Dr. Downer Does Reformation Day, and Lots More

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Well greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. It is Reformation Day. Well for some of us,

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I've... it's always interesting every year on Twitter. I do follow some

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Roman Catholics and it can get really weird on Reformation Day.

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There's this one fellow, Taylor Marshall, has posted some really wild stuff.

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There's... You got to understand that at the time of the Reformation and then thereafter, you know,

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I've mentioned before, maybe I mentioned to you, I don't know, but for example,

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Sir Thomas More and Martin Luther exhausted every possible

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Latin term for excrement in describing each other in their voluminous writings against one another in Latin.

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There were no more Latin words that could be... that anyone ever thought of that they used of each other.

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So, you know, we think things are bad now, but let me tell you, things could get really pretty crazy even at the time of the

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Reformation. So at the time of the Reformation, you know, the woodcuts the art that was used, you know, by Protestants to describe

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Rome and the Pope and you've seen... well, maybe you haven't, but most people who've done any reading at all in Reformation history, you've seen the woodcuts of you know, the

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Pope made out to be a seven -headed serpent and, you know, demons dancing around his head and stuff like that.

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And the Catholics did the same thing in reverse. And so some of the... some of the stuff...

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And there's still some Catholics that are pretty much on the same same crusade they're on back then.

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I saw quotes attributed to Luther today, and I'm like, yeah, I don't think so.

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And look, we attribute stuff to Luther that you can't find in any of the many volumes of Luther's works.

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You can search, but you won't find it. And so it happens going both directions.

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But on Sunday, I took a few minutes during the service, since it was

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Reformation Day service, to make a comment similar to what

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I had posted on Twitter. And when Jeff took the pulpit, he said, well, thank you,

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Dr. Downer. It's all because I, you know,

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I teach church history and so it

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I have to tell you the truth. And I did see one meme so far today on my feed that was fairly accurate.

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It was a picture of Luther at the church door. There's no crowd around him.

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He has his 95 Theses. And as he's nailing it to the door, there's other stuff on the door.

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There's other announcements and stuff on the door. And that was pretty accurate.

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Most of the rest of them, you know, now with these AI generators you've got, which by the way,

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I have never used anything AI in the sense of specifically

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AI. The chat stuff, none of that stuff. I refuse to be one of the mice that help train these things because that's what you are.

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And there's these graphics generators that you can, you know, make all these pictures and stuff with and so there's been a bunch of those

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I've seen this year with Luther looking like Clark Kent. You know,

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Superman body, which I can assure you he did not have. And you know, the big old because we didn't talk much about Luther when

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I was a kid. We were independent fundamentalist Baptists and if you talked about Luther that sounded like the

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Lutherans and we knew they weren't Christians. So why would we even bother?

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And so we didn't really there was no Reformation Day stuff around our house at all.

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But the stories that I heard in my mind, I had pictured

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Luther walking up to the door of the church and that there was a service going on and that this was part of the act of Reformation or rebellion was that he's pounded on the church door during the service, which of course as a kid

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I'd be thinking of them, you know singing Blessed Assurance or something. No idea it would be going on in a church in the 1500s in Germany and that that was, you know, this big interruption and of course,

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I as a kid you haven't read the 95 Theses, of course as adults, the vast majority of people have not read the 95

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Theses either. And so you assume it's some kind of truly

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Protestant document enunciating the five solas and and everything else along the way, which of course none of that's true.

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And so here's the Dr. Downer part. Here's what happened.

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Well, wow, we're up to six years ago. So man, my trip to, we did a tour prior to the 500th anniversary.

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So in 2017 in Germany about a month before the celebration took place.

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And it seems like it seems like yesterday, but it also seems like a lifetime ago given everything that's happened since then.

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I'm so glad we got to do that. And of course, you know Nahum O 'Brien was saying, okay post your

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Reformation Day pictures and it was he and his wife outside the Wittenberg door which is cool, but of course

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I can post a picture of me preaching from the pulpit, actually preaching to an entire congregation.

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For over half an hour there in the castle church. So here's here's what really really happened.

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So come with me for a moment and imagine what this was like.

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Wittenberg is not a big town even today. And it certainly was very small back then, very rural, surrounded by fields and farms, which it still is today really.

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I mean obviously less so than it was then, but very rural. The roads would have been dirty, dusty things.

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I'm not sure when they put cobblestones down, but I doubt it was there in 1517 because the

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University of Wittenberg where Luther was a newly minted professor was brand new.

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And Frederick, the Elector of Saxony, you know, a lot of these guys would start universities and sort of to compete with one another in essence.

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And so the way that you promoted your universities back then was to have competitions.

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Well, they didn't have football teams. And of course over there football would be what we call soccer in the United States. You didn't have sporting contests.

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Instead you had debates. And these were get all your friends together, get the student body together, go on the road trip, which of course meant walking generally, to some neighboring town or city.

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And the debate would last minimally all day, sometimes two days.

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And so you'd have a morning session, you'd have an afternoon session, and generally by the time you got to the evening, that's when everybody drank

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German beer, and then you had other things happening, fistfights and everything else.

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But they were all -day affairs. So all

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Luther was doing - now Luther's Reformation experience really began many years before this.

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Most people are aware of how little peace he derived from the sacramental system that while an

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Augustinian monk he would, you know, sleep on a hard rock floor without a pillow in the winter in Germany.

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Can you imagine what that's like? He pretty much ruined his digestive system, caused him major problems later in life.

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Trying to, as he himself said, if anyone would ever be saved by monkery, it would have been me.

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But none of that gave him peace. And so his father confessor had said to him -

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Staupitz had said to him - Well, he said a lot of things to him.

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He gave him actually a fair amount of very good advice, but he put him on the the pathway to becoming a professor, to learn more about God.

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Since you don't trust God, maybe you need to learn more about God. And he had lectured through the

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Psalms, and then he lectured through Romans. And somewhere, Romans, Galatians, is where the light came on.

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Obviously, one of the most important parts in all this that I can't get into today, but the 1516 release of Erasmus' Greek New Testament was - well, again, it wasn't a

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Greek New Testament. It was a diaglot, and for Erasmus the most important part was the Latin.

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But he was being exposed to the original languages and seeing the differences between the

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Latin Vulgate and and the Greek. Somewhere in all of this, he was starting to come to understand the nature of grace, the nature of repentance, which is not penance.

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So when Johann Tetzel came into the regions surrounding

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Saxony and that area of what we would modern -day Germany, back then wasn't a single state at all, he was scandalized by the preaching of Tetzel and this idea of selling the the forgiveness of God.

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Everybody knew the money was just being raised to build St. Peter's Basilica in Rome anyways, so it was it was just another tax.

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So it was leaving Germany and going to Italy to enrich the Italians rather than the

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Germans. So there was at the time a rising nationalistic feeling in a lot of places in Europe that would become very important because they're still coming out of the medieval period here.

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Anyway, he likewise had gone on pilgrimage to Rome in 1510 and had been scandalized by what he saw there.

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He was scandalized by the Roman priests. He was scandalized by just the general immorality of the

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Romans. He was especially scandalized to see the Pope riding through the streets of Rome on a horse.

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He walked to Rome and back again, if you can imagine how long that took. Riding on a horse in armor, in battle armor like a knight.

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There goes the Pope. Really? That's not what you'd envision the

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Pope to look like in their mindset. So all these things were coming together and so he had written when you talk about 95 theses, these were 95 theses for debate.

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You know, you need to have a debate thesis. We're working on a debate and the discussion over exactly what the thesis is supposed to be has been interesting.

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And the thesis can make or break the debate. I've had some good debates with some bad theses.

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But all he was trying to do when he walked up to that door on October 31st, 1517, he walked up to it as a

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Roman Catholic monk. He walked up to it not viewing himself as a heretic because everything he said in the 95 theses had been said by somebody else before him.

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There were a lot of people that were scandalized by the sale of indulgences. Most of them stayed within the

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Roman Catholic Church, even when the Reformation began. So he was looking to start a debate.

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He was looking for some other university to take him up on this challenge and set up a debate which would be good for the

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University of Wittenberg. That's what it was all about. So there was no crowd.

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There may have been anybody around at all. If there was anybody, it was probably a farmer walking by with his cow.

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Morning, Father Luther. Father Martin, good morning. No one would have noticed it.

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There was no church service going on. There was no rebellion taking place.

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It was a simple act. Now, obviously, the key thing to realize is

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God had been working for quite some time. I mean, I look back and I look at the mind of a

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Wycliffe and go, that's where the Reformation should have started, but it couldn't. There was no printing press yet. When you think of how important the printing press was to the

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Reformation, it couldn't happen. The Renaissance provided so much important ability that the

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Reformation took advantage of. That had to take place. Universities had to be built because they became a hotbed of reform, certainly.

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So there was just all the pieces weren't in place when Wycliffe made his statements and his stand.

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Or Jan Hus, for that matter, when he's killed the Council of Constance. It just wasn't time yet.

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You could light the match, but the fuel wasn't ready to go. Well, in October of 1517, the fuel was ready to go.

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Luther lit the match and had no earthly idea that he had because a enterprising

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German printer comes along and he's looking at stuff that's posted on the door and he finds these 95 theses and he goes,

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Oh, these are spicy. If the Pope can empty out purgatory with indulgences, why wouldn't he do it just for love rather than for money?

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So once they were translated from Latin into German, they probably sounded... well, anything translated to German sounds a little bit rougher than it does in Latin.

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Maybe even more so then. So all of a sudden he finds himself famous because his name's getting circulated because these 95 theses have been printed.

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Now, there's dispute as to whether he knew about it or didn't know about it as far as giving permission or not giving permission, but in any sense, that's what got his name around.

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But it's still gonna be another year until he runs, he has the

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Leipzig disputation, he he's gonna run into a man who's going to be his lifelong enemy,

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Johann Eck, and it is when he's debating

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Eck that stuff really starts to become clear because Eck starts quoting all these statements against Luther that sound like things that Luther has said but they're actually quotations from Jan Hus and all

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Luther knew at the moment at the time about Jan Hus is he was a heretic that had been burned a hundred years earlier and he's saying the same thing.

