviously
- 37:44
- I'm familiar with the name. I've seen it before, but I was sort of wondering, I've hear,
- 37:51
- I've heard some, some interesting things, um, about this fella, and I'm not a hundred percent certain.
- 38:00
- And so you go to Wikipedia and he's a convert and a
- 38:06
- Westminster seminary grad. And he made that claim in fact, um, on, boy, this is going to be fun.
- 38:16
- This is going to be fun. Um, again, these programs are live. I'm sitting here in my
- 38:22
- RV and evidently someone's fully contained one of the big bus, almost bus size, fully contained
- 38:32
- RVs, uh, bit the dust and you should see the size of the dump truck.
- 38:41
- And they're trying to get it out of here. Well, it's just a strange, it is a strange setup here. It is very strange and not the best layout and there's not much they can do about it now.
- 38:53
- I mean, once the buildings are built and stuff like that, but you've got to go wide out here and then go between two buildings to get back into the park to park where you're supposed to be.
- 39:02
- And as it was, I had to sort of go down a thing that was a little uncomfortable for me to do. So there's no way that this huge, uh, record truck, which is probably two -thirds length, my whole, when
- 39:17
- I'm hooked up, uh, and then with that thing is going to get through there. So they're actually backing this thing up and I don't know how they're going to do this, but you may hear beep, beep, beep, beep, because they're, they're going to be at this for a while.
- 39:30
- I do, I do believe here, there, they're just going to dump it over there. Uh, maybe it died in the middle of the street and they're just getting, getting to some people and get through.
- 39:37
- I don't know. But, uh, interesting stuff that goes on in, uh, in RV parks. Um, always, always interesting.
- 39:44
- Uh, anyhow, back to what we were talking about here, Dr. Taylor Marshall, uh,
- 39:50
- Westminster Seminary grad. I think I read that he, he sort of the normal progression.
- 39:57
- Uh, most reformed people that go Roman go through a phase of, uh,
- 40:03
- Anglican, Episcopalian, something along those lines, maybe visit
- 40:09
- Constantinople, Istanbul, um, East North Oxygen before they
- 40:16
- Pope all the way. He is obviously no fan of Francis. And it, it seems like he dances right on the edge of Sede -Vacantism.
- 40:28
- If you know what, don't know what Sede -Vacantism is. Sede, the seat, Vacantism is vacant.
- 40:35
- It's the idea that the seat of Peter, uh, is vacant, that there is not a valid Pope.
- 40:42
- And there's lots of Sede -Vacantists out there, um, who are more
- 40:48
- Catholic than the Pope is, which isn't difficult to do with Francis.
- 40:54
- But anyway, uh, and so he sort of flits around on the edge there.
- 41:02
- I have been told, I have not taken the time to check all this stuff out, but I have been told that he is a flat earther, literally.
- 41:13
- Now, you know, Bob St. Genes got into geocentrism a number of years ago. I don't know if any of you remember that.
- 41:19
- Bob, well, some of you don't know Bob St. Genesis. I think Bob and I have done, what, five debates? I'll go with no.
- 41:25
- Uh, I, I think St. Genes and I have debated five times. And I've got it, you know, every time
- 41:33
- I, I mention anything about Bob, I've, I've got to give him, uh, credit that he is the only
- 41:41
- Roman Catholic apologist who had, was willing to, uh, debate me on the bodily assumption of Mary.
- 41:52
- Um, nobody else touched the 10 -foot pole, because it's just, it's just so ahistorical. It's just, it's so obviously not something the apostles taught.
- 42:00
- It's not found in the scripture. Um, there was a debate recently on the subject, and listening to the
- 42:07
- Roman Catholics, especially one who is an apostate, uh, trying to twist
- 42:15
- Revelation chapter 12 against the united testimony of the early church, which is interesting, uh, but certainly out of its own context.
- 42:23
- It's just pathetic, uh, where you have to go to, uh, come to these types of conclusions.
- 42:33
- But hey, Robert, uh, Robert gave a shot. So, I was wondering if maybe
- 42:40
- Marshall's into, like, geocentrism or something, but I haven't, he's a literal flat earther, that NASA is a big, huge, uh, conspiracy theory generating machine, and, and, because that's what you have to come up with.
