And We Have Lift Off!

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:34

Well, greetings and welcome to the Dividing Line from the new mobile studios here in Kerrville, Texas, is where we are right now.

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My apologies for last evening. I managed to try to do this in a black hole of the internet.

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The park Wi -Fi was non -existent. The cell coverage was utterly insufficient.

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The positive thing is that we now have Starlink backup and operational.

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That's a backup if we need it, but we are in a place right now, we've got good connections. Here we are.

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I can't believe that this is actually happening. It's funny. It's ironic.

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In fact, I was in Fort Stockton, I realized this last night. I was in Fort Stockton last year when

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I all of a sudden realized, hey, wait a minute. If I found an

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RV that had bunk beds in the back, it was maybe only like 34 feet long or something like that.

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We could convert the bedroom up front into a mobile studio.

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It was at that very same park that sunk us yesterday that I started looking.

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I didn't find any grand designs that did that. Next place I looked was

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Jayco. Found this one. I looked at many other places, but this was the one that I found sitting in that park.

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The web worked enough that I could at least do things like that. That's where it started.

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That was about six months ago. I shared the idea with Rich.

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That started a long process that was really not all that long when you think about it that has now led to here

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I am. The problem is you can't see all the stuff that I can see.

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I am staring at a 4K camera in front of me. I can then go over to another 4K camera over here from another angle and say hello to everybody there.

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Then I can, as we will do later on, show you a little something that I really want to be able to do.

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That is Accordance Bible software. I will be able to write on that and do everything that I like to do with that.

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Then come back to here. I'm controlling it all with a switcher. I'm in control of it.

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Rich could control it, but I'm not going to let him. He might be able to take over anyways.

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I don't know. It's possible. This way I get to put up what

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I want to put up when I want to put it up in essence. I've got my microphone here, my laptop here, the touch screen over on this side where I have

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Accordance. I'll be able to do all that kind of stuff and show videos and do things like that. There's a streaming

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PC over here, which is how we're connecting out into the world. Our 5G thing over there, like I said, if we need to have

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Starlink up, we've got good connection here so I didn't have to set it up. We have that as a backup now in case

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I fall into another black hole like we did yesterday. Here we are. There's a screen in front of me with I don't know how many different things.

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Rich says a couple of them are completely irrelevant and he'll eventually fix them, get rid of them.

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I have what's in preview and all sorts of stuff up there that's telling me what's going on.

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It's probably too much information, honestly, but there you go. Here we are.

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Let me start off by expressing thanks on a level it's really hard to put into words because once we came up with this project, well, you had to fund it.

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We had already started moving toward a different tow vehicle for safety reasons.

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We had been told initially by Derek Melton to get a diesel and he was right, but we didn't listen.

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We had a different vehicle. It was a wonderful vehicle. It really is. It's a beautiful truck. It wasn't a diesel and there is just a world's difference in ability to pull and ability to stop as in slow down down a hill between a diesel and a gas -powered truck.

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If you've never pulled with both, I won't bother to go into right now, but there's a huge difference.

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We had already started to go there. A dear, dear brother who I won't go into details now made it possible for us to get that truck.

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I have this now parked in the shade tree next to the unit here in Texas that works just so, so well.

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I get so many people in the parks wishing they had as nice a vehicle as we do because they all know what a difference it makes going up the hills and going down the hills.

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Then we got the unit and we came to you all and we began a fundraiser.

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And I'm very, very thankful that we have paid this unit off. And the only thing left on the fundraiser that we still need your assistance with is what it took to convert a bedroom because I would be sitting pretty much right toward the top of the bed right now if you could sit, which you couldn't anyways.

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I'm converting a bedroom into a fully functional 4K camera, multi -camera, mobile webcasting studio where we will be able to do debates and all sorts of incredible stuff even while on the road.

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And so it's the stuff we've had to get to be able to do that that is still there.

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And we're making progress toward that. And it's all because of you folks. It's every one of you that bought a knob in the kitchen that eventually became air conditioning units and wheels and the automatic level system on the units and everything else.

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You all made this possible. We came to you and you all have been so generous to make this happen.

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And so we're going to do everything we can to utilize this to the glory of God and to the edification of God's people.

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So we thank you for it. Please pray for our safety. Yes, we have insurance on everything.

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But as someone said, we need to pray that the truck and the unit will be like the shoes of the

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Israelites in the wilderness that did not wear out. And that certainly has been my prayer as well as we look at this.

