PSA: the Many Vital Issues (Part 1)

Hello Greens, welcome to the dividing line, dividing line that is delayed by one day. It was seven minutes till three when everything stopped working on this computer. And it like it went into slow motion and programs started crashing.

And I'm like, and I'm just looking around, looking around. I noticed it had been feeling really warm. And, you know, sometimes that happens, you know, you get a process hung or something.

Like that.

I don't know. But finally, I looked up 1 batteries plugged in 1 battery. And this particular unit used to be my main unit. What we normally do is when I get a new unit, we put the one I've been using MacBook Pros run forever.

That's just the reality. And so one goes here, one goes on my desk over there, and you retire the other one. And there you go. This one had a problem before with power. And it was in the Jayco RV we were traveling.

And eventually it died like it did yesterday. Just flatline, nothing happening. And I'm like, oh, great. Thankfully, I had a backup with me on that trip. Left it sitting overnight, unplugged, plugged in the next morning, it charged up and worked fine until yesterday.

That was like 18 months. So left it unplugged, plugged it in this morning. Here it is. So there you go. So I were one day later than we would have been. And as normal, I'm getting ready for the program and something pops up on Twitter that's not directly relevant to our topic today, but it is I do want to talk about before it scrolls away because there it is.

It has everything to do with this book right here, which is only available since it came out or 25 years ago now, came out in 99, only available on Kindle now. But fascinatingly enough, the movement that I document in this book for the definition of the fifth Merian dogma continues alive and well with the same people ahead of it a quarter century later.

And so 14 minutes ago, Providence here, 14 minutes ago, Edward Penton, interesting source of scholarly information in Roman Catholicism, posted the following on X. Meriologist Mark Miravalle says he believes the time is right for the Pope to proclaim the fifth Merian dogma because, quote, the transition between a third world war by piecemeal and a third world war may actively and formally pronounced might be sooner than we think.

We are only going to get the peace, listen to this, this is, we are only going to get the peace that was promised at Fatima through the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, but we're only going to get the triumph through this proclamation of the dogma, end quote.

Now for a lot of Protestants who are not former Roman Catholics and for a lot of Protestants who are former Roman Catholics, a lot of this Fatima, Immaculate Heart of Mary, fifth Merian dogma stuff is rather mysterious and it's like it comes from another planet, we're really not sure what to think about it, things like that.

But don't underestimate the dedication of millions of Roman Catholics to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, believe beyond a shadow of a doubt the visions of Fatima and the messages from Mary, all that kind of stuff, which, by the way, is also relevant to the discussion that a lot of us are having of integralism, Roman Catholic integralism, their form of nationalism, believe you me, no Roman Catholic integralist system is going to be without a vitally important Merian constituency, which, interestingly enough, seems to track with a rise in Merian interest amongst so-called Protestants.

And one of the things we really desperately need to do in the not-too-distant future, of course, have to be after this next trip, in fact that would be a good time after this next trip, especially if we can work out a debate on the perpetual virginity of Mary for March of next year, two different locations possible for that, and I don't see any reason why we couldn't do one Merian debate in Florida and one Merian debate in Houston on the way.

Back.

I think that would be a good idea. Anyway, we really need to be dealing with the perpetual virginity of Mary and the number of Protestants who are playing around with this and need to realize, if we're going to, the main topic we're going to talk about today, penal substitutionary atonement, if you hold penal substitutionary atonement, you are in a theological minority, and again, if you believe in sola scriptura and tota scriptura, you're in a small theological minority, too.

I hate to be the one to constantly remind you of that, but we have to be reminded of.

It.

It's a simple reality. And there are Protestants in the past who have held to the perpetual virginity of Mary. It's not because of any compelling argumentation. There isn't any. It is truly the power of tradition.

I mean, nobody's, oh, Jerome, you just knocked Helvidius out of the park and it's been the truth ever since then.

That's baloney.

We don't even have Helvidius's writings. We don't have what he wrote. We don't have his response. To judge Jerome, especially given the unique character of some of his arguments that no one had used before him, to judge Jerome as the winner-take-all, it's just, it's absurd on its face.