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So during the break in the debate, he goes and looks up stuff by Jan Hus and goes, oh

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Eck is right. I'm I'm a Hussite and so he admitted in the debate

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Hus said many true and evangelical things. Well to most people that was the end of the debate.

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He lost he lost to Eck and going back to Wittenberg, you know, he's he's talking with his closest friends and he's like,

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I'm a Hussite from what I've read, Hus was right. And of course they burned

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Hus. And so that's when he has to start thinking through well, why should

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I consider why should I be right about this and everybody else is wrong about it? And that's where you start getting the discussion of Sola Scriptura because up to then it was

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Sola Fide. It was justification by faith but then he becomes challenged on the foundational issues and that's where he starts coming to understand

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Sola Scriptura. Because he's like, well, but Hus was right. Hus is in line with what

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Paul says in Romans and and how can you contradict that? And yeah, but the

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Pope says well, then the Pope's the Antichrist. It only took about a year and a half before before the

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Pope is the Antichrist theme became prevalent in his writings. And again, that's where the printing press comes in because these writings explode all across Europe.

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And it's only a few years later that he's standing before Charles at the

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Diet of Worms and Here stay, Isis, Kandisch, Donders, Gotthelfamir, here I stand, I can do it no other, God help me, etc, etc.

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You know, you've seen the movie or you maybe you'll watch the movie tonight or something. I don't know. But the point is, sorry,

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I hate to have to tell you this, but make sure that's off You know, if you're planning on going out as Martin Luther tonight, maybe you've you've gotten the

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Martin Luther wig thing to put on, so you have the tonsure cut or maybe you've gone all the way and actually shaved the top of your head and only have the hair around the outside.

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And you've got your hair robe and and everything else you

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And you got your big old mallet that you're gonna carry along and your scroll with the 95 theses.

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Sorry to ruin your day. But I think it's important to know what actually happened and that no one in Wittenberg on October 31st or November 1st, that matter, had a clue that something important had started there and It's a it's an arbitrary date

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That's just been picked up on by history and that's all there is to it. And so if you want to call me

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Dr. Downer for that, that's fine, but I haven't told you anything that people haven't known for a long, long, long, long, long, long time in regards to that.

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It is interesting to note that this

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Reformation Day comes at a time period where most people don't don't realize this.

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There are people within the Roman Catholic Church that do know what's going on. But there are major, major developments in Roman Catholicism right now.

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It's interesting. Most of the time when big things happen in history, the people alive at the time don't really have any idea that really, really big important stuff is happening.

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Because it just doesn't seem all that important at the time until things develop afterwards. Well, there has been a it's sort of the beginning of a

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Synod process in Rome. It's not how they've done it before, really. This was a

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Synod on Synodality and we've talked about it a little bit.

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We talked that there was a Synod beginning in Rome and a lot of people were wondering, with someone like Francis, and especially with all of the people he has put in place, what might this lead to?

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Well, fascinating. There's a lot of stuff out there if you start following the right people on Twitter.

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But this is from the New Catholic Register.

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National Catholic Register, sorry. National Catholic Register. Cardinal Mueller says

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Synod on Synodality is being used by some to prepare the church to accept false teaching.

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So who's Cardinal Mueller? He is the Prefect Emeritus of the

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Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. What was the

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Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith? Because I think they changed the name recently. The Congregation for the

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Doctrine of the Faith was the modern continuation of the Inquisition.

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Ratzinger had been the head of that as well, who became Pope Benedict XVI. So this guy was the guy who headed up the

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Inquisition, okay? And Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, the former

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Prefect for the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, says the Synod on Synodality is not an

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Episcopal Assembly, but more like an Anglican synodal meeting and is being used by some participants as a means to prepare the

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Catholic Church to accept ideologies that run contrary to Scripture and tradition.

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Both capitalized. In an extensive October 24th interview with the

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Register, Cardinal Mueller also warned that some in the Assembly are abusing the Holy Spirit in order to introduce new doctrines such as an acceptance of homosexuality, women priests, and a change in church governance.

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As one of 52 delegates personally chosen by Pope Francis to attend the October 4th to 29th meeting, the first of two assemblies, which will conclude in 2024, the

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German Cardinal participated in all of this month's session before departing early on October 25th to ordain new priests in Poland.

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Cardinal Mueller said the synodal meeting was very controlled and quite manipulated, with most of the interventions coming only from a few keynote speakers who spoke to them, listen to this, spoke to them as if they knew no theology.

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He said that he himself was given only three minutes to speak to the whole Assembly. The interviewer said,

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Your Eminence, what has been your overall assessment of the synod on synodality? He says he was invited.

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He said its organization, its input did not come from above in the form of synods. All the bishops in the plenary could speak about what they wanted.

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Now everything is led, it's pre -organized, it's difficult to speak in the plenary because it's only a short time is given.

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According to rules, you can only speak once and only for three minutes. Would you have liked to speak for more?

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Yeah. He says, For the next part of the synod, it will be important to reorganize it to give more freedom, more opportunity for the bishops to present their ideas.

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It must become more like a synod of bishops for the bishops to reclaim their role as advisors and witnesses of the revealed truth.

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He's asked, there was a great emphasis on the Holy Spirit at the synod. What did you make of that? He says,

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Some speakers said we must be open to the Holy Spirit. I'm sitting here going, Man, It's the same thing's happening in Rome.

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Because I think back a number of years to that debate that Bob Gagnon had with Dr.

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Kirk here in Phoenix area in Scottsdale and Kirk's whole thing was being open to the

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Holy Spirit. Being open to leading the Holy Spirit in coming to see our

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LGBTQ plus brothers and sisters as equals in the body, so on and so forth. He says,

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These were the voices of the Holy Spirit as if we were beginners in the study of theology. It was like seminary or a university, but a synod is not a school for beginners.

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Yet, they were speaking to us as if the bishops don't know much theology. Many bishops there understood theology and they couldn't speak of their knowledge.

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One of the assigned speakers, he says, who is influenced by this LGBT ideology, spoke of a relative who was bisexual who committed suicide and the conclusion was the church must be open not to these persons, but to the ideology.

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The ideology is to blame for this, but we cannot resolve theological questions and problems through emotion.

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Sound familiar? It's the exact same game plan. This is only speaking emotionally about the

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Holy Spirit and we were told we mustn't make controversies. That speaking strongly against anything isn't possible or one is stigmatized as an enemy of the

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Holy Spirit. Y 'all remember the programs last week? It's happening in Rome as well.

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So, some speakers, right? Listen to this.

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Some speakers also speak of openness and define what tradition is, saying that it is not static.

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It is dynamic. Where have we heard that one before?

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Well, the Constitution isn't static. It's a living document. It's a dynamic. That's how you go, so we're not going to worry about what it says.

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But in the end, all of these so -called synodal reflections are aimed at preparing us to accept homosexuality.

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Only this, what wasn't spoken about was Jesus Christ or divine revelation, the grace of human persons created according to the image and likeness of God and of God as the goal of our human existence.

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All is being turned around so that now we must be open to homosexuality and the ordination of women.

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If you analyze it, all is about converting us to these two themes. Now, that's the head of the

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Inquisition giving you his interpretation of what just happened at the synod where everybody was chosen to be there was chosen by Pope Francis.

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Okay? He said, he was asked, and also governance, do you think it's also an attempt to overturn the hierarchical governance of the church?

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He says, yes. Some have this image of an inverted pyramid of governance, but the center of this pyramid is the personal will of the

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Pope and of his advisors and collaborators. This can be an image for making clear to children, but a pyramid or polyhedron is not a biblical image of the church.

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These are images coming out of mathematical geometry. Instead, they should be looking towards biblical images of the church in Lumen Gentium.

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Whoops, wrong place. Boy, if you looked in the Bible, it would be really different. The shepherd and the flock and all these images of a vineyard and so forth.

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Some speakers had a sociological idea of the church, a naturalistic understanding of the church, but they did not have the theological understanding.

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They're always speaking of the spirit, but the spirit is not a fluid. The spirit in the church is the third person in the Trinity. He is a person, and we never can speak of the

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Holy Spirit without the Son, the Father. Always and at all times, we speak of the Spirit of the Father and of the Son.

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Hardly ever mentioned was Jesus Christ. Only in a pedagogical way, in ways that transform the parables and their meaning.

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Jesus didn't condemn the woman in adultery, for instance. Intervention spoke of our relation to Jesus, but not as Jesus as the

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Word of God given to us once and forevermore. Well, absolutely the same thing going on on both sides of the

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Tiber at that point. So, what was really interesting, and I don't have it up right now.

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I thought I saved the screenshot, but I couldn't find it.

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One, there was a news conference type thing.

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And what was the exact question? There was some controversy over what somebody said, and somebody tried to contradict what somebody else said, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

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Make a long story short, what it was about was one of the primary authorities basically saying, pointing to the change, and it is a change, in the doctrine of capital punishment, which we've talked about.

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We've read you the 1592 Council of Trent Catechism that identifies the act of capital punishment as part of the state as a gift from God to the state to maintain order.

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So, you could fundamentally say that there was up until only, let's just say a hundred years ago, a very consistent understanding in regards to capital punishment in the state.

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And now, it's been reversed. So, sixteen, seventeen hundred years worth of quote -unquote tradition, so what?

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Pope Francis can change that because he's the Pope. And I just remind you of how many times

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I've mentioned, because I remember sitting right here, and I don't think it was this table.

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I think it was a different table back then. Walls weren't painted yet. This is a while ago. But I remember being in this room, talking about,

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I had put together something for the blog back then. We were blogging before they had a word for blogging, and I had put together a contrast between something that John Paul II had said and something that a previous

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Pope had said. And it was Robert St. Genes, who at that time had contacted me, or we had some exchange somehow electronically, who had basically said,

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Who are you to interpret what was meant by the church in the past? Only the church gets to interpret what the church said in the past.

