An Ultra Mega Dividing Line (2.5 Hours) Covering…A Ton

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:32

And greetings, welcome to the Dividing Line. We are back. We're hopefully going to stay on the air the whole time.

00:39

If we don't, we get the program up fairly quickly. So that's sort of beyond our control.

00:47

We'll see. We hope that it's going to work because we have a lot to get to.

00:52

I have it's pretty rare for me to announce what we're going to be talking about ahead of time, but I sort of had to just to keep it straight for myself.

01:02

I have on the list Francis and Ahmed El -Tayeb's document.

01:10

We'll be looking at that. We'll be looking at Governor Northam and infanticide and blackface,

01:17

I guess. J .D. Greer, Romans 1 and homosexuality. We already announced that while I was in Munster.

01:25

And then Anthony Bradley and surviving white people. And then

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Steven Anderson's 10 video response series, the King James only controversy. No, we're not responding to all 10 videos.

01:38

I don't think all 10 have been posted. I saw, I've seen, I haven't seen them, but I've seen, I've listened to the first two or three.

01:47

Yeah, first three. And I've downloaded the first six. I don't know if there's any more that have been posted, but anyway, that's a whole lot to get to.

01:56

I mean, we could just do the J .D. Greer sermon and that would be an entire program. So we are planning on being here for a little while.

02:03

Rich has brought a brown bag lunch and a comfy chair.

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And we're going to take a break about halfway through that becomes necessary.

02:16

The older I become, that's just sort of how that works. And so there you go.

02:25

I want to start off really quickly thanking everybody in Russia for taking care of me and keeping me from getting killed.

02:38

I guess when I was before five, I lived in a place that had as much snow,

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Minneapolis as we had in Samara, but they said that at first fell in December, it had never gone away since then.

02:54

So now this is the end of January. So that's two months they've had it. And they'll probably have it at least another two months from now.

03:01

So that'd be four months out of the year with snow drifts and freezing cold and driving single, you're doing single lane driving where you have to like pull over and get out somebody's way.

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So the next group can come by and then you try to get, oh goodness. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

03:22

Thank you. I will try to remember that when it's 116 and humid in August, I will try to remember that then because that was, that was fun for a few days though.

03:40

Nobody shovels sidewalks and stuff. That's why I slipped on slipped and hurt my knee on the stairs. Well, primarily because I had the wrong shoes.

03:48

I had good shoes. I had done fine up till then, but I thought, well, let's, we've done all right.

03:54

Let's let's just wear our dress shoes. You know, it's going to be Sunday morning service and it's going to be a lot of people there.

04:00

And I don't want to be taking the shoes off and blah, blah, blah. Well, that was stupid. And, um, I've now ordered those, uh, slip on things to the next time around, uh, which might be many, many years from now.

04:12

Anyway, it was quite the experience and it was great to, um, uh, meet the brethren there and to, uh, talk with, uh, one brother from Kazakhstan.

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And, uh, we, we, uh, Nick and I witnessed to a Muslim cab driver from Tajikistan.

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And, um, then I had another Muslim cab driver on the way to the airport in Munster.

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Um, couldn't have been two more different people, uh, which says a lot in and of itself, but, uh, it was a great time and it's great to see sound churches, uh, you know, living under difficult circumstances, uh, but they remain focused on the gospel.

04:56

And if you didn't see the link, I did put the link up for the, uh, uh, sermon that I preached, uh, with, uh, with Nick, uh, my sincere thanks to Nick.

05:06

I, Mikhail Levlyovsky, I could not, I could not have done that without him there. Uh, you all are probably familiar with Nick by now, after all my trips to Ukraine and the translations, and, uh, you just don't know how much it means to have somebody who just knows you so well, and you work together so well.

05:26

And, and, uh, you can get a whole lot more said and done, uh, with less stress and strain when you have such a awesome translator.

05:34

Nick himself is a scholar and part of the up and coming next generation that will be taking over for us old crusty folks, uh, in the not too distant future.

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And, uh, he has a great, uh, ministry ahead of him as well. So pray for him and, uh, his work over there in Russian speaking areas.

05:54

And so tremendous time in, um, tremendous time in, um,

06:03

Munster, and, uh, I'm going to be,

06:08

I'm going to be, uh, talking about Munster, but not on this program, another program very soon.

06:14

Uh, got some great pictures and, uh, did have a wonderful meeting at the

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Institute for New Testament Textual Studies, uh, which we'll get into when I get back to, uh, lecturing on CBGM, which

06:27

I do need to do. I realized I did one presentation, I then stopped and I need to finish making that presentation and then, uh, and then get to it.

06:35

So, um, interesting travel experience, uh, when you switch airlines a bunch of times, um, uh, yeah,

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Munster, uh, Munich airport and Heathrow. And I'm getting to know all those places way, way, way, way, way too well.

06:53

Um, uh, and how to get through passport control very quickly. Um, but I will tell you the best money we've ever spent is registered traveler for, uh, uh, for the

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UK because, uh, I can get to the baggage carousel in Heathrow faster than I can get to the baggage carousel in Phoenix.

07:11

Uh, so that says a whole lot right there. So anyway, um, oh, it's going again.

07:19

Okay. All right. That's nice to know. Um, just had to keep pounding on it, huh?

07:26

Okay. All right. Uh, if you say so, if you say so, that's not encouraging to me, but, uh, anyway, um, all right, so let's start off with, um, a document that, uh, very recently was, uh, promulgated and signed, uh, by, uh,

07:48

Pope Francis and the, uh, grand Imam from Elazar, uh, Ahmed El -Tayyib.

07:55

Um, this was described as a tremendous interfaith dialogue.

08:02

And so I felt like I needed to discuss it because, um, of my past dialogue with Yasir Qadhi and, and is certainly

08:10

Dr. Qadhi and I's intention to do further dialogues in the future. Um, it is fascinating to read this document.

08:20

It's available, uh, at the Vatican website. Just, it's very easy to Google it and pull it up very quickly.

08:27

There's been a lot of discussion about one particular paragraph, which I'll look at. It's already being spun, uh, as so many things that Francis says and does have to be spun, uh, by everybody.

08:39

Um, and I've asked one Muslim so far for his thoughts on it and, uh, would be interested in some others as well, because there did seem to be some statements in it that I know, uh, certainly many

08:53

Muslims that I've spoken to would, would take exception to, but, um, that's for their side to, to speak to.

09:03

Um, this is a document on human fraternity for world peace and living together. Interestingly, the second line is a quotation from the

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Quran in the name of innocent human life that God has forbidden to kill affirming that whoever kills a person is like one who kills the whole of humanity.

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And that whoever saves that person is like one who saves the whole of humanity that's straight out of the Quran. Um, in the name of, and then there's lots of stuff here that sounds very, very much like, uh,

09:31

Francis primarily. And then when you finally get around to God in the name of God and of everything stated thus far, uh, okay, what

09:41

God, uh, in the name of freedom that God has given to all human beings, create them free and distinguishing them by this gift.

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Now we know Rome is absolutely dedicated to, uh, autonomous free despite Augustine's, um, presence in history.

10:00

Um, and I'm going to have to, I'm going to, if anybody wanted to say anything in channel,

10:06

I, I, for some reason, there's almost nothing more, um, distracting than seeing discussions about the stream in the

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IRC channel. Um, so there you go. Um, and I'll probably take

10:20

Twitter down for the same, the same reason. Um, like I said, folks, sorry. It's a local internet thing.

10:28

We'll have to call them and see if they can fix it and things like that. But we keep recording, huh? Yeah. We thought they had to, uh, but, um, stuff ages and it sits in the sun and it gets, and they mess things up.

10:42

So we will. So it's, uh, it's dying again. Is that what's going on up and down, up and down?

10:48

Okay. Yeah. Well, we'll have to another thing to put on the list there to get to, because, uh, that's, you know, people want to watch live, even though we do upload it.

10:59

So we will be uploading it. Our apologies. Uh, we'll be calling Cox once again, uh, to try to get these things, uh, hammered out because, uh, it's not supposed to work that way.

11:11

Anyway. Um, as I was saying, the document focuses a lot of attention upon the concept of freedom and it's in that context that some of the major problems come up.

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And obviously every time we talk about Rome, every time we reach back here and grab the universal Catholic catechism or whatever, we find the centrality of the autonomous human will in Roman theology.

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It goes back to the Reformation. This is why I say so many of those who think they're a part of the

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Reformation really aren't because they are in disagreement with the very issue that we are creatures, that we are fallen in Adam, uh, that we are enslaved to our sin.

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If you don't start there and affirm the freedom of God to act as God and then man's responsibility to act in light of his creaturely freedom, not autonomous freedom, um, you're, you're going to end up with a tremendous amount of self -contradiction, which is really what you end up with in this document, because the document that even the

12:20

Roman Catholics are sitting there going, I, um, how do we spin this? Um, here's what it says.

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Remember, this was signed by both the grandmom and Pope Francis. Freedom is a right of every person.

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Each individual enjoys the freedom of belief, thought, expression, and action.

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The pluralism and the diversity of religions, color, sex, race, and language are willed by God in his wisdom through which he created human beings.

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Now, again, on both sides, I, I, okay.

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A Muslim would say, yeah, God willed that there would be Muslims and, and Christians and Jews and that the

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Christians and Jews go to hell. Um, that's, I guess that's pluralism. That's not what

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Francis would mean by that. Um, and I, I, man,

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I can, I cannot imagine even Ratzinger, the preceding

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Pope using that language, let alone Popes of past decades, centuries, things like that.

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The pluralism and the diversity of religions and then color, sex, race, and language.

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That's a really interesting mixture of stuff. Are willed by God in his wisdom through which he created human beings.

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This divine wisdom is source from which the right of freedom of belief and the freedom to be different derives.

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Therefore, the fact that people are forced to adhere to a certain religion or culture must be rejected as to the imposition of a cultural way of life that others do not accept.

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Uh, I can't help, but thinking a little bit about Sharia, uh, about, uh, for example, the very means by which you become a

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Muslim is culturally determined. You have to, you have to do it in Arabic. You have to say Shahada in Arabic.

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Um, in almost every presentation that I make on this subject, I compare and contrast how you become a

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Muslim with how you become a Christian and, uh, go to Acts 15. And that's where Christianity, uh, avoided having that type of cultural things.

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So it doesn't make me wonder, but most of the focus has been on this assertion that pluralism, uh, is the very will of God.

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The same as race is the will of God or language is the will of God or sex is the will of God. I mean, those are creational things.

15:04

Um, now I've already seen one spin job on it to try to, you know, come up with stuff.

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Um, there'll be more, but it's just more of the Pope and what's of course, from a

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Christian perspective, there isn't anything. In fact, uh, is there a, uh, yes, there is a fine feature in this find within note.

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Yes. No reference to Jesus anywhere. Nope. Not in there.

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Let me see if, uh, nope, no Christ. Nope. No Lord.

15:52

Yeah. I, you know, if you, if you sort of pretend to be the head of all Christians, um, and you can do something like this without ever making reference to Jesus, um, yeah, that's, that's the problem here.

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You've got to get good example of bad interfaith dialogue and just compare this with what

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Yasir Qadhi and I did, where we're making truth claims, where we're doing so in a consistent fashion, we are contrasting things.

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There is trying to find places where you can, and that you can, you can find places.

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And this is the amazing thing. People deny this. You can find places where we actually agree. Um, for example, uh, the world was created by God.

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Yes. The world was created by the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Ishmael.

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I'll have to add Ishmael in there. Um, yeah. Uh, how has that God revealed himself? Well, that's where we need to start having debates right?

16:57

Respectful. Yes, but we can't pretend that the level of agreement goes beyond those particular areas.

17:07

You can't, you can't make pretense in that way. So yeah, there you go.

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Um, you know, to my Muslim friends, please realize two things. The Pope does not represent a large portion of people who call themselves

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Christians. And the current Pope does not even represent a large portion of people who used to call themselves

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Catholics. Uh, so, uh, keep that in mind. I've met so many

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Muslims that just automatically say, Oh, the Pope's the head of you guys. And no, no, not by any stretch of the imagination.

17:45

Uh, is that the case at all? Uh, no, no, no. All right. Shifting years.

17:51

That only took, that only took us to 220. That's, uh, that's pretty good. We, we might get done in a mega time.

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Then again, I haven't even started the playing the stuff with the audio clips, which always ends up taking a tremendous amount of, um, a tremendous amount of time.

18:09

Um, the material that appeared, uh, basically while I was in,

18:19

I think I was pretty much, might've, might've first shown up in Samara when I was in Samara, but I think it was pretty much while I was in, um, in Munster, um, with the, uh, representative delegate tram in Virginia and the, you know, the

18:40

New York's infanticide law. Can we call it what it is? It's an infanticide law.

18:46

Um, it is very, very pleasing to Lord Moloch, uh, and to the millions of Moloch's worshipers, uh, all across the

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United States and, uh, the Western, uh, the Western world. There is definitely a

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Renaissance and, uh, uh, revival of Molochism in our, in our day.

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Uh, and he doesn't care whether you use his name, as long as he gets the blood, as long as he gets the life, then he doesn't care.

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So, and we know Moloch is just a demon anyways. So, um, the

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New York, you know, listening to the New York assembly applauding, uh, an infanticide law, just, just think of, of past generations of Americans.