I don't know how anybody doesn't just crack up laughing when they say it, but that's how this type of stuff works. Anyway, there are Protestants who believe in this, and again, Luther believed in this,.

And Zwingli believed in it.

Again, that was not the issue of the Reformation. That was not part of the conflict. It was tradition and it was piety. It took a couple of generations down the road before you started applying Sola Scriptura and Tota Scriptura to everything, and Rome had not yet defined the later Marian dogmas that have been defined, specifically the Immaculate Conception of Mary and the Bodily Assumption of Mary.

Now, Miravalle at Steubenville, I'm not sure where he is. He may still be at Steubenville. I didn't look it up, but he was when I wrote this book. But again, that was a quarter century ago. The fifth Marian dogma, Mary is co-redemptrix, co-mediatrix with Christ.

This stuff is central to Marian piety. Did I leave? I don't think I did. Stuff tends to migrate in here and then it just stays, and eventually I move some stuff out of the way and it goes away. By the way, I brought the iPad in if you want to take a look at it.

It's sitting right there if you want to see if we can upgrade it. Anyway, I don't think I have in here The Glories of Mary, Liguri's amazingly blasphemous book, but he's a Doctor of the Church, 800 plus editions.

It's far more representative of Roman Catholic piety than anyone would like to admit. But this stuff cannot be set off to the side, and Roman Catholic integralism will seek to bring Protestants into

I mean, remember last year, Calvin Robinson, remember the big brouhaha that developed out of all that? When some guy tweets that the thief on the cross was saved through the intercession of Mary, and Calvin Robinson's like, yeah, that's great, and we're all like, oh, what?

But that's the nature of this stuff. And so it does seem to me that Miravalli and all those people that have been I mean, they've turned in millions of signatures on petitions requesting the definition.

Now, how many of those people signed more than once? I'm sure there's been lots of petitions that have been turned in over the years. But still, it's an active movement to have this dogma defined. Now, what's the chances of that happening?

You never know. I mean, I would put it fairly low, mainly because the general consensus has been that it would be absolutely deadly to ecumenical talks between East and West. But I don't know. I mean, it's light years removed from anything that could be considered apostolic.

You can't not.

You know, it's like when you try to make arguments for the bodily assumption of marriage in Scripture, you can't do it. And this is even farther down the road than that. It's light years away from anything the apostles ever thought of, dreamt of, taught, delivered traditions over, anything like that.

It's just way up. And so, what's going to come of it? I just thought it fascinating that this happened to just pop up. And I'm like, hey, there's Mark Miravalli, once again, doing his thing. So, there you go.

Keep an eye on that. It's important stuff. Now, most of you probably saw, over the past few days, an explosion of anti-PSA rhetoric on social media. And PSA is an acronym for Penal Substitutionary Atonement.

And I have lamented for decades now the fact that when we talk about, and I forgot to grab it. Oh, well, I knew I'd forget something. When we talk about the atonement, we end up talking about theories.

So, very popular in the early church was the ransom to Satan theory. You know, Jesus paid our debt. To whom? Who collected the debt? And then, big time, really important, is Irenaeus and the recapitulation theory.

That Jesus has to live the various ages of man's life. And then, when he dies, he redeems all those ages he's lived through. And that's why Irenaeus thought that Jesus was more than 50 years old when he died, because he would have to have been to redeem people more than 50.

And then, you get into the medieval period, and there was, you know, Abelard and Anselm, and all this type of stuff. And today, you've got the governmental theory, and the moral influence theory, and the Christus Victor theory.

And I've lamented, that's generally not the language we use in talking about, you know, the Trinity or the resurrection theories. What do you mean resurrection theories? You've got the resurrection. You've got theories from people who deny the resurrection.

But you don't have resurrection theories, but you have atonement theories. And what that, for good or bad, communicates to people, is the idea that, well, I really don't know. This is, it almost puts the atonement out into the realm of certain forms of eschatology, and end times speculations, and stuff like that in people's minds.

But beyond that, what's really painfully obvious, is the fact that in the preaching of the evangelical church, very rarely is there any instruction, either in Bible studies, theology classes in the church, whatever, on the history of the atonement, and why there's so many different viewpoints on it.

