Micro-Aggression Worship Songs, Tweets from MLK50 Conference, Ehrman on the Gospel Writers, Phones

Greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. We're doing our program a day early. We've got things due tomorrow.

Who knows, though? I mean, there's always another day in the week after Thursday, so who knows what could happen.

I actually think I'd like to be on a desert island for a while after the past few days.

This morning, well, both Facebook and Twitter have been rather interesting today.

One of the more interesting ones was someone put on Facebook that they had just heard praise chorus or worship music at a conference, the

MLK50 conference going on right now, and that they had somehow managed to put the phrase microaggressions into a worship song.

At first, people were like, that's got to be Babylon B. Come on, seriously?

But he insisted, and so I started tweeting out a question that said, can anybody help me out here?

And it was confirmed. It is a song written and performed by the, quote, worship team, or as he referred to as the crew, from Matt Chandler's church.

And here is the relevant section. Broken mirrors give us all a false perception.

I would play this, but I have a feeling we'd get dinged for copyright violation on YouTube.

So what can I say? This is the only way to actually do review.

Broken mirrors give us all a false perception. Broken systems teach us all false lessons.

And the evil one, so crafty in all of his deception, to keep us divided is to keep all of his lies protected.

So you can't see that you're treated as superior while I'm left fighting off the lie that I'm inferior.

We're the precious children born to this world where lies are taught as truth. Father, we need our minds to be renewed by you, because it's a daily fight to remind myself that I am worthy when microaggressions lie behind every corner lurking.

We've been hurting for a long time, weary souls. Why does it seem like my brothers in Christ can't understand it, though?

I don't know. So whoever was listening caught it and was correct.

When microaggressions lie behind every other corner lurking, and that's the line after, because it's a daily fight to remind myself that I am worthy.

As a Christian, the only thing that I remind myself is I'm worthy of God's judgment, and hence

I'm completely dependent upon grace. I'm not worthy of anything. So I don't understand that part at all.

But then when microaggressions lie behind every other corner lurking, Look, all this microaggression stuff is pretty new to some of us older folks.

I mean, I don't remember having heard that term more than, what, four or five years ago.

I certainly didn't grow up with any reference to microaggressions, anything along those lines.

I guess this is because we were all just completely socially ignorant and had no conscience.

At least that's seemingly what's being communicated. But I sort of went on Twitter and basically pointed out that when you grow up and you become an adult, you learn to filter what offends you, because you recognize that if you're in a constant state of offense, you're never going to accomplish anything.

We used to say you're going to have ulcers, but you're going to be depressed, you're going to be unhappy, you're not going to sleep well, you're not going to be healthy, you're not going to be a nice person to be around.

And so at some point in time, you make the choice that I'm not going to be offended by all the things

I could be offended by. I've told the story. Well, my daughter mentioned that she watched my grandson

Waylon, who's being treated badly by some other kids, and instead of running off to tell

Mommy and Daddy or getting violent or stuff, he just walked away from it and did something else.

That's called growing up. I remember, I've told the story, I remember the exact day, exactly where I was, which direction

I was facing. It's really weird. When someone had insulted me and I stopped my bike and I was going to run inside and tell my mommy, because that's what you do when you're a child.

And I stopped, I said, it doesn't matter. I'm not hurt.

And it's going to take too much time to go in there and have too much fun riding my bike. So I kept going. Got back on and that's part of growing up.

Part of being an adult. But we live in a day of safe spaces. We live in a day when our universities, when someone comes on campus and expresses a different opinion than the dogma of the day, you have places to go where you can cuddle teddy bears because you've been hurt.

And so we have this terminology of microaggressions.

And they can be things that people do that people do not intend to be hurtful, but you take them as hurtful.

And I'm sorry, but adults recognize that you look at someone's actions and if there was no intent to hurt, there's no reason to be hurt.

There's no reason to take offense. We are human beings. We can make that choice. And now we have it in worship music?

Microaggressions in worship music. Okay, well, there you go.

And right above that, so you can't see that you're treated as superior while I'm left fighting off the lie that I'm superior.

That's just the privilege stuff. This is, again, what we talked about last time. This is, let's divide.

Let's divide people up along these lines, cause division. And then what you do is you break things down to allegedly heal the division, but on the wrong basis for healing the division.

Yeah, well, it's been educational. It's been educational to see just how far this has gone.

And the leaders of major Christian institutions who are lockstep with it, just pushing it forward.

There you go. We also saw a, let's see, did that go into Chrome or Safari?

There it is. We also saw a tweet this morning.

Yes, I'm seeing things. I cannot look over at Twitter. It's way too distracting.

This is a book weight, by the way, in case anyone's wondering. You know, you get these book weights, and I never throw them out.

Cause they're made of leather, they're all nice, and so you end up with them for like decades. So you can't even remember why in the world you got the one you got.

Anyway, they've got some feel to them. Anyway, Kyle J.

Howard, whom we mentioned, was it last week or yesterday?

Was it yesterday? I don't know. Tweeted this in response to an

ERLC note, which in and of itself is interesting these days with George Soros and things like that.

ERLC had tweeted, Alright, so here's

Kyle J. Howard's commentary. This is where it's at. White evangelicalism, if it, as if it is an entity, wants to become a true ally to black community.

Does everyone see the massive division there? I mean, just big chasm thing in the thought.

It must begin investing financial resources, parentheses, owed,

O -W -E -D, parentheses closed, back into it. It must begin not only by giving its word, but action through financial investment into black saints.

MLK 50 conference is the hashtag. So you have the phrase white evangelicalism, which as I pointed out on Twitter today, when you put a skin color in front of something that describes the evangel, you've totally missed the boat.

It is not a micro aggression, in my opinion, to be willing to throw everybody of a certain melanin count into one big old honking group.

I won't do that to Muslims. I won't do that to Roman Catholics.

I won't do that to blacks. I won't do that to Chinese or Japanese or Koreans, or you just name the list.

I won't do it because it's offensive and it is divisive and it's wrong and it should be repented of.

Remember, he's also one who told me that I just need to repent. Repent of what? I wasn't told, but I just need to repent, period.

