Jonathan Merritt Uses Slavery as a Cover for Slander, then Bart Ehrman’s Ideal God

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And greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. It is Thursday, and we are, wow, we're working on wrapping up January already.

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2020 is not going to last very long, is it? Already been a rather eventful year, to be sure, but always eventful when you get the attention of some of the elites out there, the progressive elites.

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I'm not sure when the progressive title came along, but I have often said that to be a progressive just simply means that you're progressing right off the edge of a cliff into disaster, and that most of what is called progressivism is actually regressivism, going back to old ways of paganism and things like that, especially when you're talking about people within the

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Christian context. And yesterday I noticed there was an initial tweet that I should have pulled up here, because it didn't have my particular name in it, and so I should have grabbed that.

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I didn't. But I noticed a tweet from Jonathan Merritt that was one of these, you know,

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I'm just going to throw this out there, and I'm going to say that all these people are bad, bad people.

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And, you know, there's a lot of that. There's what was the passive aggressive mechanism of approaching people.

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And so I responded to it by asking, I might have.

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Well, this is how I responded to that initial tweet.

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Let me see if, because I just brought this up there. Maybe I can. Yeah. Okay.

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No. Anyways, here's how

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I responded, because I don't have the screenshot of. Okay.

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Here, I think this is here. Can someone tell me why Christians equivocate on the New Testament slavery passages?

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Say it with me. Quote, it is never okay for one person to own another human. Well, that's not a quote, it's an asterisk.

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Kinder slavery is still morally wrong, period, full stop. Why does this even need to be said? So I responded to that with, so you are saying one, death is superior to slavery, as slavery was often the only place to go to avoid it.

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And two, Paul was in error in exhorting slaves and masters to both come to the table in fellowship and brotherhood, question mark, not asking for a friend.

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So what I, the reason I even responded is

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Jonathan Merritt, as most people know, is a writer. He is the son of a former

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Southern Baptist convention president.

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He's got another book coming out. There's a lot of speculation as to what that book coming out might include.

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And very much on the same road as Rachel Held Evans was on.

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And so there's a whole group of people out there who, as they move away from what they call the faith of their childhood or their upbringing, part of the defense mechanism that kicks in when you are abandoning that which you once professed is to obviously start agreeing with those who attack the very things you once professed.

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Now, my experience is that the large portion of these folks were never passionate about these things, never fully understood the concept of a

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Christian worldview. They were blessed to be given these things, but it was not something that they had ever made their own.

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And so very often they will engage in extremely surface level attacks upon what ostensibly they once believed.

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Now, that may mean that they just had a very, very surface shallow, very shallow surface level belief in the first place.

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And so they're not misrepresenting necessarily what they once believed.

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They once believed very surface, shallow types of things.

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But the point is, it's very, very rare that these individuals will maintain a kind of honesty about the positions that they are intent upon encouraging others to abandon.

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Because when you start down that road, you want to encourage other people to go with you. The more the merrier.

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And if there are other people going with you down that road, then hey, that makes you look less conspicuous if it's a whole group of people leaving.

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And that makes you say, hey, we're obviously doing something right here. And so the whole point on this subject is that we have a

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Bible. And we are either going to believe all of it or we are going to adopt positions where we begin to abandon portions of it.

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And if I recall correctly, there had also been a statement on his, yeah, can we all get real honest and admit there is no

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Christian who follows all the Bible. No one is stoning their disrespectful children or sending escaped sex trafficking victims back to their masters.

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The Bible says to send escaped sex trafficking victims back to their masters.

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Really? I missed that part. This is a way of framing debates that conservatives use to shame and silence.

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Well, of course, the thing that caught me there, the hypocrisy of Jonathan Merritt, who frames things in a very negative way toward Evangelical Christianity all the time.

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I mean, that's just, he's talented at it. He does it all the time, and he knows it. He knows he's doing it.

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So to turn this around and talk about getting real honest, and then to use such absurd language, let alone, you know, let's focus in upon the central cores of the moral law to make this point that no one's doing this.

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Again, it echoes the old West Wing stuff and things that we've dealt with over and over and over again over the past number of years.

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And so I raised this particular issue because the man still, at least to my knowledge, claims to be some kind of a

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Christian, but more of the progressive kind now. But the reality is we have a revelation.

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We have a corpus of revelation that we do not have the right to edit.

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But many Evangelicals today are grabbing hold of the idea that there are ways of trying to transform this into something that will be cool in 2020

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Western culture. And because that's really what they feel they need to be doing is it's not for them appropriate to go, man, this culture is in desperate rebellion against God and it's self -destructive and it will not be able to last.

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No culture can possibly last when you can't even tell who boys and girls are anymore.

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When a culture is administering hormone blockers, which we've only known about for literally a number of decades, but we're using our advanced medical knowledge, which no generations before us possessed.

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But now we're using that and we're using that to neuter eight -year -old boys or to arrest the development of breasts for a female at age 11.

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All because we have such a corrupted understanding of our place in this universe and purpose in this universe and all the rest.

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No society that embraces this kind of thinking will long last.

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So what do you think is going to happen when we try to create a Christianity and edit a

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Bible that will be pleasing to that kind of corrupt society?

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That kind of society that no longer values morality and law.

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We use, again, that same medical technology to murder unborn children so that we can have unfettered sexual license.

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I didn't hear almost any discussion over the weekend with all the abortion stuff being it's the end of January, Roe v.

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Wade and everyone else. I heard almost nothing about the reality that the central aspect of abortion is unfettered, outside of marriage, sexual intercourse between men and women.

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Still know enough about how that works. So a society like that, how much of this is going to be left once you start cutting out the parts that this society doesn't like?

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There's almost nothing in here that this society does like, because this begins with God and ends with God, and mankind is always seen as the creature of God, indebted to God for everything that God has.

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This is God's story, and we want something that will talk about our story, because we're all that matters.

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We get to determine whether a male -female, twin -spirit, seeking, questioning, we get to redefine marriage and profane it.

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There ain't gonna be much left, and one thing we certainly should have learned by now is that even once you compromise, even once you hand the current immoral mob anything, they will not be satisfied with it.

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That will not be enough. The only thing that you are allowed to do is to capitulate, apostatize, and join the mob in chasing anybody else who hasn't yet gotten to that point.

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That's all you can do. There are no middle grounds. There's no compromises. These people are totalitarians from beginning to end.

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So those people who are trying to find some means of slowing down the process and making

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Christianity cool, there are certain aspects of biblical revelation that they simply can't abide.