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And so the modern church gets to interpret the ancient church. And so if the ancient church said X, if the modern church says not

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X, you just have to go, I guess they meant not X back then, even if it's painfully obvious that that's simply not true.

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And so this is the problem with the Roman Catholic system of ecclesiology.

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They had the opportunity once the Council of Constance healed what's called the

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Babylonian captivity, the schism of the church where you had as many as three popes. There was a brief window there where they could have opted for a system of government where councils, a conciliar form of government, with maybe a pope as an important leader, but not someone that can overrule a council.

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But the popes closed that down real quick and anyone who tried to promote that idea found themselves tied to a stake in providing light for everybody.

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So Rome stuck with this. Once you had Vatican I, there's no going back.

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There's no redefining this stuff. You try to redefine this stuff and you're just basically saying, Hey, we're making it up as we're going along.

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There is no reason to believe this is a 2 ,000 year old church or any of the rest of this stuff.

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We're just sort of, you know, with the winds of society or whatever. We're just gonna do what we're gonna do.

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That's the problem. And one of these high up archbishops or something like that, what they said was they pointed to that change in the

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Catholic Catechism on the issue of capital punishment in answer to a question on the issue of homosexuality.

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So, how does the Roman Catholic deal with this? Now, the rock -ribbed, super conservative

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Roman Catholic goes, We've had bad popes before, but the problem is

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Vatican I says the pope will not lead the church astray on matters of faith and morals.

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So when the Pope's on an airplane early on in his pontificate and he's asked a question about homosexuality and he says,

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Who am I to judge? We all raise an eyebrow and go, In your system, you are the guy to judge.

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What do you mean, who are you to judge? But that's on an airplane. When you change this, okay, this is what you're supposed to believe.

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This is what you're telling the world you believe. And when you specifically instruct that this is to be reversed on a belief, you can go back to 1592.

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There it is in print, unquestionable. This contradicts that. And it's supposed to be the one infallible church.

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So, what's to keep Francis, or more likely

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Francis's successor, from doing the same thing? I mean,

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Francis just gave pastoral permission for blessings of same -sex unions, as long as you don't make it look like a wedding.

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As long as you don't make it look like a marriage. Y 'all remember the

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United Methodist doing that only a few years ago? Remember? That's how it happened in every denomination.

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Oh, no, no, no, no, no, we're not we're not calling it a wedding. We're not not really calling it marriage.

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No! And how fast did that change into, well, of course, it's a marriage.

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Of course, it's a wedding. Of course, that's actually a woman. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It didn't take any time at all.

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It would take longer in Roman Catholicism because it just moves so slow. But it still happened, and it's happening in Rome whether you want to accept it or not.

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And what does that mean? What's that communicating? When we first started dealing with Roman Catholicism in the late 1980s, and I started dialoguing with people like Scott Windsor.

39:33

There's a name. I just saw Rich go, whoa, hadn't heard that name in a while, huh? Long, long time.

39:41

People like that leading to the writing of the

39:47

Fatal Flaw, Answers to Catholic Claims, and then the fateful day when the phone call came from Jerry Matatix at Catholic Answers, and let's do a debate, and that was debate number one.

40:00

I've done a lot of them since then. When we first started dealing with that, all that stuff, and you know,

40:08

I went to Catholic Answers headquarters and I remember walking into the offices, and you know, there was

40:17

Patrick Madrid's desk and Jerry Matatix's desk, and I think Mark Brumley was there, maybe.

40:24

Somebody else was there. Anyway, Carl Keating. The primary argumentation was we have a

40:34

Pope, and we don't have the anarchy that you all have because we have someone to go to that can give us an infallible interpretation of Scripture.

40:47

John Paul II was definitely a stabilizing pontificate.

40:54

Vatican II had been a little bit of a revolution for a lot of people, and so he was

41:07

Pope for a long time. So you at least had some level of consistency, even though in reality, you know, one year he'd throw something conservative to the conservatives, the next year something liberal to the liberals, trying to keep everybody happy.

41:22

But you don't get the same thing today. You do not get the same kind of discussion today that you did back then about the

41:36

Pope. These rock -ribbed conservatives, you know, Catholic apologists won't be

41:42

Catholic apologists for long if they're not very conservative. Progressives, liberals, they have nothing to defend, so why bother?

41:52

They don't involve themselves in apologetics. So the apologists tend to be very conservative, and these people are pulling their hair out.

42:03

They have been for 10 years with Pope Francis. But it's getting worse, and worse, and worse, and they really don't know what to do about it.

42:16

It's a difficult time to be a Roman Catholic apologist, because it's painfully obvious where this man's going, and what it does is it sheds tremendous light on the authority claims of the

42:33

Roman Catholic Church. And so if you can have the current

42:40

Pope reverse centuries of Roman Catholic teaching, then all the claims that Roman Catholic apologists have been making about, well, we don't have your problem.

42:56

We've got the Pope, and he will infallibly teach us what we're to believe. And it's like, no, actually he won't.

43:05

I mean, aside from the fact that the entire doctrine of papal infallibility is a paper tiger.

43:11

It has no meaning. Any Pope can say anything.

43:16

Pope Francis could say something, and what will happen is the same thing you're seeing now. Well, he can't contradict tradition.

43:25

Well, he's the definer of tradition. What do you mean he can't contradict tradition? Who do you think you are? Who do you think you are to even pretend you can interpret tradition?

43:36

So you're stuck in a vicious circle, and you know, you could argue that, well, you know, if they start having female priests, you could argue, well, that was never a dogma.

43:54

It was a discipline. How many hundreds of years have to pass before that discipline is clearly and obviously a dogma?

44:08

But you look at the issue of homosexuality, you change on that.

44:15

You start blessing same -sex marriages, and then start allowing them, and start aside from the fact that Rome has a serious homosexuality problem to begin with in the priesthood, and everybody admits that.

44:35

I mean, the only argument is extent, not the reality thereof. Leave that off to the side.

44:44

There is no way that any rational person can sit there and say, yes, the papacy has always taught the one gospel of Jesus Christ, except on these issues.

44:59

Because no one's going to sit there and say, yeah, we're teaching the same thing now that we were teaching then. That's really what

45:05

I've been pushing at for years and years and years, when I say, and I get no responses.

45:12

I mean, you want to shut down a conversation. I can't tell you how many times.

45:18

It works like a charm on Twitter. Somebody will be raging on about the 2 ,000 -year -old church and all the rest of this stuff, and I just go, so name me the bishop at the

45:34

Council of Nicaea who believed his dogma, everything you have to believe his dogma today.

45:43

I mean, it should be pretty easy. I mean, Nicaea, the first ecumenical council, so important, you know, all

45:49

Christians look to it as a, I mean, it was certainly a turning point in so many different ways.

45:55

Show me a bishop who is at the Council of Nicaea who dogmatically believes everything you have to believe as a

46:00

Roman Catholic today. And there were none, and they all know it. They all know it. So many of the things that have been defined as dogma since Nicaea developed long after Nicaea.

46:14

Nobody there dreamed of the bodily assumption of Mary, but you have to believe the bodily assumption of Mary as dogma day,

46:20

De Fide. Now, does Francis believe in the bodily assumption of Mary, De Fide, in the way a progressivist might put it?

46:35

I mean, remember, I'll never forget. I'm gonna be saying that a lot as I get older and, you know, this chair is worn out.

46:47

We need to get a new one. Rich hasn't got me a new chair yet. That's how I'm gonna get a new chair, is I'm just gonna mention it at every program until someday

46:53

I'm gonna walk in, and there's gonna be a new chair. But fairly soon, it's gonna be a rocking chair instead of an office chair.

47:00

And Rich will have one too, in the other room, and we'll just sit here, and you know, there'll be very long dividing lines, but very slow moving.

47:09

But I'll never forget. Well, now I've forgotten what the point was I was gonna make.

47:15

See? See how that works? What was, which, which, it was, it was, it was a cool illustration too.

47:21

But, you know, when you chase the rabbit, you can chase the rabbit around one bend, but once you hit the second bend, you're lost.

47:31

You'll never get back to where you were going. I might think of it later on.

47:37

But anyway, these, this synod could be one of the most important steps toward this redefinition in regards to homosexuality.

47:53

And once you redefine homosexuality, marriage and everything goes right along with it, and man, that leaves a very small number of us holding firm at all on that particular topic.

48:13

And this morning I was listening to um, sort of switching topics a little bit here, uh,

48:21

I was listening to um, Dr. Moeller read some of the amazing comments that were made by leftists regarding the new

48:34

Speaker of the House. Now, we'll eventually, maybe I'll have Jeff on to talk about it or a friend of mine from Louisiana, but eventually we need to talk about what happened in Louisiana in the defeat of the abolition bill there, where we had the votes, we would have passed, and it was killed by one particular individual, and it's the new

48:59

Speaker of the House. Um, which surprises a lot of people because, you know, hey, you want to know my, you know, he said, you want to know my worldview?

49:08

Pick up a Bible and read it. That sounds great. I'm glad someone's willing to say that. But you need to realize how deeply entrenched the pro -life industry way of thought is.

49:25

And even when we had the votes to abolish human abortion in, um, in Louisiana on a gospel basis, that's what, that's what the issue is.

49:37

I don't have time to go into this right now, but the issue was from the pro -life perspective, what you can never, ever do is make abortion a gospel issue.

49:48

What I mean by that is the issue, the real central topic is, is there, is the mother guilty of the murder of a unborn child?

50:04

And you've seen the horrific videos and stuff, people going out, celebrating their abortions, or they're about to get abortion, and they're talking about killing the little baby, and oh, this is gonna be so great, you know, and, and hashtag, they're not victims.

50:20

But that is so built into the DNA of the pro -life movement that if you in any way raise the idea of punishment for abortion, and hence make it something that can be repented of, and you receive forgiveness for, there's the issue.

50:38

Then they're like, nope, can't do it. Never, ever do it. Anyway, Mueller was talking about the, just the language that people are using on the left of extremism and nutcase, and so once, see, right now, officially

51:02

Rome still says homosexuality is a disordered desire and holds to certain basic fundamental positions.