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But all of that, like I said, I came up with the idea of the unit and how for me to sleep in the back in bunk beds and trade in a little of my comfort for making this available.

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I had almost nothing to do with what you see in front of you right now, except for the colors on the wall behind me.

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That was about my only contribution is I did find the really super cool sort of waterfall type colors lamp that's behind me.

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I found that and I think that's about it. I cannot think of anything.

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Well, I did only last week or the week before say to Rich, no, we need to put that other camera at a different angle over there.

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And so that's why it's at the angle that it's at. And that's about it.

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Everything else in here is the result of the most famous French person from Prescott.

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Rich designed all this stuff. And if you've not ever seen what a studio looks like or recognize the amount of cabling in here, for example, the number of HDMI cables and brackets, because this has to be a studio that can undergo 20 earthquakes a day, maybe more.

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And that's what it has to do. So these cameras are smaller cameras, but they're super high quality cameras, but they need to be protected.

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I can't leave them up. So there has to be a quick disconnect stuff because, you know, initially,

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I think Rich probably just wanted me to walk in, hit a couple of buttons, and we could go. Doesn't work that way. You just can't protect electronic equipment.

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Let me just give you an example. It happened again on this trip. I have a little closet place in the very back of the unit because I sleep back there.

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I have a little place to hang shirts and some drawers for socks and stuff like that.

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I have to, I've just got to realize this now. I keep putting shirts back there on plastic hangers.

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I can't. It bounces so hard. It snaps the heads off of the hangers and they end up in a jumble.

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It already happened on this trip and jumble on the floor. That's how much bouncing takes place, especially on I -40 in New Mexico, anywhere in New Mexico and Louisiana.

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Both states are definitely competing with each other for having the biggest holes in the road possible.

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And so you've got to protect this stuff. And so I have a drawer over here.

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I take these cameras down. There's three cables I have to insert in each one.

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By the way, Rich, we need to take those plastic things off camera too. You took it off that one, but we need to take it off that one.

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Anyway, he bought the super high quality styrofoam stuff and cut out the stuff to put the cameras in there and the microphone in there.

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And I've got one light over here. The other light over here is called a window. Natural light going on right now.

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And so you've got it. So all these cables are zip -tied in place and they're organized and they're all hooked into the right places.

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You got power run all over these places. It's all zip -tied together. I was going home last week or the week before and I get a phone call.

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And I hit on the truck and as soon as it picks up,

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Rich says, never mind, it popped back in. And I'm like, what popped back in? My knee.

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He was in here working. And the only way to do this stuff, I mean, where I'm sitting would have been open before underneath the bed.

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I would have no place for my foot, for my feet. So he had to build a platform, bought this desk, look for this desk, lightweight desk that still has some substance to it.

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And then he attached the table to this platform and had to attach the platform to the floor where the bed used to be and match the carpet to the carpet that's along the floorboards in here.

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And while he's doing all that, you got to get down on the ground. I've had to get down on the ground in here a number of times. And I'm going to tell you something, at our age, getting down on the ground is not as fun as it used to be.

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And his knee went out. And it had been out for a half hour. And he finally gave up that it was going to go back in.

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So he's calling me to come get him to take him to the ER. And as the phone's ringing, evidently his guardian angel didn't want him going with me anywhere because I've taken

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Rich to the ER before. I'm not going to tell that story. I've taken Rich to the ER before. You know, as you get older, stuff like this happens.

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And so his guardian angel popped it back into place. But there was one day he got to my house.

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I had it parked out in front about 8 .30 in the morning and left at 4 .30 that night. It takes time to do all this and to do it well and to do it right.

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And it's been done right. So look, if you enjoy what we're doing here, if you're appreciative of the stuff that we've got coming up in the future, there's primarily just one person to thank for all this hard work.

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And it's not me. So I know Rich already has a little cult following out there, you know.

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You're coming up to me at various churches when I'm speaking. And evidently, the password to get into the cult is be nicer to Rich, something along those lines.

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I am nice to Rich. I really am. But hey, if that's how you get into the group, that's cool.

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But seriously, this is a massive amount of work. And this guy could have made a whole lot more money in other areas of work than working for this ministry.

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I can assure you of that. Because if we had paid somebody to put this together, it wouldn't have been any more efficient or looked any better than what we've got.

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So well, we did sort of pay him to do that. But that's not anything special. That's just what he does.

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He does the studios at the office. He did all that stuff. He did all the painting.

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He did all the paneling and all the wiring and all that stuff, which obviously was behind all of this too.