You know, I mean, I did five or, no, I did 16 sermons on baptism at Apologia a few years ago. But that's not quite as unusual. But when it comes to the atonement, how many times do you hear sermons that are literally going through the various perspectives, and why we have disagreements on the subject?

So, one of the things that I definitely saw in people responding, is, you know, people can have a solid understanding. They recognize, no, wait a minute. Our hymnology is filled with PSA. Before the Throne of God Above is a PSA anthem.

My name was graven on his hands. What's that even talking about? It's personal atonement. It's giving of life. It's PSA. So, as popular as it is, it's almost due to the fact that it is popular, that a lot of people, when they see a denial of it, the only thing they can do is go, well, that's stupid.

Saying that's stupid doesn't prove that it actually is stupid. So, it's not an argument. It's just how we react to something we've never even, not only never even heard of before, but we're not sure how to answer.

Because we haven't heard of it before. And so, it's natural human response to respond like that. So, I saw a lot of that. And Josh Barzon put out a, Josh has been making a name for himself on Twitter by doing these threads.

You know, he did a big huge thread on John MacArthur last month and stuff like that. And Bible translation stuff is really where he started. This translation, this is its history, so on and so forth. So, he did one on PSA as well.

It's very useful, but the topic is extremely complicated and very often requires working through church history and a lot of more fundamental foundational issues. And so, I can't even cover all of that in one program or even a couple programs, honestly.

It would take me away from any type of preparation for the Dale Tuggy debate coming up and stuff like that next month as I'm traveling back east. So, I can't do that right now. But it is fascinating to note that what you have right now is a confluence of very different theological perspectives all coming together to say the same thing.

And that is PSA is false, it's human tradition, it's absurd, it violates the Trinity, all the rest of this kind of stuff. And what you get is you get the, what's that guy's name down in Austin? We did something where I was going to be traveling through and we offered to debate and, of course, he wouldn't.

And it's this ultra left-wing church in Austin, everything in Austin is ultra left-wing. But anti-PSA, pro-LGBTQ all that kind of deconstructed progressivist drivel that you get. And this guy is a former Dallas grad, so that was one of the things that was interesting about him.

So, you got those types of folks chiming in about how bad PSA is. And they're being joined by Eastern Orthodox. So, the Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox, they'll always say the same thing. Their arguments are necessarily limited by the fact that Eastern Orthodox theology, at least as it has officially been defined, as far as you can define anything officially within Eastern Orthodoxy, the structure that exists is the traditions that existed in the 7th, 8th, and 9th centuries, really 8th, 9th, and 10th centuries.

And they really can't break out of that without ceasing to be Eastern Orthodox. And so, there was in the East at that point in time a strong diminishment of Paul's theology of sin, depravity, fallenness, and hence, the concept of grace, efficacious grace that is so central to PSA, had been diminished within Eastern Orthodoxy.

And so, their primary arguments are, you have to be an Arian, you have to be a Nestorian, it's all Christological stuff. And we'll read some of their comments here in a second. And most evangelicals are like, what?

What? Nesto who? They didn't know who Nestorius was or any of the arguments about whether Nestorius actually believed what Nestorianism is credited with and all this kind of stuff. It doesn't get anywhere, but that's the kind of stuff that's going on.

And then you've got just every guy who has 147 followers crawls out from underneath a rock and has his own unique spin on things. I mean, I've seen some stuff and I've just read what people were saying.

I'm just like, what? It doesn't represent any historical position at all. And they just do their thing. So, you've got those types of folks too. So, it's been raging for a couple days. And so, I wanted to look at some of it and respond to some of the stuff that's been said.

So, here is an Eastern Orthodox assertion. And I'm not going to use Jay Dyer anymore. That guy is just such a... I feel sorry for the Orthodox to be stuck with someone quite that unhinged and immature, just simply childish.

That's the only way to describe him. He's a very, very childish individual. And only getting more childish, like he's regressing, if that's possible to do. I guess it is. But a fellow by the name of Ronald Donalds.

Now, this is not a big account. Only 122 followers. And normally, I wouldn't refer to someone like this. But it does do a good job in sort of summarizing what you're likely to hear from this type of stuff.