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Um, how many of the, of the preceding generations, uh, would have disagreed with the statement that if that's how far this society devolves, then may

19:51

God wipe it out, take it out. They would have, that's exactly what they would have thought, but not today.

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No, no, no. We saw a lot of people, God bless America with, for what? And with what?

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When one of the most populous states in the union, and you know, the California is going to do the same thing.

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And there'll be a number of, all the leftists are now just vying with each other. How, how far can we go with this and how quickly can we do it?

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Uh, it's sort of like Colorado giving up its, uh, its, its vote, its presidential vote. If you hear about that,

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I don't have time to get into right now, but look it up. They, they actually, the, the leftist took over everything in the last election.

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They now have a openly gay governor. Um, and one of the first things they've done is, uh, uh, the left is, is seeking to undo the constitutional method of electing presidents.

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And so what they're going to do is instead of participating electoral college in the normal fashion.

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So if a conservative candidate wins the popular vote in Colorado, what they're going to do is they're going to make it by statute that their electoral college votes will go to whoever wins the, um, popular vote.

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So in other words, it's, it's a open, plain, um, rejection of the wisdom of the electoral college by the founders.

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It's, it is a plainly anti -American, uh, move and it's already been accomplished.

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Just boom. One of the first things they did there, get together with other States and that way they can get rid of the electoral college. And you can just be run by California, New York, the whole nation, just, just, just do whatever the, whatever the radical nut cases in Colorado, uh, in, uh, well,

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Colorado too, in California and New York say, that's it. And they don't care that they're overthrowing the system of government.

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They don't care that that means that there are going to be times when their own citizenship, their own citizens will be robbed of their vote, that your vote won't matter unless you vote the same way

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California, New York does. They don't care because, cause they, they, they want to destroy this nation and are succeeding.

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They're succeeding. Let's just say they're getting away with it. They're getting away with it. Anyway, all of this to, uh, take us to the situation,

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Virginia used to Virginia. Wow. It used to be, uh, a Southern state, you know, uh, used to be a place where you had some conservatives, uh, but the cancer of Washington DC has taken over Northern Virginia and just runs the place now.

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And so you have a Democrat, despite CNN trying to turn him into a Republican for a while, um, a

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Democrat, uh, governor Northam, um, who interestingly, uh, ran by, uh, accusing his opponent of being a racist.

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You know, do you think, do you wonder if when he's running and he's accusing the other guy being a racist, do you think he ever stopped and went, man,

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I hope nobody ever finds any of those pictures. Uh, he even, he even had a nickname that was a racial slur nickname.

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Um, do you ever think he sat around going, uh, really hope all those, uh, good old boys he used to go out drinking beer with don't, uh, don't say anything.

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Does it, does it really? Wow. You know, just the level of hypocrisy, but obviously the big thing that has been eclipsed by the primarily politically motivated, but also, you know, it's, there are only certain things that can get people riled up on the left today.

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Um, and if you ever said or did anything decades ago, that does not fit into today's standards, even though the standards have just recently evolved, then you're in big trouble.

24:12

Um, but when he actually made comments that affirmed infanticide, this guy is a nurse, is a pediatric neurophysiologist neurosurgeon.

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He, he does, he is a trained doctor who does operations on little infants.

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And he made comments about making a, if a child survived a late term abortion, making it comfortable while a conversation ensues conversation about what men's ass tried to get a unanimous declaration bill through the

25:01

Senate. And of course, a Democrat, AKA socialist leftist objected to it.

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And so it has to go a different direction, you know, and the, the bill would just simply say that any child that's born alive cannot be killed in the

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United States. In other words, it's an anti -infanticide bill and who's opposing it.

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Who else? The party of death. What? Look at the worldview.

25:29

Look at the worldview, people. It's the party of death. They're not going to oppose anything that would be opposed to death.

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So yeah. Um, we're seeing what we've been saying is coming and what we knew was already a part of the worldview for a long, long time.

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And yet I'm, I still see social justicians, uh, saying, well, you know, we, we can't be single issue voters, you know?

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Um, you know, uh, equality of pay, that whole mythology, which has been demonstrated to be a mythology 10 ,000 times, but nobody cares.

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Just keep repeating it enough time. Equality of pay. I can see how a Christian could consider that equal with abortion.

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Yeah. Only if you're insane. Only if you're insane. Anyway, um, they are, they are not at the, the, the, the, the barbarians are not the door.

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They have broken down the door and they've taken over the reins of government. And there are a lot of people, there are a lot of people that are just openly wondering, is there, is there any hope?

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Now, obviously for Christians, there's always hope. We have brothers and sisters living under incredible circumstances all around the world, and they remain faithful in those difficult situations.

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Pretty much purged of all the self -love and stuff love that we have not been purged of yet, but they're there.

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But there are people asking, is there, is there any hope for this culture or this nation?

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And, um, I, I wonder the exact same thing, because when I look at the, at the millennials and ZGen, I guess that's what it's being called.

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Um, do I find Christian people with a proper

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Christian? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Are they anywhere near the numbers that would be required to have a meaningful impact in changing the direction that we're going right now?

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No, no. Can God change that? You bet. But I'd like to see

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God change that. I sure would. Um, but what's the toughest thing to do?

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The toughest thing to do is to think about how you would be faithful in the midst of what's coming either in 2020 or 2024.

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And that's not far away because, you know, this, what's the guy's name for Starbucks?

28:25

Um, Schultz. Yeah. This Schultz thing. That's fascinating.

28:32

That could make, I mean, talk about a zoo as what is it?

28:38

17, 18 on the, on the democratic side right now, every socialist on the planet.

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Um, and then you throw Schultz in there as an independent. Uh, the

28:52

Democrats are not happy and they are putting pressure on him. Like right now, like you would not believe. Yeah.

28:59

Yeah. He would be a threat primarily to them. But whether it's 2020 or at the latest 2024, you're going to have a leftist.

29:11

And by the way, stop calling them liberals. Liberals want liberty. That's the liberal liberty.

29:18

There's a root thing there. They're, they're coming from the same root. Um, these people are not liberals.

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We've just gotten so used to referring to liberal as a leftist. They are leftist totalitarians.

29:30

They do not believe in liberty. They do not believe in freedom. Uh, they are statists. Uh, they want to destroy all religious freedom, uh, replace it with sexual freedom.

29:41

Uh, let's just be straightforward and honest here where these people are coming from, what their intentions are, what their ultimate goals are.

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Their ultimate goals are the utter eradication of any semblance of historic

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Western culture that was based upon Judeo -Christian norms, because only Judeo -Christian norms can give you an objective standard by which to, to control and critique the state.

30:07

You wipe that out. The state can do whatever the state wants, all power, all the time. You are simply the subject.

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The state is your Lord. That is their goal. That's what they want. Uh, so, uh, they will do whatever they need to do to accomplish that.

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And the millennials and the ZGen know nothing about history. Know nothing about history at all.

30:32

Do not know this is a very stuff that we were fighting only a matter of decades ago and now is being promoted by, uh,

30:40

AOC and, um, the Muslim lady from, uh, Michigan, um, and numerous others like her and the nutcase

30:49

Senator from my own state. Uh, that is so embarrassing. I've lived in a state for 40, 45 years and it'd be 45 years this summer.

31:04

And to think that this state could ever send, um,

31:11

Kyrsten Sinema to the Senate is absolutely one of the most embarrassing things

31:17

I can even think of. But then again, I think of almost any state today and you really have to work hard where do you find a state where you wouldn't have to go, wow, there's a,

31:29

Oh, look at that. Oh man. That's just, that's just sort of what's going on all over the place. So, um,

31:36

I don't think the governor is going to survive as governor. Um, I think eventually somebody will put the fix in and give him a deal he can't refuse.

31:49

And that, but, but did you hear that? Did you hear the news? The Lieutenant governor, the black

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Lieutenant governor who could then serve out his three years and then another, so get seven years there in Virginia.

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As soon as it became, as all the calls for Northam to resign started getting loud, sexual assault charges started popping up against the

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Lieutenant governor. One of which he's admitted he did have consensual sex outside the bounds of marriage with this woman.

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Totally different toe, toe Lee different than the Kavanaugh stuff. Much more recent admitted to as far as relationship, the whole nine yards.

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And yet, of course the press had known about these and sat on them because he's a leftist and because the media is the arm of the leftists.

32:48

It's we all know it. Everybody knows that there's no reason to argue about it anymore. It's it's, it's obvious.

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That's just, you know, many people in the world live in cultures like this now where everybody knows corruption, corruption, corruption, it's all a bunch of lies.

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That's what, that's, you know, we just gotta get used to it. We just gotta get used to it. Anyway. All right. Huh. Two 30.

33:15

I'm doing pretty good. I'm doing pretty good. Stream's going strong, huh?

33:21

No, that's good. All right. Now I do not know

33:28

J .D. Greer. Never met him. Honestly, even after he was elected last summer, that was last summer, wasn't it?

33:38

I think it was. Um, I, I, when he was elected, if you had shown me a picture of 10 different guys,

33:48

I couldn't have told you which one was him. Never heard him speak.

33:55

Um, heard from some people that he was mildly reformed in some way.

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Um, don't have any bones to pick with him on a personal level.

34:08

Don't know the guy, but he's the president of Southern Mass Convention. And a sermon was preached about two weeks ago now, um, from he's going through Romans.

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It's always good to go through Romans. Well, unless you go through Romans, the way that we went through Romans, uh, in Sunday school, uh, back about 1985, 86.

34:41

And that was about when it was, wasn't it? Where you cover all the Romans in what was it about six, eight weeks, something like that.

34:49

And you know, Romans nine, 10, 11, we can skip over that part.

34:56

Yeah. That wasn't the way to do it. Um, this was in the Southern Baptist quarterly. Uh, if you've not

35:01

Dave, I don't know if they even have a quarterly anymore. Do Southern Baptist have, I took

35:06

Twitter down, so I guess I can bring Twitter back up if, yeah, I don't know.

35:12

Um, but, um, yeah, let me ask, uh, let me ask folks in, in Twitter.

35:19

Um, uh, yeah. Do the Southern Baptist still have, uh, quarterlies because they were bad, really bad.

35:31

35 years ago, they were surface level fluff balls 35 years ago.

35:36

So I would imagine by this point, they would be so puffy that they would float and they would just, no one could hold on to them.

35:47

Oh man. They were, how do you feel about this? Anyway.

35:55

Um, I don't know if I'll, uh, if I'll get any answers to that. So why in the world would

36:03

I get myself in even more trouble? Um, because this will get me in trouble.

36:10

Uh, I'm not sure how anybody can get me in trouble all that much, but anyway, um, why would

36:18

I review someone else's sermon on Romans one? Well, because JD Greer is the president of the

36:24

Southern Baptist convention. And because, um, he claims to have reformed pedigree and because he said many good and true things in the sermon, but it was the handling of the text, the direction ended up going and the influence very plainly of the social justice movement determining the application.

36:57

And even I would say the exegesis in the text in this sermon. And when that's done by the president of the

37:06

Southern Baptist convention, that makes it worth looking at. Um, uh, well, that's interesting.

37:18

Did you know this? Did you see that? Did you know that cinema went to BYU? Now that's interesting.

37:25

I'd like to. Yeah. Yeah.

37:32

Yeah. I knew that. I knew that anyway. All right. Um, my concern with what was said fundamentally comes down to JD Greer did not seem to understand what

37:53

Romans one 26 to 27, how that's functioning in the flow of the argument in Romans one.

38:00

What he does is he removes it from being the, the, the example that Paul gives of the exchange, the giving up, not, not giving over, but the, the, the exchanging and giving up of one thing for another, the twistedness that results in the creator creation relationship.

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When the creature refuses to acknowledge the creator and engages in idolatry, he talked about idolatry over and over again.

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Idolatry is the root of everything else in this chapter. He emphasized that very strongly, but what he missed was he made, it was, it was like homosexuality was just one of the sins listed in the vice list at the end of the chapter.

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And that isn't the case. There is a reason why

38:53

Romans one 26 to 27 is where it is before the vice list.

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Homosexuality isn't just some other thing you can throw in and make the same as disobedience to parents.

39:08

And that was the thing that he's trying to do. He's trying to say all sins are equal. That's a very problematic position to take because God's law didn't treat all sins as equal, did it?

39:22

No, it didn't. Go back to Leviticus 18, read the holiness code, read

39:30

Deuteronomy. What do you discover? You discover there were certain sins inclusive of homosexuality, bestiality as well, that resulted in the nations that had been in the holy land beforehand being spewed out by the land itself.

39:55

These were pagan nations. This has nothing to do with the

40:01

Jewish people not keeping the covenant and all the rest. No, no. This is the pagan nations did these things and homosexuality is one of them and the land spewed them out.

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The list of things was limited. The list did not include disobedience to parents.

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It did not include the vast majority of the vice list that Paul provides at the end of the chapter.

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And so it was J .D. Greer's attempt throughout this sermon to make homosexuality a sin like unto all other sins.

40:44

And it's easy to do that because obviously all sins separate from God.

40:52

All sins bring the wrath of God. But not all sins bring the wrath of God in the same way.

40:59

That's plain from the comparison of Chorazin and Bethsaida with Sodom and Gomorrah.

41:05

What's the difference between the two? The amount of light they have. So, even committing the same sin in different contexts of how much light you have resulted in what?