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He knew what needed to be done, what kind of power requirements there were in cabling and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

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So please, however, do not write in and ask Rich to moonlight, to design studios for anybody else.

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He's ours. Not looking for anything extra to do there. So anyway, very, very, very thankful for all that Rich has done here.

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And it is just an amazing thing to look at. It really, really is. So what I want to do today,

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I did a little driving line that Rich posted as well, commenting on some of the stuff going on, on other subjects right now.

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You don't want to get into that type of thing. I wanted to sort of celebrate what we're doing here.

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And oh, goodness. I'm sorry.

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I was just interrupted by... I have my

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Twitter set on a thing where it refreshes every little bit.

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So sometimes a video will come up and sort of like, ah, what on earth was that all about?

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There's just a lot of weird stuff going on in the world today. Anyway, what I wanted to do today is

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I want to sort of go back over the history of this ministry.

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It is our 40th anniversary. We're going to be doing some cool stuff later on.

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Of course, that's coming at us so fast that it probably just could go flying right by us. Anyway, since we're sitting here in our new unit doing this,

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I was thinking back about when this ministry began, what we were focused on, and just how different things are today.

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Most of you know that our first focus was Mormonism. I had met with two more missionaries just a matter of weeks after my marriage in the summer of 1982.

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Elders Reed and Reese were their names. I started teaching a class on how to witness to Mormons at the very large

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Southern Baptist Church that I was a member of at the time.

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And that class then started bringing together the first people that made up Alpha Omega Ministries.

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And when it started, there were four of us, Mike and Linda Beliveau and my wife Kelly and I. It wasn't too long after that that Mike took over teaching the

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Mormonism class that I was teaching, and I started teaching a Christian doctrines class. Now, some of you will find this very interesting.

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The primary book that we used was by Charles Ryrie. I'll give you an idea of my background at that particular point in time.

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But it was also pretty much around this time period that... Well, actually, man, that would still be three or four years down the road, actually, before I was in seminary, when

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I started to discover Reformed Theology. And it was while I was teaching the

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Christian doctrines class that after one particular session, a fellow walks up to me and introduces me to his friend who was wearing a maroon members -only jacket.

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And I will never forget it because he looked a little charismatic, because he was.

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And that was the first time I met Rich. And Rich had a lot of learning to do at that particular point in time in his life.

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But that was where we first met was while I was teaching that particular class.

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And then Rich started coming out to the LDS Easter pageant, which we started tracting.

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1984 was the first year that we, in any organized way, went after doing that work in Mesa.

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It was 84. It was 1983 that Kelly and I drove out there for the first time to the pageant.

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Well, we rode out there on a Kawasaki 440. And the next year was when

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Wally Tope went with us out to the Easter pageant. And that's where I learned a lot.

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There was nobody who could pass out tracks and witness to Mormons like Wally Tope.

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He was the energizer bunny. He was an odd fellow. There's no question about it. I've mentioned before, we let him stay at our apartment.

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And he literally drove our Persian cat insane. Cat was never the same after he stayed in that apartment.

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I don't know what happened. I'd love to have video. But remember, this is long before the internet. This was before cell phones.

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This was before pagers. This was when you carried a dime around to make a phone call at a payphone.

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A very, very different time. We started doing newsletters and stuff like that, because that's the only way to communicate with people.

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The computer had been invented. We bought our first computer. And we used it to write what we call the information sheets, which are still available on our website now, and design our first tracks that we used with Mormons and things like that.

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And that was also when we first headed up to Salt Lake City. Had no idea what we were doing. No idea what we were doing.

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We almost ruined a poor man. We really didn't. We took Dave Warner up there.

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And he almost never, I don't know, that he ever witnessed a Mormon again. We didn't give him any training.

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Well, we did. We trained him all through the night as we drove from Phoenix to Salt Lake City.

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That's not the way to do it. When you're 21, it makes sense.

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But yeah, that wasn't the way to do it. And Mormonism was our major, major focus.

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And so in keeping with that, I wanted to just remind everybody, if you're going to be witnessing to the

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Mormons, anything like that, of at least one text that I think is really, really useful. And it's right here in Isaiah 44, 24.

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Isaiah 44, 24. Thus says Yahweh, your Redeemer, and the one who formed you from the womb. I, Yahweh, am the maker of all things, stretching out the heavens by myself and spreading out the earth all alone.