White evangelicalism, if it wants, what is it? When we prove from Scripture that the

Holy Spirit is personal, is a person, how do we do that? We do that, for example, by demonstrating that the

Spirit gives the gifts as He wills. To will something is the action of a person.

Only persons can will. If it wants is a personification of a group that doesn't exist.

There is no such thing as white evangelicalism. There are far too many distinctions, differences, mixtures for that to even be a semi -meaningful category.

It just doesn't exist. It's fantasy. You may make points with people by making reference to it, make it the bogeyman, the bad person over there, but it doesn't exist.

Think of the worst example you can come up with of a racially segregated, racist in the sense of secret members of the

KKK in it, backwards church with only whites in it.

Then combine that with all the other churches where you have, not by having racial quotas, not by people going out and looking to try to fill the pews with different colored people.

I'm going to pass by the white folks and go, I need some of this color. It's like going to a paint store. We need to have different colors on the walls.

But there are all sorts of churches where you'll have 40 % of this and 20 % of that and 10 % of that and 5 % of that.

And it's because that's the people that the Spirit of God drew to that place and to the preaching and teaching and the ministry of the word in that place.

You throw them all together and that's white evangelicalism. That's absurd. That does not help anything.

It doesn't help anything. It's divisive. It's divisive and it's intended to be.

Maybe not by this individual, but by the people who want to see this type of division.

That's what's wanted. That's what's wanted. And then begin investing financial resources owed.

Is this a reparations reference? Are we really? That's what's going on here now?

Is reparations? I've always found that. I've told the story before.

I remember I was in South Phoenix. I think I had just ridden South Mountain if I recall correctly.

Though there's other reasons I'd go down there. I just can't think of any others at this point in time. This is years ago.

Michael Medved was on. And I was listening to Michael Medved. And he had on a black woman who was arguing that blacks cannot be racist.

Just can't be racist. It's not possible. You have to have power. And this issue came up at that time.

I've never been able to find that program. But like I said, it was probably too long ago. It's no longer on the listing or whatever.

I don't know. This whole concept of reparations.

Michael brought up to this lady. What about people whose ancestors weren't here during the

Civil War? I mean, I happen to know that my great -great -grandfather. Great -great or great -great -great.

Anyway. I can trace it back, give you names. Didn't arrive in the United States until sometime between 1884 and 1889.

He was in Scotland. And you point that out and people are like, doesn't matter.

It's based on skin color. Really? What if you're black and your ancestors weren't here until my ancestors were here?

It really starts getting crazy. And it all goes back to this idea that, well, you know.

You can be held accountable for what your father's father's father's father did. Even if they weren't here.

Or they didn't do. Yeah, exactly. I don't know.

It just surprises me to see the boldness with which these things are being expressed. Within a context, it just makes you go.

Have you thought about what you're saying there? I had a back and forth with the guy.

I don't think that James' interpretation of Colossians 3.

I think I could have taken it differently. Okay, what's your exegesis? Still waiting on that.

But part of it was, well, but we need to be kind and compassionate. And I'm starting to figure out what those buzzwords mean.

I mean, there's a biblical meaning of those words. And then there's the, I guess we call the woke meaning of those words.

I hate the destruction of the English language that that utilization of that term means and represents.

But there's the woke meaning, which means you will not be considered to be kind and compassionate until you agree with our founding presuppositions that you actually disagree with.

So if you disagree, you're kind and non -compassionate. Even though we are kind and compassionate in pointing out your disagreement and saying that you are not kind and compassionate for disagreeing with us.

There's no winning. It's just submit. It's sort of like what was said to me initially.

Repent. Of. Just repent. Okay. You can't get very far in those situations.

It's sort of hard to get much discussion there. So there you go.

So this might be one of the best arguments

I've ever seen for only using the Trinity Hymnal. Because you're not going to get microaggression.

Yeah, exclusive psalmody is starting to sound pretty good right there. Sadly. I mean,

I like singing Jesus' name, but yeah. There you go.

It's been a weird morning. It really, really has. It's... Anyway, I promised yesterday that I would get back to at least a brief...

You know, I don't even know if this is on. Let me see. No. Did we turn that off? Should be working, huh?

One, two, three, four. What? I don't even know where the light is.

Don't even know where the light is. Nope, no light.

You can't hear this at all? Nope. Oh, well. Back to the 1980s, which seems to work best.

Yeah, there's just... Maybe it's dead or I don't know. It shouldn't be dead.

But I don't know where lights are. And it's not doing anything.

So, yep. Oh, well. Let's... I promised we were going to do at least a brief section of Ermine.

And then we will go to your calls. Why not? Make them on apologetics issues.

Or things that we've covered, I suppose. It won't take us too long to get through Ermine. So I suppose if you want to line up, 877 -753 -3341.

877 -753 -3341. What? Not that I know of.

I've got it unplugged anyway. Let's get back to...

This is just a portion of... This is sort of the... The Gospels can't be correct.

Because they're not just slavish copies of each other type argument from Bart Ermine.

This is the debate, of course, with Mike Licona. And here's just a couple minutes on that.

Matthew's writing a sermon that Jesus gave on this mount. He's writing this account 50 years after the sermon was given.

How well can you remember

Barack Obama's last State of the Union address from two years ago? Could you write it down?

Two years ago? What if you waited 50 years? Could you write word for word what

Barack Obama said in his speech? You were probably paying attention. I was paying attention. And I don't even know what he was talking about.

The Gospel of John has a speech of Jesus that begins in chapter 13. He's giving it to his disciples, his last evening with them.

Chapter 13. The speech goes into chapter 14. All of 14. Goes into all of chapter 15. And then all of chapter 16.

And then chapter 17. He leaps into a prayer that goes all of chapter 17. It's five chapters. Written 65 years later.

What is the likelihood that we know what Jesus said on this occasion? Now, Mike has just told us that the way the

Gospel writers knew what was said... Because Jesus said these things over and over and over and over.

I'm not going to say how many overs that is because I don't have enough time. But over and over again.

You will notice that he never pointed out whether that is ever said in the New Testament. Where in the

New Testament does it ever say that Jesus gave the same sermon... Over and over and over and over and over and over again?