- 42:57
- I mean, every satellite image, um, every, you know, all the weather images, and everything that's come back from Voyager, it's just all fake.
- 43:11
- I mean, it's the largest conspiracy theory ever hatched by anyone. Um, and so, you know, people have said, well, you guys need to debate.
- 43:23
- Well, I was certainly thinking about it, but I'll be honest with you. If, if it was actually verified to me, if I were actually to read in his own words, this guy's a flat earther.
- 43:34
- I'm like, I don't, I don't know that you can, I don't think you can have a rational conversation with a flat earther.
- 43:41
- I've tried a few times. It's, it's worthless. Um, they, they don't function rationally like the rest of us do.
- 43:49
- Um, there is no law of non -contradiction in their thinking. There are no, there's no way of understanding category errors in their thinking.
- 43:58
- So there's, they don't deal with facts in a, in a meaningful fashion that you just, you can't really have a conversation with them.
- 44:06
- I'm not really sure how they function in this world because they've got to, they've, they've got to function that way to drive down the road, but they function by a different worldview when it comes to this.
- 44:16
- Uh, hopefully they're not using GPS. His GPS can't work.
- 44:22
- Can it? Anyway. Um, so he started throwing out all these basic, basically standard
- 44:35
- Roman Catholic claims. They would have been fairly normative, uh, back in the eighties when
- 44:41
- I first started studying it, but they're not, they're not as normative, uh, today.
- 44:51
- Roman Catholic apologists will try to spin and nuance things more now, uh, than, than this guy is.
- 45:01
- He's just throwing stuff out there. So for example, he said, uh, Pope Damascus in 382 determined which books would be in the
- 45:08
- Bible. Boom. Just boom. Now the
- 45:14
- Catholic encyclopedia contradicts that and there's just tons of Roman Catholic writing.
- 45:20
- I mean, the first dogmatic definition of the canon of scripture from Rome's perspective is the
- 45:27
- Council of Trenton, 1546, not 382. And the very idea that a single bishop could have that authority, uh, again, maybe
- 45:41
- Pope Damascus thought he could do that, but nobody else did. And I, I, I tweeted back to him when he said that, uh, funny how
- 45:50
- Jerome, uh, Jerome did translate the deuterocanonicals at Damascus' insistence, but didn't change his opinion that they weren't canonical.
- 46:03
- So he knew what Damascus' position was, but it didn't impact him because he never dreamed that one bishop could actually determine the canon of scripture.
- 46:12
- And you can follow Jerome's line. It goes back to Miletus Sardis and, uh,
- 46:19
- Origen and Rufinus and just all sorts of people. Pope Gregory the
- 46:24
- Great, um, the Catholic encyclopedia admits that Gregory the
- 46:30
- Great did not believe in the canonical status of the deuterocanonical books. And all the way up to the time of the
- 46:36
- Reformation with Cardinal Cayetan, who interviewed Luther, his commentaries followed
- 46:42
- Jerome. So it's not, it's, it's not really, uh, a questionable thing, but it's, it's almost humorous when someone can just so bluntly throw out
- 47:00
- Pope Damasus determined the canon of scripture in 382 and just ignore all the rest of it.
- 47:06
- But the kind of ultra conservative Roman Catholicism that Taylor Marshall represents, that's what their people want.
- 47:16
- They, they want that kind of thinking, that kind of, uh, blunt stuff.
- 47:23
- And like, like I was saying, um, he's all upset about Pope Francis canceling
- 47:31
- Bishop Strickland. I'll be honest with you. I don't know what the background of all that stuff is. Uh, but he's not, he's actually has a poll, uh, where evidently more people think that Francis should resign than Pope Strickland should, should resign.
- 47:48
- Um, he's got a book out that I've been told I should go ahead and listen to, if nothing more than for entertainment value called
- 47:56
- Infiltration, which again, um, there are a lot of red -pilled
- 48:04
- Roman Catholics that recognize there's tremendous corruption in the church.