51:20

If that changes, I'm going to tell you something, those few of us that hold firm,

51:30

I can see the full force of the legal system coming down upon us. Can't right now, because what, what religious group has the primary power in, say, on the

51:45

Supreme Court, or in the Senate of the United States? Roman Catholicism. But if they no longer have the official position of Rome, what's, what's left?

52:02

What happened to Randall Terry? Well, I remember they went after him, yeah.

52:07

So they, they got him, and they got him under RICO. Yeah. And what, he did 10 years, if I recall.

52:14

Yeah, I suppose. I mean, I'm actually amazed that it hasn't happened a lot more than that.

52:20

Yeah. Well, the, the floodgates may well open in that, in that situation.

52:28

No two ways about it. But keep your eyes on what's going on. Things are happening right now in front of us.

52:35

And yeah, you know, the media doesn't cover much of it. I get it. They're not overly concerned about these things, but keep an eye on it.

52:48

Because yeah, developments are going to happen. All right. So it's going to be a little longer program today.

52:55

That's why I wasn't rushing through that. I think it's important to talk about it. But most of you signed in to watch today.

53:04

There are people that were posting images, memes of getting your popcorn ready and all that kind of fun stuff.

53:16

And that's because this morning, well, it, it popped up on mine.

53:24

I suppose I should, I can, I can real quick check the, check the date here just to double check things.

53:35

Uh, yep. Posted October 31st, 2023. So this morning, uh,

53:41

Jared Longshore published an article called, are your children members of the new covenant?

53:49

And, um, so, uh, and then there's a fellow, and the only reason that I mentioned this,

54:00

I wasn't going to mention it, but literally as I looked over at my screen, um, it refreshed and Brandon lands down.

54:14

Uh, and now it refreshed again. I hate when I, I have, you know, I've stopped using tweet deck.

54:21

I happen to have it up right now, but I've stopped using tweet deck because what it started doing is

54:27

I'll be sitting there and I'll be reading a tweet and then poof, it's gone.

54:34

And it's like, well, well wait, it, it, it was there just a second ago.

54:39

Where, where, where'd it go? And it, and you, you can scroll and scroll and scroll and never find it again.

54:45

So Brandon lands down, pastor of, I think Coram Deo Reformed Church, I think is what I was seeing.

54:51

Uh, there it is. Um, I moved from Credo to Pedo, uh, he just, he just announced that he's left, uh, being a

55:02

Reformed Baptist and now he's a Presbyterian, which by the way, is not just a view on baptism, I guess.

55:07

I've always found it interesting that people that make that move never talk about ecclesiology.

55:15

They never talk about how they go from, um, a Baptist ecclesiology to a

55:22

Presbyterian ecclesiology. And I'm like, so did you read the Five Views of Church Governance book that came out many years ago?

55:31

I did the Plurality of Elders view and Robert Raymond, God bless his soul, uh, did the

55:39

Presbyterian view. And to be honest with you, we were the only two that took it seriously. I mean, one of the other guys literally started off his essay by saying, you know, you look at the

55:48

New Testament, Plurality of Elders seems to be what they were talking about, but I've been assigned the single pastor role.

55:54

So here we go. And it was a, it was sort of a written debate between me and Robert Raymond on ecclesiology.

56:03

And it's, it's just really interesting to me how people can change their views on this thing over here and those go ahead and go, okay,

56:12

I'll go with that too. But it was clearly not a part, uh, it was sort of like, well,

56:18

I like this so much. I'll just go ahead over here. And, and it's like, hmm, that that's always interesting to me how that, how that can work.

56:28

Um, you can make a change in one place and let's just go ahead and we'll just go along with the others along the way.

56:33

But anyways, uh, Phil announced that as so many, this is, this is my observation after decades doing this.

56:45

Um, you get people and they, they're in an evangelical church, they've imbibed a basic Baptist understanding.

56:56

You know, maybe they've heard a few sermons about, Hey, the New Testament pattern is always, uh, repent, believe, be baptized.

57:07

Sounds great. There's no infant baptism in the New Testament. So cool. Fine. And they've, they've never, the vast majority of them do not have a sound covenantal understanding of what baptism means.

57:27

They don't know what the, you know, signs of a covenant, what's a sign of a covenant? Why would you give signs of a covenant to someone who's not in the covenant?

57:34

Well, how do you get into the covenant? What's the nature? And then of course that issue aside, you get over to the other side and there is no end to the complexity of discussions of covenant theology amongst reformed people.

57:55

I mean, there are, there are some reformed folks and that is all they ever talk about. Um, and it, you can start drawing lines and it can look just as confusing as any dispensational eschatology chart ever.

58:18

Yeah. You know, we see those, we see those books with all the, you know, fold out.

58:25

Was it Larkin? Was that, was that the name of the Larkin? You should know. Um, uh, you know, you get this fold out.

58:32

This is this big, this timeline of history and the different dispensations and all the rest of this kind of stuff. Some folks in the covenant theology get to the same point.

58:44

It gets just that complex. Uh, and sometimes what's lost in all of that is biblical definitions and that can happen even amongst reformed folks.

58:57

Anyway, what happens is you, they, they grab hold of reformed theology in the sense of reformed soteriology.

59:07

Five points, 6 .7 points, however many of you want to make it, and they get all excited about it and you see the sovereignty of God and you start seeing his, his purposes through time and it becomes a pendulum and you, you swing out of that evangelicalism and then you start reading more and more and you go, wow, a lot of these folks were

59:25

Presbyterians and they believed in paedo -baptism and for a lot of folks that's enough right there to overcome any, whatever positive

59:35

Baptist theology they had. Um, and then you get certain people that you really, really like a lot and boy, if they took that position, then you read their stuff and go, wow, there it is.

59:46

I, I believe, and the pendulum swings all the way and the amount of effort that had been put into making sure of this stuff over here isn't nearly as much once you get, once you got this, once you got that momentum going, you know, you got that swing going and I've seen it over and over again.

01:00:04

I, I can, I could point to, I could point you to two or three Baptist guys right now that I can pretty much guarantee you within three years they will not be

01:00:15

Baptists. I, I could, I could name them for you right now. I'm not going to, but I could.

01:00:22

Um, you can just see it because the reason

01:00:29

I remain a Baptist having done multiple debates in the subject, every one of which

01:00:35

I was challenged to do. I just keep reminding people of that. That's not one that we ran around looking for somebody.

01:00:43

I want to debate somebody on paedobaptism. No. Um, every debate that I've done on that subject was because I was challenged to do that debate.

01:00:53

I was the one that was invited to that. Okay. So, um, every,

01:01:02

I've, I've, I've, I've listened to the arguments and I've recognized that there are a wide variety of arguments that are not consistent with one another.

01:01:12

Um, I firmly believe the Westminster Confession of Faith is inconsistent with itself.

01:01:18

It's contradictory to itself. When, when you say baptism is a positive, it's, it's a positive command of Jesus Christ and then you baptize infants, you're having to stretch that way out there and look, hey, don't get upset with me.

01:01:34

The federal vision stuff of 2001 -2002 really shone a light on the fractures that exist amongst people who say,

01:01:47

I'm being consistent with Westminster Confession of Faith. You've got people on both sides who are contradicting each other and both pointing to the

01:01:54

Westminster Confession of Faith as being the deciding factor. Uh, so that's your own history.

01:02:01

You've just got to own up to that reality. So anyway, uh,

01:02:07

I've, I've heard all the arguments and, and I know where my friends over there go and my friends over there go and how they do this with the new covenant.

01:02:17

They do that with the new covenant. Number of years ago, I think it was probably getting close to 15 years ago,

01:02:23

I wrote some articles for Reform Baptist Publication. Ended up in a book and they're on the subject of the new covenant in the book of Hebrews and specifically the citation of Jeremiah 31 in Hebrews chapter 8.

01:02:47

And this for me has always been the primary issue.

01:02:54

What is the nature of the new covenant? And this has gotten me into trouble all over the place, but when it comes to baptism, um,

01:03:07

I'm very much in the same camp that I am in the Trinity. Um, I believe in the

01:03:14

Trinity because the Bible forces me to. And I'm really uncomfortable going beyond divine revelation, especially in the

01:03:23

Trinity because you can't know the truth of the Trinity outside of God revealing it in special revelation.

01:03:32

It's not something you can't sit there and look at a beautiful tree as it turns colors in the fall and go, ah, there's the

01:03:39

Trinity. It doesn't work. It is special revelation and therefore, we should believe what the apostles taught on the subject.

01:03:48

And Calvin was right. When God makes speaking, so should we, but we haven't.

01:03:55

And that's what causes a lot of problems. Same thing with baptism. Um, what

01:04:01

I believe about baptism, I believe because of exegesis because I try to be consistent and I try to use the same exegetical hermeneutical principles in baptism that I do in soteriology, ecclesiology, whatever, whatever it might be.

01:04:22

So, uh, the article and of course,

01:04:28

Jared Longshore went payto about what, about two years ago now, something like that. He had been with the founders, of course.

01:04:38

Um, and so you can, I'll, I'll, I'll link to the article. Um, he quotes from Jeremiah 31.

01:04:45

Uh, he says that, uh, uh, you know, a lot of people say many, many claims of the new covenant is so unlike the

01:04:55

Abrahamic covenant that the natural children are no longer included as members. Well, there's a, there's a, there's a lot there, but we are talking about a covenant described in Hebrews 7, 8, 9 as a better covenant.

01:05:15

Okay. So built upon what? Better promises. That's not my language.

01:05:22

That's the right, that's the language of scripture. And so any covenantal theologian knows that we all have to deal with issues of continuity and discontinuity.

01:05:39

And when we want to emphasize one over the other to give us an advantage over the other side, we will, but everybody has to deal with continuity and discontinuity.