He had made a statement. Well, Rod Dreher... Well, you know how it is on X. Someone respond to someone and respond to something. So, Matt Kennedy, on August 10th, had posted, Penal substitutionary atonement is the beating heart of the gospel.

I would agree. Rod Dreher, the rather well-known Rod Dreher, responded, Not so, says Eastern Christianity. I responded to Rod Dreher, Yes, a major problem for the East, traditions of men. And this fellow responded to that.

And there were 21 responses to that particular statement. I'm sure we could follow any one of them down a complete rabbit trail. But the guy says, If we're talking about Jesus Christ as the true man from whom the tradition comes, then absolutely the Eastern Orthodox faith is perfect and without error.

Well, that has to be the foundational assumption for all of Eastern Orthodoxy. And that is that the traditions which had become prevalent in a particular part of the former Roman Empire, that is in the East, go back to the Apostles.

Now, we know that with one of the most central elements of Eastern Orthodoxy, iconography, iconodolia, the claim of the Second Nicene Council is, this is apostolic. I know there are even more books coming out, but man, the ones that have come out recently, the only proper term I can use for them is desperate.

Desperation to read into anything in the early church some concept of iconodolia. And then to read the plain statements of people saying, No, no, no, no, no, no, we would never do that. To read them out of the record as irrelevant.

As irrelevant. So, that's just a good example of where someone from the Eastern Orthodox perspective, they've been told this is apostolic. Okay, so it's apostolic. I can't prove it. In fact, the evidence is completely against it.

But, hey, we're going to, we are going to believe that this is what was taught by the apostolic church. And this goes back to the Apostles. That's what he's saying there. He says, however, penal substitution is a man-made tradition.

I've seen, I've even read your book in the Trinity, so I expect a deeper understanding from you. The Godhead is undivided and inseparable. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one in essence and will. To say that the Father punished the Son is to divide the Godhead, which is contrary to Scripture.

The Father does not act against the Son, but rather in perfect unity with Him. Christ sacrifices voluntary and eternal love, not punishment inflicted by one person in the Trinity on another. I hope that all of you can hear, this man has no idea what penal substitution or atonement is.

He's just contradicted it. I have corrected that misapprehension because you know who says exactly what he just said? The Muslims. I have to defend the voluntary self-giving of the Son against misunderstandings by Muslims all the time in debates.

Lost track of how many times in Ireland and England and South Africa and Australia, United States, where Muslims have expressed this, I can't believe you Christians believe that the Father was attacking the Son, or how does he put this?

The Father acts against the Son and this type of thing. And I'm like, no, you don't understand what we're saying. We're saying that this was the will of the triune God in eternity past. The Son gives His life voluntarily in obedience to the Father.

And in perfect harmony and unity with the Father for the salvation of Christ's people. But it is an act of triune love. But especially in the Muslim context, this is vitally important. And I don't know how these other folks even begin to do Islamic apologetics in light of the stuff they say.

But this is vitally important. I have said this in sermons, in books, for decades. If when you look at the cross of Christ, if all you see is the love of God, you're not seeing the whole picture. You must see the wrath of God against sin, holy and pure wrath against sin, for you to see the fullness of the love of God in the cross of Christ.

And you see, there's where the problem lies. Um, years ago, many years ago, it's funny how memory works and then stops working. Um, I remember what room I was in. I remember it was a modular building.

There are no modular buildings in the campus of Grand Canyon University anymore. I can assure you of that. There are no single level buildings left on the campus of Grand Canyon University anymore. Every single level building that I studied in when I was a student at Grand Canyon has been replaced by multi-story buildings.

Um, anyway, it was in a modular building, Fuller Seminary was using it. It's probably one of the church history classes, as I recall. We were talking about C .H. Dodd. Okay, C .H. Dodd, British theologian, end of the 1800s, into the beginning of the 1900s.

Um, and Dodd, very well known and very influential. Dodd was one of the primary reasons why, um, in British theology and British translations of the Bible, you don't have the word propitiation, you have the term expiation.