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Now, interestingly enough, if you were to seriously think through biblical law and think about the moral foundations, and this is an area of difficulty for many

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Christians, there are certain eschatological perspectives that as a part of their eschatology include the denigration of and dismissal of God's law as having continuing relevance today.

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And so there are many who just go, I'm not under law, I'm under grace. So I'm not going to think about the moral exhortations of the

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New Testament. I'm not going to think about how the Corinthians should have known that incest was wrong, even though it's obvious to the pagans, it's right there in God's law.

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And I'm not going to, you know, I know the, I know Paul, when in first Timothy, when he walks through all the sins,

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I know he's following the Ten Commandments and I know he's, that means it's continuing to be relevant and applicable.

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And even outside of the boundaries of ethnic Israel. But I'm just, there's just too much to that.

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Let's just go with this really super simplified version. And as long as you stay in your own little boxes, then you can get away with stuff like that because you don't get challenged.

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But for people who want to go out into the world and seriously engage the world, that's, that's not going to work.

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You have to have, you have to have a view of scripture that will allow you to meaningfully engage with very smart people who guess what folks, this is a big seller and you can buy it anywhere and people who don't believe it actually read it.

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And sometimes they know this far better than the people who claim that it's

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God's word. I mean, my, this is one of my first really super Bibles I've talked about before.

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It's, I had God's word put on the front of it. That was a pious thing to do, right?

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And I certainly continue to believe that all these years later. I probably, probably bought this just probably about 39 years ago.

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Was that 39 years ago? Did I put a date in it? My mom used to do that. So, yep.

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Okay. Nevermind that. 41 years ago. Under, under the presented by put the

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Lord. Well, he gave, he gave me the job to do it. So yeah, 1979.

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So I continue to believe that it's

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God's word. And I put that on the front cover, not in between the testaments.

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And I meant it for the whole thing. What I'm saying is our enemies know what it says.

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So we have to be honest about what it says. And so the new narrative is, and what

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I ran into because of Jonathan Merritt is this buzzsaw of people that just basically say, look, you just simply have to say this, no nuance, no history, no context.

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You need to speak from 21st century America and judge the word of God on the basis of the wisdom, the pinnacle of wisdom of 21st century

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America. That's what you gotta do. And I wasn't willing to do so.

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So things get, things get ugly. Now, Jonathan Merritt would not answer my questions.

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He's a smart guy. He knows he can't get into this debate because the inconsistencies, the fact, see, and it doesn't, it doesn't help his side.

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All they want to do is push a narrative. They don't push the narrative by demonstrating the consistency of the narrative.

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This is not a narrative that appeals to history, logic, reason.

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It appeals to emotion. And emotion is best ramped up, not through logical interaction and argumentation, but through the use of insults and through the use of categories, not proper categories, but you just need to use the key words to flip the switches in certain people's minds.

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And therefore I will not listen to that side. And so I asked the questions that I asked for an obvious reason.

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We know that there are multiple kinds that, that, that slavery has existed from the earliest annals of human history.

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Slavery has existed amongst every people group, every skin color, every background.

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There is slavery in China. There is slavery all over Asia. There was slavery in Africa.

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There was slavery in Europe. The American Indians not only enslaved other

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American Indians, they ate other American Indians. Okay.

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Um, the Aztecs, oh my goodness. The Mayans, the

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Olmecs, the Toltecs, it is universal amongst mankind that slavery has existed.

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And it has very, very, very rarely been regulated in any fashion whatsoever.

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As long as there was war, there was going to be slavery. As long as there was famine, there was going to be slavery.

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What's the relationship? Real simple. Up until the past couple of hundred years, mankind normally lived in an economic situation where they were three meals away from starvation.

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And so as soon as things would go bottom up, lack of rain, invading army, whatever, all of a sudden, if you're fleeing someplace, all you've got is what you can carry.

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That's not a lot in the way of food. And so if you don't have the economic basis for food storage and people helping other people and communication and stuff like that, very often all you could do would be to enter into slavery.

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You call it indentured servitude. There's all sorts of different levels and you're going to find differences in how slavery was practiced in this place over against that place.

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Even during Greek slavery, under Alexander or during Roman slavery, you're going to find differences as to how slaves were treated in Rome versus Ephesus versus Carthage.

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There are subtle differences, but there will be differences. Very often it was simply property.

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There were incredibly powerful slaves in the Roman Empire who had good lives, but they didn't have their freedom.

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They had great power, but they could not make themselves free. There were others who had relative freedom, but had very little power.

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And then normally slavery meant no power, no freedom at all.

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Lowest level of the society. But if you belonged to someone who had resources, still had food sources, then you had value to them and hence you could eat.

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So there were situations, the Bible recognizes situations where a person had the choice of entering into slavery or dying.

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That was their choice. And you can do the Patrick Henry thing, all you want, give me liberty or give me death, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

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But I have discovered that there are many people on Twitter who have never thought about these things.

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They never think, ever, ever, ever think historically. They don't think about how things were in the past.

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They sit around and they assume our worldview and then use that to read through things in the past and assume that people thought the way we think and had economic opportunities and communication, and they didn't.

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And the result is a mess. Absolute mess.

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Historically laughable. But if you keep these things in mind, then you realize that God's word allowed people in Israel to enter into slavery.

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Now, there was Jubilee year, there was supposed to be a freedom of these slaves, but there are other kinds of slaves that weren't set free in the

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Jubilee year when foreign wars took place and things like that. So there were differences. And there's even some argument as to exactly how some of these things worked out because there's not a whole lot of discussion about them and does this law take priority over that law and stuff like that.

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But the point is, a lot of people don't, haven't thought through, would, was it a mercy for God's law to regulate slavery?

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It was a universal reality. The people of Israel were slaves in Egypt. So it's not like you're going to come out and get to ignore the reality of slavery.

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They were slaves. Now, how then are they going to function in a world where slavery is going to exist in every nation around them?

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The Philistines had slaves. It was considered absolutely normative. In fact, it was considered absolutely necessary for economic realities.

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Just the way it was. I mean, the Egyptians, how do you, how do you think the Egyptians built pyramids?

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They did not advertise for skilled workers. Okay. This is not how it was done.

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So would it not be a mercy to regulate these things and to have the opportunity to save yourself, your wife and your child when famine strikes?

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And I asked the question, that's why I asked the first question, is he saying death is superior to slavery?

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And I haven't gotten anybody answer that question yet with any level of clarity. There've been people who say, well, but it's always still wrong.