- 48:11
- And that, um, if Francis gets his way and his successor is his own acolyte, um, this is going to start a fundamental shift.
- 48:25
- And there's just so many Roman Catholics still today who just, oh, it can't happen. Nope. This just can't happen.
- 48:31
- And it's like, we're watching it happen, dude. Um, that's what the red pill is about. Um, but he made, um, well, here's, here's, here's a couple of, uh, tweets
- 48:46
- I was just going to interact with in the last minutes we have here. Um, he actually sent this to me.
- 48:53
- Augustine taught baptismal regeneration, Eucharistic sacrifice, prayers to the dead and prayers to the saints. He was a
- 48:58
- Catholic. Now that sounds again, simplistic.
- 49:05
- And this is the problem with debating someone like this is they throw something like that out and it's, you know, red meat for their followers.
- 49:14
- But for example, what he believed about baptismal regeneration is different than what modern
- 49:23
- Roman Catholicism teaches on that subject. I would certainly agree that he was in error on that topic, but he also believed.
- 49:32
- And again, going back years and years and years, uh,
- 49:38
- I think I made my first presentation on this in the nineties. Oh yeah, it was, that was probably 92, 93.
- 49:49
- Yeah. Right around that area. Uh, where I went through how Augustine's, um, the controversies he engaged in his life, two major controversies, the
- 50:04
- Donatist controversy and the Pelagian controversy formed the evolution of his theology.
- 50:11
- And as a result created fundamental contradictions so that the
- 50:17
- Protestants could quote them, the Catholics could quote them on different subjects and do so in, in context.
- 50:25
- Um, you know, the quote I've given over and over again from Morefield, the reformation inwardly considered was just the victory of Augustine's doctrine of grace over Augustine's doctrines of church.
- 50:37
- And his doctrine of church came first with the Donatists. Um, so, you know, his idea of, uh, divine election and that there were people who were regenerated by baptism, but were not given the gift of perseverance.
- 50:57
- So they were true Christians, but they would fall away because unless you're given the gift of perseverance, you will not persevere in that regeneration.
- 51:08
- Now that's incoherent biblically given union with Christ and the nature of what
- 51:14
- Paul teaches, but that's, that's where they are. Uh, that's where he was.
- 51:21
- Eucharistic sacrifice. Really? This is the same guy who, who taught plainly that the church is deprived of the physical presence of Christ until the second coming.
- 51:34
- What, what are you doing when you're genuflecting? You go into your church. What's in that monstrance, that tabernacle?
- 51:41
- Isn't that the physical body, body, soul, blood, and divinity of Jesus Christ. But Augustine taught he's gone.
- 51:50
- He's gone until the second coming. Oh, must've had a different understanding.
- 51:57
- Uh, you certainly did. Um, prayers for the dead in what way?
- 52:02
- Again, he represents a step, another step in the development toward the final doctrine of purgatory, but he certainly doesn't hold to what, uh,
- 52:14
- Florence would teach or anything that would come in the next millennium. Um, so it's so easy to just throw stuff out and not, and just be able to depend upon your audience, not having sufficient context to be able to recognize what's actually being said.
- 52:38
- Um, but what was really interesting was he makes, yeah, here you go.
- 52:51
- Uh, he, he,
- 52:57
- I think he responded to Megan Basham. Well, here's one of them.
- 53:03
- It says the Twitter version of Christian nationalism is actually the weak sauce devolved reformed
- 53:09
- Baptists version of what should be authentic throne and alter
- 53:15
- Catholicism. Hashtag return. Um, and up above that there's one, you're never going to have authentic Christendom established under the
- 53:31
- Southern Baptist convention. Well, actually probably agree on that one or the PCA or an independent
- 53:39
- Presbytery in Moscow, Idaho. Oh, we know he's shooting out that it's laughable.
- 53:46
- And so what's behind that? Well, uh, if you've heard the term integralism, um, the
- 53:57
- Roman Catholic concept, it shouldn't shock anybody that given that Rome had established a sacral system that, that look, it was never overly consistent, uh, for lengthy periods of time.