Propitiation means a wrath, a sacrifice that turns away the wrath of God. Expiation is a sacrifice that simply, um, restores relationship with God. There's no, there's nothing in expiation that makes specific reference to God's wrath, or as the British like to say, wrath, the wrath of God.

So, he detested the idea of a wrathful God, and that impulse was amplified after World War II. After the Holocaust, um, you get major impact on New Testament theology, especially in, uh, Europe. Germany, especially, of course.

And the idea of a wrathful God becomes extremely unpopular. If you want to publish, if you want to get ahead, you can't go there. And so, the penal part of penal substitution and atonement assumes a bunch of stuff that's just simply no longer a part of the theology of many traditions, movements, and churches, because it is so completely opposed to what mankind wants to hear.

We don't want to hear about the wrath of God. We don't want to hear about his law. So, in a day, it's, it, and look, penal substitution and atonement is a reformed it's a reformed doctrine. The Armenians, the original Armenians, did not believe in PSA.

There's plenty of Armenians who believe it today. They just don't realize that that's a reformed doctrine, and they don't realize that believing in it, they are making themselves completely incoherent.

I've ran into a bunch of them online just last night. Um, the reformed were the ones who codified this over against the remonstrance, the beginning of the Armenians, the synergistic, the synergistic element of the Reformation, and against Rome, because this is where, whether you all like it or not, the reality is that synergistic Protestantism agrees with Rome on key fundamental issues against the Reformers, against Luther.

You know, Luther, punish the will. Erasmus, you put your finger on the key, the hinge upon which it all turns, deadness of man and sin, um, resultant necessity of the electing grace of God. So, people don't know this, and so Armenians will, the original Armenians, after Arminius anyways, Arminius was much more reformed, but couldn't stay that way.

Uh, his movement could not stay that way. It swung away from that stuff really fast, historically speaking, and they had, they recognized that penal substitutionary atonement, where the wrath of God against a sinner is borne by his substitute, Christ, in his place.

The only way for that to be a case is if there's a specific people. A specific people who are united with Christ in his death. The idea, which has become so popular since then, of some kind of hypothetical non-propitiatory sacrifice, because that's what, that's what modern Arminian synergists believe.

They will say, on the one hand, Christ dies in behalf of all of humanity, and all we have to do is accept the free gift, but that changes the nature of Christ's death. It's, it's no longer propitiatory in itself, it can only become propitiatory with the addition of the act of the human will to enable it.

So, so what happens in time determines the nature of what the sacrifice was? Oh, no, it's just the application, but, but that's the point. A propitiatory sacrifice removes the wrath of God. So, the Arminian who tries to hold a PSA is saying it doesn't remove the wrath of God until man does X, Y, or Z.

Now, you say, oh, but you're doing the same thing, because you think that we're under the wrath of God until, until regeneration. But the point is, from the Reformed understanding, and I believe the biblical understanding, the elect are united with Christ in his death.

Now, God regenerates them at a point in time in their lives in accordance with his will and his purpose, but the certainty of their regeneration and salvation is right there in front of us. It's, it's certain.

But the Arminian's saying, no, it's not certain. It's provisional. It's put out there, but it's up, up to us. And, of course, this, this then raises all the questions about, you know, does God know, uh, you know, what's going to happen here, and all the rest of that kind of stuff, and what about, you know, um, I'm going to turn the air down if you don't mind, um, what about free will, and can man's actions determine, what's the nature of God's knowledge of future events, and Molinism, and all the rest of that kind of wacky stuff comes in.

But the point is, PSA requires atonement to be propitiatory, and propitiation means it has to be personal, which means the object of the propitiation has to be known to God. So, if, if I'm to be united with Christ, um, in the effect of his sacrifice, then there's, there's a theology that has to exist behind that.

God can't be running around just trying to react to man and make things work out in, in the end. That doesn't, that doesn't work. So, in American Evangelicalism, the Armenians picked up on PSA, and they like the idea of Christ died for you, not as, you know, okay, fundamentalists like the wrath part, hellfire and brimstone, uh, that, that fits, I suppose, even though I would argue that in unhealthy fundamentalism, the actual role of the law as a revealer of God's holiness, um, oh man, I, you know, I was raised in it, so I, I know there's a lot of law, but it's not based upon actually studying the law.