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What they mean is it's something that existed in the fallen world. Well, then everything is always wrong.

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Taxation's always wrong. Having to have laws to regulate human behavior is always wrong. Everything's always wrong because we live in a fallen world.

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We're not talking about the end of time here or not. We're not talking about when justice will roll down like mountains and roll down the mountain, so on and so forth.

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We're talking about the real world where this was intended to function in the real world.

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And by the way, by the way, we sit around today and we pretend that there could never, ever be a time again where anything that the

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Bible said about these things in the past would be relevant to us. Because we have grocery stores.

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We have food, electricity, water, houses. None of that stuff will ever, ever, ever happen again.

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I don't want to be the big downer dude. But you do know that the really crazy guy in North Korea has nuclear weapons, right?

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And you know the Iranians are enriching uranium.

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The Iranians are enriching uranium. That's really very hard to say. And you do know that it is well within the realm of possibility.

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It's not just the stuff of movies. That major American cities or European cities or Russian cities or Chinese cities could disappear under a mushroom cloud without any of the major nations having launched some type of nuclear strike.

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You do realize that, right? Do you remember what happened? Well, some of you don't. If you don't remember, when 9 -11 took place, there was a major economic turndown.

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Remember? There was a major economic turndown. Ministries were impacted.

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Everybody was. The economy took a hit. That was two buildings. That was three buildings.

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What happens if Washington disappears? What happens if New York disappears? What happens if 10 cities around the world were to disappear under a mushroom cloud?

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What do you think is going to happen to the economy then? And when the economy goes, that grocery store goes too.

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And that thin veneer of civilization that we are all so proud of and never really give thanks to God for because we take it as an assumed reality, you don't think that that could happen and we could be back in situations that much more mirror what happened long ago than what we've got right now?

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We've had an extended period of blessing from God, but we've also taken it very much for granted.

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And so, the point is, what if you find yourself in a situation, you are a young man, you have a young wife, you have an infant son, and the choice is we're going to die together slowly and horrifically, or we are going to sell ourselves to become servants to someone who can provide our needs, and we will live.

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What is the Christian perspective on that? And there isn't any argument here because as soon as you go, well, we should just die together, you are now saying that the majority of the members of the early

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Christian church should not be respected for how they lived their lives because there were a bunch of slaves in the early

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Christian church. The New Testament is plain on that. So, you're saying they should have just offed themselves because they had it worse?

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No, they lived lives without political freedom that were free in Christ and honoring to Him.

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You can only do that if you're alive. Now, there are,

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I was going to bring them up, didn't do it, apologize. There are numerous books, you don't even have to get religious books, you can get secular books that will lay out for you all the different permutations and stuff like that of slavery in the past.

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And most of the time, you're just sitting there going, wow, I'm glad I did not live back then. And that's wonderful, but when you do that, you begin to recognize that there were people who made real contributions to this world.

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We may not know all of their names, but they made real contributions to this world because they lived their lives.

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Life is vitally important. Isn't there something in Christianity about life, the sacredness of life?

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And are our Chinese brothers and sisters who are in slavery right now to the

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Chinese government, are they less worthy? Should Chinese Christians, knowing that they're about to be in prison, should they kill themselves or they go into prison, suffer by the grace of God and act as a testimony, glorifying

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God? It seems that a bunch of people on Twitter think that they should kill themselves.

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If you don't got it, if I can't have my iPhone, I don't want to have life. Seems to be what most people are saying.

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Because there's this narrative and they've bought it hook, line, and sinker. And so I ask a question, which is death superior to slavery?

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It's meant to make you think. It requires you to maybe do some reading to understand something about history.

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And then I asked, Paul was an error in exhorting slaves and masters to both come to the table in fellowship and brotherhood.

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You have to deal with the reality that there are entire texts in Ephesians and Colossians and elsewhere in the

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New Testament that specifically address masters and slaves. You have to deal with it.

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It seems these people want to ignore them. They want to, in some way, say, well, all of them are actually commands to do away with slavery.

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Amazing reading. They can't apply the same rules of exegesis to those texts. They apply to anything else.

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They have to come up with some new way of reading all that, but you've got to deal with it. You've got to deal with the fact that the

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New Testament does not turn the Christian faith into a revolution in its first generation.

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Does it lay the foundation? Of course it does. The very fact that you would bring masters and slaves together at the same table is obviously detrimental to the long -term survival of slavery in what?

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In a society where Christian values and morals become the standard.

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A lot of these people don't even have a theology that would ever believe that that could even happen.

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So you've got to deal with these texts, and so you have to answer the question.

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Paul knew slavery existed. He knew slaves. So why wasn't his first thing to say, rebel, take up the sword, fight?

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He didn't do that. He did not do that. He could have done that.

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His master didn't do that, so he didn't do that because he knew that life in Christ is eternal.

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And so you proclaim the gospel. These individuals are freed in Christ even if they remain in chains.

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In abject servitude. I mean, you know there were slaves on those ships that Paul was on going to Rome.

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In the shipwreck, there were slaves. Paul didn't say, run, run, run, but he set them free spiritually.

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Well, that's spiritually. Yeah, and that is more important. Oh no, he said it.

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Yes, I said it. It is more important to be spiritually free than physically free. Yes, that's true.

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And if you don't believe that, you must have never done any type of prison ministry or anything like that at all, right?

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Because, I mean, what's being imprisoned if it's not slavery? I mean, most slaves in Antebellum South had more freedom than people in a penitentiary do.

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They got more chains going on there than they did in the South. So, I'm just stunned at how inconsistent people are.

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And it's all because of a narrative. So, let's see how the narrative worked. So, Jonathan Merritt won't answer these questions because to answer these questions requires you to think through the relationship of the nation of Israel to the nations around immediately to major powers like Assyria and Babylon and Egypt especially, then to think through Greek slavery and then the modifications that Rome made in their form of slavery, which would be the primary form that would be experienced by the first Christians once the gospel goes out into the

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Mediterranean Basin. It requires you to think through what you believe about law, whether you believe that there's any relevance whatsoever to the

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Mosaic law or whether that's just simply been done away with and it just doesn't matter anymore. It requires you to do a lot of thinking.

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Thinking is not emoting. And leftist progressivism as it's experienced in Christianity is an emotionally driven thing.

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It's not a thinking thing. And so, it doesn't answer the questions but does respond with this.

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Not to me. He tags me but he doesn't respond to the questions.