It doesn't say anywhere. Where does he give the same speech over and over again in the New Testament? He never gives the same speech more than once in the

New Testament. So why does Mike think that he did? Because Mike thinks he did.

That's just like, well, that makes sense. So that must have been how it happened. But what's the evidence?

Historians prefer evidence. And I don't know of any. There's certainly no evidence.

Okay. So there's the argument.

And it is central to Ehrman's... What should we call it?

Desire to promote skepticism. And when you approach the

New Testament as a skeptical agnostic, you don't believe in the activity of the

Holy Spirit. It's just simply... And unfortunately, the perspective of the

Laicona, Craig -style apologetic approach has no defense against this.

Because if you're going to sit there and say, the majority of scholars agree with me on this, then when they turn around and say, the majority of scholars agree with us on this, you've got no place to go there.

You've given in on that concept to begin with. But from a naturalistic historical perspective, which is all you've got in an agnostic worldview, you can't have any type of supernatural activity involved.

The text is not inspired. And so the first thing he asks is, do you remember

Barack Obama's last State of the Union speech? I never saw one.

So no, I don't remember. Even if I had...

I mean, I'm sure I saw clips of some, because you can't avoid that. But I didn't watch

Trump's either, for very different reasons for the two of them.

But no, I don't remember any of those things. But is it a valid argument to point out that...

Well, he goes after two. He goes after the Sermon on the Mount with Matthew, and then he goes after the personal interaction of the

Lord with the disciples that is unique to the Gospel of John, and that was specifically not included in the

Synoptic Gospels. Which is interesting, because presuppositionally, I imagine he would say that all of that material in John is not historical in the first place, though he will now expose it to some type of alleged historical criticism.

Anyway, those are two examples he uses. If you have ever compared

Matthew and Luke, you will see that Luke has a

Sermon on the Plain, Matthew has a Sermon on the Mount, but they contain a lot of the same material.

So some would simply say that Matthew and Luke are contradicting each other, A, as to location, or B, the...

Some will harmonize that by saying, well, it was a flat spot on the Mount.

I suppose, I don't know. But they're not verbatim reports.

Luke's is much shorter and varies in certain details from Matthew.

The assumption of the agnostic, the unbeliever, is, well, this is all supposed to be the same thing, but since Mark doesn't contain this information, then

Matthew and Luke end up being really different. Again, all based upon naturalistic presuppositions and presumptions.

Try to say those two words together. So his argument is, why are there differences, and could anyone really remember?

And then he tries to respond to an appropriate observation on Licona's part, and that is that these were...

And Licona did a good job at this point. Remember, he listened to this and got tired of the over and over and over, but he did it for a reason.

He's established the idea, and all Ehrman does is preach against it. He doesn't provide anything of an argument.

Well, that's just Licona's opinion. No, it makes perfect sense.

We have minimally two, possibly three years of ministry on Jesus' part. Are you telling me that in almost daily teaching, frequently, not for the length of time that a professor teaches, well, except for those incredibly long...

It's the type of teaching I normally do because I normally come in for five days, and so you teach all day long.

Most professors don't have to do that. They'll teach for an hour and a half, and then they're done for the day, or at least that class.

Jesus often is teaching all day long, week after week, month after month, year after year.

Do you really think, and this is sort of surprising to me, do you really think,

Dr. Bart Ehrman, that there was no repetition, that every time

Jesus told a parable, it was a new parable he had never told before? I mean, how many principles of life in the kingdom of God are there?

And given that Scripture does repeat things, why would

Jesus not repeat things? He says, well, but there aren't any sermons that are repeated over and over again.

That one really caught me. Not because it's a good argument, because it's so silly. And I hope you see why it's silly.

If you are Matthew, and you are writing your gospel, and you have an idea of how long you want it to be, why would you repeat the same things over and over and over again?

I mean, you're only going to give one representative sample. You have the clear evidence that Matthew, for example, telescopes the story of the woman, well, of Jairus, the raising of Jairus' daughter, and the woman who touched his robe and stuff, removes that, doesn't even tell that part of the story.

You clearly see that the authors are concerned about how in -depth they're going, and when they go very in -depth, as Mark did, in that particular instance over against Matthew, that is indicative, plainly, of their wanting to emphasize something about that particular event or incident in Jesus' life.

So it just struck me just what a vacuous argument it is to say, well, he didn't repeat other things, and doesn't say he repeated things, but it's just so obvious.

And Bart Ehrman is one of the greatest examples of it. One of the greatest examples of it.

You want an example? Here. I don't even have to have this marked. This is easy.

You, as the audience, have the pleasure. Welcome to Kennesaw State University to tonight's exciting debate.

Dr. Bart Ehrman is James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina.

I know where it is. Here it is. All right. How many of you are students here? Good. Okay.

How many of you here consider yourselves to be Bible -believing Christians? Wow! Okay.

Huh. Ready? How many of you are here to see me get creamed? Okay. How many times have you heard him say that?

It's almost in every single debate. It's almost in every single debate. How many of you are here to hear me get creamed?

I could go back, and I bet you I could pull that out of ten debates without any problem.

But can I find any place in Bart Ehrman's books where he specifically states that he likes to repeat things?

Yeah. Okay. So we clearly have gross double standards being used.

What about this issue of how long? I mean, obviously, I think Ehrman is expanding the time frames.

I think the Gospels are written much closer to the events than he would like to believe, but be that as it may, is there a parallel between listening to a political sermon, a political speech, and the very essence of the message that the

Apostles would be teaching and preaching every single day of their lives?

I mean, let's look at the John material. That was not public.

That was private. Why, then, should we think that that would be relevant?

Because of the very nature of the fact that this was what was taught on the very night before Jesus' betrayal.

And it was clearly very personally directed to them. Do you really think that the

Apostles, after the Resurrection and after the Ascension of Jesus, never talked about that again?

You know they would have talked about that over and over and over again.

So, this idea that what's being put into the mind by Ehrman's presentation is, yeah, man, if I tried to remember what my neighbor said to me over the fence 65 years later,

I could never get that. That's not a parallel. That's not what's going on.

What's going on is stuff that was extremely important, stuff that they would have taught on and repeated over and over and over again, privately and in public.