41:16

Different levels of punishment. In the same way, the penology provided by the law demonstrates that there are certain sins that the commission of which is considered to be extremely heinous in God's sight.

41:39

There are a lot of Christians that misunderstand Jesus's application of, for example, you've heard it said, thou shalt not kill.

41:52

But if I say to you, if you have hatred in your heart toward your brother, you've committed murder already.

41:58

Okay. A lot of Christians look at something like that. Or obviously, Jesus is saying, you've heard it said, you shall not commit adultery.

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But if you have lustful in your heart, you've committed adultery already in your heart. And so, they go, oh, that means everything's the same.

42:13

That means all sins are the same. So, go ahead and have adultery. Go ahead and do the physical act because you've already done it mentally because it's all the same.

42:23

No, that wasn't Jesus's intention. Jesus's intention was to bring the searching light of truth and justice and holiness into the thought life.

42:33

But it was not meant to say that if you do it in the thought life, then, hey, it's all the same.

42:39

It's all the same. Go ahead. Why not? Same punishment? No, it's not the same punishment.

42:46

You see, people could get away with the thought life part, and Jesus is saying, you won't before God.

42:53

But the fact remained, under the law, you had to actually commit the act before you would receive the punishment.

43:00

And so, what was missed in J .D.'s presentation, J .D. Greer's presentation, we have to be specific there.

43:09

What was missed in J .D. Greer's presentation is the role that Romans 1, 26 through 27 plays in demonstrating the depth of depravity and the nature of depravity and the twisting of the creator -creator relationship so that sin goes all the way down into the very self -definition of man and woman.

43:32

That's why it says, even their women gave up the natural function. This is how deeply this can impact, this rebellion can impact the human race, is all the way to that level.

43:50

Now, that's in a different part of the conversation than the vice list later on. That got all jumbled up, as we will see, as we will see.

43:57

So, I'm going to try to, I'm going to try to keep my comments succinct.

44:09

Yeah, I know. I don't have a long track record of being able to do that very well. But, here we go.

44:18

Okay, I guess I need to select this. There we go. I will tell you that I've been pretty nervous about this message all week long.

44:23

I found that interesting and understandable.

44:29

But, in light of what he's going to end up saying and the applications he's going to make, I think part of the nervousness was how to try to make this application work with the social justice aspect to it.

44:42

In Romans 1, Paul is demonstrating to us that every single person, Jew or Gentile, religious or irreligious, all of us have essentially the same problem.

44:51

And that problem is that all of us have turned away from the knowledge of God that was made known to us in creation and in our consciences.

44:59

Now, I think it's important, another problem I had was he will later on, I'll play it, he will later on make the direct statement that you can simply take out the they and make it us.

45:11

That short -circuits the very purposeful approach that Paul uses.

45:17

In Romans 1, he talks about the universal sinfulness of man in such a way that requires him in Romans 2 to address the

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Jew who heard Romans 1 as being specifically about everybody else in broad categories.

45:33

And then, so he has to, in chapter 2, address the Jew. And it's only in chapter 3 then that he brings the two accusations together so that all of mankind,

45:46

Jew and Gentile, stands before God equally condemned. But there is a progression, and I don't think it's wise to change the wording of the text and the understanding of the text to short -circuit the progression that the apostle himself builds into the text.

46:04

But that ended up happening in this sermon. To this, very poor, some of them, and taking the little money they had and pouring it out an offering before this statue of this

46:14

God. And I remember being in that temple and just at one point just feeling so overwhelmed at what

46:20

I felt like was the spiritual darkness and the oppression that I just I had to leave. I had to walk outside and to get out away from it.

46:27

And I remember later finding myself just going back over that incident in my mind and feeling sorry for the people there and thanking

46:35

God kind of in my heart that I wasn't like them. But then in the middle of that thought, it just occurred to me. I had a whole list of things in my heart that have taken

46:42

God's place, just like that statue had. And those things that I had given God -like weight in my heart are just as nauseating and oppressive to God as that statue would be to me.

46:52

Okay, so here is the beginning of the attempt to flatten out all sin.

47:00

All sin's just sin. There is nothing more to it than that. Sin's just sin.

47:07

And so, if you go into a pagan temple and offer sacrifice to a hideous idol, that's identical.

47:18

It's the exact same thing as, well, every single

47:23

Christian can recognize that in our incomplete state of sanctification that there are times that the world gets in the way and we have inappropriate idols in our lives.

47:36

It's all the same thing. It's all based on idol. See, here's the problem.

47:42

You can identify a common source that does not mean that the manifestation of the sin is identical.

47:48

Just because it comes from the same source does not make it the same exact thing. And that's where I think he's gotten completely off.

48:00

It would be appropriate, it is necessary to biblical writers specifically mock the idolatry that he's there going, well, not look, if he said, well,

48:12

I'm certainly glad I'm not like them because I'm better than myself. No. But if as a

48:17

Christian, you are revolted by that idolatry, that is appropriate.

48:23

You want to reach those people. They're made in the image of God. You want to testify to them.

48:30

It doesn't mean that you become any less revolted at the obviousness of the sin.

48:37

Paul's heart was deeply troubled when he saw the pagan worship amongst the

48:43

Athenians and that motivated him to testify. He didn't curl up in a ball and go, oh,

48:50

I just do so many of the same thing. No, he ends up giving that tremendous sermon on Mars Hill.

49:00

And so you can't flatten all this stuff out. You can't just simply say, well, because it has one source, then it's all the same.

49:08

That's a major category error. And it's a category error that was repeated numerous times in the process.

49:18

What Paul then begins to do now, and that's what we're going to get into today, is he then begins to give examples of what this looks like in our lives, in our families, and in our societies when we begin to come unraveled.

49:31

Verse 26, there are women exchange natural sexual relations for unnatural ones.

49:38

The men in the same way also. Okay, now, partially true and partially false.

49:44

It's partially true that this is about how things become unraveled, but the real issue in Romans 1, 26 -27, we've talked about many times before, the real, you know, for this reason, what is that reason?

50:01

The exchange of the truth of God for the lie. Verse 25, metaloxon, to exchange.

50:09

They exchanged the truth of God for the lie and worshipped and served the creation rather than the creator.

50:18

And therefore, God gave them over to degrading passions, for even their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural.

50:27

So, this is the connection. This is an illustration.

50:34

This is showing what happens, and it is an extreme example of what happens, because even their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural.

50:47

There is an unnaturalness, a disorderedness in same -sex attraction.

50:57

Same thing in verse 27, in the same way. Homoios, in the same way.

51:04

Also, the men abandoned, not just to abandon, they walked away from.

51:13

Now, I'm not sure how someone who argues the SSA from birth perspective handles this.

51:23

In my opinion, it is a small minority of the homosexual,

51:30

I don't like the term community, but people who practice homosexuality,

51:36

I believe it's a small minority that can honestly say that's all they've ever experienced, that's all they've ever known.

51:43

There was no external, there was nothing about society, there was nothing about their personal relationships, there was nothing that happened in their life, there was nothing at all.

51:51

It's just all they've ever had was same -sex attraction. I think there are people who can say that honestly, but I don't think there's nearly as many as who claim it today.

52:02

I've seen studies, I've seen interviews, going to gay bars, going to places where it's being openly practiced, and they'll go, oh, no, man, that happened that time, or I decided to try this that time, and they're all straight up front about, oh, no, no, that wasn't something from my childhood, but it was pretty early on,

52:26

I chose to do this, this happened to me, I got abused that way, this tragedy happened in my life, whatever, and there were external aspects to it.

52:38

So I'm not sure how someone who would argue that all SSA is just born that way would deal with the term, in verse 27, authentes.

52:53

It just strikes me that the terminology is rather difficult to abandon, and this is something that is done by the individual.

53:07

It says they abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned with their lust toward one another.

53:13

This is obviously mutuality that was involved in this situation.

53:20

So this is how this section is functioning. This is how it's working, and you have to recognize that because it separates this from the vice list later on.

53:38

It separates it out, and I think that's very, very important to recognize.

53:44

Now, this is the longest and the clearest passage in the Bible on homosexuality, and let me just go ahead and acknowledge right up front here,

53:51

I know, I know that historically, we in the church have not done a great job in talking about this, and maybe even a worse job in caring for those who are going through this, but...

54:03

Now, first, he's right. This is very clearly, inarguably, a text on the subject of homosexuality.

54:14

But then immediately, it's, yeah, and, you know, the church has handled this really badly.

54:21

I suppose it depends on the church, and I'm not sure how you...

54:29

I mean, would you say that once pedophilia becomes accepted in our society, and there's no way to stop that, the way things are going, will we actually have people saying, you know,

54:40

I know that the church hasn't really done a good job in addressing this. Are we going to do that? Why is it always the church's fault all of a sudden?

54:49

Why would there have been a better period in the past?

54:55

Because what doesn't seem to be acknowledged is we've never been in a situation before where we have entire groups of people claiming to be

55:07

Christians and saying we need to completely reorient our understanding of sexuality, morality, interpretation of scripture, and everything to fit my sexual experience that happens to be in this area.

55:21

And as soon as Obergefell took place, then it was like, oh, and now we need to do it with transgenderism, and bisexuality, and polyamory, and, you know, the only things left...

55:32

People say you shouldn't be talking about things, but the only things left, honestly, when you think about it, are pedophilia and bestiality.

55:39

That's it. What else is there? I don't even want to know. If you have an answer for that, I don't want to know what your answer is.

55:46

That's pretty much the range of expression that you can come up with.

55:52

So I just found it odd that as soon as you say, yeah, that's what this text is about, and let me start apologizing.

56:02

Let's execute the text first, and I think that'd be a good idea. The apostle Paul says that one of the results of displacing

56:09

God in the center of our hearts was that we developed unnatural sexual patterns.

56:15

Again, I don't like the use of the we. Let's stick with what Paul said and let him make the transition when he's laid the ground for doing so.

56:25

But I appreciate unnatural sexual patterns. It's not just that we developed this for this reason.

56:37

Oh, God gave them over to degrading passions. Not just unnatural, but degrading passions.

56:47

That sort of got passed over because, well, let's just be honest, it's really strong language.

56:53

You are describing that as degrading passions.

57:00

You can't get away from what that means. There's no way. And that sort of gets skipped.

57:07

In one sense, we shouldn't be surprised that this is where Paul turns first. Paul is not picking on homosexuality.

57:13

He is not saying that it is a worse sin than all the other sins. It's just that if God made us in his image, male and female, then it shouldn't surprise us that the effects of our rejection of God in the center of our life would show up in those primary relationships.

57:30

I didn't follow that. If we're made in God's image, the continuation of the species is dependent upon production of children.

57:42

And the point in Romans 1, 26 -27 is the natural function is being abandoned.

57:50

There is a giving away, you know, it's, I've got the truth, I can exchange it for a lie.

57:56

You want to see how deep that can go? Okay, let's see how deep that can go. You can give up, exchange the natural function, same term to exchange, it was used in the preceding verse, exchanging truth,

58:09

God for a lie, exchange the natural function for that which is unnatural, the degrading passion.

58:16

So this is an illustration, this is a warning, this is how deep it can go, this is how far it can go.

58:26

And so it's not just a, you know, it's not saying it's worse than any of the sins, it's not even addressing that.

58:34

Though the law had already made that rather plain back in Leviticus 18, didn't it?

58:40

It did. Now in recent years, some have tried to say that this passage, Romans 1, 26 and 27, refers only to certain kinds of homosexual acts, promiscuous homosexual acts, like prostitution or one night stands or a master forcing a slave to have sex with him or that kind of thing.

58:59

And that Paul was just, he was just unfamiliar with a committed, loving, same -sex relationship, the kind that we see in our society today.

59:07

And if Paul had been aware of that, he most certainly would not have lumped them all together. If he saw the friendship and the sacrificial love and the commitment, the union that we see in same -sex relationships sometimes today, that he certainly would have understood that that is a very natural, a very natural thing.

59:21

But that is not true. Exactly right. And at that point, he goes into a demonstration that he's run across Bob Gagnon's material or Michael Brown's material or whatever, because he gives examples and refutes that.

59:39

And I'm glad, very glad that he did. We need to acknowledge when a good job on something was done.

59:45

And we agree. Now, again, it is important to realize that Paul is not just randomly picking on homosexuality here.

59:54

He's just citing it as one of the clearest examples of elevating our desires over the Creator's design.

01:00:01

He's just citing it as one of the clearest. It's definitional of what it means to be given over and to exchange the truth for a lie, to exchange the natural for the unnatural.

01:00:16

That's what he's saying. It has a special function. And it's almost like people want to try to say, well, no, not really.

01:00:27

I mean, it's just one of, no, it's not. It is different in the way that it's used by Paul here as a clear example.

01:00:36

And that needs to be kept in mind. Where did

01:00:42

I go? Well, maybe if I just hit this. We're in a situation in which we say. Oh, there it is. Okay.

01:00:47

Sorry about that. Couldn't find the little cursor thing. That is Paul rhetorically building an argument.

01:00:54

You're going to see in chapter two that they is weak. Paul's going to explain that he's a chief member of this group as are all of us.

01:00:59

This is not an us and them, like those sinners and us righteous people. He's like, everybody's they, where it's a big old we.

01:01:05

There's no us and them, just one gigantic group we. And so every time you see they in Romans one, you can read it as we. I completely disagree.