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He quotes a response I wrote to somebody else. Someone named

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Tyler Lee Conway wrote to me, perhaps you could just simply answer.

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This is part of a thread. So, you can go back and see where it was. Perhaps you could just simply answer, do you believe it's ever okay for one human to own another human?

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Now, Tyler was trying to, again, get past dealing with the complexities of this topic.

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And that's, again, this is 2020. This is 2020

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Christianity. I don't want to deal with the text in Exodus where someone who has become a servant to someone else could actually love their master so much they want to stay with them for life.

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I don't want to deal with that. Because you see, that requires me understanding a, a context of a culture that I don't, that's not a part of me.

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I, I, I don't get that. I'm an American, kings, hierarchical societies, stuff like that.

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I, I don't get it. And in fact, all I've known is the employee employer relationship, which again, in human history is rare, is fairly new.

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Very, very new. I mean, you just, you just need to understand that the, the

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European experiment with things like liberty, a middle -class, universities, education, this has not been the historical human condition.

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And so people who are, that's all they know, because we, well, because most of them are public school educated.

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Let's just be honest about that. They don't read classics. They, they don't, they don't read, you know,

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I was, I was on a, I was on a webcast. Finally. Well, you saw the bar guys,

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Dwayne. I was on with him and we had been trying for a year to make that happen.

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And it just, I said, well, let's do it. You got your, got your stuff. Let's do it. And one of the questions that they ask is what books are you reading right now?

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Well, the funny thing was I had just downloaded 80 hours or 90 hours, forget what it was, of,

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I burned all my audible credits. And what I did is I downloaded a ton of books about the backgrounds of the

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Bible. Not, it's not, this is a background of the Bible book, but a book on Babylonian and Assyrian religion.

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Well, that'll be fascinating. But then books on Hannibal. So the car, the, the

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Carthaginian wars with Rome and then a couple of books on, on the rise of the

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Caesars and the Roman empire. And the book I was,

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I am still reading. I haven't made much progress on past couple of days, is a book on Alexander the

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Great. And it's starting off with his father and then moving to Alexander and the various campaigns and the expansion of Macedonian power through all of Greece and, and the

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Persians and all the rest of that kind of stuff, which most of you think you know about because you saw 300.

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That's not really giving you a whole lot of good solid history or you saw Troy. So that gives you something a little bit earlier than that.

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Anyway, those aren't the kinds of books that the vast majority of people in the 21st century are reading.

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And so exposure to the economic systems, exposure to the wars, exposure to the cultural situation with a, with a king and with the structured society don't have it.

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And so we take our standards and we read them back onto the past.

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And as a result, you lose, you, you, you can't engage with history in a meaningful fashion.

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So Jonathan Merritt, can someone tell me why evangelical leaders like Dr.

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Oakley, 1689, that's, that's the moniker I hide behind as some atheists think, refuse to say, quote, it is wrong for humans to own each other, question mark, exclamation mark.

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So you ask him to think historically, morally, ethically, contextually, not anachronistically, outside of just the

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USA -itively. And all of a sudden you're refusing to say,

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I mean, this is just the dishonesty of this is stunning, but it's what is done every day in politics.

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Every day in politics, this is what is done by both sides, by both sides to the other.

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But it's part of the religion of the left. This is what is done.

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That is a grossly unfair statement. It is not accurately representing what

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I said. And what it's doing is saying, I don't want to reason. I don't want to deal.

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I don't want to actually build a biblical ethic that applies the same standards of exegesis and interpretation to this issue that I apply to the

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Trinity or the resurrection or justification of my faith. I don't want to do it. You just simply have to buy the narrative.

43:01

And the narrative is, you just simply say, it's all wrong. Let's, and see, these people never, ever leave their bubble and they don't go to other countries.

43:12

They don't, they don't take on other people in debate who are from another religion, but read this the same way we, they don't, but I read their scriptures.

43:23

So they don't have to deal with the fact that I will engage in a discussion with a

43:29

Muslim about what the Quran says about these issues. And that means the Muslim is going to reading what this says about that.

43:36

I can't ignore this stuff. You people live in your little progressivist bubble. And so you can ignore all of it.

43:43

Fine. The rest of us who live in the real world that are actually doing real encounters with other people, we can't do this.

43:51

We can't ignore this. I have to have a meaningful, consistent, apologetic, not just a defense as in I'm going to play with the facts, but a true defense that understands how

44:08

God's word address these issues and still says God's word continues to be relevant today.

44:16

So it was not wrong. And in fact, my response, did

44:23

I include that? I don't see this here. Oh, great. I didn't. I'm doing all these screenshot things.

44:30

And unfortunately the ones I saved at home, I forgot to put in Dropbox. They were saving someplace else. I thought that was a default thing.

44:36

I had set it up for that. It must have changed. Anyway, my response included quoting

44:45

Philemon 1 -1, where Philemon, who was a slave owner, is called our dear brother and fellow worker.

44:55

And I said, this is not a lie. Because that is what this, if you simply say it is wrong at any point in any time, in any context, then

45:07

Paul should not have called Philemon his brother and fellow worker and commended him. Then Paul was wrong.

45:14

I am fundamentally abandoning any belief that this is a consistent revelation.

45:20

That's what they want. They don't necessarily see that. But they haven't thought this stuff through.

45:29

So he says, it gets better. The influence of white supremacy on white evangelicalism runs deeper than most people realize.

45:42

Lord, save us from your followers. I realized what

45:48

I had skipped here. I was telling you what Tyler Lee Conway, so the tweet that he's responding to, Tyler Lee Conway had said, perhaps you could just simply answer, do you believe it's ever okay for one human to own another human?

45:59

My response had been, simply answer equals, please stop reminding us of human history and all the complexities that involves.

46:07

Ignore all that. Limit yourself to the current, shallow, ahistorical, emotion -driven culture and submit.

46:14

And that's where I put Philemon, our beloved brother and fellow worker was not a lie.

46:21

That's what he was responding to. Did he refute anything about Philemon? Jonathan Merritt ain't going to touch it.

46:28

He ain't going to touch it. That's not going to help the narrative. Did he refute anything about the fact that there is human history involved here that is complex?

46:40

Nope. Didn't touch it. Instead, what do you do? Throw out the white supremacy slander.

46:45

It's easy. His name is white. That makes it real simple, right? Let's just throw that slander out there and see what sticks.

46:55

And there are lots of likes on it. Warren Throckmorton, he's always a friendly fellow.

47:03

One of his responses was, is Dr. Oakley 1689 an evangelical leader? That's depressing, if that is true.