So, I'm sorry, there's no argument there. And as to, for example, the differences between Matthew and Luke in the recording of the

Sermon on the Mount, Sermon on the Plain, that makes it very clear. They are drawing together material from numerous times when,

I mean, we know that Jesus was teaching and preaching on the principles of the Kingdom of God. You think he only did that once?

No, he used the same parables, he was teaching the same things in different cities, in different contexts, and these are compilations of these things.

I don't see where the argument is, but it is the standard

Ermanian approach to try to inculcate this level of skepticism, but not consistently.

There really is no consistency in what he's doing there.

So, keep that in mind as you listen to Erman's presentations. And sometimes it is somewhat humorous to apply his own words to his own writings.

I mean, I've said many times when he addresses the issue of pseudonymity, fraud, forgeries, that using the standards he uses, if you compare his popular books with his academic books, obviously two different people wrote them.

There must be a fraudulent Bart Erman out there. Because he won't allow for the fact that when

Paul writes to Timothy, when you write to an intimate friend in a personal letter, even if it is deeply theological, that's going to use different vocabulary than when you're writing to a church.

And you're going to use different vocabulary when you're writing to the Philippians than you use when you're writing to the

Galatians. Because the Philippians, it's an epistle of joy. Galatians, not so much.

Evidently, that's not allowed. So, as I've said, if you compare

Erman's scholarly writings with his popular writings, with his emails, apply the same standard, and there's a bunch of Bart Ermans running around.

Need to catch those fraudulent ones and do something bad to them. Hit him with my book thing that keeps books open so you can type at him.

That'll do it. I can't use it on Twitter?

What? Oh, no, well, okay. I can't, no. Alright. Huh.

Okay, I gotta, don't let me, you're the one that mentioned Twitter, and you shouldn't have mentioned Twitter. Because then I look over there and I start seeing stuff on Twitter, and I should just minimize it.

I really, really should. 877 -753 -334, I saw you mention something, and I'm not sure that that one topic is anything overly relevant to anything that I would know about.

But let's start with Bob in Kansas. Hi, Bob. Hi, Dr. White. Hello.

Thank you for taking my call. Can you hear me? I can. Just barely on my end. That's okay. Yeah, I got a headset on.

I'm sitting in my truck. Okay. My question is, how do you see the majority text, the view of it and its implementation and translations and things like that being affected by CBGM?

Well, there really isn't any real connection there, because fundamentally, majority text advocates already have an assumption that they are functioning on that is different from the whole concept of the

CBGM. The majority text advocate is basically saying that the

Ausgang's text is going to be found in the majority of manuscripts.

CBGM is not saying that. The nature of coherence in the

CBGM is different than just simply a majority reading. There are times when the CBGM will point you to a non -majority reading.

Now, it has been pointed out that there does seem to be a bias toward the

Byzantine texts in CBGM, which may be related to the concept of coherence and to the fact that it primarily focuses upon non -fragmentary texts.

And of course, the older you get, the more fragmentary texts are. You can't include them, but there is somewhat of an inherent bias against some of the earlier texts because of the form that they're in.

And CBGM, and I didn't get into this yet, but CBGM also does not yet, it's not that it can't, but it does not yet take into consideration translations and lectionaries or patristic citations.

All of those things could be included, but it would vastly complicate the mechanics and it's going to take some time, if it eventually is included, to make up those databases.

And then there's all sorts of questions you've got to go into. What version of the

Fathers do you use? There has to be critical text analysis of their text and all sorts of stuff that is extremely complicated.

So there really isn't a direct impact simply because they're not functioning on the same basis.

The majority of text advocates already have their presuppositions and what CBGM is going to say is going to be irrelevant to them one way or the other because of the nature of their presuppositional commitment.

There is a section, I can't reach it from here, but in Dr. Gurry's book from Brill, on the impact of CBGM on the

Byzantine textual prioritists such as Maurice Robinson.

So he does address that and basically comes to the conclusion that it has no impact because, pretty much what

I just said about the majority of text, there really isn't any interface because they've already made a fundamental textual decision that sort of determines what their text is going to look like and coherence isn't a part of it.

I guess, if I may, I guess what I mean is when we see new translations come out, they're always based on the

NA27 or 28 or whatever, something like that. With CBGM, if it shows that the

Byzantine text, for instance, is as reliable as these other texts, might people take a second look at it?

And I don't mean people who are like King James only or majority text advocates or whatever.

I just mean in general, in the scholarly world in general. Well, while CBGM has breathed life into the idea that the

Byzantine manuscript tradition can maintain original readings that are not found in earlier texts, it certainly has not.

In fact, in the vast majority of instances where there is a difference between the most primitive text and the

Byzantine, in the vast majority of instances, would still point toward the earlier readings than the

Byzantine. So when we say it has raised the stock of the

Byzantine manuscript tradition, we only mean that in the sense that the Byzantine manuscript tradition isn't simply dismissed as being always secondary.

But it's not like it is said, Oh, this is wow. This is most of the time. This is one that's got the right reading.

That's not the conclusion that the changes have come to. I mean, when you look at the number of changes so far in the general epistles and in Acts, which are the only books where this has been applied in any consistent fashion thus far, the number, the changes between the

NA27 and NA28 in the general epistles was relatively small, 30 some odd,

I think, that are meaningful. And thank you for taking my call, and thank you for your ministry.

Okay, thank you. Goodbye. All right, bye. All right. Let's talk to Jeremiah.

Hi, Jeremiah. Hey, Dr. White. How are you doing? Doing pretty good. Good. I first of all wanted to thank you for all the work that you've done.

You've helped me. Well, God has helped you with your work, helped me become a

Calvinist, and kept me sane in my Church of Christ college, so I wanted to thank you for that. Church of Christ college.

Well, what did you do? Keep the Potter's Freedom hidden in a brown paper bag or something like that so it couldn't be seen?

Actually, yes, I did. Yep, yep. Put an engineering cover on it or something like that.

Algebraic equations. Something really, really innocuous. You wouldn't be the first one, believe me.

You wouldn't be the first one. Yes, sir. Your question. Yes, my question was about Matthew 16, 18.