01:05:55

And so let me, let me just look at this here. Um, he says the chief text scripture supply to support this claim is

01:06:04

Jeremiah 31, 31 to 34. Well, yes and no. Um, there are a number of references to covenants in Jeremiah, but only one is cited in the new

01:06:19

Testament with apostolic authority and that's in Hebrews 8. That's the key.

01:06:25

So I think before reading it, looking at the article, because I want to respond to a couple of points, I think it's important to, to look at Hebrews 8.

01:06:32

So, um, grab that Bible, my friend, grab that Bible.

01:06:41

Well, you want me to, you want to do that, huh? I see you over there. Nope. Going the wrong way.

01:06:49

There we go. Get that a little bit bigger. Well, like Greek is way, way too big now.

01:06:55

So that's a little bit better. I'll go ahead and it's always nice to have a

01:07:01

Jeffrey Rice rebuying nearby gives you a lot more. There's authority, you know, when you got, you got your

01:07:07

PTL when you have, you know, a Keith Foskey who, by the way, I've known forever.

01:07:14

I've known Keith forever. He'll tell you that. Um, but he just put out,

01:07:19

I think he just put out one. Did you see his new video called, um, uh, denominational?

01:07:26

Oh, what was that game show? Family feud, denominational feud or something like that.

01:07:32

Just see the reformed Baptist guy. First time I've ever seen him use someone other than himself. And he has this guy and he's strapped, man.

01:07:40

He's got a, he's got a nine mil over here and a 45 over here. And, and he's just, he has taps the end of one of the guns reformed

01:07:49

Baptist. The Presbyterians won big time. Uh, but, uh, it was, it was hilarious.

01:07:57

It really, really was. And if we all could just have our conversations as civilly as Keith Foskey does with himself, but the, uh, the, the superior, uh, the

01:08:08

Presbyterian has always got a stogie and a bow tie and a sweater vest on and superior theology.

01:08:16

You know, we've got the superior theology. I have the superior Bible. So there that's how we're gonna go there.

01:08:23

All right. Here's I don't have forever. So some of you think,

01:08:30

I think that I do. So let's try to be concise, but I need to hit the important point.

01:08:38

Here's the issue. The text in Hebrews has to have, has to be approached in context.

01:08:47

And here's what Hebrews is about. I remember, I forget when it was, but it was many, many years ago.

01:08:53

I was flying home from someplace. I said, you know, I'm going to set my presuppositions aside and I'm just going to read

01:09:01

Hebrews on the way home. I just want to, I just want to listen to what I want to read all of it.

01:09:07

What's, what, what is it? What's it trying to say? And it became very, very clear to me that what

01:09:17

Hebrews is, is an extended apologetic argument addressed to Jewish believers in the early decades of the

01:09:28

Christian movement, before the temples was destroyed. So it's pre -70. There's no question about that. It talks about the ongoing sacrifices.

01:09:36

So it's just obvious. This is probably 50s, 60s, early 60s of the latest,

01:09:42

I would, I would say. And the whole argument is this.

01:09:49

There's nothing to go back to. There's nothing to go back to.

01:09:55

There's so much pressure being put upon them. You've joined a cult. This has got, not going to, not going to ever amount to anything.

01:10:03

A comeback. And of course, to come back meant that you had to offer sacrifice, which was in essence to say that Jesus guy followed for a while.

01:10:11

He wasn't what he claimed to be. He, he, he died a criminal's death and his blood was not a sacrifice for sins.

01:10:18

And so it was a, it was to trample underfoot the blood of the son of God. That's what you're supposed to do.

01:10:26

And the whole argument of Hebrews is there's nothing to go back to. And I'll prove that by the supremacy of who

01:10:35

Jesus is. So, I mean, Hebrews chapter one, he's Yahweh. He's, he's, he, he's the ones create, he's sustaining the creation.

01:10:47

And he, the author will literally take a text about the unchangeable Yahweh and apply it to Jesus, to the son specifically, in Hebrews chapter one, verses 10 through 12.

01:11:01

And then as you follow it along and you can outline it, the supremacy of Jesus in this, and the supremacy of Jesus in that, and supremacy in this way and that way.

01:11:12

And then you get into, and this is why a lot of people lose the story.

01:11:19

You get into the demonstration of the Melchizedek priesthood and the supremacy of Christ priesthood versus the old priesthood.

01:11:27

All of things, all these things would have been vitally important in that day and time because it was all part of the come back, come back, come back.

01:11:40

And the argument is there's nothing to come back to. So in chapter seven, so let's get the context here.

01:11:49

In chapter six, you know, you have the warning about being in the congregation and then abandoning that.

01:12:01

And along with the promise that you have the sure anchor that goes into the holy place.

01:12:10

It's beautiful. It's sad that Hebrews six is primarily known about the warning passage and not about the anchor of our faith passage at the end of the chapter.

01:12:21

But then in chapter seven, you start getting into the issue of this better covenant, better mediator,

01:12:30

Melchizedek, and what the Melchizedek priest can do. So Hebrews 7 .20,

01:12:38

inasmuch as it was not without an oath, they indeed became priests on oath, but he with an oath, the one who said to him, the

01:12:44

Lord has sworn not to change his mind. You are a priest forever. So again, very, very important.

01:12:52

The 110th Psalm. I mean, just Psalm 2, Psalm 110, central to Christology in the writer's minds of the

01:13:03

New Testament. They're quoting it for an all time. So much, the more also Jesus has become the guarantee of a better covenant, a better covenant.

01:13:22

Whatever this covenant is, it's better than the old. It's better than what it is replacing.

01:13:30

There is a discontinuity in the covenant. Now, my

01:13:36

Presbyterian brothers get around that by saying, yeah, we're not talking about the Abrahamic. We're talking about the Mosaic. It's only the Mosaic. It's not the Abrahamic.

01:13:43

And again, be careful. Be careful with your polemics today that you don't take a position that would have weakened or muted

01:13:56

Paul's argument then. Because I think this is Paul. I don't think Paul wrote it. Luke wrote it.

01:14:02

It's Luke's vocabulary. It's Luke's syntax. It's difficult Greek. It's classical

01:14:07

Greek. But I think he's writing what Paul preached in another language, Hebrew, Aramaic, whatever it might be.

01:14:15

Anyway, don't let your modern context weaken the apologetic argument of the apostolic context.

01:14:28

I think that's a danger that some people don't even give a second thought to. If you're saying, well, that's not the covenant we're talking about.

01:14:40

We're talking about the Abrahamic covenant. We're not talking about the Mosaic covenant. Could that have been used in response to the apologetic being given in Hebrews by the people saying, come back?

01:15:00

I don't hear people talking about that. They should, but I don't. So it goes on to say, 723, the former priests on the one hand existed in greater numbers because they were prevented by death from continuing.

01:15:12

But Jesus, on the other hand, because he abides or remains forever, holds his priesthood, aparabaton, permanently without successor.

01:15:25

There are no successors to Jesus' priesthood, and that includes the young guys on the bikes riding through your neighborhood right now who think they are, but they're not.

01:15:35

Therefore, because he holds his priesthood permanently, therefore he is able also to save forever, pantales, forever or completely those who draw near to God through him.

01:15:52

Why? Since he always lives to make intercession for them.

01:16:01

Now, we've spent much time on this in the past.

01:16:07

I was listening to, and we're going to do a Radio Free Geneva, Lord willing.

01:16:13

I'm going to go ahead and say it now, but things could come up. But my plan right now on Thursday is to do a

01:16:19

Radio Free Geneva in response to the fellow

01:16:25

I did the response to last time I was on the road, on John 6, who was a

01:16:31

Calvinist for 10 years, and now he's not. One of the things he said, and he got around to doing something on John 6, which he thought was a response to what

01:16:41

I said, but it really isn't, sadly. One of the things he said was that the

01:16:48

Calvinists do not have a single argument for limited atonement. I wrote to him on Twitter and I said, have you ever read

01:16:58

Death of Death and the Death of Christ by John Owen? I have a copy, but I haven't read much of it.

01:17:06

Those 10 years wasn't long enough. Here's one right here. Why is

01:17:13

Christ able to save completely those who draw near to God through him? Because he always lives to make intercession for them.

01:17:23

The intercessory work of Christ is able to save completely.

01:17:29

So who does he intercede for? Does he intercede for all people?

01:17:36

Does he intercede for the Amorite high priest? Is he interceding for the

01:17:41

Buddhist monk in Tibet right now? No, it's those who draw near to God through him.

01:17:50

His people. His intercession is specifically for them, as was the intercession of the high priest under the old covenant.

01:17:59

And that's the parallels being made. The point is, he has complete power to save utterly.

01:18:07

For it is fitting for us to have such a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens, who does not need daily like those high priests to offer up sacrifices, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people.

01:18:19

Because this he did once for all, once for all, and again, just real quickly, ephahpox, ephahpox, ephahpox is just simply the strengthened version of epahpox.

01:18:36

Once for all does not mean one time for all people.

01:18:41

It's a temporal term. It means once for all time, period.

01:18:47

It's a singular act. So he made this offer once for all when he offered up himself.

01:18:57

So the offering of Christ is a singularity in time, which is what makes the

01:19:04

Roman Catholic representation of it in an unbloody manner so that it perfects no one such a blasphemy against the teaching of scripture.

01:19:16

It is. It undoes the finishedness. And that's why there's no peace.

01:19:21

That's why you can't know. The law points men as high priests who are weak, but the word of the oath which came after the law appoints a son made perfect forever.

01:19:32

I'm going through this very quickly. If you want great expansion of all of this, I preached 85 sermons through Hebrews a number of years ago.

01:19:41

They're still available online on sermon audio. Now, the main point in what has been said is this. We have such a high priest who has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in the high heavens.

01:19:52

So again, the contrast here, the high priest of the old covenant, there is no place to sit on the day of atonement.

01:20:01

You go into the holy place, there's no place to sit because he wasn't meant to stay there because he did not come into there carrying a sacrifice sufficient to provide a place to sit.

01:20:13

The blood of goats and calves cannot provide forgiveness of sins. But Christ sacrificing himself enters into the holy place and he is seated at the right hand of the majesty in the heavens.