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Now, this is the Legacy Standard Bible. If you're going to be talking to Mormons, you want to probably be reading from the

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King James if you just simply want to simplify things for you. But the point is that here

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Yahweh says he is the maker of all things. And then notice the two phrases, stretching out the heavens by myself and spreading out the earth all alone without any other is literally what the

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Hebrew says. Why is this important? Well, part of it is to tell you a story.

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Once we started doing this with more and more people over the years, somewhere around 1985,

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I forget who it was, but we got ahold of somebody at the church that did

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T -shirts, you know, silk screening of T -shirts. And I came up with something called, and this was before I knew what a kuj was, just so you know how long ago this was.

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We came up with what's called witnessing with the word T -shirt, the witnessing with the word T -shirt. I'm wondering if Rich still has his witnessing with the word

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T -shirt because I think you had a yellow one, if I recall correctly at some point. I do not,

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I do not. You did not have a yellow? You didn't have one at all? Oh, I had one back then.

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I had one back then. I don't have one anymore though. Rich is not down here on the floor.

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People are going to wonder, oh, you've got him, you've got him, you've got him underneath the floor. He's in a little cell down there.

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No, this is where the streaming PC is. And so if Rich wants to talk to me, it's down there.

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So I just sort of automatically look to where the voice is. I wouldn't have to do that because it doesn't really accomplish anything.

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But just want to make sure that none of you think that I actually have Rich still.

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He's actually running everything because I'm incompetent to do any of that. Anyway, so we had a witnessing with the word

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T -shirt. And the reason I mentioned kuj is it was very colorful. It was a color fade type thing.

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And that was my idea. And I designed it, and it had Greek and Hebrew on it. And it had certain verses.

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Now we had started, even at that point, while I was doing the class on Mormonism, I would take questions at the end of the class, and people started asking questions about Jehovah's Witnesses.

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And like, well, that's not the subject. I really, you know. And so pretty early on, it was within, you know, it was by within the first two years,

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I'd say I had to start studying

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Jehovah's Witnesses. And so some of the verses had to do with the deity of Christ.

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I think Colossians 2 .9 was one of them. And then the other verses had to do with witnessing to Mormons.

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And I'll never forget, I was wearing that shirt when I had to drive,

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I had to get up in the middle of night from the Motel 6 because we stayed, we've always stayed only at the best, the best places.

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And Motel 6 in Salt Lake was where we would stay. Parallel bunch of people into a single room.

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It was, we were all young guys, why not? And I had to get up, a fellow by the name of Tony DeLute was flying in at like two o 'clock in the morning.

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And I had to go pick him up at the airport. And so I was wearing my witnessing with the word t -shirt.

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And I was, this was, you know how long ago this was? You could just walk to the gate and wait for the person to come.

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That's just pre 9 -11. So yeah. And I'm standing there and I'm half asleep waiting for them to deplane.

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And this guy walks up to me and starts speaking to me in Hebrew.

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And like I said, I'm half asleep, but I'm like, I'm sorry, what? Any emotions toward my shirt?

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And of course there's Hebrew on my shirt. Well, as soon as I explained what it was about, a

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Christian ministry, oh, he was just highly offended that we would have Hebrew on our, that we dared to use their

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Hebrew. But I'll just never forget that particular instance there in the Salt Lake airport.

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Many, many, many, many, many moons ago before going out the next morning and passing out tracks and many, many people there in Salt Lake City.

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And this was one of the verses, Isaiah 40 before 24. And why? Because in Mormonism, in the

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Mormon temple ceremony, Elohim, who is God the father, sends

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Jehovah and Michael down to organize the earth, not to create the earth.

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The Mormon God cannot create anything ex nihilo. He cannot say, let there be. He can only organize preexisting matter.

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And so it's Elohim sending Jehovah and Michael to organize the earth.

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But here Jehovah says, he's the maker of all things, which include the planet that Elohim lived on.

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He says, man, stretching out the heavens by myself and spreading out the earth all alone.

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Not being sent down by Elohim and not being in company with Michael. So the monotheism of Isaiah 44 -24 is directly contradictory to the concepts enunciated by Joseph Smith and Mormon church.

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It is interesting to realize that I really wonder how many

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Mormons today that you would talk to would even be aware, would even have thought through, even if they're temple

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Mormons, what they have seen. Because I'm pretty certain that scene's still in the temple ceremonies.

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Though there have been some major revisions of the temple ceremonies since we started this ministry.

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There's been at least two, maybe three, major revisions of the temple ceremonies since we started.

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So there you go. So like I said, then pretty early on,

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I started building my Watchtower library. And again, one of the things I am most thankful for, and I don't know where it came from.