I've been encountering many Roman Catholics about this verse, and they make a particular argument about the changing of Peter's name from Simon to Kephos, and they say that in the same fashion of, like,

Abraham and his name change, it requires a promotion to a certain position, so how would you respond to that argument?

Well, there's nothing about Kephos in Matthew 16, 18, first of all. So they are assuming an

Aramaic original that we do not possess, and as Chris Karagounis has argued, we don't know what the

Aramaic would be, but there is a better possibility that instead of Kepho, you would have used something like Minra in a context like this, but again, it's all speculation.

Even though Rome claims great authority, they can't claim to be able to know what we don't possess, and the canonical version of Matthew, even in Roman Catholicism, is still the

Greek version of Matthew and not anything other than that. So what is important in Matthew 16 is not that many

Protestants, I think erroneously, try to make a distinction between Petras, Little Stone, and Petra, Big Stone.

That's a very common argument, but I don't think it's an argument that has a whole lot of weight to it. Instead, what people miss is the fact that it goes from Hati Su, you are

Petras, kai epi taute te Petra, and upon this rock. So there is an absolutely grammatically and syntactically necessary disjunction between the direct address, second person, to you, you are

Peter, and upon this rock. Now, it doesn't say upon you, it says upon this rock.

Now, the only reason to put taute in there is for it to point to something other than Peter.

And the only thing, and this is a very common interpretation, in fact, it's a much more common interpretation in the early

Church Fathers and the Patristics than anything supporting a Roman Catholic viewpoint, and that is that taute is referring back to Peter's confession, which came in verse 16, and that was the object of the blessing of Jesus.

He says that flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. So this is an actual revelation of who

Christ is, and it is upon that rock that Christ builds

His Church. And so, there's no other reason for taute to be there.

There is a disjunction there. And you can continue that on by then going to verse 18, and I will give to you, and it is singular, and I will give to you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.

And Roman Catholics love to focus upon that. See, Peter's given the keys, and the apostles only participate in blah blah blah, and then asking the question, where in Matthew does

Peter receive these keys? And the fact is, there is no place where Peter alone receives keys.

So you either have to say, well, yeah, Matthew just doesn't record it, or you have to recognize that Peter received these keys along with the other apostles in Matthew chapter 18, as an equal, not as a superior.

Would an argument also follow that if they say that Peter alone receives those keys, wouldn't they be proving too much?

Because if Peter alone receives those keys, that means only he does and nobody else, not even supposed successors.

Well, you would think, I mean, they're just going to automatically assume if they're given to Peter, then Peter has to pass them on to somebody else, even though there's nothing about succession in key holding, there's nothing about what the nature of the keys are, the nature of the keys are obviously binding and loosing, which has to do with what the gospel does in its proclamation, that's what the

Holy Spirit allows the church to do, blah blah blah. And more importantly, Jesus says he continues to hold the keys in Revelation chapter 2 or 3, as I recall.

So you have those issues as well. So there are lots of problems. If you go back, we've done the debate on the papacy numerous times, and both in my debates with Jerry Matatick, who

I just saw yesterday. Did you see that, Rich? Jerry Matatick did a some type of Skype thing with Matt Slick.

And I clipped through to just find where Jerry was talking, and it's like, man,

I remember when he was just a young guy, and so was I. And secondly, in fact,

I look older than he does. And secondly, he's still arguing the exact same things that we've refuted a thousand times for years and years later.

It's sort of sad to see. But anyway, if you go back to the debate on the papacy, the very, very lengthy debate on the papacy that we did in Colorado, there will be a rather full discussion of that, as well as the debate with Mitch Pacwa.

We go through Matthew 16 rather painstakingly in those two debates. Yes, sir.

Thank you. Okay. All right, Jerry and Matt, keep up the good work out there. Yes, sir. All right. Thank you. Bye -bye.

Bye -bye. Yes, sir. Wait a minute. Jerry's still arguing the same...

He's been driving a U -Haul for the past 24 hours, and all he's had was a Coke to drink.

That poor man has not had anything but a Diet Coke in almost 30 years now. It's terrible.

Poor guy. Somebody over -enrolls him. No wonder he's so skinny. Diet Coke ain't going to put much meat on your bones.

Somebody in Rome should give him a sandwich. That's... Poor Jerry.

Poor Jerry. I didn't listen to it. Like I said, I only...

I just threw it real quick and just saw a couple of minutes. I just couldn't download it and force myself to listen to the same things that I've dealt with over and over and over again.

But I should, just simply because I hope everybody on that call or that discussion realized they were dealing with a very, very non -Orthodox

Sedevacantist guy who's way, way, way, way, way, way, way out there.

I hope they recognized that that was the case. Okay. Let's go to Alexander.

Yes, sir. Hey, Dr. White. Yes, sir. It's a very... It's a pleasure to finally be talking to you.

Your ministry has really been a huge blessing to me and I thank you for all that you guys do. Well, thank you. My question is about something that...

Well, first of all, earlier today I was listening to one of your older dividing lines.

And by older, I mean 1999. That's old. So, yeah.

And you said sort of an explanation of what Jesus said when He said no one had seen

God at any time. You said that that was the Father that He was referring to. Is that correct?

Mm -hmm. Okay, well, if that's the case, I wanted to ask about Daniel chapter 7 where it appears to be referring to the

Father. I mean, the Ancient of Days, if that's the Father, and you can tell because the Son of Man, Jesus, approaches

Him on the clouds. If that's the Father, and if Jesus is saying no one has ever seen the

Father, how does that work? Well, it doesn't specifically make the statement that it says,

I kept looking at night visions. Behold, with the clouds of heaven, one like a Son of Man was coming. He came up to the Ancient of Days and was presented before Him, and to Him was given dominion, glory, and the kingdom of heaven on earth.

It doesn't say that I saw what He looked like. I mean, this is a heavenly vision in the clouds of heaven, and all the rest of that kind of thing.

It's not a specific reference to any type of encounter with God the

Father or anything else. It all says the Son of Man was presented before the Ancient of Days.

You're assuming that that means that the Ancient of Days is somehow visible to the physical eyes or something like that, rather than just simply being presented before the throne of God.