01:01:11

If that was what Paul intended, that's what he would have written. It disrupts the argument that he's going to be making and the audience that he knows is going to be listening to him and reading him and following him, and that is the

01:01:25

Jew -Gentile situation. So why do this? What's the motivation for this? Where do you, in chapter three, you're going to get everybody.

01:01:35

All have sinned. But that doesn't mean all have sinned in the same ways. Um, I, I disagree.

01:01:42

I think that's a mishandling of the text. Paul starts with homosexuality, but he goes on to show how every part of our lives, literally every dimension of our lives is affected by the disorder that comes from putting ourselves in the center instead of God.

01:01:57

Now, so what he does here is he makes one 26 through 27 instead of a key illustration of the nature of the exchange, he now tries to make,

01:02:14

I don't think he's trying to do this intentionally, but it's, it's the result, uh, is that he tries, even though there is a, a transitionary verse in verse 28, tries to say, well, this is just all one big long list.

01:02:31

And homosexuality came first, but it's really no different than all the rest of them. All the rest of them are not being said to be examples of the exchange on an, on a fundamental foundational level.

01:02:46

This becomes a classical vice list that flows from rebellion.

01:02:52

I get that. That's true. But this trying to make everything, you know, flatten it all out stuff ends up deeply influencing the exegesis itself.

01:03:05

In fact, what you see is that Paul identifies that as one result of a life that is no longer centered on God, but then he goes on to these other things.

01:03:14

See, again, flattening it out. That's just one result, but you know, they're all, they're all connected together. They all are all connected together in their common source, not in how he's discussing it and presenting it.

01:03:27

Are those things, listen, are those things the cause of God's judgment or the result of God's judgment?

01:03:33

Careful. Are they the cause of God's judgment or are they the result of it? The answer is both.

01:03:39

I would agree with him there. Uh, that is a sort of a side issue for our intentions right but, um, yeah.

01:03:48

Uh, do these sins bring God's judgment or does God's judgment cause the withdrawal of his hand and more of these sins?

01:03:57

Uh, that's a, um, that's a rather interesting question. Rejecting God's rule and putting our rule in its place.

01:04:03

That's the one that all of us have participated in a life equally. We have all participated in it alike.

01:04:11

Yes. All of us are guilty of idolatry. Yes. Equally? No. It is a greater act of idolatry to take a human life as if you are

01:04:23

God than to steal somebody's carrots. Those are not equal things.

01:04:31

Trying to make them equal things may help you diminish the focus on homosexuality, but it doesn't make it true.

01:04:38

And see, here's the thing. We don't always get to choose which way that corruption affects us. Now this is, this is a key, okay, this is, this is a very, very key element.

01:04:49

Catch, catch this here. And see, here's the thing. We don't always get to choose which way that corruption affects us.

01:04:55

In some people, the corruption manifests itself as envy or pride or unbridled personal ambition or an out of control temper.

01:05:03

Maybe it manifests as an ability to, in an inability to control your impulses for food or a propensity toward doubt or worry or depression.

01:05:11

Those things are all included in that list in Romans 1. In others, it manifests itself in some form of corrupted sexual desire.

01:05:19

By the way, all of us in some way have experienced corrupted sexual desire. Yes, I agree.

01:05:26

We're all broken sexually, but not in the same way. And there are people who have never experienced same -sex attraction.

01:05:35

Never. I can just honestly say that. Yep. Never crossed my mind. Not interested in it.

01:05:43

But again, notice how instead of seeing the

01:05:49

Romans 1 placing of homosexuality in the place that it does, primary example of twistedness.

01:05:58

It's just becoming, well, this is how it manifests. And it manifests in this and this and this and gluttony and so on.

01:06:03

And then homosexuality. Where's that coming from? That didn't come from the text.

01:06:11

That comes from a concern to have a certain spin on this.

01:06:20

Let me say something here that I fear might get misunderstood, but I feel like it's important enough that even though it might get misunderstood,

01:06:26

I'm going to say it anyway. When someone says that, you might want to tune in. And yeah, you needed to tune into this one.

01:06:32

In this sense, you can almost think of homosexuality as an affliction and not just a sinful choice.

01:06:42

I haven't gotten around to it yet. I suppose I need to, but I've had a number of people that I trust have told me he probably got that from Sam Albury who has likened same -sex attraction to having a physical problem to where you can't walk or something along that.

01:07:03

It's a malady. It's an affliction. That is not coming from Romans 1.

01:07:12

How do you read, burned in our desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving their own persons the due penalty of their error.

01:07:21

How do you compare that to a malady, to just something that...

01:07:28

How do you do that? That's not coming from the text. That's coming from someplace else.

01:07:35

What's the source of this? What are you wanting to accomplish here? What is it about the text that you're trying to ameliorate or lessen in some fashion?

01:07:46

That really is the question for me. But it's not coming from the text.

01:07:54

And homosexuality is not a malady. That's like saying, well, if you have these desires, well, to compare homosexuality with gluttony.

01:08:11

Gluttony can kill you, so can homosexuality, but not in the same way and not in the same, necessarily, fashion.

01:08:20

And if you do compare the two, the problem is those who are presenting this as a malady, they recognize that with a certain amount of simple discipline, you can overcome gluttony.

01:08:33

Many people have done it many, many times. Does that mean that a certain amount of discipline, you could overcome homosexuality?

01:08:41

Well, there would be some people who would say yes. There would be some people who would say, oh yeah. But I think most of those in the social justice movement today, or those promoting this topic, or maybe even gay

01:08:56

Christianity, would say no. No, it doesn't matter how much discipline you have. The attractions remain the same.

01:09:04

And so it's a malady. And so we should look upon these people as people who have a physical disability, not someone who has a disordered attraction that is fundamentally unnatural.

01:09:22

No, you're not. And again, if you have same -sex attraction, the beginning of coming to recognize the means of dealing with it is not the diminishment of its seriousness.

01:09:39

To diminish its seriousness is to actually keep people away from the solution.

01:09:49

That's, I think, what's going on here. Because for most gay people, they feel like they didn't choose those desires.

01:09:58

In fact, here's what I've learned after two decades of pastoring. Almost every person I've encountered, in the church at least, almost every person who struggles with a same -sex attraction is almost always dealing first and foremost with an unanswered prayer.

01:10:13

So now he goes into trying—not exegesis anymore. Now it's experiential, now it's anecdotal.

01:10:23

We've pretty much left the text at this point, and won't really come back to it as far as providing any foundations for this.

01:10:33

But now we get into the, well, you know, I've talked to this person, and their experience was, and you know,

01:10:39

I debated Justin, who himself, as a

01:10:47

Southern Baptist, claimed that that's all he had ever known.

01:10:55

Okay, I can't prove or disprove that one way or the other.

01:11:01

I still think it's a minority thing. But let's say there are some who, from the beginning, have had that. You don't address it biblically by diminishing the significance of the desire.

01:11:15

Once you go there, you're basically saying the

01:11:21

Bible doesn't have any answers for you. You have to find your answers in modern psychology, modern sociology, whatever area you might want to go there.

01:11:34

This is what you have to understand. Every Christian I know who's struggling with same -sex attraction is dealing, first and foremost, with the question of why

01:11:44

God did not answer their prayer to change them. Which means that people with same -sex attraction really ought to be, first and foremost, recipients of our compassion.

01:11:55

That is, it makes same -sex behavior any less sinful, any more than it would make outburst of temper, or envy, or materialism less sinful.

01:12:03

I stop it mid -quote. Do we recognize the essential disorderedness of the attraction, or does that get lost in the constant comparison of the sin to other sins?

01:12:21

Because Romans 1 should give us the ability to differentiate those things, and here in Romans 1 is where it's being confused.

01:12:29

It just means that we don't always get to choose our weakness or our corruption. And see, that means that gay and lesbian people are not worse sinners than other people.

01:12:36

They're not a different kind of sinner than the rest of us. They just got affected with a different dimension of the curse, and that changes how we think about it and how we talk about it.

01:12:45

That was what J .D. Greer was trying to get to. Now, did that come from the text?

01:12:55

No. It came from external sources. It came from the current movement toward impacting the

01:13:06

Church's historic moral understanding. That's why you start off by saying, ah, the Church has really screwed this up in the past, so we're going to try to do better now.

01:13:12

Well, there's no question that, especially my generation, older generations, these things weren't discussed.

01:13:22

And so, since they weren't discussed, since it was considered embarrassing or whatever else it might be, all right, that doesn't change what had laid the foundation for viewing homosexuality in this way.

01:13:36

When you take a pan -canonical, all of the canon, the entire Bible together, when you look at what the

01:13:44

Bible as a whole says about homosexuality, there is absolutely positively nothing positive ever stated.

01:13:51

And there's a lot negative stated. And so much so that the toevah abomination of what happens in Sodom and Gomorrah, you can stand on your head and try to disassociate it in every single way.

01:14:06

It's not about monogamous loving situations, all the rest of this stuff. The fact of the matter remains, it is the desire, the burning in with desire, one for another, outside of the natural way that we have been made that shows a giving over to a fundamentally deep layer of idolatry in that person's experience.

01:14:32

And again, this is where the fundamentalists go wrong and say, and that means they can never be saved.

01:14:38

No, Paul specifically says, and such were some of you. Anybody who says a homosexual can't be saved has no idea what to do with 1

01:14:48

Corinthians 6. None. They just skip it. So, it can be overcome, it can be forgiven, but you don't deal with how a sin needs to be mortified in a person's life by diminishing the reality of what it says.

01:15:08

And that unfortunately is what we are experiencing in the church today. Now, my guess from looking through the window is that Cox has completely bailed on us and dumped us and killed us and everything else, and so this is all going to be uploaded at a later time, and hopefully it's recording, because I would assume if it wasn't recording,

01:15:29

I would have been told, so I could have skipped all of this stuff and done it at a different time. But that still means

01:15:37

I've been at this for an hour and 15 minutes, and we've still got about an hour and 15 minutes to go, depending on how long it takes to get through the rest of the material that I have here.

01:15:46

And so, we are going to take a brief break, and I don't know if you're going to want to try to use that as a time to try a different connection or anything else, just keep going the way we're going.

01:16:00

But we're going to take a brief break, and then we'll be right back. Answering those who claim that only the

01:17:00

King James Version is the Word of God, James White, in his book, The King James Only Controversy, examines allegations that modern translators conspired to corrupt scripture and lead believers away from true

01:17:11

Christian faith. In a readable and responsible style, author James White traces the development of Bible translations, old and new, and investigates the differences between new versions and the

01:17:27

The King James Only Controversy, by going to our website at www .aomin

01:17:34

.org. Breaking news from the

01:17:39

White House, and the issue, gay marriage. For a lot of people, the word marriage was something that evokes very powerful traditions, religious beliefs.

01:17:48

I think same -sex couples should be able to get married. The NAACP has passed a resolution endorsing gay marriage as a civil right.

01:17:55

This comes two weeks after the President announced his support for same -sex marriage. Under the guise of tolerance, our culture today grants alternative lifestyle status to homosexuality.

01:18:09

Anyone opposing or questioning this today is quickly shouted down, called a bigot, a homophobe, a hate monger, threatened and accused of discrimination.

01:18:18

It's become commonplace to see people who take a biblical stand against homosexuality ostracized to the point of losing their job.

01:18:24

How soon will it be before we will also see people losing their freedom? Now more than ever, Christians need to be equipped to be an approved workman of God, correctly dividing the word of truth, as we are told in 2

01:18:34

Timothy 2 .15. Dr. James White and Pastor Jeffrey Neal have partnered to bring you their book, The Same -Sex

01:18:39

Controversy. If you are a Christian, this book is just one of the tools you'll need to be prepared to give a proper defense of the faith in the face of the unrighteous onslaught we face today.

01:18:48

The authors write for all who want to better understand the Bible's teaching on this subject, explaining and defending the foundational biblical passages that deal with homosexuality, including

01:18:57

Genesis, Leviticus, and Romans. In a straightforward and loving manner, they appeal to those caught up in a homosexual lifestyle to repent and return to God's plan for His people.

01:19:07

The Same -Sex Controversy, Defending and Clarifying the Bible's Message about Homosexuality. Get your copy today from the bookstore at AOMN .org.

01:19:14

And don't forget to search for other resources like debates and past dividing lines dealing with this very provocative issue.

01:19:21

And remember, theology matters. Hello everyone, this is

01:19:31

Rich Pierce. In a day and age where the gospel is being twisted into a man -centered self -help program, the need for a no -nonsense presentation of the gospel has never been greater.

01:19:42

I am convinced that a great many go to church every Sunday, yet they have never been confronted with their sin.

01:19:48

Alpha Omega Ministries is dedicated to presenting the gospel in a clear and concise manner, making no excuses.

01:19:55

Man is sinful and God is holy. That sinful man is in need of a perfect Savior, and Jesus Christ is that perfect Savior.

01:20:04

We are to come before the Holy God with an empty hand of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Alpha and Omega takes that message to every group that we deal with, while equipping the body of Christ as well.

01:20:15

Support Alpha and Omega Ministries and help us to reach even more with the pure message of God's glorious grace.

01:20:20

Thank you. And welcome back to the program. Yes, we are dead casting at the moment.

01:20:27

I got word during the break that we contacted our service provider and they looked at it and said, wow, you're losing a whole lot of data.