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I don't know. Somewhere along the line,

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I grabbed hold of the reality that if you're going to, as a

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Christian, deal with other faith systems, whether you call them cults or false religions or whatever it is, you need to hear what they themselves say.

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You need original sources. When I studied Mormonism, I didn't have that.

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I didn't have it. I didn't have anybody to guide me. There was no one at my church that really...

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There were some people at my church that were a little concerned about what I was doing appropriately.

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I'm a young guy. They tried to give some guidance along those lines, but I didn't have anybody to tell me.

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And somewhere early on, I realized I'm reading all these references to the

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Journal of Discourses and Doctrine of Salvation and Mormon Doctrine and all the rest of this kind of stuff. Marvelous work in a wonder.

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But Wally Taube said, it's a Marvel, more don't wonder. He had different names for all the books.

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Anyway, and so I started going and getting them. And I started building up my

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LDS library. And I had to do the same thing with Jehovah's Witnesses. I had to get their books and read their material.

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And so I started building that up. I subscribed to the Watchtower and Awake Magazine. And things like that.

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And so we started dealing with Jehovah's Witnesses. And one of the key texts that I would highly recommend to people that you memorize is in Colossians Chapter 2.

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You know, see to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, and not according to Christ.

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That's something you probably know. But the verse to memorize is Colossians 2 .9. For in him, all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form.

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And it's short enough that if you read Greek, you can memorize that as well.

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And just simply be ready when the time comes to deal with one particular issue.

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And that particular issue is the fact that the New World Translation of Jehovah's Witnesses mistranslates this text.

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Well, it gives a purposefully misleading and inferior reading of this text.

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And that is that it translates the term theatetas, which means that which makes

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God, God. It is a very strong term referring to the very essence and nature of God.

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It translates that as divine quality to get around the fact that what

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Paul is actually saying is, in Christ, the fullness of deity dwells somaticos, in bodily form.

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This was a slap upside the head to any Gnostic whatsoever. They would never use this kind of language at all.

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And so you can see right there in verse nine, the fullness of deity in bodily form.

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That is a great verse to memorize to deal with Jehovah's Witnesses because it's not one of the verses that they're automatically going to be ready to respond to.

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John 1, 1, John 10, 30, of their, as I've said so many times before, they can respond to those texts in a comatose state.

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You're not getting any thought process going in the mind. Colossians 2, 9 is not nearly as regular a text they have to deal with.

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So we, for quite a while then in the ministry, we're dealing primarily with Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses.

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Early on, I still remember when

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I was in Bible college, my parents coming back from visiting relatives at Tennessee Temple University and telling me about the

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King James only movement, splitting churches and doing all sorts of stuff like that. And so when

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I had first started taking Greek, I had, you know, when

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I opened up my UBS text, third edition corrected, I think. And I saw all those notes at the bottom of the page.

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I asked Dr. Barrett, I said, what are these notes? And he says, that's where the Greek manuscripts differ. And I knew,

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I remember which direction I was facing. I remember which room I was in. That building's gone now, sadly.

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But I knew then I have to master this stuff.

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And it's really funny, only a few years ago, I was sitting with Dr.

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Barrett and he and I are colleagues now. I mean, it was only a decade and a half later.

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Yeah, about a decade and a half later, I started teaching Greek at Golden Gate. He was teaching

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Greek at Golden Gate. He'd teach the advanced class. I'd teach the beginning class. We became colleagues and he told me, he said, oh, you went past me on text criticism by your second year.

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I just had to make it look good. Because I knew already

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I had had far too many conversations with Mormons not to know that this is something you need to understand.

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This is something you need to know and be familiar with. And so King James Only -ism,

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I wrote the King James Only controversy in 1994. And so that whole subject was added to what we were doing.

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But we had already, of course, begun doing something else.

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And that was dealing with the subject of Roman Catholicism. That, I never, ever wanted to be the

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Bible answer. I always felt that you can only do so much well.

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And if you try to do more, you have to get shallower and shallower and shallower.

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Everyone has to make a choice. I mean, I teach church history, but there are some people that's all they do.

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Every day, all the time. So they can go, they can do deep, deep, deep dives all the time.

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They can't tell you anything about Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, textual criticism, Islam. They couldn't teach

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Bible study if they like to, but they can go deep in an area like that. So you can either be, you can try to do everything and only go so deep.

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You can try to just do a very small number of things and go deep, deep, deep, deep. Or you can be somewhere in the middle.