Okay, well, the reason I assume that is because Daniel gives a description of the

Ancient of Days. I believe he says his skin is like bronze and his hair is white.

I may be getting the two mixed up, but that's the reason why I assume that. I've asked other people before, and they basically say—

That says vesture. No, it says vesture. There is a description of these things, which is then taken over into the

New Testament. Nothing is— But His throne was ablaze with flames, its wheels were a burning fire, a river of fire was flowing and coming out from before.

These are all very much poetic descriptions of power and authority, and there's nothing here that would indicate that you have the same concern that, for example, is had elsewhere where I'm going to die because I've seen the

Holy One of Israel a number of times. That happens in Judges and places like that.

So, you know, if you want to say, well, that means that the seat or the throne of the

Ancient of Days has burning wheels, and that that's a literal thing, then, yeah, this would be a literal vision in that sense,

I guess. But it seems very poetic and indicative of something other than that to me.

But if you want to take it that way. Yeah, no, okay. So you're basically saying that this is a poetic description, not actually

Daniel seeing the Father. Well, the white as snow, pure wool, it's the purity, power, authority.

I don't fully understand why his throne has to be ablaze with flames.

It's pretty hard to actually see somebody inside a throne that was burning, and its wheels are a burning fire, and river of fire flowing and coming out before him.

It just seems to me that this is descriptive of power and authority and glory, and it's not what

Jesus does, and that is actually interact with mankind and take on, in the

Incarnation, human flesh. And in the Old Testament, you have the

Christophanies. So the Ancient of Days doesn't come down off of his throne and go wrestling with Daniel.

But you do have that situation, and you still have to deal with Jesus' own words when he says, no one has seen

God in any time. The monogamist Theos, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known. Now Jesus quotes from Daniel 7 at his own trial, so he knows

Daniel 7. So he can say, no one has seen God, but the monogamist Theos has made him known, knowing full well what you're reading in Daniel 7.

So you've got to put those things together somehow, and that's the nature of Biblical interpretation.

Okay, I thank you a lot, because I guess I did take it a little bit too literally. Thank you so much,

Dr. White. Well, just be careful you take it really literally. That river of fire thing can get pretty nasty. Yeah, that's a good point.

Asbestos gloves while doing your studies in Daniel might be a good idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

All right, thanks, Alexander. Thank you, Dr. White. All right, God bless. Bye -bye. We'll just take these last ones.

And I don't want to take this one, but I'm going to take it anyways. Justin, I don't want your question, but go ahead anyhow. Oh, I already knew that.

Oh, great! Oh, yeah, sorry. This is going to be fun.

I can tell right now. See, I have a little arrow here on my

Comrex stack thing, and there's a drop button. And I've put the little button, and all

I've got to do, see this thing here? All I've got to do is just press that, and you go poof! So just keep that in mind.

Well, I appreciate you taking it anyway. Yes. I'm just a little man holding to the

Reformed Baptist Confession of Good Faith. Reformed Baptist. I love the holiness code that you did.

I have a lot of theonomist friends, and just kind of battling. How do you describe what identifies a theonomist to you?

Because I know a bunch of people who call themselves theonomists, and they all have complete disagreements with one another as to exactly what that means.

True. And that's exactly why it's kind of like the subject that no one wants to talk about. So I guess if I could just narrow it down to one common question that I get on the

London Baptist Confession, Section 4, where it talks about that he gave sundry judicial laws which expired together with the state of that people, not obliging now a virtue of that institution, but their general equity...

General equity! That's the term. Yep, general equity only being of moral use, and then

I have seen other versions that say of modern use, and then I get told, oh, wait a minute, modern use, hey, what is that saying?

So... And then just... Okay. What reference? I'm sorry.

It's Chapter 19, Section 4. Okay. And you said that...

Now, see, I grabbed the modern language one. So... To the people of Israel, God also gave sundry judicial laws which applied as long as they remained a nation.

The principles of equity which appear in them are still valid, not because they are found in Moses' laws, but in virtue of their unchanging character.

Okay. I've heard you speak of the modern version, and I like that.

I was just wondering, is that a good thing, to grab that for your family, or do you stick to the traditional?

How important are those words? Well, one of the reasons... You know, I have the...

Oops. That ain't it. I thought that was the original one there. I should have...

No, that's not easier. Maybe this is it. Well, this is interesting.

Let's see what... This is called Confessing to Faith, 1689

Baptist Confession for the 21st Century. And it's...

Let's see if it's the same. To Israel, he also gave various judicial laws which ceased at the same time their nation ended.

These laws no longer obligate anyone as part of that institution. Only their general principles of justice continue to have moral value.

So no, it's not identical. So, there are a couple of currently published modern editions of the 1689.

The reason that I have this one here is because, technically, this is actually the one that the

Constitution of PRBC makes reference to. It's not the actual old language one which

I have on my phone. And which is in the Trinity Hymnal, which I think I'm going to suggest becomes the forever standard in light of what happened today and microaggressions.

So, there are differences, and that does raise questions.

Obviously, the key issue is to go back to 1670s and determine what words were being used that time first and foremost, if you want to be a real stickler for strict subscriptionism to the 1689.

But, as to application, I think I tried to be consistent in the

Law of God series in recognizing the necessity of looking for the continued meaningful application on a moral level of what the law was referring to as it reveals to us the character of God.

And that's not always easy to do. I don't claim that I did it right or even consistently all the way through that series, but I tried my best and there aren't too many people that have tackled all of those texts that I was willing to tackle in that series.

So, you know, I think it is important for us to think it through and I love the 1689 as well, but I don't think that as a document, it is exhaustive of everything we can learn about God's Law and therefore, if I need to go beyond it or even stretch its parameters a little bit in light of what

God's Word says, well, by our own confession, semper reformanda, we're always reforming, so we should be willing to do that.

So... Amen. Yeah, absolutely. And if it's any consolation, you did a fabulous job, and actually that modern use, it really accompanies what you said in the series very well.

We look for the general principles, we look for the background, and then we go back to the moral law of what it's teaching us.

So, I think that's great, and I'm going to use that for my family. Can I squeeze in just one really quick question? Sure.