01:20:36

And we're like, yeah, wish you all sort of checked on that stuff on your own. So they're going to be out in the morning and hopefully, well, this happened before and we got it fixed.

01:20:48

And there's this thing called entropy, second law of thermodynamics, things break down over time.

01:20:54

So you can never expect things to get better. So anyway, okay, so got to get back to it here because let me see.

01:21:07

I'm doing all right. I might make it. I am being concise.

01:21:12

You got to admit, come on, let's, you know, let's do some kudos. I could be much more wordy than I am right now.

01:21:19

So I'm trying, I'm trying. And I think I'm being fair to J .D.

01:21:25

Greer. We're letting him speak for himself. How many people do that? How many people play what the person's saying and then interact with it?

01:21:34

Not too many. So we, we press on. And in fact, I think I'll do just simply to make sure we do make it in time.

01:21:41

I'm going to kick it up to 1 .2. I was like, I'm not sure why I'm so fixated on letting people know that, but I just,

01:21:47

I am. So he'll be speaking slightly faster than he was before. These people will not inherit the kingdom of God.

01:21:55

Somebody says, but I was, I was born this way. I don't dispute that. And some of us were born with a propensity towards selfish ambition or maybe a raging temper.

01:22:03

The Bible's message is that we all need to be born again. Now, I appreciate that. He's not trying to say, hey, this isn't sinful.

01:22:11

Hey, this won't separate you from God. He is trying to flatten it all out, but he's saying, you know, recognize that what first Corinthians chapter six says will not inherit the kingdom of heaven.

01:22:21

I've got desires I can't overcome. You got desires you can't overcome. Jesus is the one who overcomes.

01:22:26

Therefore you must be born again. The gospel message is not let the day become straight. The gospel message is let the dead become alive.

01:22:33

And that is impossible apart from the power of God, which leads me now. Okay. I get that, but I don't get that.

01:22:44

I get that, that it's not becoming straight. That saves you if, as if you could do that by yourself, you can't, but is he suggesting or leaving, leaving the door open to the idea that the dead can become alive, but remain entrapped in the control of the same sex attraction.

01:23:08

Straightness does not save you because adulterers are straight, but straightness is what

01:23:15

God designed in the making of male and female. He's going to make a statement that about that eventually here.

01:23:25

Paul, this homosexuality is simply one corruption among many. No, that's no, no, he didn't.

01:23:31

He did not put it in the vice list. That's the primary issue here.

01:23:37

People have been saying on Twitter, well, I thought I did a pretty good job. I said, look, give me time to explain.

01:23:42

There it is. He did not, you know, what, what, what's, what's the assertion here?

01:23:48

Paul, this homosexuality is simply one corruption among many. No, he didn't. He listed it as a corruption that demonstrates the fundamental twisting of the very nature of the inner life of man as a result of idolatry.

01:24:07

And you can try if you want to say that losing your temper illustrates the same thing, but it doesn't, not on the level that homosexuality does.

01:24:22

At least not if Romans one is your guide. Again, look at the rest of the list.

01:24:28

Here's a question. When I read that list, do you think of deceit and boasting as equally depraved? Yeah.

01:24:33

Do you again? See, once you put it in the list and remove it from where it was actually functioning, then you're left with this flattening out.

01:24:44

That's what, that's what he's going for. It's all, it's all the same. Yes. It all comes from the same source. It doesn't make it the same thing.

01:24:51

It doesn't function in the same way in his argument. It doesn't function in the same way in life.

01:24:57

How about greed? Do you think of greed as equally depraved as homosexuality? How about a rebellious attitude against your parents?

01:25:03

Do you see that as equally depraved? Paul would. No, Paul would not. You've, you've missed his point. If, if, if, if face of the choice of one or two things,

01:25:13

Paul would say, disobey your parents, not go into a brothel and have sex with a bunch of men. There is a difference between the two.

01:25:21

Now you may just bury parents to go in there and do that. That's just total mess in and of itself. But to, to flatten these things out this way is to ignore the fact that the law of God itself provided different kinds of penalties in regards to the seriousness of sins.

01:25:38

It's ignoring the amount of light that you have. It's ignoring what it says about the heart condition, all the rest of these things. Yes, they all separate from God because God's standard is perfection.

01:25:48

It doesn't make them all the same thing. Because you got to understand, Pastor Greer, if you follow this logic, then having sex with your cow is no different than disobeying your parents.

01:26:01

Right? It's all just sin. Yeah. That was what was really troubling about all of this.

01:26:11

You know, you're like, oh, I'm just worried my, my, my child got the same sex attraction. You ought to be worried that they have a rebellious attitude toward authority because in God's book, that's every bit the same.

01:26:19

They're connected, but it's not every bit the same. People who look down on others and try to be a certain kind of good, whether it's a good mom or good husband or good

01:26:27

Christian, so they can look down on people. Is that equally depraved the same sex attraction? It should be. I mean, in terms of frequency of mention or the passion with which

01:26:34

Paul talks about it, it would appear that quite a few other sins are more egregious in God's eyes than homosexuality.

01:26:40

Now, there is also where there is a crash. And I just simply have to say, I'm sorry.

01:26:46

That is, that's something that must be refuted. This is, this was an error. This was an error.

01:26:53

And it's an error that comes straight out of the pro -homosexual movement. That's why it was shocking to hear him say this.

01:26:59

Well, there's only six passages. Well, that's not true, by the way. There's more than that. But let's say there are only six passages.

01:27:06

Does that make the many more verses warning about hypocrisy, does that make that worse than the six passages of a homosexuality?

01:27:14

No, it does not. When God drove entire nations out of the land, describing it as the land vomiting them out and destroyed them, man, woman, child, and beast.

01:27:32

You don't think that's enough? You don't think that's serious enough?

01:27:39

He doesn't have to repeat it over and over again. Counting the number of texts is foolishness.

01:27:48

That was just a major face plant right there. That was wrong. That missed it completely.

01:27:57

And there's part of the illustration. When you've got a goal you're going for, you can end up making that kind of error, even as the president of the

01:28:07

Southern Baptist Convention. Jen Wilken, who's one of our favorite Bible teachers here and who's actually leading a women's conference, she said, she said, we ought to whisper about what the

01:28:14

Bible whispers about, and we ought to shout about what it shouts about. And the Bible appears more to whisper when it comes to sexual sin compared to its shouts about materialism and religious pride.

01:28:24

Well, um, that's one conference I won't be going to, uh, because once again, counting verses, whisper about sexual sin, whisper about sexual sin.

01:28:38

You know, this really does illustrate what I've said before. We're canonically challenged today. If you can look at the

01:28:46

Old Testament, if you can look at Sodom and Gomorrah and go, wow, everybody died, burned to a crisp.

01:28:59

No, that's not a whisper. Throughout Jesus's ministry, his life, we see him demonstrating great, just incredible sympathy for those caught in sexual sin and great animosity toward the religiously proud.

01:29:15

Yeah. Um, caught in sexual sin, the woman taken in adultery, maybe the non -canonical

01:29:22

John 73, 8, 11, maybe is what you're referring to, or, uh, prostitutes, things like that.

01:29:28

Yeah. There is no question that in Jesus's encounter with the Pharisees, but is that parallel to where we are today?

01:29:37

Uh, no, because there was nobody in that culture, nobody in that culture that disagreed that homosexuality was abomination before God, nobody.

01:29:49

So how could there be an equal mentioning of it? And this is, this is where a little history, a little exegesis, a little, you know, let's, let's, let's let the text speak, helps.

01:30:03

In fact, Jesus, one time, not one time ever said that it was difficult for the same sex attracted to go to heaven. Straight out of the handbook of the pro -homosexual movement, straight out of it.

01:30:16

And that's not where he got it from. He's got a goal. He wants to, to, to present a certain, very culturally acceptable perspective here.

01:30:29

Not, not culturally in the sense, you know, he says it's a sin. He says it will separate from God, but it's, but we're all in the same boat.

01:30:35

We, we don't want, you know, it's, we're all where we all are. And so Jesus never once said that it's hard for the same sex attract.

01:30:43

He didn't need to, J .D. Pastor Greer, he didn't need to. That was a given.

01:30:51

That was, that was as basic as God exists. Nobody, nobody was disputing that. Why would he have to repeat it?

01:31:00

He did say it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle, eye of a needle, than it was for a religiously proud or materialistically successful person to enter into the kingdom of God.

01:31:09

Because he was dealing primarily with the Pharisees at that time, and they had that issue.

01:31:15

Irrelevant to your trying to overthrow Romans 1 and the position it put homosexuality in and using it as an illustration.

01:31:24

Yeah. Again, this was why I, once I listened to this and I, I listened to this while running in the snow,

01:31:35

I had never run in snow before. It actually wasn't too bad. Um, I never slipped once.

01:31:41

I was scared I was going to, which maybe why I didn't, but rain, the snow in Munster, Germany, along where the exact old wall was the city.

01:31:48

And that'll come out when we tell some more stories about Munster. But anyways, that's where I was, where I was listening to this and he gets this stuff.

01:31:55

And I was just like, all right, I'm going to have to review it. I'm going to have to take time. I have to put it in an audio note taker, and I'm going to have to edit it.

01:32:02

And I'm going to have to get it ready to go because here you have the illustration of what happens with someone who has the skills, knows how to do it.

01:32:12

And yet comes to these strange conclusions and, and ends up spending a bunch of time on stuff that the text never even brought up.

01:32:23

Where'd it come from? Oh, in this case, it came from the cultural situation and a desire to fit into a particular perspective.

01:32:34

And your life will no longer be characterized by judgmentalism and fundamentalism. It'll be characterized by compassion. You'll start loving your neighbor, like somebody made in the image of God and feeling compassion for them and their weakness.

01:32:43

You will begin to treat them first and foremost, like people who deserve compassion, not scorn or judgment or a political voting block that we need to marginalize.

01:32:51

There's much true there. Anybody who thinks that somehow they're getting kudo points with God by standing firm on homosexuality, no, you're not getting kudo points with God.

01:33:04

The reason to stand firm on homosexuality is because you honor God, honor his truth, love the death, birth, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

01:33:13

And you want to see people delivered into the kingdom of God. And if, and if, and if you stay up to 1130 at night, of course, showing how early

01:33:25

I go to bed, um, just simply arguing with people on Facebook or Twitter, uh, thinking you're somehow doing

01:33:32

God a favor rather than having those motivations, then that's, that, that's a problem. When you understand that, then what that means is that you become a person who will, for example, stand up and be among the fiercest advocates for the preservation of the dignity and the rights of LGBT people.

01:33:46

Because we recognize that gay and lesbian people are essentially just like us, people made in the image of God, like us and deserving of all the dignity and respect that we desire for us or our children.

01:33:54

There is no them. Yes, there is a them. First of all, there is no

01:34:00

LGBTQ. Every one of those letters is not only different, but contradictory to the others.

01:34:10

There is no community. Transgenderism is an open rebellion in 99 % of its manifestation.

01:34:22

Just check out the guy putting his arm on Ben Shapiro on the Dr. Drew show a couple of weeks after I was on.

01:34:29

Just check out the guy going nuts in the convenience store yelling. It's ma 'am. It's ma 'am.

01:34:34

That's rebellion folks. That's not affliction. That's not somebody in a wheelchair that's rebellion, but it's a different kind of rebellion than homosexuality.

01:34:49

There is no community. The only thing that puts these people together is a fundamental rejection of God's created order, but it manifests in very different ways.

01:35:01

So advocates, well, advocates to bring them the gospel, advocates to call them to repentance, but not advocates in the sense of saying this community needs to be viewed in the same way we view other communities.

01:35:17

No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't. Upon what biblical basis,

01:35:24

Pastor Greer, are you going to tell Christians that you need to extend the same kind of respect to a community that is defined specifically by its rebellion against God's law as you do the community of veterans of the

01:35:42

Korean war? The biblical basis of this would be what?

01:35:48

Good luck. You can't find one. You know it. Good luck. I don't believe in luck.

01:35:54

Anyway. Here's the third way that we go wrong. Number three, assuming it's hard for LGBTQ people to get to heaven.

01:36:00

Let me say something really, really clearly here. Okay. Homosexuality does not send you to hell. You know how I know that?

01:36:05

Because heterosexuality does not send you to heaven. That was said by the president of Southern Mass Convention in his own church, which is a multi -campus church, a couple weeks ago.

01:36:26

You hadn't heard that, huh? Yeah. That was the one time I almost slept because it was like, yeah, yeah,

01:36:38

Rich just shot his foot off in the other room. Thankfully, we got it soundproofed. We didn't. He didn't do that.

01:36:48

Here's the third way that we go wrong. Number three, assuming it's hard for LGBTQ people to get to heaven. Let me say something really, really clearly here.

01:36:55

Okay. Homosexuality does not send you to hell. You know how I know that? Because heterosexuality does not send you to heaven.

01:37:01

Okay. That is neither a logical nor a rational statement.

01:37:09

No one suggests that heterosexuality sends you to heaven.

01:37:16

Heterosexuality, however, is God's created norm. It's beautiful, it's right, and it's good.

01:37:23

Mankind may mess it up, but it is how God intends males and females to relate to one another.

01:37:32

It's good. It's God's intended, created design. To use arguments like this fundamentally undercuts that.