37:45

And I suppose as an apologist and professor and teacher, I'm sort of somewhere in the middle. But I was hesitant to expand too fast and get into stuff that...

38:03

So it was a man by the name of Benny Diaz. Benny was at North Phoenix Baptist Church as well. During this time period somewhere, and this is right at the same time that Rich got involved with this.

38:17

And his... Do you still have your name badge, Rich? Do you still have it somewhere? I do not.

38:23

I do not have the name badge. What? You got rid of it? I did, yeah.

38:31

Yeah. Long time ago, actually. I know you can't hear him, but...

38:39

See, I had a name badge made for Rich. Oh, they heard me. They heard me just fine.

38:48

They can hear you? Yes, I'm running through the sound of the board here. So yeah, they can hear me. Oh, okay.

38:54

All right. I didn't... I just figured there was that little voice over there and it was going to have to go into my microphone. So we wanted this to be a joyful program, but it won't be any longer,

39:06

I'm afraid. I had a name badge made for Rich because when he first got involved with this, he was just like, well,

39:16

I'll just do anything. And so, you know, there were lots of projects that weren't a whole lot of fun to do, but somebody had to do it.

39:25

So we give it to Rich. And so I had a name badge made for him because I had a name badge made for me to be

39:34

Elder Lucas so I could role play Mormons. This was before YouTube. So I could do that because no one had any idea who in the world this young guy was.

39:45

So I could look like a Mormon missionary. So I had Elder Lucas. Lucas is white in Greek. And so I had one made that simply said slime.

39:58

And you can have a different color. So it was white with green. Let's green slime. Because I forget exactly what it was.

40:05

I think we were doing a newsletter or something. And Rich just made the comment that he was just sort of the slime around there.

40:13

And we found the passage in the Bible that he pulled me out of the... What was that?

40:18

We were in the studio at KXEG. It was you, me, and Mike. And you introduced yourself as the president at the time.

40:29

He was the vice president. And you both looked at me and didn't know what to call me.

40:35

So I said, just call me slime. There you go. There you go.

40:42

Slime. Because I had a name badge made up, which he has not kept.

40:53

My heart is empty now.

41:02

So anyway, another individual. This was right around the same time that we put up, we heard about.

41:11

I think, as I recall, how various people around the country were getting phone numbers.

41:20

And they would put an answering machine on it. And they would have phone messages from different groups, primarily for Jehovah's Witnesses.

41:29

Because Jehovah's Witnesses, they won't take tracts from you. They are hard to evangelize. And so eventually we had three phone lines, 266 -2JWS, 266 -2LDS, and 266 -2RCC.

41:46

And we would... And eventually, I just realized, eventually we had a computer do that.

41:54

We actually got this. It was an 8088. And there was this program.

42:01

Remember that? That you could call in and you could choose which one you wanted to listen to.

42:08

And there would actually be a menu of which messages you wanted to listen to. And we eventually did that and took those numbers down, just had one number to call.

42:18

And you could listen to messages for Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, or Roman Catholics. Oh man,

42:23

I remember that. That's so long ago. Anyway, so we would get together at our little apartment,

42:32

Kelly and I's little apartment, after church. And we have pictures of...

42:40

I know this one picture of Mike Beliveau and I standing there. And I would write messages each week and we would record them for the various phone lines.

42:54

And one of the guys that would help us with that was Benny Diaz, who is no longer with us.

43:00

He passed away about... What was that? About five years ago now, I think. Somewhere around there. And he was a former

43:07

Roman Catholic. And he really pressed me.

43:13

He says, look, everything you're saying about the Mormons, they deny scriptural sufficiency.

43:19

Rome denies sola scriptura. They have an unbiblical source of authority. Well, you've got the papacy. They've got an unbiblical gospel.

43:26

You've got purgatory and the mass and stuff like that.

43:33

And so we started getting involved in that area. Before I go into that, though,

43:38

I have to... Sorry. I was thinking about the picture that I have somewhere of Mike and I.

43:48

We didn't have microphones like this. We literally had the little plastic microphones that came with the phone answering machine.

44:00

And so I'd print out the script and we would record it. And sometimes there was a conversation.

44:08

And so in this particular... Sometimes you'd get the giggles.

44:14

Sometimes you'd get the giggles. And in this particular one, Mike had to say

44:21

Wilford Woodruff. Wilford Woodruff. And he developed

44:28

Elmer Fudd syndrome. No matter how many times we tried.

44:36

Wilford Woodruff. I'll never forget that night. We almost gave up on it.