01:20:25

The finishedness of that work. A minister in the sanctuary and in the true tabernacle, which the

01:20:31

Lord pitched, not man, for every high priest is appointed to offer both gifts and sacrifices. So it is necessary that this high priest also has something to offer.

01:20:40

Now, if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all, since there are those who offer the gifts according to law. He was not of the tribe of Levi, who serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things.

01:20:49

By the way, just briefly, do you see the apologetic element of this? Come back to the temple.

01:20:56

Look at that beautiful temple. There's no building like earth. Come back, offer sacrifice. And what is the argument here?

01:21:04

The shadow. The shadow. In fact, it was the tabernacle that was the shadow of the heavenly things.

01:21:11

The temple is but a picture of what the tabernacle was, who serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things, just as Moses was born by God when he was about to erect the tabernacle.

01:21:23

For see, he says that you make all things according to the pattern which was shown you on the mountain. But now he has obtained a more excellent ministry by as much as he is also the mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted on better promises.

01:21:45

Now, whatever you do, you have to recognize that the new covenant is a better covenant.

01:21:52

Now, it sometimes scares me. It almost sounds to me sometimes like my Presbyterian friends are saying, yes, it's better than Mosaic, but not the

01:21:59

Abrahamic. And it's like, again, and wouldn't that have been the answer that would have been given by the

01:22:08

Jews to Paul's argument? You can't undo the Pauline argument.

01:22:15

There is, he is a, he is, he is not the mediator of the Abrahamic covenant.

01:22:21

He is the mediator of the new covenant, which has been enacted on better promises, enacted now, not way back then.

01:22:32

The Abrahamic covenant, beautiful all across the world, blessing to all the people, but it's the

01:22:40

Abrahamic and there's much more to come. There, there's a necessity for much more to come that comes in this new, better covenant.

01:22:49

And he is the mediator of it. Always keep in mind, because Jared's going to say this in his article.

01:22:56

He's going to talk about a covenant made in the blood of Jesus. Well, the new covenant, he's the mediator of that covenant.

01:23:04

And so the question will always be, what does he mediate to the members of that covenant?

01:23:14

Because whatever it is, it's been enacted on better promises than what existed before.

01:23:23

For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion sought for a second.

01:23:30

For finding fault with them, he says, and so here you get this long quotation from Jeremiah 31.

01:23:38

It is in the context of the mediator can save the uttermost, better covenant, better promises, a fault existing in the first covenant.

01:23:56

And, but then he says for finding fault with them, he says, and then you have the quotation.

01:24:07

So let's listen to how the quotation is made. Behold, days are coming, says the Lord, says

01:24:13

Yahweh, when I will effect a new covenant with the house of Israel, the house of Judah, which by the way,

01:24:19

I shouldn't, I should mention this in passing. Um, it's not his position now, but if you look at the original printing of the book of the commentary on Hebrews by John MacArthur in the

01:24:35

New Testament commentary series, MacArthur was a strong dispensationalist at the time, and he took the position in that original that Hebrews 8 is not about, is only with Israel.

01:24:49

It's not with us as believers. Um, because it says the house of Israel and the house of Judah.

01:24:57

If this is with believers, then obviously, what does that mean that we're the true circumcision?

01:25:04

And that's a big argument right now. Uh, you find out how people's eschatology and stuff will impact all of their theology.

01:25:14

And we're seeing that right now. When I will effect a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant, which

01:25:22

I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt.

01:25:31

So you see, oh, that's, that's just a mosaic. That's, that's not the Abrahamic. Okay. That's true.

01:25:37

But the Abrahamic leads into all the other covenants. There are, yes, there's, there are continuities and yes, we've been justified the same way all along.

01:25:50

I, I agree a thousand percent, but there are also discontinuities, major discontinuities, and we're about to see them.

01:25:59

How is it not like that? Well, on the day when

01:26:04

I took them by the hand, lead them out of the land of Egypt for they did not continue in my covenant and I did not care for them, says the

01:26:14

Lord. Now, have to point this out because I'm me.

01:26:21

It's just how I work. That is a major textual variant from Jeremiah 31, at least in the

01:26:30

Hebrew, Hebrew Masoretic. You go back and you look at your

01:26:35

English translation of Jeremiah 31, instead of saying, and I did not care for them, says the

01:26:41

Lord, it says, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. So go back and look at Jeremiah 31 and say, though I was a husband.

01:26:49

Here it's, I did not care for them. Now, is that the writer of Hebrews changing something? No. There is a variant, both in the

01:26:59

Hebrew that is reflected in the Greek Septuagint, the

01:27:04

Greek translation of the Old Testament, which is being, what is being quoted here. And it's actually the difference of one letter.

01:27:13

Though I was a husband to them would be ba 'al. You've heard the Baals, that's ba 'al, which means

01:27:20

Lords. It was also used for husband. And so the

01:27:26

Masoretic tradition has ba 'al, but ga 'al would be to despise or to not care for.

01:27:36

And the Gimel and the Bet, they're not identical to one another, but they're fairly similar in form.

01:27:44

And so you have a textual variant there. And the writer of the Hebrews is writing to Greek -speaking

01:27:52

Hebrews. That's why it's being written in Greek. And so he follows the version that they would possess at that point in time.

01:28:02

He doesn't really put a lot of emphasis on it as part of the, I mean, it does fit with his argument.

01:28:08

Finds fault with them. I did not care for them. But later in chapter 10, he will quote from the

01:28:15

Septuagint and he will make his argument based upon a variant. It's just the reality.

01:28:22

It's just what it is. All right. I don't skip over those things. For this is the covenant.

01:28:27

Here we go. This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. You want to know what the new covenant is?

01:28:34

Here it is. I will put my laws into their minds and I will write them on their hearts and I will be their

01:28:47

God and they shall be my people. And they shall not teach everyone his fellow citizen and everyone his brother saying, know the

01:28:55

Lord for all will know me from the least of them, least to the greatest of them.

01:29:02

For I will be merciful to their iniquities and I'll remember their sins no more. All right.

01:29:09

So what is the nature of the new covenant? Because here's the argument.

01:29:17

The sign of this covenant is only to be given to those described in the better new covenant with the better mediator and the better promises.

01:29:31

Here's the promises. Here's the better promises. In the, up to this point, you had in Israel, you had people bearing the covenant sign of circumcision.

01:29:51

Now, by the way, that was Abrahamic, continuing on into Mosaic. They're, they've got the sign.

01:30:01

Look at all the Kings of Israel, circumcised in the flesh, uncircumcised of heart.

01:30:10

How many times does the prophet say this? Circumcise your heart. You've broken the covenant.

01:30:19

You bear the covenant sign, but this isn't who you are.

01:30:27

You're uncircumcised of heart. And so you had believing

01:30:34

Israelites who are circumcised, not just in flesh, but in heart, worshiping right next to people who are not.

01:30:46

And so that meant that there had to be the prophetic ministry. Know the

01:30:51

Lord. Let me teach you about who the Lord is because you don't know. So the covenant sign is given broadly, but it doesn't necessarily have a direct connection.

01:31:06

When you come to the new covenant, I will put my laws into their minds.

01:31:14

How does that happen? That's called regeneration. That's called being made a new creature in Christ.

01:31:22

When you have, when you love the law of God, and when you have that desire to follow him and to do what is pleasing to him,

01:31:34

I'll put my laws into their minds and I'll write them on their hearts.

01:31:40

That's the innermost. This is, this is a covenant that brings about true transformation.

01:31:49

Not by happenstance, not as the minority. This is the, this is what makes it better.

01:32:00

This is why it has a mediator who happens to be the son of God who created all things.

01:32:09

I'll put my laws in their minds. I will write them on their hearts. I will be their

01:32:14

God and they shall be my people. The prophetic phraseology over and over again was you claim to be my people, but you're not my people.

01:32:27

Why? Because you're far away from being hard. That will not be the case here.

01:32:35

I will be their God. They shall be my people and they shall not teach everyone his fellow citizen and everyone his brother saying, know the

01:32:46

Lord for all will know me from the least to the greatest of them. You're not going to have, you know, the priest class having to go, well, this is how you know the

01:32:57

Lord and that's how you know the Lord. And people are, oh, you're saying there's no teaching in the new covenant. I didn't say that. I said that they will know who the

01:33:04

Lord is. The relationship has already been established. I will be their

01:33:11

God. They will be my people. There will not be this need to be because of this mixed company to be saying, know the

01:33:19

Lord. They all know me from the least to the greatest of them. And how can that be? For I will be merciful to their iniquities and I will remember their sins no more.

01:33:29

There it is. The new covenant is salvific. It is soteriological.

01:33:38

If you're in the new covenant, God has been merciful to your iniquities. He will remember them no more.

01:33:44

That's Romans 4. That's justification by faith. That's sola gratia.

01:33:51

That's sola fide right there in front of us. Big old bright red flag.

01:33:57

This is what we're talking about. So when he said a new covenant, he has made the first obsolete, but whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear.

01:34:09

Goes on from there in the chapter nine and continues that argument. He has obtained eternal salvation. Goes into chapter 10.

01:34:15

One sacrifice perfects for all time. Those that are made one will one Testament. This is the argument of Hebrews.

01:34:23

There's nothing to go back to. So if baptism is to be given as the sign of the new covenant, these are the people to whom it's to be given.

01:34:37

They know the Lord. His law is written upon their heart. They're regenerate.

01:34:44

God has been merciful to their iniquities. I'll remember them no more. So how do my

01:34:56

Presbyterian brothers deal with this? Well, you can go look at the books. I can give you references.

01:35:04

One of the ways is to say, yes, someday that's what the new covenant will be like, but not yet.

01:35:17

Think about that just for a moment. I mean, they're brothers, but this is one place where man, tradition can really get in the way and dangerously.

01:35:29

So new covenant has not actually been fully established yet from their perspective.

01:35:39

That would be the most effective argument against Hebrews. I've ever thought of just, it would take just one

01:35:46

Jewish controversialist to come up with that one in the days in which this was written to the people to whom it was written.