It's what's popular at your point in time, okay? And so, you know, I've told the story of hearing an entire sermon once, my mom took me to somebody else's church one time before we moved, and, um, yeah.

I, I need you to stop reading whatever it is you're reading out there and tune back in to what we're going on here. Um, thank you. Um, I have to set up for what? Yeah, okay. Anyway, I was just trying to get his attention.

She took me to a sermon, and the entire sermon was on the evil of pantsuits. Now, I suppose you could, I'm sure he did, I'm sure the guy did, quote, from the Mosaic Law, that you're, you're not to wear the clothing of the other gender.

Uh, I'm sure, I'm sure he went there. Um, but it's extremely selective, okay, in the fundamentalist perspective. So, there isn't a sound theonomic understanding of law in, in, um, fundamentalism. And, of course, in the broader spectrum of American evangelicalism, there is just massive antinomianism.

There is a, there's a massive, the law was just back then, it's irrelevant now, Old Testament's sort of only semi-canonical, you know, the, the cool stories are great, but, you know, really can't learn much more than that, that kind of stuff.

And so, the penal aspect, where the holiness of God is in, is in view, just isn't a part of, of, of much of that. So, Arminians don't have, they came up with the governmental theory of atonement, moral influence theory, uh, Christus Victor stuff, there's, there's all these other, quote-unquote, theories, which, in most instances, have an element of truth to them.

Christus Victor, Christ is, Christ is victorious over his enemies. Well, that's, yeah, amen, but that's certainly not all, that's just a, that's just a part. And, you know, moral influence, we, look, look at the, the fantastic moral influence that the self-giving of Christ has had in the history of mankind, in comparison to any other religious leader, any other religious, oh, just, well, okay, that's true, but it doesn't even get close to what the apostles said the purpose of the atonement was, or the mechanism of the atonement, or anything else.

So, all these theories, normally, if you, if you give them an optimistic reading, will have an element of truth to them, you can go, I agree with that, I agree with that, but that doesn't get anywhere close to fulfilling the biblical teaching on what the nature of the atonement was, and why it was necessary.

And so, modern evangelicals, who are Arminians, just don't know their history, and so they don't know that by holding to PSA, they're literally holding to a belief that, and I said to some people, they didn't understand why I was saying this, when you combine penal substitution atonement with synergistic, non-election-based concept, what has it led to in many Arminian denominations over the years?

Universalism. Why? Because Christ dies for everyone, Christ loves everyone equally, Christ's death provides forgiveness of sins, and therefore, everyone's going to get saved. And you may have not run into a universalist recently, but they're all over the place, and there are biblically literate universalists.

There are a number of texts of scripture, I've said many times, the only two ways to interpret this particular text of scripture, not in the whole testimony of the Word of God, things like that, but the only way to do so is either in the Reformed understanding, because we're talking about the elect, or the universalist understanding.

There isn't any way for the synergistic, it's up to you free will folks to even get in the conversation on numerous texts. It's either the Calvinist, or it's universalist, it's just the only options you've got.

And so, most of us have never had those conversations, and would struggle greatly in them, and a lot of it, again, goes back to nature of atonement, and the foundational doctrines that come to that. So, if you don't have a, if you don't believe in Sola Scriptura and Toto Scriptura, and of course, Eastern Orthodoxy rejects these things, Roman Catholicism rejects these things, and that's why many of their objections are based upon theological developments from hundreds and hundreds of years after the times of the apostles, they're not really biblical objections at all.

And in fact, when they do go to the scriptures, it's very obvious that they are importing all sorts of external authorities, and external traditions, and things like that into their conversation. So, that happens just all the time.

But within quote-unquote Protestantism, whatever that exactly is, you very easily can see that while PSA is popular on a certain level within America, still an actual commitment to what it means as a doctrine, and that is that the wrath of God must be propitiated.

God's law cannot simply remain broken. Very little of modern American evangelicalism has a sufficiently high view of God's law to even understand why we would say that. That again, takes you back to the Muslims.