44:43

I don't know how we did it. But yeah, it was good. It was wonderful.

44:50

Those are the days. So anyway, toward the end of the 80s,

44:59

I started reading more and more on Roman Catholicism. And that's when I encountered Catholic Answers, This Rock Magazine.

45:09

I was getting ready to graduate. In fact, I graduated in 89 from Fuller Seminary with my first master's degree.

45:18

And one of the classes that I had taken there that I had just... I loved because I had a professor who loved his field.

45:27

Was church history. Nate Feldmuth was my professor. And he gave me a love for that subject.

45:36

And so once I started seeing the historical aspects of what

45:43

Catholic Answers were saying, and specifically Jerry Matitix, who at that time had just converted to Roman Catholicism.

45:52

He was a former Protestant. He and Scott Hahn. And I started listening to their debates.

46:02

On cassette tapes, of course, with a Walkman. That's how you listen to that kind of stuff.

46:12

And that was the reason why when the opportunity of writing came up in God's Providence, we met a man by the name of George Bonneau, George and Aline Bonneau.

46:26

He had begun a publishing house to publish Robert Maury's materials. And he gave me an open invitation.

46:35

You write it, I'll publish it. And so I assumed my first book would be on Mormonism. It wasn't.

46:42

My first book was called The Fatal Flaw. It's available in PDF on Kindle. And once I got it done, we realized it was too long.

46:54

And so we split it up. And The Appendices became a separate book called Answers to Catholic Claims.

47:00

Those are the first two books that I had published. I'll never forget opening that first box. And we sent,

47:10

I think it was just The Fatal Flaw at that time. We sent a copy to Catholic Answers. And within a week, the phone rings and it's

47:16

Jerry Matitus. And that led to August 1990, Long Beach, California.

47:23

August 16th, I believe. Debate number one at St. Cyprian Catholic Church in Long Beach.

47:31

First debate. I had not debated in high school, did debate in college because neither had debate teams, never studied it.

47:42

But I had listened to the debates that Matitus was doing. He was crushing Calvary Chapel guys who knew nothing about church history.

47:51

And so that led to the Solus -Criptura debate. And then in December of that year, the double header,

47:59

Northwest Community Church, we did Perseverance of the Saints. And the next night, the papacy at City of the

48:05

Lord in Tempe. That's where Catholics were getting up and walking out. Because that was the first debate the

48:11

Catholic Answers had, where the other side went to church history. And they didn't know how to handle it.

48:19

And they didn't handle it well at all. That's where it started.

48:26

And from 1990 through the early 2000s, sure, we're still going up Salt Lake City, doing things in other areas.

48:36

But Roman Catholicism was a key central area. Once the

48:42

King James Only controversy came out and I started publishing for Bethany House Publishers, then the breadth of what we were doing expanded greatly.

48:53

I forget, Rich, when did you start with Alvin Omega full -time?

48:59

Because we eventually, around 2000, stopped doing radio.

49:07

Yeah, I started officially January 1st, 1998.

49:14

And we would go down to the radio station for a while and pay them exorbitant amounts of money to have a

49:20

Saturday show and a few listeners. Then we discovered that they had a real audio stream.

49:29

And that was interesting. And we discovered that there were more people listening through real audio than on local radio.

49:37

All of our phone calls were coming from outside of Phoenix. They were coming from the real audio stream.

49:43

And that's, I don't know who thought of it first, but we're sort of sitting around going, why are we bleeding money to a radio station?

49:52

We could do this ourselves. And that's how Christian Podcasting got invented.

49:59

Because we were poor. We didn't have anything. And so we got a real audio server and I was set up in Rich's garage.

50:13

That's where my office was, was in Rich's garage. I had actually written the

50:18

King James Only controversy in one of the bedrooms of the house. And then we enclosed the garage and we had to put an air conditioner in there.

50:30

It's Arizona. And it was so loud. You can still hear it on old recordings.

50:39

But we set it up to where I had a microphone at my desk and my computer and Rich would sit on the other side of the wall.

50:49

And that's where we did the very first Radio Free Geneva. I remember it well. I remember it well.

50:55

And that was using real audio servers. And so that was like 2000 is when we started doing that from the offices there at Rich's house.

51:10

And it was 2000, was it 2006 that we went down to where we are now?

51:16

I think it was 2006. Yeah, right around 2006 to the offices in that vicinity. Yeah. Yeah.

51:22

And again, massive amount of carpentry work, knocking out walls, putting in doors.