01:35:55

And that's how you get around the whole thing, because that's not how the writer is using the new covenant.

01:36:02

There's nothing to go back to because this is what we've got. It's here.

01:36:09

You know what? I mean, think about it. Think about what that reduces the apologetic impact of Hebrews to.

01:36:15

Don't go back to the ways of Judaism, because a few thousand years from now, this could be a whole lot better than it is now.

01:36:24

Wow. There's an apologetic for you. See how important it is to not argue these things outside of the context of the scriptures that actually give us the light to be able to see.

01:36:40

So here's the reformed Baptist argument. Baptism, new covenant.

01:36:50

Sure, we can make all the arguments and I'll link, I think there's a playlist on YouTube.

01:36:58

I'll try to remember. We're done here. Link to it. I think it was 13 sermons that I did within the past few years on baptism at Apologia.

01:37:11

You can make the argument, and I address all the stuff in there, but we worked through every reference to baptism, and we saw what the apostolic practice was.

01:37:24

But knowing the arguments, we knew that that's not enough, because they argue, yep, if that's all you had.

01:37:35

But you see, we have the old covenant too, and so we are going to interpret the new covenant in light of the old covenant, and we're going to say, well, it's going to continue on through.

01:37:46

And what you do when you do that is, once you run into something like this, you've got to find a way around it, because it's a roadblock.

01:37:57

So, well, it really, you know, someday the new covenant, that'll become true someday, destroys the apologetic argument of Hebrews.

01:38:06

You can't go there. So, here's a description of those who are to be baptized. If it's the sign of the new covenant, there's a new covenant.

01:38:15

That's what the new covenant person looks like. So, you give the sign, not in anticipation or hope that someday that might happen, because that's what you're doing.

01:38:34

That is the fundamental difference, is you're saying, I hope this happens someday, or what really ends up happening, let's be honest, this is something not talked about very often.

01:38:46

How many people go Presbyterian, Credo Baptist, and then go all the way into full

01:38:53

Pedobaptism, baptismal regeneration, infant salvation?

01:39:01

And man, I have met Presbyterians that are, they're right there. Pierre Marcel, I mean, he actually went so far as to say that a covenant child has the impact of original sin removed from them, so they can be a free moral agent.

01:39:20

And once you get there, you're so far removed from the New Testament that it's hard to even know what just happened.

01:39:29

Anyway, so, there's the reasoning. As long as Hebrews 8 is there, there's your new covenant believer.

01:39:36

They're the ones that receive the sign of the new covenant. And then we're consistent, because the other ordinance of the new covenant is what?

01:39:47

The Lord's Supper. Who's that for? Those to whom God has been merciful to their iniquities and remembered their sins no more.

01:39:55

Right? That's what it's for. And most of our

01:40:01

Presbyterian friends don't do that. But some do. So, you'll see the debate that I did with Doug on that subject last year on paedocommunion.

01:40:11

But the vast majority of Presbyterians go, nope. They recognize, hey, New Testament says you gotta discern the body and blood, so on and so forth.

01:40:19

Nope, not gonna do that. And that led to all sorts of divisions of church membership versus people fully partaking and all the stuff that comes with that.

01:40:30

It's a bit of a mess. So, we'll let that go. So, real quickly to the statements.

01:40:42

Okay, shall all know me on the heart. Here we go. The argument then runs as follows.

01:40:53

The old covenant which God made with Abraham and Israel included natural children. Israel broke the covenant. The new covenant will be different in that it is not made with natural children but spiritual children.

01:41:02

Only those who are regenerated unto saving faith and thus it will not be broken as the old. That's part of it. Yeah. I mean, it's part of the betterness is that it involves the sovereign work of God in the actual salvation of those who are in the covenant because their mediator is

01:41:25

Christ. Moreover, there will be no need for every man to tell his brother to know the

01:41:31

Lord for each and everyone this new covenant is regenerated unto saving faith. There are no unregenerate covenant members in the new covenant as there was in the old back in the days of Abraham, Moses, and David.

01:41:40

The mixed covenants of the Old Testament. Not only can I see how someone could hold this line of thinking.

01:41:47

Well, good. I myself did hold to it for some time, albeit with a variety of modifications, clarifications, and attendant arguments.

01:41:56

Indeed, for me, making points like the one in this post is an exercise in what Chesterton once said. I'm not going to worry about the

01:42:01

Chesterton quote. Indeed, for some time, I considered the various biblical promises God made to his people's children in the

01:42:08

Old Testament as promises God made to Israel and their offspring. And in some general sense, similar promises were made to new covenant members and their offspring.

01:42:17

I could not say with confidence that they were covenant promises from God to covenant children in the new covenant, for I was convinced the new covenant membership necessitated regeneration.

01:42:28

So, what he's saying is you can be in the new covenant without being regenerated. I was not prepared to claim the active regeneration of my infant, and I hope you still aren't, so I was not ready to recognize either their new covenant membership nor the biblical promises above as being vouchsafed to them here by Christ's blood.

01:42:49

Key, key point. The blood of Christ is why he is mediator.

01:42:56

He's the mediator of a better covenant based upon better promises. That's what mediation is all about.

01:43:04

I took these promises as announced to the Christians' children, even promises made to such children in a special way given their presence in a

01:43:12

Christian home, but I did not take them as promises stuck to them, promises from God signed and sealed upon them.

01:43:19

But that is what they are. They are not promises potentially made to your seed or promises merely announced like a general gospel call to the world.

01:43:27

They are promises covenantally made, indeed promises vouchsafed to your children by the blood of Christ.

01:43:35

They are sworn oaths of blessing made your children in a particular way for they are covenant children and the promises are to them and fulfilled by faith.

01:43:44

So, they're made by the blood of Christ. This sounds wonderful, and I'm seeing, and this is why

01:43:53

I, again, I could name the names of the people that I can just tell you within three years they're gonna be Presbyterians, minimally. Sounds great.

01:44:00

Here's the problem. If you give the sign without regeneration, and that's what pentebaptism is, it's we're going to give the sign, and the promises will be fulfilled.

01:44:15

So, it's hoped for, and what the rock -ribbed federal visionists were saying is, believe the promises, they're regenerated.

01:44:28

Leads to baptism regeneration. There's no way around it. That's the consistency.

01:44:34

If it's promised in the blood of Christ, and you give the part of the covenant, well, they're going to be saved.

01:44:40

That's all there is to it, but here's the problem. Everybody recognizes that there are all sorts of people running around this planet right now who were baptized as children.

01:44:55

When I debated Doug in 2004, every Roman Catholic kid was baptized in the name of the

01:45:03

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. My argument then was, it's irrelevant what words you mean if the gospel is not a part of it, and I stand by that today.

01:45:11

I stand by that today. You can use all the proper forms, everything you want. If it's not a part of the gospel, it's irrelevant, but there's lots of Presbyterian boys and girls running around who were baptized as infants, and they make no profession of faith today at all.

01:45:34

They've written books, all sorts of things. They're apostates from the

01:45:42

Presbyterian perspective because they were made a part of the covenant by their baptism. So here's the question.

01:45:51

What does Christ mediate to them? Because Christ is the mediator of the new covenant, right?

01:46:01

The new covenant exists in His blood, so what does He mediate to the members of the new covenant?

01:46:08

The only thing in the New Testament that Christ mediates to the covenant is eternal life, forgiveness, grace, adoption, all the beautiful things that we associate with that.

01:46:24

Most of my Presbyterian brothers will say, what does He mediate to those who leave? Wrath. Wrath.

01:46:33

So they will argue firmly. They'll argue for the, you know,

01:46:39

Hebrews 6, so on and so forth. These were covenant members. Hebrews 10, why do we argue about who is sanctified in Hebrews 10?

01:46:47

Hebrews 10, 29. Why did John Owen say it was Jesus, but most

01:46:52

Presbyterians say it was the person who breaks covenant? So that you can make sure to argue that person was in the new covenant, therefore the new covenant is breakable, and therefore

01:47:02

Jesus mediates wrath on members of the new covenant. I see absolutely no basis since it's in His blood.

01:47:10

Because when you think about it, what does the act of apostasy, what's its description in Hebrews 10?

01:47:20

He does what? Tramples underfoot the what? The blood of the Son of God. So that blood has not brought about the intended regeneration described in Hebrews chapter 8.

01:47:35

So the idea that He is mediating wrath in a covenant by His blood when

01:47:41

His blood is intended and perfects those for whom it's made makes no sense. It breaks the whole argument of Hebrews that there's nothing to go back to because here you have the completed and finished work in Christ.

01:47:58

His mediatorship saved to the uttermost a certain people. He has obtained eternal salvation, and we're going to turn all that on its head for a view of baptism that nobody held up until John Calvin?

01:48:12

Oh, wait a minute, now you just skipped everything. No. Go listen to my debate with Greg Strawbridge.

01:48:19

That was the argument that I made there. Sure, I made these arguments. I made the biblical argument. But then I also added to it, you need to understand something.

01:48:26

Now some people say, well, there might have been a few people, you know, maybe there's an

01:48:31

Anabaptist over here, maybe Bollinger over there, whatever. But Calvin develops a specific doctrine that fundamentally defines modern

01:48:41

Presbyterianism. And anybody that knows church history knows that the infant baptism, the infant baptism of the early church, which existed side by side with believers baptism, there were a lot of views on baptism in the first 300 years.

01:49:03

But you dig up their churches, and they didn't have teeny little fonts. You could just move around easily like that.

01:49:10

They had a big gold thing that everybody can get down into. And especially because even in the 400s, they're doing trying baptism forward, face forward three times, the name of the

01:49:22

Father, name of the Son, name of the Holy Spirit. You don't do that in a little teeny tiny font.

01:49:28

Smash, smash. It just doesn't work. So yeah, or the baby, yeah. So when infant baptism, when paedo -baptism becomes the established tradition, it is for the remission of original sin.