01:37:39

Don't you see that? I was stunned. He has this weird way of doing things where he's got this notebook type thing.

01:37:52

I don't know if this is a Southern Baptist thing or just what, but he's just whipping through this stuff. I actually downloaded it.

01:37:59

I don't have it here. There's actually a PDF of the outline that he's got up there.

01:38:05

It's a weird way of doing things, but may I suggest in the future you have somebody proofread that?

01:38:12

Maybe somebody that'll stand up to you and say, really? No one's suggesting that the reason homosexuality sends you to hell is because heterosexuality sends you to heaven.

01:38:26

Who has ever said that? Who has ever said that? That's just silly.

01:38:33

That's absurd. Earlier he says those who practice these things will not enter the kingdom of heaven, but now let's smooth that out.

01:38:58

What sends you to hell is refusing to allow Jesus to be the Lord and center of your life, regardless of how that manifests itself.

01:39:05

How about that long forgotten word, repentance?

01:39:12

What has ever happened? It has fallen on hard times. How about just saying it straightforward?

01:39:18

What sends a person to hell is their sins, for which they are justly punished, unless they repent and turn to Jesus Christ so that their sins are imputed to Christ and hence they can enter into heaven because of his satisfactory work in their place.

01:39:41

How's that? Focusing it all upon doing this with Jesus.

01:39:48

It might manifest itself in your refusal to let Jesus be Lord over your sexual life, yes, but it might manifest itself in your refusal to let

01:39:55

Jesus be Lord over your money. So see what he's trying to do here? Yeah, not letting

01:40:01

Jesus be Lord over your sexual life. In other words, continuing in homosexuality, yeah, but same thing with your money.

01:40:09

See what the desperate hope here is? That we don't want to do what

01:40:14

Paul did in Romans 1, basically, and say this is a fundamental issue of the definition of what a human being is and God's rights over it.

01:40:25

Then something weird happened. I literally only have four short quotes left, and I better.

01:40:34

It jumped off in, I guess it was the weekend, the pro -life march, something like that.

01:40:39

So it jumped off into abortion somehow. Okay. And of course, inevitably,

01:40:45

Martin Luther King got quoted too. It's almost how you prove your wokeness now, is that no matter what you're preaching on, you find a way to quote

01:40:57

Martin Luther King. Those are your bona fides. All right, here. He lists it as one of many examples of the corruptions that come from a society that has rejected

01:41:07

God and replaced ourselves and our desires at the center where he belongs, a rebellion in which all of us have alike participated equally.

01:41:13

Okay. That was actually a summary statement. What came before, flattening it all out. That's not how it functioned in the argument.

01:41:20

He missed that, didn't present it accurately. That's been a problem. And we love you regardless of the way that you feel, the way that you feel like you are.

01:41:28

We do not believe that your sexual identity defines you. We believe that you are, first and foremost, a child of God created in his image.

01:41:36

You know how my mind works? I know exactly where I was. I can point on a GPS map exactly where I was on what's called the promenade in Munster when he said that.

01:41:50

Did you miss it? Maybe it's just become so common anymore that people are just like, I don't get it. And we love you regardless of the way that you feel, the way that you feel like you are.

01:41:59

We do not believe that your sexual identity defines you. We believe that you are, first and foremost, a child of God created in his image.

01:42:07

You were created in his image. Yeah. However, it is basic, fundamental

01:42:15

New Testament theology that until you repent and have faith in Jesus Christ, you are not the child of God.

01:42:24

How basic is this? You are not adopted in the family of God outside of faith in Jesus Christ.

01:42:33

How can the president of the Southern Baptist Convention stand in front of his people and say to unrepentant, at this point, practicers of homosexuality, you are the son or daughter of God?

01:42:50

I know how the Roman Catholics do it and the liberals do it. Why is J .D. Greer doing that? I know that we even in our church have people who work, people that attend our church that in some of these clinics.

01:43:04

And I know that you entered that profession, not with any ill will, but you did it because you wanted to serve. We've gotten into the abortion part here.

01:43:13

And I even asked people, because I didn't have a chance to go back and listen to it right now. I was busy when

01:43:18

I was there. But I even asked some folks who had also, I knew who had also listened to the sermon.

01:43:24

Did he say that they have members of their church who work in abortion clinics?

01:43:30

He didn't say members. Listen to it again. I know that we even in our church have people who work, people that attend our church that work in some of these clinics.

01:43:38

Now, did you catch? He caught himself. At first he said people in our church.

01:43:44

So that's what I heard. I heard we have people in our church that work in these abortion clinics.

01:43:50

But then he caught himself. I know that we even in our church have people who work, people that attend our church that work in some of these clinics.

01:43:58

And I know that you entered that profession, not with any ill will, but you did it because you wanted to serve. Just attend our church.

01:44:05

I just have to ask a question. Would this church discipline abortionists or people who assist in abortion?

01:44:20

I don't know. But that was a weird thing to say. And he himself seemed to see what the problem was halfway through the statement.

01:44:30

Last one. Can you tell me the difference between a baby two minutes before it comes out of the birth canal and two minutes after?

01:44:38

And can you explain to me how killing that baby inside the womb is somehow helpful for the life of the mother?

01:44:43

And when they pass this, the legislator applauds. Don't hear your judgment in that.

01:44:50

The first part, exactly. The evil that we see in our land, the giving over to now infanticide, you don't have to apologize for calling evil evil.

01:45:13

But that's what you end up with here. Don't hear your judgment in that.

01:45:19

If anything, when I tell that based on Romans 1, I don't look at these things and say, what's wrong with those people? What I say is, what's wrong with us?

01:45:33

I do say what's wrong with those people. I do say what's wrong with those people. You have to understand what being given over to the culture of death, being given over to a love of death looks like.

01:45:47

And if you can't differentiate between that and what you have in the church, all based on this flattening out that you've tried to do, confusion, simple confusion.

01:46:00

And a lot of it. And a lot of it. So to those who were asking me over and over again, so what's the issue?

01:46:13

You know, why would you do this? Or it sounds like a great sermon to me. Maybe you hear the good parts, and as a result, you just filter out the bad parts, the parts that just didn't make any sense.

01:46:28

Maybe that's how it works. I don't know. I don't know. Make it quick. I've still got Anderson to do.

01:46:35

I know. I made a comment when you were overseas on Twitter talking about, you know, are people paying attention in church?

01:46:44

And you know what? I think in a lot of cases, this is one example of things that I've heard lately that I'm really curious.

01:46:54

Why am I the only one that noticed this? Why am me or maybe one other person the only ones? You're hypercritical, mean, nasty, and everything else.

01:47:02

Translation, I'm paying attention and you're not. Thank you. The end. Yeah, well.

01:47:10

Okay. Transition real quick. This morning,

01:47:17

I posted on Twitter and Facebook.

01:47:23

Well, I posted on Facebook and then linked to it on Twitter. I want to read some tweets, and I'm going to move over here.

01:47:32

I want to read some tweets from Dr. Anthony Bradley, a graduate of Westminster Theological Seminary, PhD, and I will read them in the...

01:47:45

When you read Twitter, you got to read from the bottom up. And it actually picked up somewhere, but I'll just with what

01:47:52

I have here. As such, Great Commission Christianity doesn't know what to do with the

01:48:01

Old Testament. So he's contrasting cosmic black

01:48:07

Christianity with what he's calling Great Commission Christianity. And I'd seen some of this earlier, where he's basically saying that the white church in America has this truncated view, you know, it's just a great commission.

01:48:21

Just go make disciples. That's it. So Great Commission Christianity doesn't know what to do with the

01:48:29

Old Testament. They have to make Jesus and Paul appear in the Old Testament.

01:48:34

And I'm like, Paul? What? Appear in the Old Testament in order for the text to have meaning.

01:48:43

The traditional black church is far more Trinitarian about the whole counsel of God than evangelicals.

01:48:54

Okay. I would dispute that from my own experience, but one of the privileges of being white in America is never needing

01:49:06

God to stop a society from trying to destroy you and your family. So the

01:49:11

Bible is a book for evangelicalism, disciple making, and teaching morals. Not a book for personal and, capitalized, social cosmic survival, so your kids walk.

01:49:32

So if you're white, the world has never tried to destroy you and your family.

01:49:42

And so you end up with a truncated view of scripture, because the world's not trying to destroy you. Evidently, whites don't have a struggle with the world.

01:49:51

In case you're wondering, I find all of this absolutely absurd, but we haven't gotten to the worst part yet.

01:49:59

Evangelicals will be confused by the black church, because they've never needed the

01:50:04

God who acts through miracles to redeem them from something that's not their fault.

01:50:13

So of course, they will certainly question the reliability and veracity of the text. Life's been pretty easy.

01:50:25

So evangelicals don't come off very well in Anthony Bradley's perspective, as you can tell.

01:50:34

And they never needed a God who could miraculously deliver them, because they've had life easy.

01:50:42

Not that Anthony Bradley was ever a slave, and he's too young to have even been impacted by Jim Crow laws, and he's probably grown up in a middle -class situation with plenty of money, food, and health care.

01:50:55

But hey, let's not worry about that. We got to look back, transform ourselves back, and we're back there somewhere.

01:51:02

Yeah, okay. Everybody else, though, you know, I have to wonder, did

01:51:10

Anthony Bradley have more privilege than I had when I grew up? It's possible. I don't think that fits the narrative.

01:51:17

It's highly probable, but I don't think it fits the narrative. But anyway. But here's the last one, and this is the one a lot people caught.

01:51:26

This is simple. Black people in America have relied on God's word to help them survive white people.

01:51:39

When you're white and in the dominant culture, you've never needed the Old Testament covenant -keeping redemptive

01:51:45

God. Yours became a Christianity of moralism, and your kids walked.

01:51:57

It no longer really has much meaning for me simply to say, how about you reverse the colors there and not see that this sound like it came out of a

01:52:08

KKK meeting. But their response is, oh, you can't reverse the colors because the experience within this culture, doesn't matter what happens anywhere else in the world, let's not worry about that.

01:52:20

No, no, no, no. We may be talking about allegedly cosmic Christianity, but what we're really talking about is American Christianity.

01:52:29

Our experience. Doesn't matter if it doesn't work in Canada or Mexico or South America or Russia or South Africa, that doesn't matter that it's irrelevant in those places.

01:52:39

We're still going to make these accusations. I said something on my

01:52:44

Facebook article. You read those tweets. This is black supremacy.

01:52:52

This is black supremacy. We get the Old Testament. We need the covenant -keeping

01:52:57

God. We've done this. We've done that. You haven't. This is divisive, segregationalist, black supremacy.

01:53:07

How do you explain where I'm wrong? Show me where I'm wrong. Don't just respond with your emotions.

01:53:13

Show me where those words do not communicate those things. They do. Whether you want to see it or not, whether you want to filter it out or not, it's right there.

01:53:24

If you can't see it, ask yourself, why can't I? Yours, yours became a

01:53:32

Christianity of moralism. That's never happened in a black church. No, no, no.

01:53:39

Every black church is just spot on. There's never been a black church that's sold out to the

01:53:47

Democrats in Planned Parenthood. No. Come on.

01:53:54

Please. Seriously? Wow. I was just stunned.

01:54:03

As I said in my article, I have it up here. I said, there are times when

01:54:09

Anthony Bradley catches us up short by going against the standard language of the narrative from the social justicians.

01:54:16

He's a brilliant guy, well -trained, a force to be reckoned with. And yet, as these statements prove, deeply, deeply ingrained a way of thought that is so divisive, so prejudiced, so imbalanced, that he truly is one of the most dangerous voices simply because he can speak the language and use it to promote such concepts as he does here.

01:54:34

That's how I started my article. And I concluded it by saying, finally, as you can see, finally, could you possibly show less concern for the unity of the body of Christ than to say that blacks have relied upon scripture to help them survive white people?

01:54:52

Dehumanizing, devaluing, prejudicial, bigoted to the nth degree, and Anthony Bradley seems either completely at peace with that or the lens he has been crafting for years are so close to perfection now, they filter it all out.

01:55:05

The entire tweet reeks of, ready for this, racial superiority, black supremacy. Yes, I said it.

01:55:11

This is a man looking down his racial nose at others, dehumanizing them as a group just as plainly and clearly as any disgusting white supremacist of the past or present.

01:55:26

So that's on Facebook. Well, it was last time I looked. When I wrote it,

01:55:34

I said to somebody, well, this could be my last post on Facebook, or at least for a period of time. I don't know.

01:55:40

But yeah. All right. 35 minutes. Good luck. I think

01:55:46

I have more than 35 minutes just to play from him. So definitely going to be speeding up Steven Anderson to 1 .2.

01:55:53

All right. Why bother? Let's go back to this one. So because I'm looking at this.

01:55:58

Why bother? I had a bunch of people on Twitter said, don't waste your time. Okay, look, let me

01:56:06

I need to offer an excuse, an apology, classically, in the sense of what apologetic means.

01:56:13

When we were at G3, we had a huge line of people that wanted to come up and have books signed and tell me this, that and the other thing.

01:56:24

And it's very, very enjoyable to do that. It's exhausting, but it's very, very enjoyable to do that. I cannot tell you how many times

01:56:33

I've had former Mormons come out to me and say, you and Jeff Durbin, man, that was the Lord used you all.

01:56:39

And former Jehovah's Witnesses. Yes, we've had former Muslims, not in Atlanta, Georgia, this time around.