47:10

To which someone responded, it's a big circus and he's a clown. That was Dan Marvin. And Warren Throckmorton responds, ah, so there are court evangelicals and then there are evangelical jesters.

47:22

Well, it is a kingdom with many roles, I suppose. Oh, the elites, the progressive elites and their robes of social justice, righteousness.

47:32

They're just, oh, you're so good. Oh, so you're this month. Others just going crazy.

47:39

All because Jonathan Merritt is willing to ignore direct, meaningful, historical questions and just simply go straight for the white supremacy slander.

47:57

It's a lie. Everybody knows it's a lie. There is not one rational person who believes that that's a true statement.

48:04

Jonathan Merritt knows it's not a true statement. So this is what it means to be woke.

48:12

Here it is, folks. This is what it means to be woke, is to be challenged to think about what the

48:24

Word of God actually says, what its history says, how to understand all of it together.

48:31

And look, I realize he may have been raised in a context where there was no emphasis at all upon a holistic view of scripture.

48:40

I get it. I get it. That doesn't mean that I don't have that view.

48:47

Doesn't mean that I don't have that view. So to ignore being rebuked and challenged to answer meaningful questions and to just respond with, ah, there's white supremacy for you, only meant to excite the fellow woke people.

49:13

Because there's no substance to it. I mean, if you were to submit this to some type of logical examination, everything you're saying here is just disjointed.

49:23

You didn't make any connections, didn't make any arguments. You're making assertions that aren't even logically connected one another.

49:29

Yeah, that's what we face today. Is there any reason why

49:35

I'm getting a crick in my neck, always looking to the left all day today? Just, I mean, normally you've been over here within five minutes.

49:43

So you keep reading over there. And so I just need to, I just need to get, I just need to, we're going to need to run a little thing in here and I can just go beep, and then

49:51

I can, I can, I can do that. Anyway, so there, there's lots of stuff that I, something tells me that within five years,

50:08

Jonathan Merritt will be outside the orbit of Rachel Held Evans. About five years.

50:15

And I might be being conservative at that point. But that seems to be the direction things are going.

50:22

But this is how it works. If you dare challenge the progressivist to reason with you from scripture and challenge them to think these things through, oh my goodness.

50:34

But there is a narrative and the narrative is we have to do something with this.

50:44

And if they're really honest, what they would say is this is outdated.

50:50

It's outmoded. There is no way to come up with a 2 .0, let alone a 10 .0

50:56

or a 19 .0 or whatever else. There's there, you know, we all sit here.

51:01

Have you noticed how often now, I've smartphone for a long time now. I'm a geek. Have you noticed how much more you have to update the thing now?

51:13

I mean, every day that little red badge shows up on the app store and it's six and then 10 and the next day it's 20 and you don't update it for a while.

51:24

It's 95. And, and, and we're so used to that. That's, that's how things function.

51:33

You can't do that with this. You can't do that with this. Now, my belief is the reason you don't need to do that is because it has a divine author that by revealing it the way that he did means that in whatever situation mankind finds himself in, the proper handling of this will provide what we need.

52:01

But these folks don't believe that. These folks don't believe that.

52:10

Progressivists can't believe that. Yes, sir. Well, I had mentioned in that same conversation, sometimes you don't see my posts and I don't see your posts on Twitter.

52:22

I don't know why that is. It drives me crazy. I pointed out that in Genesis 47, 13 through 22, we have the account of the famine coming.

52:36

And then in verse 19,

52:41

I believe it is, we have the Egyptians coming to Joseph. Now they've already sold their cattle to him for food.

52:51

And a year later they're coming back and they got nothing left. And they, they basically said, well, verse 18, and when that year was ended, they came to him the following year and said to him, we will not hide from my

53:04

Lord that our money is all spent. The herds of livestock are my Lord's. There is nothing left in the sight of my

53:11

Lord, but our bodies and our land. Why should we die before your eyes, both we and our land by us and our land for food.

53:22

And we with our land will be servants to Pharaoh and give us seed that we may live and not die.

53:29

And that the land may be not, not be desolate. Verse 20.

53:35

So this is what they did. Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh, for all the Egyptians sold their field because the famine was severe on them.

53:43

The land became Pharaoh's. Verse 21, as for the people, he made servants of them from one end of Egypt to the other.

53:52

Only the land of the priests, he did not buy for the priests had a fixed allowance from Pharaoh and lived on the allowance that Pharaoh gave them.

54:01

Therefore they did not sell their land. So you have a picture right here where the Egyptians come to Joseph.

54:09

That terrible Joseph. And they have it in their view. You know what? It's better that we not starve to death and it's their idea.

54:21

Not his, it's their idea by us, by our land, and we will be your servants.

54:27

Well, but right there. Joseph, Joseph, look, let's just, let's be honest there. Joseph, Joseph didn't do it right.

54:35

He should have let them die. But the thing is, you know who brought this whole thing about?

54:41

It kind of started with Joseph's brothers throwing him into a pit. There is that sovereignty of God thing.

54:47

It was the sovereignty of God that brought all this to pass. Yes. I'm, yes, I'm well aware of that.

54:55

That's true. But look, it's, it's 2020 and reading, um, reading the text in such a way that, um, you're, you're understanding its history and its context and things like that.

55:12

Not allowed to do that. It doesn't fit the narrative. Doesn't fit the narrative. Um, so, so there you go.

55:20

So, uh, Jonathan Merritt, shame on you. Um, if you, if you have any integrity at all, you'll pull that tweet and apologize and apologize to everybody who liked it too.

55:30

But I don't expect that to be happening anytime soon. Um, one last thing

55:36

I want to get to on the program today, I have had this in my queue for so long that eventually it's going to be so far down in the stuff to cover pile, um, that I'll, I'll lose it.

55:51

A few weeks ago, uh, maybe even a month, a month and a half ago, I, uh, saw a, um, video from David Wood where he was speaking to Muslims about Bart Ehrman and their idolization of Bart Ehrman.

56:10

And I've addressed similar things, but he quoted from a, um, something that Ehrman had written about Christmas.

56:25

And yeah, here, here, this, this was what he quoted. He says, uh, I myself do not believe in God, but if I did, that would be the

56:33

God I would defend, promote, and proclaim. Enough of war, enough of starvation, enough of epidemics, enough of pain, enough of misery, enough of abject loneliness, enough of violence, hatred, narcissism, self -aggrandizement and suffering of every kind.