And that's, a lot of these brothers are Presbyterians as well, which brings in the whole baptism debate.

You did a fabulous job on those debates. I guess the bottom line question that I struggle with is would you participate in communion with them and observing the

Lord's ordinances when you know that they're giving them to non -believers? So, in a sense, not the

New Covenant. I kind of feel like Martin Luther, like, oh, I can't participate in this. Like, it gives me, you know, it hits my stomach.

Yeah, well, you know, we ask in general at our church that those who partake of the supper be baptized in a church of like faith and order.

However, we have made exceptions to that, but only for Presbyterians. And the reason being, for example, we had, a number of years ago, we had an elderly

Presbyterian lady attending our church. She couldn't attend anywhere else, and we did not feel like there was anything wrong.

She knew where we stood. We knew where she stood. At her age of life, it was not worthwhile to be having a debate over the covenants with her on that particular subject.

It is appropriate that we have to have an ecclesiastical division between ourselves and the

Presbyterians when it comes to the normal function and life of the church.

Because of our different views of that, the Westminster Confession identifies our view as sinful.

And we would have to reciprocate in the sense that fundamentally, when you get down to the brass tacks, we believe that baptism has a particular meaning.

It is eschatological. It is not promissorial. It looks back upon a completed reality, not forward to something that may or may not take place.

And so there is a division there. However, the issues that unite us are significantly greater than the issues that divide us.

And therefore, we do allow for exceptions to that, but not exceptions that communicate the idea to anyone that we don't think baptism is relevant anymore.

That would be, I think, where you draw the line. If you just go to, hey, it doesn't really matter, we don't care, that unfortunately is where a lot of churches are now.

But when you have certain situations that we don't start throwing javelins at that particular point.

And what about when you're traveling, visiting one of these Presbyterian churches? You would have no problem participating?

You know, I just, well, you know,

I was at a actually at a CREC church only about four or five months ago.

And I believe they have the supper in each service, and I participated, yes.

Okay. Yeah, that's great. And I just preached, so I mean, sort of like, you know, yeah,

I had great, great communion with those folks. Not just communion, but all the way through.

So yeah, I mean, we have great conversations about it, but, you know, as long as I can tell this individual is absolutely convinced that they are truly obeying

God's will and they just haven't seen what I have presented to them,

I'm not gonna push it beyond that. It's up to the Lord at that point. Amen.

Okay. Awesome. Well, I can't thank you enough for your minister over the past ten years to help me to share the gospel with so many faiths, understand what they believe, and communicate it.

And I was over in Turkey having interfaith dialogues well before your conversation.

So I'm so excited for the next one, and I praise God that your gospel Can I get your name and email to send to Brandon House so he can start firing your direction before he starts firing mine?

Okay. Great. Sure. Sure, sure. You'll say that on the phone anonymously, but when the rubber meets the road.

Uh -huh. Right. Thanks, Justin. All right. God bless. Thank you. Bye -bye. Yeah. Reminds me of one guy when

I started the King James, writing the King James I was right behind you, James. Long ways behind you, but we're right behind you.

So, uh, okay. We'll be right there. Yeah, don't worry. Let's talk to Andre.

Hi, Andre. Hello, Dr. White. Thank you so much for taking my call. Yes, sir.

All right. I've got, uh, hopefully it might be a quick question in Hebrews 10, speaking of the one who regardeth profane the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified.

Um, you've spoken a lot about this as referring, he there refers to Jesus. Um, and, uh, a lot of people have objections to that, and I was wondering, in my study of Jesus' high priestly prayer,

John 17, verse 19, Jesus says, I sanctify myself for them so that they also may be sanctified by the truth.

John Owen beat you to that connection by a couple hundred years, just so you know.

Oh, I'm glad. I'm glad. Okay. So, that's, um, Jesus is speaking to the same, uh,

Yes. The same truth there in that text. Yeah, I believe so. Owen did make reference to that, um, in his, uh, discussion of that very issue in his magisterial work on Hebrews.

And, uh, so, again, just for those who are wondering grammatically, um, the, uh, the one who has, uh, regarded as unclean, uh, the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, um, en ho hagias they, in the original language, um, can be, the, the reference to that can be the

Son of God or to the apostate individual. You cannot determine that on the basis of the original text as to what the antecedent is.

You have to argue that from the meaning of the text. And, uh, my argument is that especially in the light of chapter 10 as a whole, which really is the concluding section of the supremacy of the work of Christ, the supremacy of the new covenant, so on and so forth, and what has been said about the perfection of those for whom

Christ died, the will and testament of the giving of his body and everything else at the beginning of the chapter, that to jump down to this section and introduce the concept of that very diatheke being breakable and destructible by the act of apostasy of false profession would be to turn the entire argument of the epistle on its head.

And evidently, Owen, not when he was younger, when

Owen wrote The Death of Death, which is his first major work, his comments on Hebrews 10 are of a different nature.

But his multi -volume commentary on Hebrews is sort of his magnum opus at the end of his life.

And so you see there, what you often see in an author over time is a change or he would,

I think, identify it as growth in his understanding of the text. And that's what he puts in the commentary.

So, yeah. That's, I think, a very consistent position.

And all I get in response to that is, well, no. And then the connection, especially between 1010 through 14 and 1029, seems to be broken in a lot of folks' understanding of that.

But that's how it works. Okay. Is that commentary still in print?

Owen? Oh, yeah. I think it's

Banner. It's seven volumes if I recall correctly. It's not small. But it's obviously available electronically, too.

It may even be free online someplace. I don't know. It's possible because it's obviously out of copyright.

But it is definitely still in print, yeah. It looks really good on the shelf, too.

Wonderful. Well, I will have to look to get a copy of my own then.

Okay, thanks. All right. God bless. Thank you so much for your help. Bye -bye. Last call for today.

Let's talk to Adora. Hello. Hello. Hello, Dr. White.

How are you? I'm doing well. How are you? Pretty good. I just really appreciate y 'all's ministry.

It really helps me with talking to my Catholic and my Mormon friends. But something that I've come across recently is there's a lot of subjectivism in that community and in their answers, and it's kind of hard to answer that because they don't really stand objectively on a single answer.