- 54:19
- I mean, you look at the pornography in the 10th century. And then by the 12th century, you have the papacy reaching the height of its political power.
- 54:27
- You have all the discussion of the illustration of the sun and the moon and representation of, um, governmental authority and which is the church and which is the state and the use of the interdict.
- 54:45
- Um, and, and it's, it's a, it requires you taking some time to read some church history to know about everything that, that developed over that time period.
- 54:59
- And then there was degradation over time because once the church enters into politics, well, some
- 55:05
- Popes are going to be, uh, better politicians than others, shall we say, just as, you know,
- 55:14
- Charlemagne incredible, his sons, not so much. Um, and you're going to have certain
- 55:22
- Popes, powerful authority, uh, individuals, uh, lots of, lots of authority can wield it.
- 55:31
- And then the next guy might be a complete wimp. And so it's hard to keep a consistency going.
- 55:40
- Um, you'd get Holy Roman Emperors or Kings who are stronger in opposing
- 55:47
- Rome's, uh, usurpation of power. And so they push back and so things change.
- 55:54
- Um, but the sacral system, sacralism, and again, remember who was it that freaked out about that term recently?
- 56:03
- I've never heard anybody talking about that. And everybody starts posting all the people using it. Well, I was just like,
- 56:10
- Oh, please. Um, sacralism where you have a unbiblical mixture.
- 56:23
- Uh, you know, the big term that everybody's using now, it's not new, but it's come into our vocabulary is sphere sovereignty.
- 56:31
- You have the sphere of the family. You have the sphere of the church. You have the sphere of the state.
- 56:39
- And once you give to anyone, uh, once you give the state, um, certain levels of authority to redefine what the family is, uh, to control the church.
- 57:00
- And from the time of Constantine onward, what you have is a constant battle back and forth as to who's going to have ultimate authority with the family sort of getting lost in the mix.
- 57:18
- That's what church history is all about. And so it's not overly surprising to see Roman Catholics going, well, you know, we did it for hundreds of years.
- 57:27
- Well, it was a whole lot easier to do things for hundreds of years back then, because development took place so slowly.
- 57:33
- Doesn't work that way today. Um, not with the speed of communication. Um, political change and evolution happens fast now, unless there is an unchanging foundation.
- 57:47
- They say, Oh, we can provide that. Yeah. Who's your Pope again? Sorry. Hey, he's your
- 57:54
- Pope. Okay. I just have to point out to you, um, that y 'all don't have, we've got something that doesn't change.
- 58:04
- You don't, because you reject the ultimate authority of this. You, it's just reality.
- 58:10
- You place this under the authority of the church. You do. That is the functional reality.
- 58:15
- Just admit it. Because of that, you got your
- 58:22
- Francis and he's going to do what he's going to do. That's just all there is to it.
- 58:28
- There's lots of fascinating stuff to read in his, uh, in his timeline. Uh, there really, really, really is.
- 58:35
- There are things where we actually agree on stuff, especially stuff going on in the world. Um, but the solutions, very, very different, uh, conclusions, um, between us at that point, no, no two ways about it.
- 58:50
- So anyhow. All right. Uh, so on my way to Pennsylvania, uh, please continue to pray for traveling mercies.
- 59:01
- Uh, because I, um, I think it was a long drive. I'm not sure why it was over four hours.
- 59:09
- Um, pray that we figure out how to, for me to get gas easier.
- 59:17
- I, I went through the diesel lanes at a, at a place today and they wouldn't take the card because you have to have a certain type of card for fuel stuff.
- 59:26
- And we need to get me one of those because trying to get a 51 foot long vehicle into the car areas doesn't work.
- 59:37
- And today I, I waited to go to a flying J because it said RV friendly, which has always meant until today that they had
- 59:45
- RV lanes, which is nice. There's no thing up above and you can fill up on either side.
- 59:51
- And they're normally wide open and great. I get there doing a diesel.
- 59:59
- Um, so yeah. Okay. Rich says, tell folks to call me if they know about that card, because Rich says, okay,
- 01:00:09
- I'll just go ahead and throw this out there. In fact, there's two things we need your help with. Number one, Rich says, when we first started traveling, that a kind lady contacted him and told him about what we're probably talking about right now, the card that you need to go through the diesel lanes where the trucks go.