56:45

Give me the God of Christmas, the God of love, the God of an innocent child in a manger who comes to bring salvation and wholeness to the world the way it was always meant to be.

56:55

Well, that sounds wonderful. And I guess the, the point was that, uh, what you have here is, you know, uh, the

57:05

God of love, the innocent child in the manger. So that would be things that Islam could not accept.

57:13

But I, someone was kind enough to, um, find it for me.

57:22

I mean, I re -subscribed. I had been subscribed for a while, but I let it lapse and re -subscribed to the

57:27

Ehrman log, but I still couldn't find it. Someone directed it to me. This is from 2017. I was just looking at the wrong year.

57:35

Um, and this is what came earlier than that. This is what Ehrman says. Now, some of you may have noticed that there was some discussion over the past, um, couple of weeks that Ehrman talked about an epiphany that he had.

57:52

And basically the epiphany was this, um, cockroaches cannot imagine that we as human beings are what we are.

58:04

They can't imagine we can do the things we can do, that we can write poetry and music and send men to the moon, even when people don't believe we did, um, and have cell phones and smartphones and, and, um, all the, all that kind of stuff.

58:20

Um, and so since, but just because a cockroach cannot imagine mankind, doesn't mean that mankind doesn't exist.

58:31

It's just beyond the pay grade of the cockroach to understand that mankind as mankind exists, just like the cockroach doesn't know the cockroach kind exists.

58:41

And so because of that, he said, it's self -evident that there might be all sorts of levels of beings above us.

58:52

And we just don't know about it and couldn't know about it the same way the cockroach can't understand that we exist.

59:00

And so there might be all sorts of things that we would call deities, but levels of being above us, um, that, that might exist.

59:12

Now, I think there's a lot of problems with that. Um, because the difference between the cockroach and us, um, is not the difference between us and something above us.

59:25

We're, we're talking about, believe me, a cockroach knows a human exists when I step on it. Okay.

59:30

That's, that is absolute evidence right then and there, but the cockroach ceases to exist and doesn't think on that level in the first place.

59:39

Its brain is, you know, but anyway, um, so you may have heard about some of that so that it impacted somehow that impacted his agnosticism, uh, enhanced his agnosticism on some level, um, redefined his atheism on some level, you know, the whole discussion of what is atheism, agnosticism, and all those epistemological questions.

01:00:06

So in light of that, back in 2017, he is talking about Christmas.

01:00:16

Um, and he, this was the paragraph right before the last one, the image of God it conveys.

01:00:21

Well, now this is, this is basically, here are some of the things that, that Christmas embodies for him, the things in life that I think of as inherently good.

01:00:31

All right. So this is the last one, the image of God it conveys the

01:00:37

God of Christmas is not a God of wrath, judgment, sin, punishment, or vengeance.

01:00:43

He is a God of love who wants the best for people and gives of himself to bring peace, joy, and redemption.

01:00:49

That's a great image of a divine being. This is not a God who is waiting for you to die so he can send you into eternal torment.

01:00:56

It is a God who is concerned for you and your world, who wants to solve your problems, heal your wounds, remove your pain, bring you joy, peace, happiness, healing, and wholeness.

01:01:08

Can't we keep that image with us all the time? Can't we affirm that view of ultimate reality 52 weeks of the year instead of just a few?

01:01:17

Now again, hey, um, isn't that significantly better, um, than trying to tell

01:01:30

Christians they need to drink antifreeze on the basis of a textual variant? Well, yeah, obviously

01:01:37

Bart Ehrman is a much more thoughtful man along those lines, but you hear something like this and I, I hope you see upon hearing it, um, just how still very man -centered this is, because this is, this is not the image of the

01:02:01

God of Christmas. Um, the God of Christmas is not a

01:02:08

God of wrath, judgment, sin, punishment, or vengeance. This is what happens when you have a secularized understanding of what

01:02:21

Christmas is, the incarnation is, and not a biblical one. Because who is this one?

01:02:29

I'll never forget, you were at, you were at NPBC when, well

01:02:34

I know you were there, uh, but when, um, remember

01:02:40

Ruby? Okay, the, the, the black soloist, she was, had just such a beautiful voice.

01:02:48

And one, I don't remember, I think, yeah, it was the Christmas musical.

01:02:54

NPBC was a big place, so did things big. Um, I think we had horses once, didn't we?

01:03:05

I do. No, no, no, no. They had, they had more than horses. They had camels.

01:03:11

Um, and I'm, I'm just thinking maybe one year we tried to keep up with the Joneses. Um, I, I really think we did, and I think

01:03:19

Jackson hated it, but it still happened. Anyways, um, the, the point being that there was a, there was always a huge Easter cantata and a huge Christmas one.

01:03:30

And, you know, 250 voice choir, full orchestra, lighting. I mean, it was pretty cool.

01:03:37

Oh yeah. 60 piece orchestra. It was huge. Yeah. I had to run sound for it. So just don't, don't get me on those, those stories.

01:03:45

Anyway, um, so, uh, there was a soloist named

01:03:53

Ruby. She, there is at least one YouTube video I've found with Ruby Brown singing and she was fantastic.

01:04:01

She really, really was. I don't think she's around anymore. Yeah. I don't think so either. Yeah. She'd be, yeah, she'd be, yeah.

01:04:09

Anyway. Um, and, but one of the, one of the songs that really struck me and especially because I was involved in running sound and lights and stuff like that.

01:04:19

And so we did something special. We put a cutout on this one light in the shape of a cross and it was red.

01:04:28

So one red light. And I never went up in the roof. No, no, no. I had not conquered my fear of heights.

01:04:33

I might be able to do that now, but I, I probably not. It would still freak me out. But so up in the roof, uh, in the ceiling there, we, we put this light and we focused it on the manger and she sang a song called the shadow of the cross.

01:04:49

So you do remember that. Okay. And so when she's singing that song, this red cross appears the light over the manger itself.

01:05:01

And that had great, I just got goosebumps that had great theology, because what it's saying is this was the beginning.

01:05:12

And it's so important because it speaks about who Jesus was, but this was the beginning of a whole story that had an end to it.

01:05:23

And so what's one of the first things Jesus identified as the lamb of God, John the Baptist, behold, the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.

01:05:33

And so you, you can't come up with this image that separates it.

01:05:43

I've said, I've been saying this for decades and people have made memes out of and everything else, but that's because it's absolutely true.

01:05:51

And that is, if you look at the cross and you do not see the depth of God's wrath against sin, you aren't seeing much of the cross at all.