So I was wondering how you would respond to that. Well, that's really the situation we're dealing with across the culture today, honestly, when we've gotten to the point that everyone's religious opinion is to be taken as equally valid with everybody else's.

There is no idea that there has been a revelation from God as to what his truth is.

Ironically, the two groups that you mentioned, you will still find very firm

Roman Catholics who will argue that, no, the Church of Rome is the one true church.

Without her interpretation, you can't understand the Bible. The old Trent -type Roman Catholics, they're still out there.

And there's still Mormons out there that firmly believe that the prophet can receive revelation and the priesthood authority and all the rest of this type of stuff.

But you're correct that especially amongst the younger advocates of these religious groups, and even more so amongst

Mormonism, you have a deep subjective element. Mormonism always had it.

And in fact, I think one of the reasons that Mormonism is fundamentally changing, and I don't think can avoid a split in the future, is the seeds of its eventual destruction were sown by its founders.

When Joseph Smith writes Moroni 10, 4, and 5, and places ultimate religious conviction in the alleged testimony of the

Holy Spirit, which is a burning in your bosom, you can claim all you want about objective revelation and prophecies and prophets and the

Quorum, the Seventy, and the Twelve, and everything else. It all boils down to your burning in the bosom.

And once you go there, your descendants eventually are going to have some serious problems as far as their truth claims are concerned.

Rome has always had a political side, and so they've always been there, but that's just more a function of the culture right now.

And in both of those instances, it's funny, we did discuss that just a little bit.

I did a short video with Jeff Durbin out at the

LDS Easter pageant last week, and we talked specifically about the prevalence of subjectivism in talking to Mormons today, because they really have gotten away from the idea that there is a revelation that could be known on the basis of following the prophet and things like that into a very, very subjective emotion -based, experience -based, feeling -based concept.

And many of them just don't even want to talk theology. They don't even want to talk about the truth claims of the

Bible or anything else. With anybody like this, the reality is, though, they live in the objective world.

And anybody who wants to say, you know, you've got your truth, I've got my truth, they don't live that way. I used the illustration, we were standing out there in Mesa, I used the illustration that they may say that to me to my face right now, but they are going to wait until the light changes on Main Street and Hobson before they start walking across the street, because they know that objectively, if they walk out in front of a city bus, they're going to die.

So as with dealing with anyone who tries to basically say there is no objective truth, you have to let them talk long enough until they roll out enough rope to hang themselves, because they will not be able to maintain that subjectivity for a very long period of time.

They live in God's world. They are God's creatures. They recognize that there are laws of physics and laws of science and laws of logic, and there are objective things, and it doesn't make sense to say that God could create us as communicating beings, and yet He has not communicated with clarity to us.

We somehow have the ability to do that, but somehow God doesn't have the ability to do that. It doesn't make any sense. And eventually they'll make some type of an objective moral criticism, frequently of you, and that's when you've got them.

That's when you've got them in the sense that they've exposed their image of God -bearing, and now you can press them on why they pretend to live and to have religious belief in a subjective context when they really live in the objective world.

So you have to find when they're—catch them in their contradictions, basically, is what you're looking to do, and then press home

God's truth at that point, and of course that's dependent upon the Holy Spirit of God bringing that kind of understanding to their heart.

And sometimes He does, sometimes He doesn't. The New Testament gives us lots of examples of the

Apostles preaching wonderful sermons, and only a few people believe. But when we're called to minister in this culture, that's what we're up against.

Okay, so I could put an answer I usually get back from both

Catholics and Mormons are like, oh, that's a mystery. I get that a lot.

I get that from Lutherans all the time. Yeah, it's like if I have the

Book of Mormon with me and it's open, I say, look, right here, you read it right here, it says such and such. They still say that's a mystery.

Well, that's weird. I understand how you get some of that from some of the Roman Catholics in regards to maybe something like the

Doctrine of Election or something like that, but I'm not really used to hearing Mormons use the term mystery very much.

Well, these were younger Mormons, so like 20s or earlier, so that might be really their subjective worldview,

I don't know, but it's very hard to communicate with them when they're that subjective, even when it's pointed out in their own scriptures.

Well, the Mormon might be using the term mystery there in the sense of a deep doctrinal teaching that they really don't want to discuss with you.

So, in the context of things that happen in the temple, things regarding exaltation and being sealed to, excuse me, your wife for time and eternity and stuff like that, they'll use the term mystery of that to basically say that's sort of not something

I can talk about. So maybe, I don't know what the context was, but they wouldn't use that really in a subjective way, more in the sense of revelation that's sort of for our elite way.

I have heard them use it like that, but I haven't heard them use it in the well, we just don't know.

Because, you know, Mormonism has three more books of scripture. Why wouldn't they know? So it sort of depends on what you were talking about.

If maybe you were talking about the gods before the gods before the gods or something like that, eternal progressions, things like that, then they may use terminology like that possibly.

Yeah, we were talking about who God is basically. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, especially when it comes to the fact that in Mormonism, if you have an increasing number of gods today, then by necessity, if you go backwards in time, you have to have a decreasing number until you get back to the first god.

And yeah, I have had them say, well, we just don't know, that's a mystery, that type of thing, to try to get around the inherent contradictions in the assertions of their original prophets.

Okay? Okay. Thank you very much. Thanks for your call. God bless. Bye -bye. Bye. All right.

Good calls again today. Thank you very much for participating in the program. And so what do you think?

Are you around Friday? Why? How early?

Hmm. As long as I get to bed early on Thursday, I can get up that early,

I suppose. Anymore, you know, it's too warm in the afternoon to be doing much anymore.

I think Thursday is going to be, what, 96? I think it's supposed to be 96 here in Phoenix. Yep, yep. It's that time of year.

It's slowly, slowly coming our direction. And before long, 96 is going to feel like sweater weather.

But anyway. Well, we'll think about we'll let everybody know if we're able to put something together for Friday.

And Rich promises to announce the right time this time rather than 2 p .m.

Eastern Daylight Time. He wants to do Azulu time, which would really confuse everybody.

So we're not doing that. Anyways, thanks for listening to the program today. We'll either see you