I did a debate in October of 2013 in Erasmus, South Africa, at the Abu Bakr Siddiq Mosque. It was the first debate we did that was actually in the mosque. I stood where the imam led the prayers. I was standing in front of the Qibla.

I was debating Shabir Ali. Something I've done many, many times, and Ergen Kanner never did once. Anyway, and the whole thing was how we have peace with God. And one of the key elements of my presentation was in Islamic theology, Allah can forgive any sin, but he does so arbitrarily.

And so I told about the Hadith that the man had killed 99 people, and he inquired of a priest whether his forgiveness would be accepted by Allah. The priest said no, so he killed the priest. Now he's killed 100 people.

And so he asks some other people. There's different versions of the story in the Hadith sources. It's in both Bukhari and Muslim. And they said, go to such and such a city, such and such a village, and they will tell you what is necessary for your repentance to be accepted.

But as he was on his way, the time of his death came, because 40 days after conception, God writes upon your forehead what day you're going to die. That's it. And so he drops dead in the middle of the road.

Angel comes from paradise, angel comes from hell, argue over his soul. You'd think the angel himself from hell would have a slam dunk here, but the angel from heaven says, well, he was going to find out about repentance.

So Allah decrees that if he is one cubit closer to the village he was going to than the one he was coming from, that he will go to paradise. And then in some versions of the story, Allah causes the earth to shrink between where the man died and where the village was, so he's one cubit closer, and he goes to paradise.

And I told that story, because it's a well-known story. I'm sitting here thinking about what that night was like, to have Muslims seated on the floor in front of you, as close as riches, even through the glass.

And I was able to communicate to them. I was able to look them in the eye and talk to them about what holiness is, and sin, and forgiveness, and you know your own heart, and all the stuff you've done can't take away that sin.

And it was truly amazing. And I could tell they knew that story. And that story is so empty. There were a hundred people whose lives were taken by this man. He goes to paradise. And they had to know in their own thinking, not everybody he killed went to paradise.

There was no, you can call Allah holy all you want, but if you can end up in his presence, simply based upon that, and then I was able to go, but that's not how it works. The message of the Christian faith is, if you're going to stand in the presence of a holy God, you have to be clothed in the righteousness of someone else.

And that's where I really started preaching to them. You know your own heart. You can't stand before God and pretend the purity of your intentions. You can't do it. You know the anger you had toward your fellow man this very day.

And I'm looking right at this guy. They're not used to that. That's not how it normally goes. And I said, you need to have the righteousness of someone else. And that righteousness must answer to God's holiness.

And I think it's one of the major, major, drive a truck through it holes in Islamic theology, soteriology in specific. But there are a lot of people within quote unquote evangelicalism that basically do the same thing.

They've taken the Muslim perspective. In fact, we might as well go ahead and do this, because I'm not even going to be able to, I'm going to have to come back to this. Because there's so many, see atonement brings together so many basic foundational issues.

I think that's why people struggle with it. Because if they're missing something here, they're missing something there. You get up here and the whole thing is sort of wobbly, wobbly. I think that's what goes on.

But let me go back and see if I can find this here. All bookmarks. There it is. Okay. I'm not going to bother to put it on screen. Just do the audio. Um, this is from different church. So, um, this is impastor Hannah Siegmund.

I'm assuming Mr. Siegmund is talking with her. I could be wrong. Don't know. Can't tell. But I just get that feeling. And of course, there's no pulpits or anything like that. Nice lighting. We're sitting on bar stools in our jeans and stuff like that.

Um, but, uh, listen, this is, uh, like less than two minutes. So this quote-unquote pastor chick, uh, is asked, why did Jesus have to die? Now, by the way, what I should, should have done, what I should go do before the next program is go queue up when Yasir Qadhi, Dr. Yasir Qadhi asked me that question at his mosque in Memphis a number of years ago.

Why did a part of God have to die? And let me explain to his gathered people, the necessity of the death of Christ. The sad thing is, you know, the Muslims should get a united response on that, but they don't.

Roman Catholics going to answer differently. Eastern Orthodox going to answer differently. And today you've got stuff like this. So you're ready with this. I hopefully got it all set back up here. Let's, uh, let's listen to this.