01:06:05

That's what makes it what it is. You're going to end up with a sentimental view of the cross.

01:06:15

If you do not see that it is first and foremost, the means by which the triune

01:06:21

God glorifies himself and remains absolutely just in all that he does. That's the only way that we can have redemption is because of the fact that how can he deal with sinners like us?

01:06:35

We know our hearts because of the cross, because of what the God man does at that place.

01:06:41

So that shadow over the manger, means that from the start, that is exactly what

01:06:49

God's intention was. I mean, there are forms, there are certain forms of teaching that say that when

01:06:56

Jesus was born, that if Israel had accepted him as their king, there would have been no cross.

01:07:04

And I'm just like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That shadow of the cross was there.

01:07:11

That was God's intention from the beginning. So he is a

01:07:17

God of love. Yes. But the depth of his love requires justice.

01:07:25

He is also the thrice holy God. Holy, holy, holy. You have to hold these together.

01:07:31

And Barterman doesn't like the thrice holy God. He wants a God of love who wants the best for people.

01:07:38

Well, funny thing here, the funny thing here is

01:07:43

I wonder if when Barterman wrote this, if it didn't just cross his mind for a second, that one textual variant in Luke chapter two,

01:07:57

I mean, he knows about it. I know he knows about it, but did he think about it here? Peace on earth, what?

01:08:06

Well, the King James says goodwill toward men, but that's textual variant. That doesn't have the genitive.

01:08:17

And the genitive is goodwill toward men with whom he is pleased or upon whom his favor rests.

01:08:31

So that's a different meaning. And I would assume that Dr.

01:08:39

Ehrman would take the genitive there rather than the Byzantine reading. It just struck me.

01:08:49

Who wants the best for people and gives of himself to bring peace, joy, and redemption.

01:08:55

Yeah. Gives of himself peace, joy, redemption. Why does he have to do that?

01:09:01

Because a price has to be paid because there is wrath and there is judgment and there is sin. This is using words in a context where they lose all meaning.

01:09:14

There's nothing left of it. That's a great image of a divine being.

01:09:20

So what's a great image of a divine being? Let me emphasize it like I did when I first read it.

01:09:26

This is not a God, a God, not the God, this is not a God who is waiting for you to die so he can send you into eternal torment, as if that is even a semi -meaningful description.

01:09:41

Instead, it is a God who is concerned for you and your world.

01:09:50

Not he and his world. No, it's you and your world who wants to solve your problems, heal your wounds, remove your pain, bring you joy, peace, happiness, healing, and wholeness.

01:10:07

I'm sitting here going, did Joel Osteen break into Bart Ehrman's house?

01:10:15

I can just see smiling Joel, whacking old Bart over the head.

01:10:25

Wow. Of course, this is what an atheist wants, is a

01:10:30

God that's all about you, not him. All about you.

01:10:37

But man, does that sell because that's what Joel Osteen's all about, and that's what the prosperity gospel is all about.

01:10:45

It's you and you and more you. Yeah. So, that was the paragraph right before the last paragraph, but it just struck me, it's just so illustrative of so many people going, you know, if I could just get you to talk to my friend,

01:11:10

I'm sure that, I'm sure if you did that, that you'd, he'd understand. And I'm like, don't you realize there are many unbelievers who know more than you do about the

01:11:25

Christian faith, and they still reject it. I remember,

01:11:30

I've told the story before, and I wish I could find it. I just don't think we have the tapes of it anymore. But, or maybe we'll dig them out of a box someplace.

01:11:38

They might, you know, there's that whole line of boxes up there that who knows what's in there. And, and, and you and I are never going to find out what's in there.

01:11:49

Somebody, somebody in the next generations could go through that stuff. He just called me a hoarder from the other room.

01:11:54

I just want you to know that. But someday the museum is going to be very happy that I hoarded that stuff.

01:12:00

Um, but there was a, uh, uh, Tom Likas show, uh, that I did back on KFYI sometime in the eighties with an atheist.

01:12:18

He'd written a book. I don't remember his name. Sorry. Um, eighties are starting to get a little fuzzy.

01:12:24

Uh, and this guy was not like most of the atheists

01:12:32

I'd encountered at that point. What was that guy with the American atheists that I, that I took on?

01:12:38

Brian, Brian Lynch. Oh man. You know why

01:12:44

I wasn't all that shocked in Salt Lake city when the guy whips out the antifreeze?

01:12:50

Cause I had encountered Brian Lynch in person. I had heard him on the

01:12:56

Tom Likas show. He was the nastiest vilest man I had ever heard on public radio.

01:13:02

I mean, he was unbelievable. And so when they called and asked if I would take him on,

01:13:09

I was like, Oh boy. And when I found out he was going to be in studio with me,

01:13:16

I was like, Oh no, the guy shows up and he's about five foot three.

01:13:25

He weighs about 102 pounds. And when the microphone's not on,

01:13:32

I've told the story before, I know, but when the microphone's not on, this is a very nice studio.

01:13:39

It's very nicely painted. How are you today? And I'm like, this ain't the guy

01:13:47

I heard on this program before. And then the microphone clicks on and the demon takes over.

01:13:57

And then as soon as we go to commercial break, this coffee is getting a little cold.

01:14:03

Can I get it warmed up a little bit? It was, it was, if it wasn't demonic, it was multiple personality disorder on steroids.

01:14:15

Okay. But I think it was probably demonic. Um, but that's not the guy I was talking about.

01:14:21

Oh, okay. That's not the guy I was talking about. Okay. That, that is on sermon audio. It is on sermon audio. In the atheism section.

01:14:27

So folks, if you want to hear that story. Now, remember folks, I wasn't a presuppositionalist yet. So be careful.

01:14:33

Be careful. I've, I've grown. 1986, August 15th.

01:14:39

Okay. No, wait a minute. No, wait. Can you, can you

01:14:44

DM me that? The, the, the link to that in Twitter? Uh, because we might have the other guy's name in there and the description just may not, just may not, um, uh, be there because I'm trying to remember this guy.

01:15:01

Cause he had a book and I had read his book and here was a guy who knew the main thing.

01:15:13

I remember him saying, and I, and his book too, was that if you just read the new

01:15:18

Testament, the new Testament teaches God is sovereign over all things and that God predestines the people unto salvation.

01:15:28

It's just, it's just, if you just read the new Testament. And I remember at that time thinking to myself, how come an atheist sees this?

01:15:37

This was, this was, I think this was the first atheist I took on after I found out what presuppositionalism was.