01:56:49

But what I really noticed this time around more, and I think it was because of what was going on with the NIFB back then at that point.

01:56:55

Remember before they melted down? Back in November, December, they were going nuts. And then they had a big old split.

01:57:01

And we haven't heard much of anything for a while. Because of what was going on, maybe

01:57:10

I just noticed it more. But a number of the people that came up to us said, you know,

01:57:15

I was in one of those Steve Anderson churches. I was in an NIFB church. And it was you,

01:57:21

Jeff. It was you guys. And it was your videos. I'm reformed now.

01:57:28

I'm going to a sound church now. Just wanted to thank you. It's been such a huge thing for my wife and my kids.

01:57:35

And this happens over and over and over again. And I said to Rich, I said, well, now we know why they're coming after us.

01:57:41

Now we know why they hate Jeff and I so much. Is because they run across our stuff and go, whoa,

01:57:50

I, how come, hmm, is he right about, hmm, ah, it's a process.

01:57:56

It can be a painful process. It's a process. They are losing people all the time.

01:58:03

That's why they're attacking us. So why respond to this? Well, it's responding to a book that was written 25 years ago, published 24 years ago.

01:58:14

But it's still, it's still my best -selling book. It's a book that's used as a text, a textbook in a number of colleges, universities, seminaries, and the

01:58:23

English speaking world. It's had a real impact. So I understand why you'd want to respond to it, but why, given that I sat down with the guy and we didn't get into a lot of King James only -ism in that, in that dialogue that we did.

01:58:37

Well, it was a dialogue, it was an interview. Didn't get into a whole lot there, but the reality is that these issues continue to be presented by the other side, errors continue to be made, and there are all sorts of new people all the time that need the truth.

01:59:00

These are teachable moments. I don't know how, I mean, it's going to take me a lot of time. It takes a lot of time to dump these things into this program and mark them and do all the stuff and just listen to them, but it's worthwhile.

01:59:16

It's worthwhile to provide a full response because we have absolute confidence, absolute confidence that this position being presented by Steven Anderson is completely indefensible, completely indefensible.

01:59:32

There's nothing he said in this first one I'm going to deal with, even slightly challenging, but by refuting it, we lay a foundation and can hopefully see even more coming out of these groups that are deceived about these particular issues.

01:59:48

So that's, that's the issue. Second thing before I started, I don't know if anybody else finds it really weird, but there are a couple of different Steven Andersons and I've not seen them all in the same room at the same time.

02:00:03

You can go to Steven Anderson standing on his pulpit, kicking his pulpit.

02:00:10

You can find videos of Steven Anderson within the past three months, within the past 90 days, screaming at people during services, telling people to drag him out, people running across the in front of the camera to grab a guy and drag him out of the room.

02:00:25

You idiot! Another one where he fired someone that was working for the church.

02:00:32

And I can guarantee you broke about 47 different laws in regards to how you have to do that stuff in the process, especially just posting this nasty, personally attacking video.

02:00:48

So you've got the guy accusing Jeff and I of homosexuality and all the rest of this stuff, the wild eyed, screaming, pounding

02:00:57

Steven Anderson, Steven L. Anderson, S. L.

02:01:02

Anderson, S. L. Anderson. Yeah. And then you've got Steven Anderson in these videos, who is reading the

02:01:12

Greek New Testament through for the third time and the Old Testament in Greek too, and who studies history and is so soft -spoken and seemingly so rational.

02:01:27

And it's like, how do you explain that? These two do not fit together.

02:01:35

That they are not the same person. It's like multiple personality disorder, or other people might suggest spiritual aspects to it.

02:01:45

I don't know, but it's creepy. Because, you know,

02:01:50

I go and travel places and I meet with people and we go out with the elders after speaking like that. And you know what the main thing they say is, you're just like on your program and in my debates and in all the rest of my life.

02:02:04

I am who I am. You see, what you see, what you get. Sorry, ain't much more to it. But here you got somebody who changes.

02:02:14

And I find that very creepy. Very, very creepy. All right. Got to get into it.

02:02:20

Got to get into it. I'm not sure I can get it all through, but at least we can mark where we were.

02:02:26

Now, the reason why he thinks this is important is because he says that we need to have unity. Okay. He's starting with the introduction and chapter one, and he's going to do chapter one.

02:02:34

He's going to do a total of 10 videos. Like I said, I've only seen, I know there are six up. Maybe there's more.

02:02:39

I haven't looked. It's going to take me long enough to get through the six, but we will eventually. So he's in the introduction talking about how he started the book.

02:02:48

King James only position is so divisive. On page 16, he says, and by the way, the reason I mentioned that was

02:02:54

I was first introduced to it by my parents going back East and talking about all the churches that they encountered that had been divided, had split over the

02:03:04

King James only issue. This book is written out of a desire for peace in the church of Jesus Christ.

02:03:10

And he talks about how there have been splits as a result of the King James where churches have split.

02:03:16

I can't tell you how many letters I've gotten over the years. I, especially when the first came up, some of them that really ripped your heart out was, oh, if you had just written this book a year earlier, it could have saved our church because it saved our missions work.

02:03:29

People have broken fellowship one with another over this issue. Well, here's the ridiculous thing about this is that he's claiming that the

02:03:37

King James only position is bad for unity and that it's divisive. Well, think about how.

02:03:43

Now listen carefully, folks. Ridiculous. It is to think that having multiple Bible versions in English is going to create unity.

02:03:50

OK, let me give you an illustration from politics. Let's say the United States Constitution was available in 400 different versions.

02:03:58

Do you think that's going to bring more unity to lawmakers and to Supreme Court justices and people that are interpreting and reading the

02:04:05

Constitution? Of course not. People already argue about what the Constitution means and how it's interpreted it.

02:04:10

Can you imagine if they had hundreds of different versions of it, the confusion? And you wouldn't even be able to have a conversation about the

02:04:17

Constitution. What's the really obvious problem with that particular illustration?

02:04:23

We don't have 100 different versions of the Bible. We have 100 translations. The Constitution was written in English and we still possess it.

02:04:35

We do not have the original manuscripts and they weren't written in English. They were written in Hebrew, a few chapters in Aramaic and Greek.

02:04:43

And we don't possess those originals anymore. So there's absolutely no parallel at all.

02:04:49

And the unity of the church, he's going to say their unity is based on the

02:04:55

King James Version of the Bible. Well, given that they don't have any unity, because if you're yelling at people to be picked up by the deacons and chucked out and calling them idiots during your church service, sir, that's not unity.

02:05:08

You may think that is. It's enforced unity because you've got the biggest deacons, but that ain't unity, my friend.

02:05:15

The unity of the church is based upon the common confession that Jesus Christ is Lord, that he is the

02:05:21

Messiah, the Son of the Living God. That is the foundation stone of the church.

02:05:27

That's the basis of our unity, not the translation of the Bible we use in a language that would not come into existence for a thousand years after Jesus.

02:05:41

Okay? Amazing. With someone who's using a totally different version that leaves out entire sentences or adds entire sentences or just says something completely different here or there or somewhere else.

02:05:54

Okay? And it's the same thing with the Bible. Look, throughout this, and we're gonna have to address some of the examples he tries to give, but throughout this, the idea is, if you've got

02:06:08

ESV, that's a completely different Bible than the King James, and that is baloney.

02:06:15

That is baloney. I've said it before, I'll say it again. You apply the exact same rules of interpretation and hermeneutics to the entirety, not just to one verse here or one verse there, but to the entirety of the text, the

02:06:32

ESV and the King James version, you will not have a different message. It is absurd to argue otherwise.

02:06:39

Only the ignorant who have no earthly idea what the whole Bible actually says could ever accept something like that.

02:06:49

They are not completely different books with different messages, but that's fundamental to his position.

02:06:58

Often you'll talk to five people about the same thing. You ask five people about salvation, you're gonna get five different answers. Okay? In these big non -denominational churches or these

02:07:07

Baptist churches where they use multiple versions, everybody believes totally different things. They're not even reading the same

02:07:12

Bible. Yeah. And how well does the NIFB movement stay unified using the

02:07:18

King James? How quickly were they producing entire videos about how the guy that they had on their panel one week earlier, ripping and snorting on however else's apostates, now one week later, he's the false prophet and he's the false teacher.

02:07:40

Yeah. But they've all got their King James version of the Bible and it gives them a bunch of unity.

02:07:46

No, it doesn't give them any unity at all. And going into a church, look, you will find, you go into a

02:07:57

Reformed Baptist church, you go into a Reformed church, and you will find significantly higher levels of understanding and unity and interpretation.

02:08:11

And it doesn't matter whether they've got the new King James or the ESV or the new American Standard or whatever it is that they're using.

02:08:19

That's just the reality. And so to think that you're going to get unity from a whole bunch of different Bible versions is ridiculous.

02:08:25

Now, our church, Faithful Word Baptist Church, has about 400 people in it and we're all King James Bible only.

02:08:31

So everybody's got a King James Bible. Well, that's why we have unity in our church. Okay? Because we're all following the same rule as the

02:08:38

Bible says. We're all minding the same thing. We all have the same foundation. I mean, if the Bible is our foundation...

02:08:43

Now notice, first of all, there is a tremendous amount of video evidence that all is not well at Faithful Word Baptist Church and that this unity is a very surface level unity and not a deep doctrinal unity.

02:09:04

It's a unity of fear of being screamed at by Steven Anderson from the pulpit. That's enough to keep most people in line.

02:09:12

But this idea that, you know, as long as we're carrying around the same Bible, we're going to have the exact same understanding of it.

02:09:22

It's just absurd. What's the favorite English Bible translation of cults in the

02:09:28

United States? The King James. Why? Because it's free. And because it's language, you can twist it easier than some of the modern translations.

02:09:37

But the Watchtower Society used the King James right up until they created their own in NWT.

02:09:44

The Mormons still use it. They're all carrying it around. They're all carrying it.

02:09:52

How come they don't have unity with Faithful Word Baptist Church? It doesn't have anything to do with the translation.

02:09:59

Good. There ought to be a division between those who are King James and those who are reading an ESV or a New American Standard or an

02:10:05

NIV. Because how can we have unity with people who believe a totally different Bible? There's also confusion, and it's constant in Anderson.

02:10:14

Always just constant. And this is a standard element of King James only non -think.

02:10:22

Not thinking, but non -thinking. King James only struggle with categories.

02:10:28

So they will switch categories and equivocate constantly. So Bible and translation of Bible are the same thing, or they're different.

02:10:37

He knows differently. He's worked as a professional German translator.

02:10:43

So when we got into the section where I was talking about translation, he was agreeing with me all the time. Yeah, a lot of King James guys are wrong about this because he has to.

02:10:52

You cannot literally translate word for word from English into German or German into English.

02:10:58

It's not possible. Can't be done. So he knows that. He understands that. Unlike the vast majority of King James onlyists who don't understand that.

02:11:07

So he gets that, but it doesn't change anything. He will still equivocate and violate categories over and over again as he does here.

02:11:15

Well, you know, if the source of our belief is the Bible, yeah, the Bible, not the King James translation of the

02:11:21

Bible from 1600 years after the birth of Christ in a language that didn't exist then. Those are two different things.

02:11:28

And every single one of the King James translators would agree with me against him on this.

02:11:35

It's interesting. He's later going to talk about just how brilliant they were and stuff like that, but he doesn't believe what they wrote in their introduction.

02:11:41

No, no, he doesn't. Not by a lot because he, you know, what he says about the

02:11:47

Septuagint, they accepted the Septuagint being for what we know it was historically. So he's not consistent by any stretch of the imagination.

02:11:55

Okay, that leaves out 17 verses in the New Testament that completely rewords things and changes things and is going to promote a different doctrine at the end of the day.

02:12:03

Okay, we can't be unified with those people. No, and if those things were true, if they were completely different Bibles, then you'd have a case.

02:12:09

They're not, obviously, and hence there's nothing to them. Another thing he brings up in the introduction is that the

02:12:18

English language, according to him, is a less rich language than the original Greek and Hebrew. He said, you know, you're translating on page 17 from an ancient text, a rich foreign language into our less rich English language.

02:12:34

That just simply isn't true. English is a very rich language. In fact, by many metrics, English is the richest language on the planet.

02:12:40

I mean, English has the greatest vocabulary of any language on the planet. Well, we're talking about a modern language versus an ancient language, and hence no one needed to have a

02:12:50

Greek word for font, upload, pixel, or anything else.

02:12:56

I, obviously, as he should be able to know if he's got all this linguistic capacity, was talking about the grammatical and syntactical capacity of the

02:13:07

Greek language to make specific assertions simply by the forms of the words.

02:13:13

Uh, English can't do that. We have to use all sorts of was, and were, and be, and helping words, and it's very clumsy and difficult to get to the nuances of a periphrastic construction or things along those lines.

02:13:29

Ice top with the infinitive, and all that kind of stuff that Greek had established.

02:13:35

I mean, the Greek part, well, the article in Greek, far beyond anything that we have in the

02:13:43

English language. We struggle to even begin to express it. And the participle, wow, the

02:13:50

Greek participle so far beyond the English participle is not even funny. That's what I was talking about, and I stand by it.

02:13:57

And I think anybody who actually does read those languages would agree.