01:49:46

It is replacing what in the state of grace. It is not what

01:49:51

Paul taught in Romans. It is inconsistent with justification by faith.

01:49:58

And so we don't believe these things. We're biblicists. If you're a Protestant, you're a biblicist. Congratulations. You try to run from the phrase, but you can't do it.

01:50:09

So it was a theological novum when Calvin came up with this perspective to try to hold all this stuff together.

01:50:18

God bless him, but he was still a sacralist. And so he couldn't get rid of the princes and he couldn't get rid of the violations of severe sovereignty that were inherent in the system of his day.

01:50:29

He laid the foundation for it, but couldn't do it in his own day. And so the baptism of Presbyterianism today is not the baptism of the ancient church.

01:50:45

And I'm thankful for that. Okay. It shouldn't be. We believe in the gospel.

01:50:50

That's why we can have unity together. We debate about this one, but we can still proclaim, as long as you're complaining, proclaiming sola fide and sola gratia, we're good.

01:51:01

But it's not the same baptism. This was a theological novum. We need to own that and come up with an explanation for it.

01:51:11

So anyways, oh goodness, nine minutes.

01:51:17

What about the

01:51:23

Jeremiah 31 objection above? I believe the objection I detailed above simply straps too much on the back of Jeremiah.

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He is a strong prophet, but if we load the stated objection on his shoulders, then we weigh him down with more of an argument than he can bear.

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Really, we must take it easier on him. The objection claims that Jeremiah 31 proves that each and every new covenant member is regenerate at this very moment when

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Jeremiah's point is that the new covenant will be better than the old. Particularly the new covenant will be better in that it will not be broken as the old was.

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It consists of God's law being written in the heart of his covenant people, and it will be far more efficacious and potent in the lives of the covenant people.

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Here's the problem. I'm not talking about Jeremiah. Jeremiah was prophesying it. I'm talking about its application in Hebrews 8, and it's central to the apologetic argument of Hebrews.

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And if you do this, you're destroying the apologetic argument of Hebrews.

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That's the point. Broken. Regarding the new covenant not being broken, Jeremiah's point is not that an individual covenant member cannot break covenant with God in the new covenant.

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Rather, his point is that the new covenant itself will not be broken. Again, put this,

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I don't know why he tries to throw this back into Jeremiah. We're talking about Hebrews 8.

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We're talking about a specific application. Better covenant, better mediator, better promises. Here's what it looks like, and this is why, therefore, the covenant sign needs to be given to these particular individuals.

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The old covenant as a whole was broken such that it came to an end. Think of the administration of the new covenant like a presidential administration.

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Say the Washington or Jefferson administration. Jeremiah is not saying that a card -carrying member of the

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Jefferson administration cannot resign his membership and leave it. He is saying that administration itself is never going to fade away like the old one did.

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That's the end of the Hebrews argument. You just destroyed the Hebrews argument.

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That's not what Hebrews is saying. You follow the argument from 7 into 8 into 9 into 10, and if you want to have anything coherent left in 10 when it says, by this one will, we have been perfected forever, you can't be playing these games and saying, well, it's sort of like an administration.

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No, it's not. The point of Hebrews 8 is it's better because they will all know me because I have been merciful to their sins.

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Not to sins of some nebulous group, but to specific people called the elect. On the heart concerning God's law written, you need to give me, okay, thank you.

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I'm trying to go fast. Concerning God's law written on the heart in the new covenant, Jeremiah speaks to the degree of the

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Spirit's power and efficaciousness upon the new covenant people. He does not imply that the saints under the old administration of the covenant of grace were saved without the work of the

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Spirit upon the heart. That's true. No question about that. We're not saying the Holy Spirit was not present, but what we are saying, and now he goes to Calvin here, and of course,

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Calvin was trying to find a way around all this stuff. We're not saying the Spirit was not present under the old. We are saying is that there were lots of people who bore the covenant signs under the old who did not have the

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Spirit in their life. They were not regenerate. That's why the prophet is saying, circumcise your heart.

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You don't have that in the new covenant. You don't have that in the new covenant, because that's how you get into the new covenant, is through regeneration.

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Again, more quotes from Calvin. In other words, whether you believe there is one covenant of grace and substance, which has undergone a significant renovation, form, and structure of the coming of Christ, or you believe there has been two separate covenants, the old housing, the natural family, and the new, merely individuals who are marked by active regeneration, makes a big difference.

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That's true, but which one fits in the argument of Hebrews? Which one says there's nothing to go back to?

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Which one explains why the mediator of the new covenant is able to save perfectly those that are in the new covenant, which you did not have under the old?

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That's the question. Shall all know me, the greater efficaciousness and potency of the new covenant is seen in Jeremiah's language.

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They shall teach no more every man his neighbor, every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord. Jeremiah here speaks hyperbolically.

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His point is not that the substance of the new covenant is different, such that each and every new covenant member is regenerate, opposed to the old when that was not the case.

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Rather, Jeremiah amplifies the point, the new covenant manifests God and his truth far more broadly than the old.

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That is the difference. There's the division. I say, I call bunkum on that one.

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That is not what Hebrews 8 is saying. There's the issue.

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If you go there, if you go there, you have destroyed the apologetic. You have destroyed the apologetic of Hebrews, and I don't know how you can't see it.

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I really, really don't. His point is that the substance of the new covenant is different, such that each and every new covenant member is regenerate, opposed to the old when that was not the, that, that is the point.

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Tell me how your position fits 7, 8, 9, 10.

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Tell me how it fits, because it doesn't. It doesn't. This new covenant with the better mediator, he writes his law upon, that's regeneration.

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That's what makes a new covenant what it is, and that's why you give the covenant sign to those who are regenerate. I don't need to go with the rest of it, because that's, there's, there's the dividing line right there.

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There's the dividing line, and it's how you're going to understand, and I, and I hope you see the danger that I see.

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I am so thankful that so many of my brothers, and look, in many, many ways, I am closer to my

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Presbyterian brothers than I am to many Baptists that I know, by a long shot, by a long shot.

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I get it, but here's the issue, and I'm sorry, I have not heard meaningful responses.

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I've heard all sorts of complicated discussions about someday the new covenant will come into fruition, and all the rest of this kind of stuff, but I have not heard someone get into the text, follow the argument, say, here's what the

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Apostle is arguing, and here's how it makes application. I've not heard it, and that's why baptism needs to be given to those who are described in Hebrews chapter 8.

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That's the nature of the new covenant, and that's the nature of baptism, and you can, you can decide,

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I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this because of the authority of this person, that person, this person did it, they know more than me, so on and so forth.

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Fine, I am reformed because the Bible requires me to be.

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The same exegesis I use to prove the deity of Christ, to prove the resurrection, is what proves predestination, election, the ecclesiology of reformed theology, which is not what a lot of people think it is, and why

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I hold the view of baptism that I do. There you go.

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So, that, that, right there, under shall all know me,

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I'll link to this, there it is, because the, the second full, third full sentence, no, one, two, fourth

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His point, and Jared says, is not that the substance of the new covenant is different, such that each and every new covenant member is regenerate, opposed to the old when that was not the case.

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Jared, that's dangerous, because what you're saying is, the new covenant opens up, even this new covenant opens up the door for true members who are not regenerate, and yet it's made in the blood of Christ.

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I don't see how that's consistent with what we believe about predestination, election, particular redemption, any of those things.

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I don't see how making Jesus the mediator of covenant, where he has to mediate wrath, is consistent with any of those things.

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But most importantly, it fundamentally cripples the argument of Hebrews.

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So, there you go. All right, didn't expect to spend quite that much time on it, but once you get into Hebrew, it's hard to work through Hebrews very fast, okay?

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It's not a book that allows surface level stuff at all. It's a little bit deeper than that.

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So, here on Reformation Day, hey, don't blame me, don't blame me, blame

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Jared Longshore, he's the one that posted it on Reformation Day, this was his Luther moment, and we just knocked the nail back out from the other side of the door.

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Blame Calvin? Calvin had nothing to do with this whatsoever, nothing at all.

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Okay, so like I said, right now the plan is, right now to untangle the amazingly tangled mess that was produced in response to my criticism of John 6, the presentation made on John 6.

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And it may take a while to do that, because it is truly convoluted.

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And unfortunately, the individual that I'll be reviewing um, he used the

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Blue Letter Bible and Olive Tree Bible software. I use Olive Tree all the time on my phones and iPad, great stuff.

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But he makes a number of statements based upon the original languages saying, this 100 % proves

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Calvinism is wrong. There's only one problem, he doesn't read at all.

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And this would be a good illustration of the danger of using secondary biblical sources.

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Accordance, Logos, Olive Tree, Blue Letter Bible, whatever, they're wonderful to have,

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I'm not saying anything against them, but just because you can click on a word and it parses it for you does not mean you understand what that word is saying.

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And unfortunately, I'm going to be able to give you example after example where this man would fail my first year

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Greek class or anybody else's first year Greek class, because he doesn't read the language. He doesn't understand what a participle is.

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Over and over again, he would say, this is a present active indicative tense.

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No, that's tense mode and voice. Those are three different things. And he doesn't know how to recognize a participle, doesn't realize that you've got substantival participles and then non -substantival, and they're going to interact with finite verbs differently.

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And there's a reason why it takes time to learn Greek and just using

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Bible programs. And you know what's really sad about this? When I taught for Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary years and years ago, when

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I taught Greek, I had 15 weeks, 13 functional weeks to go all the way through mounts.

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And I struggled with that because I don't want to teach people to hate Greek. I want to teach people to love

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Greek. When they switched to you being able to fulfill your language requirement in Greek in a

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Jan term class, I pretty much gave up because Jan term is two weeks long.

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You cannot learn a language in that period of time at all. All they were doing was starting to use these programs.

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And that is not learning the languages. It isn't.

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And it's dangerous. It's dangerous. Anyway, anyhow, any so anyhow. So thank you very much for listening to the program today.

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Hope it was useful to you. We covered the waterfront today. That's for sure. Lord willing, we'll see you on Thursday.