01:15:44

So this would have been when I was in seminary and now that I'm thinking about it, it may not have been like us.

01:15:50

It may have been Bob Mohan. Remember Bob Mohan? Uh, might've been

01:15:56

Bob Mohan that I think it might've been either that or it might've been one of the Saturday afternoon guys, but it's

01:16:03

KFYI cause I remember the studio. I remember that, that much. Point, point being, uh, you don't have that link?

01:16:13

Used to be, used to be faster at this than he is now. It's just, just slowing down, slowing down with age.

01:16:24

Anyway. Um, while I wait for that, the point was that was the first illustration

01:16:30

I had of someone who knew the Bible, just didn't believe it.

01:16:38

There, there was, you know, I had been raised the idea if you just give people, no, there are some people that already have more than you got, but if, if there's not a, if there, if there's no change here, then you know what it, you know, what does it matter?

01:16:56

Um, you know, do we even follow each other on Twitter? Cause I got nothing.

01:17:04

I'm sitting here in Twitter in, in DMs and, and there ain't nothing.

01:17:10

And you're, you're looking at me through the glass, like you sent it. So I'm, I'm sitting here going, yeah,

01:17:17

I think Twitter has figured this out. And ah, there, finally, man, live.

01:17:23

How long did that take? I don't know. Okay. Okay. Well that's all right.

01:17:30

Well, all right. That's Brian Lynch, but where is the atheism section? I can go to atheism.

01:17:38

There's only two of nine. Okay. Dan Barker, Brian Lynch, uh, and McKinney.

01:17:45

Oh, that's Dan Barker's significant other. Ehrman, Barker, Barker, Silverman.

01:17:53

Nope. Nope. The only thing is the

01:17:58

Bible for real. I wonder what that is. So the, remember the, the

01:18:06

Robert Funk? Oh, is that the Robert Funk one? Well, it was two -sided. So you had a debate with a professor from ASU on one side, and a, the, the, the

01:18:21

Robert Funk exchange was on the other. Oh. So, uh, that's what is the Bible for real is that one.

01:18:27

That's interesting. That's when Robert Funk hung up on us and told us to go to hell. I think that is. Let me, let me look.

01:18:32

And then there was another one on, uh, KTAR. I did a lot of radio back then.

01:18:38

Yeah. I just don't know that we have all. Okay. So the, the one side, the 41st, 45 minutes is with Dr.

01:18:44

Dietz of ASU. Dr. Dietz. Yeah. Yeah. And then the other is with Robert Funk of the

01:18:51

Jesus Seminar. Honestly, I think those were two different programs that we just crammed together.

01:18:56

Yeah, we did. Well, they were right about, because everything was. Dietz was on KTAR. They were doing everything in 90 -minute cassettes.

01:19:01

Right, right. And reduplicating them on a ghetto blaster. Yeah. That's all we had.

01:19:08

That's honest folks. There were, there were years when this ministry was so small and so poor.

01:19:16

Did we, did we finally throw out the ghetto blaster? Oh man. That's a shame.

01:19:23

I, I, we need, we need to go on, on, on Amazon and see if we can find one again. The Amway. I think it was

01:19:29

Amway. Did we get the Amway? You were, it was given to you by a family at church that would get them through Amway bonuses.

01:19:40

I had no idea. You're right. I am remembering that. Never heard of before. But then, but then remember how we would do it.

01:19:46

And we got two of them. We, but remember how we would do it. Not only did it have a high speed function.

01:19:52

Right. But we didn't even have cassette labels. We used file folder labels.

01:19:57

File folder labels. That we ran through a, an IBM Selectric typewriter. And individually typed each thing.

01:20:07

We were, yeah. And some of those labels are still in the store. They are. On those cassettes. Because I still have those.

01:20:12

Yeah, we can prove it. That's right. That's right. We've been doing this a while.

01:20:18

We've been doing this a while. No two ways about it. No two ways about it. Well, anyways, that pretty much wraps it up for now.

01:20:25

Um, what? Oh, so I thought you were talking to me.

01:20:31

Uh, pretty much wraps things up. I appreciate the opportunity. You know, at least we still have the opportunity to respond to slander and to correct it publicly.

01:20:42

Um, the day will come. The day will come when we won't have that opportunity.

01:20:48

When those on that side will have free reign to speak without correction.

01:20:54

And at that point, all people will need to have a strong, biblically defined basis for determining truth.

01:21:04

And you're gonna need the testimony of two or three witnesses. And even then, you're gonna need to look at their character.

01:21:12

Because right now we can respond back. Right now we can provide screenshots. Right now we can give the other side.

01:21:20

I think the day is coming when that won't be, uh, the opportunity any longer.

01:21:26

And so keep that in mind, folks. Keep that in mind.

01:21:32

So, Lord willing, and I don't get shot this weekend. Got man camp this weekend.

01:21:39

And, um, all I can tell you is that we've got a lot of guns and a lot of ammunition.

01:21:52

And I'm bringing double hearing protection so that I will still be able to let me go.

01:21:58

What? What? What? Can't hear you. Uh, after, after all this.

01:22:03

Um, but, uh, yeah. So, uh, assuming that doesn't happen, then Lord willing, I think,

01:22:09

I think next week looks pretty normal. There's, there's a bunch of stuff we, for those of you who are waiting for me to get back with you, especially one dear brother.

01:22:22

Have you ever been, had one of those puzzles where it's just, there's this one piece. And once that one piece goes together, then everything falls together.

01:22:28

That's where we are. Once I get that one piece that I'm finally going to know the schedule and be able to go, okay, we're going to do this, this, this, and boom, it's going to come together.

01:22:37

Um, and there could be some really interesting debates this spring. Um, and I appreciate your patience, but it's,

01:22:43

I don't have people who do scheduling. Okay. I do the Vastorama scheduling.

01:22:48

Rich gets involved. Rich does all the travel arrangements and stuff like that. But when it comes to figuring out exactly when

01:22:54

I can do stuff, uh, that's, that all falls on me. And so, uh, we're, we're working on it and we want to do some really great stuff, but I also have to have time to do it all.

01:23:06

And right now I'm looking at five or six debates in one month on completely different topics.

01:23:14

I mean, no connection other than Christian, you know, um, that's not wise.

01:23:22

That's not wise for anybody. It really isn't. Um, but is there a way to make it work out?

01:23:30

I'm, I'm trying. So anyways, that's what we're working on. We will see you Lord willing next week.