02:14:03

Dr. James White, about some of the bad stuff in the NIV, when we were filming our movie,

02:14:08

New World Order Bible Versions, if you watch that movie, New World Order Bible Versions, and I talked to him about, what about this in the

02:14:14

NIV? What about that in the NIV? He says multiple times, well, don't expect me to defend the NIV. So once again, um, one of the primary thought errors of King James Onlius, again, they can't do categories.

02:14:30

So they can't understand how you could, on the one hand, defend the

02:14:36

NIV in my book against false accusations from the King James Onlius.

02:14:41

At the same time, turn around and say, well, yeah, Sarx in the NIV, that's problematic.

02:14:49

And of course, the new NIV has gone way beyond where the 1984 edition that I was using in the book has gone.

02:14:58

And if I were to do a new edition of the book, I would probably not even focus on the NIV. I'd use the

02:15:03

ESV, because it's pretty much taken the place of the NIV amongst conservatives, amongst the people that would be the audience of my specific book.

02:15:12

But again, the idea is, you know, he's accusing me of inconsistency, and most of this for King James Onlius comes because they cannot make, or will not make, or are not accustomed to making, or have been taught that it's bad to make, category distinctions.

02:15:26

Recognize that on the one hand, you can do this. On the other hand, it's not a contradiction. But for them, it comes that way because of the way they think.

02:15:35

You know, it doesn't make any sense, folks. The reason that he sings the praises of the NIV in this book is because the NIV is the bestseller, and he wants his book to be a bestseller.

02:15:42

So obviously, if he wants his book to be popular in Christian bookstores, he can't condemn the NIV. Never crossed my mind.

02:15:50

And of course, the topic that I'm addressing in the book would be relevant to anyone with an

02:15:56

NRSV, NASB, what's the CEB now, whatever the terminology is.

02:16:02

It would be relevant to all of them, and they've all found it to be useful along those lines. Now, one of the major themes of this book...

02:16:09

Okay, now, I'm going to play an extended section here, all right? This is probably three or four minutes.

02:16:15

This is one of the main reasons I wanted to start doing this response. Here, Anderson tries to basically steal presuppositional argumentation, but again, because he doesn't understand it and does not do category thought, misrepresents it and misses the point.

02:16:38

But this is an argument you might not hear in other contexts, and so I felt it was really important to be able to address it.

02:16:46

Now, one of the major themes of this book all the way throughout is that he accuses those who are King James only of using circular reasoning or circular logic.

02:16:54

And the way he explains this is he says, you know, the King James Bible is the standard because it's the standard, you know, that we as King James onlyists just believe the

02:17:04

King James. Why do we believe the King James? Because the King James is the Word of God. Well, how do you know it's the

02:17:10

Word of God? Because it says it's the Word of God, you know, or whatever. That's what he would call a circular argument of using the

02:17:15

King James to prove the King James, okay? Well, obviously what

02:17:21

I specifically stated is that the King James is an English translation of the Bible. It's not the

02:17:28

Bible itself. And so it has to be judged on the same grounds and basis as any other

02:17:34

English translation of the Bible, whether it came before the King James or after the

02:17:40

King James. The same standards have to be used in the analysis, and you cannot simply begin with the

02:17:47

King James because there are translations before, translations after. You can't simply begin with an English translation without answering the same questions that you're going to ask of every other translation.

02:17:58

That's what I was saying. But what's funny about that is that when I spoke to him when we were filming our movie and when

02:18:05

I interviewed him, you know, he had to admit the fact that all of Christianity is based on a circular logic or circular reasoning because of the fact that why do we believe the

02:18:15

Word of God? Why do we believe the Bible is God's Word? Because the Bible says it's God's Word. So forget King James or English translation.

02:18:22

How about just God in general? Why do we believe in God? What's the evidence for God? We believe in God because the

02:18:30

Bible said that God exists, okay? And why do we believe in the Bible? Because the Bible is written by God.

02:18:36

And why do we believe in God? Because the Bible told us about God. And why do we believe the Bible? Because it's written by God. So we believe the

02:18:42

Bible because of God, and we believe in God because of the Bible. You know what that is? According to him, that's a circular logic. So to attack

02:18:48

King James -only -ism for using circular reasoning is basically to attack Christianity for circular reasoning because of the fact that the

02:18:56

Bible and God are the reasons for each other, okay? And there's nothing wrong with that. You know, I believe in the

02:19:02

Bible because God's Word is powerful. I believe in the Bible because of the Holy Spirit, because of the fact that when

02:19:07

I read the Bible, it has power. It's the Word of God. What does the Bible say should be the basis of our faith?

02:19:13

It says, faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God, okay? The Bible says that our faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

02:19:22

So then when we apply that to the King James Version and say, well, the King James Version is the one that has the power. The King James Version is the one that's bearing fruit.

02:19:28

The King James Version is the one that the Holy Spirit testifies to us that it's the Word of God.

02:19:33

We hear the voice of the shepherd when we read the King James, and the King James is the standard because it's the standard, because it's the

02:19:40

Bible, the Word of God, that has power, that God has used, that got us saved in the first place. So, you know, he doesn't like that kind of logic and calls it a circular argument, but you know what?

02:19:51

Right back at you, buddy, because your faith in God and your faith in Jesus and your Bible is a circular argument by that logic.

02:19:58

No, not even close. First of all, he clearly hasn't a clue what

02:20:04

I tried to explain to him as to the nature of presuppositional argumentation, the transcendental argument, or any of the characteristics thereof.

02:20:13

Secondly, again, category issue. The King James is a primarily

02:20:19

Anglican, early 17th century English translation of the

02:20:26

Bible. It is not sufficient in of itself to function as the ground of being as God is.

02:20:36

So, God's self -attestation and an English translation's self -attestation are not the same thing.

02:20:46

The circular argument of ultimate authorities is rational.

02:20:52

The circular argument of a 17th century English translation of the Bible is absurd.

02:20:59

They are not the same thing. So, I wanted to make sure that was laid out clearly, because that's trying to steal a valid concept and apply it to something that isn't even close to being sufficient to be a valid concept.

02:21:16

But that's what you get from Stephen Anderson. I'm not sure

02:21:22

I'm going to make it on this one, but we'll get as close as we can. The next group of individuals would insist that the above Okay, so now what he's doing, he's reading from where I defined the various kinds of King James -only type thinking.

02:21:38

Textus receptus, or received text, either has been supernaturally preserved over time or even inspired, and hence maintained in an inerrant condition.

02:21:47

So, what's funny is that James White doesn't believe that. James White does not believe that any Greek text has been supernaturally preserved over time or even inspired, and hence maintained in an inerrant condition.

02:21:59

So, what you have to understand is these people that are not King James -only, it's not that they're not King James -only and that they just want to use other

02:22:05

English translations. They don't even believe that the Greek New Testament that we have today is perfect. They believe that there are problems even in the

02:22:12

Greek New Testament. So, basically, he's talking about this group that they're wrong.

02:22:17

He's saying they're wrong because they think that the textus receptus, the received Greek text, has been supernaturally preserved.

02:22:23

Well, why wouldn't it be supernaturally preserved when the Bible says that heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away?

02:22:31

It says that it's easier for heaven and earth to pass than for one jot or one tittle to pass from the law till all be fulfilled.

02:22:38

I mean, the Bible tells us that God will preserve his word unto all generations and that God's word will abide forever, okay?

02:22:47

So, yeah, of course it's supernaturally preserved. Now, I turned around and realized I pulled my

02:22:52

TR and took it with me to Owensboro, and I haven't put it back yet. It's sitting on my desk in another room.

02:23:00

But the textus receptus, as we have explained so many times before, that he would have is a

02:23:10

Greek text based upon an English translation, and it did not exist until the 1800s.

02:23:17

So, that's a fact. Scrivener did it. Scrivener compared

02:23:23

Erasmus, Stephanus, and Beza, went to the King James translators, saw what choices they made, and by the way, he'll emphasize later on, oh, there are 53 billion guys, but they're all broken up into teams, into committees, and so you only had a certain number of people, a relatively small number of people, working on any one portion.

02:23:42

That's why they never claimed inviolability for themselves, and that's why not a single one of the King James translators would even give a second thought to King James -only -ism.

02:23:51

They would just go, oh, you've got to be kidding me. You've all have devolved that far? Yeah. Anyway, what

02:23:57

Scrivener did is he went to their choices that they made, because they were choosing between Erasmus, Stephanus, and Beza, and created a

02:24:05

Greek text based upon the textual choices of the King James translators. So, there is not a single

02:24:10

Greek manuscript in the universe that reads exactly like TR.

02:24:17

None. So, he doesn't either know or care, he'd have to know, he read the book, but does not seem to address the origin of the phrase textus receptus.

02:24:30

It was an advertisement in 1633 from the Elsevier brothers. It was an advertisement, it's a promo.

02:24:37

Yes, they wrote their advertisements in Latin in those days. Textus receptus, received text.

02:24:42

He takes that to mean, oh yes, the church, down to the ages, has received this text.

02:24:52

That's pure fiction. He seems to believe it, but that's what it is.

02:24:57

It's pure fiction. That's not what textus receptus meant. Well, received text, or textus receptus, simply means that which has been passed down.

02:25:07

It's been received by us. We received it from whom? The previous generation. So, it's known as the traditional text, or the text that's been passed down, the received text.

02:25:16

And the logic for this is that... You might be able to use that phrase of the Byzantine manuscript tradition as a whole, but then again, go to the

02:25:25

Book of Revelation. Sometimes you can't even identify what the Byzantine manuscript tradition is. It splits into the A and the K groups, and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

02:25:32

So, there are numerous places where the TR does not represent the

02:25:37

Byzantine manuscript tradition at that point. So, even at that point, historically, he's in error. God preserved his word.

02:25:45

So, therefore, we don't believe that the true word of God is buried in the sand somewhere, and some archaeologist has to dig up.

02:25:51

By the way, people, archaeologists have dug up numerous Byzantine manuscripts as well. So, this constant,

02:25:58

I don't believe in the Bible, they're buried in the sand. Well, then, I guess you don't like your Bible either. The true word of God.

02:26:04

No, we that believe in the textus receptus believe that it has been preserved supernaturally by God, as Dr.

02:26:10

White stated here, and it's been maintained in an inerrant condition. Folks, if it hasn't been maintained in an inerrant condition, then we're in trouble.

02:26:16

Which one? That's why I asked Doug Wilson, which one? At least he said that one right there.

02:26:22

Right down there, 1535 Stephanus. Right there, that's 1555

02:26:30

Stephanus. So, that's the one that Doug Wilson says is inspired in there. Now, I don't want to connect

02:26:37

Doug with Steven Anderson. Love you, Doug, but I'm not going to do that to you.

02:26:43

One of these things is not like the other on a big level. It'd be almost humorous to see

02:26:54

Doug dealing with Steven Anderson. But anyway, we wouldn't want to do that to him. Doug's aging, and we don't want to age him any faster than we have to.

02:27:03

But anyway, what was I talking about? Oh, so, this whole line, which one?

02:27:10

Which one is the inspired inerrant one? Because if it's the blue case bound edition you're carrying around, that didn't exist until the 1800s, so you don't have an inspired text of the 1800s.

02:27:19

After the translation of the King James, right? Right. How can you get up and say, well, the

02:27:24

Word of God's inerrant? But then you can't even point to a Greek text that's inerrant? Because Dr.

02:27:31

White's Greek text, he doesn't claim it's inerrant. That's why he's on the 27th edition or 28th edition of the

02:27:37

Nestle -Allen Greek text or the UBS 4th edition or the UBS 5th edition. Why does it keep changing?

02:27:44

Because they don't believe it's perfect. They don't believe it's inerrant. And if they go dig up some new papyrus in Egypt or some new manuscript, they'll change it again, folks.

02:27:52

They'll dig up more evidence and more manuscripts, and they'll change it again and again and again. It just keeps changing, okay?

02:27:59

Behold the voice of tradition. Behold the voice of the man who borrows from the past, establishes a tradition, and then mocks any further study.

02:28:13

Erasmus would have loved to have the papyri. He would have used the papyri. The people that produced what becomes the

02:28:19

Textus Receptus would have loved to have had what we have today, and not a one of them would have agreed with this man.

02:28:24

Every single one of them would have laughed at him in his face. Every single one of them.

02:28:30

Every translator, Erasmus, Stephanus, Beza, you can't claim any of them because they would have rejected your position wholeheartedly.

02:28:44

Never took the position you take. If a papyrus was found in Egypt, we'd be excited because many of them have been.

02:28:56

But what's interesting is, the more we find, the more we discover we already knew about all the variants anyways. They give us an earlier text, very important, p66, p75, p72, p46, p45, the one

02:29:08

I'm working on, all really important. They help to verify. Vilifying these things shows how these individuals, like Stephen and Anjan, could never engage, never engage the world in any kind of meaningful apologetic at all.

02:29:24

And they don't. They don't. The world loves when these guys come along because they're so easy to defeat. I didn't get through all of it, but I got through half of it.

02:29:35

And so I'm gonna make a note as to where I got and we will try to fix that.

02:29:44

Oops. Yeah, there it is. We will try to continue on we've been going for two and a half hours.

02:29:52

And that's plenty long. We got through almost everything we wanted to get through and came close.

02:30:00

So I'm feeling pretty good. So we'll continue on and maybe even take some phone calls next time about all of this stuff.