- 01:00:29
- Um, but he doesn't, he can't find it. He can't find what was indicated. And I, so I called him today after I filled up.
- 01:00:37
- Um, and the guy at the, what was that? At Speedway. He was really nice. I just need to hold on to your card.
- 01:00:43
- I'll turn on the pumps. You can get diesel, get deaf and come back in. And, you know, but if you have the right card,
- 01:00:50
- I wouldn't have to come in to do any of that stuff. It would be much faster. Um, but, uh,
- 01:00:56
- I called Rich and I said, we gotta, we gotta find out which one of these cards, uh, we need to have so that I can,
- 01:01:04
- I can get this thing filled up. I need diesel. I've got a big tank. Uh, I need deaf.
- 01:01:10
- And, uh, well, you know, so he's thinking that we were contacted by someone early on.
- 01:01:19
- And I think one of the main reasons we didn't follow up is we first, first vehicle we had was regular gas.
- 01:01:25
- It didn't use diesel. So it wasn't helpful. Um, but now I've got a 26 gallon tank and, um, got to fill up deaf and that's, that's what you gotta do.
- 01:01:37
- Uh, so that's the first thing. Secondly, and I'll throw this out on Twitter, hopefully this evening, I threw out onto, um,
- 01:01:47
- Twitter about three weeks ago. I said, look, I'm going to St.
- 01:01:52
- Charles. Like I always do first weekend, December. And it's a long ways to go for one church.
- 01:01:58
- And you say, well, go earlier. The weekend before is Thanksgiving. And I want to be with my family and my grandkids, uh, for Thanksgiving.
- 01:02:07
- And once you get into December, a lot of churches have holiday stuff going on.
- 01:02:12
- And so what I threw out on Twitter was, is there anyone on my way back from St.
- 01:02:21
- Charles, Missouri, that would like to do something the next weekend, do a mini conference, do whatever that would be helpful to the church.
- 01:02:31
- Um, you know, I can do a whole thing on virgin birth, deity of Christ, everything related to the subject of the incarnation.
- 01:02:41
- That would be really enjoyable to do. It really would be. Uh, I'd, I'd have a lot of fun with that.
- 01:02:46
- I actually have my, my family will tell you, I, I did a talk for them. What was that about seven, eight years ago, maybe a little longer, um, for Christmas based on manuscript
- 01:02:59
- P52. Yes, we do geeky things in our family and they enjoyed it.
- 01:03:04
- They found it very, very useful and stuff. So, so the weekend after, um,
- 01:03:11
- I would be speaking in St. Charles. And, uh, so that is hold on a second here.
- 01:03:20
- So I'd be speaking in St. Charles on the first, second, and third. So like seven, eight, nine, or even 10 of December, lots of people have stuff going on then.
- 01:03:35
- That's why you haven't done anything before. Someone in Kansas city tweeted me back and I can't find it.
- 01:03:44
- I thought I had saved a screenshot. Might've been on a different computer phone.
- 01:03:50
- I don't know. And I can't find it. So if, um, if you were the folks in Kansas city that said, we'd love to do something on that following weekend.
- 01:04:01
- Um, I want to follow up because I need to, I need to be making reservations. It's not like the reservations at that time of year are all that tight or anything like that, but I still need to do it.
- 01:04:13
- Um, but yeah, that's what I'd like to try to do. Um, that weekend afterwards.
- 01:04:18
- So I lost it. I don't know where it went and I want to follow up with that.
- 01:04:24
- So I figured I'll throw it out here. I'll throw it out on Twitter. Hopefully between the two, we'll be able to catch up with folks and, and make things work.
- 01:04:32
- And yeah, yeah. That's a, that's how, what we'll do. Okay. Let's get to the right outro music here.
- 01:04:40
- And thank you for watching Dividing Line, Road Trip Dividing Line. Again, thanks for everybody who made this beautiful RV and the studio available.
- 01:04:51
- And I don't know when we'll be back on, but watch the app to know when we'll be able to be with you again.