51:32

And who did Vassara and stuff? Rich did. And I had some volunteer help.

51:40

But when we go Tim the Toolman Taylor stuff, there really is an application.

51:48

There really is, including trips to the ER and things like that.

51:53

But that's not neither here nor there. Anyhow, during this time period, this is what we're doing.

52:02

And the debates are getting around and stuff like that. Obviously 9 -11 happens.

52:09

The thought crosses my mind to do something on Mormonism on Islam. God and his providence kept me from doing anything because I wasn't ready.

52:20

It was about 05 when two crazy students at Biola got hold of me.

52:31

And they said, would you be willing to debate a man by the name of Shabir Ali?

52:40

And I'm like, and so I start listening to some

52:45

Shabir Ali's debates. And I'm like, oh, this would really be a challenge.

52:54

This really, really would be. So I started doing a deep dive.

53:05

And the advantage I had was, the advantage that Shabir had in the debates that he did is most

53:12

Christian apologists don't know anything about liberalism. And I went to Fuller.

53:20

And so I'm listening to Shabir and I'm like, I know where this guy's coming from.

53:26

I know what sources he's using. I know to respond to that. And so we had our first debate in May of 2006 at Biola University.

53:43

And I remember walking in, they have the two comfy chairs. The two comfy chairs.

53:52

If I recall correctly, there was some flowers in between. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no.

54:01

I know this guy, he's gonna debate. He's coming here to rip my head off. And I'm gonna be debating him.

54:08

We need tables. We're gonna have books. We don't need flowers. This is gonna be a real debate.

54:14

I think they were a little freaked out about that. But we prevailed. And that debate's still out there.

54:23

And halfway through that debate. Now, by the way, there was a professor at Biola who did everything he could to torpedo that debate because he didn't know who

54:34

I was. He never heard of me. And he taught on Islam. He just didn't want to have to clean up the mess because he knew how good

54:42

Shabir is. But we persevered. The Lord kept the door open.

54:49

Halfway through the debate, when we took the break, the students are ecstatic.

54:55

They're excited. Shabir walks up to me, puts his hand out, and says, congratulations.

55:02

We're not done with the debate. Halfway through, he says, congratulations. He knew because his whole approach,

55:11

I had already dealt with it. I had preemptively refuted most of his arguments before he could even get to them because I had spent so much time listening.

55:22

The cross effects in that is still classical. I use it in classes to show people how sharp

55:29

Shabir is because they don't expect Muslims to know that much about the Bible. But how also to respond to those things.

55:39

And also at the halfway mark, the professor who had tried to torpedo came up to me and said, here's my card.

55:50

We need to talk. And he ended up opening doors for me to study Arabic and stuff like that after that debate, knowing now who

56:00

I was and what I was capable of doing. And that began. The amazing thing is

56:06

I've done more debates with Muslims globally or in total than with Roman Catholics.

56:14

Not by much, but a little bit. That began a decade that was very much focused upon Islam, which it's not that we weren't doing other subjects, we were.

56:31

But look, we had to make a decision. And I made a decision.

56:37

And what I decide impacts Rich and his family. Islam is not the most popular subject amongst

56:45

Christians. They want to keep that out there. And a lot of people are like, well, yeah, we've learned a lot.

56:51

I mean, wow, I did programs where we, I remember one dividing line.

56:57

We looked at every single use of Isa in the Quran.

57:03

I don't know if anybody else has ever done that. That's not how you build an audience.

57:08

But the audience of this program exists because that's what we do. And that's what we've done for 40 years in the ministry.

57:17

And for almost a quarter of a century in podcasts. You are there because that's what you want.

57:26

You don't want the entertainment. You want solid, consistent, biblically grounded teaching on all sorts of sometimes esoteric topics.

57:37

So we've done this. You know, here's

57:44

Surah 112, Surah Dhaliqaas. Say, he, Allah is one. Allah is he on whom all depend.

57:50

He begets not, nor is he begotten. And none is like him. That third line right here,

57:56

Lam yellid wa lam yulid in Arabic, a clear response to and denial of the

58:04

Christian understanding. Now, what the Quran understands by what it means to beget or be begotten is another issue.

58:12

But we would go into these issues in depth.

58:18

And that's what we do. We believe that we can trust the

58:28

Holy Spirit of God to guide people and to give them understanding and to, if you're going to need to witness to Muslims, then you're going to need all the information you can get and the

58:44

Lord will make it so that you're going to remember it and you're going to be able to use it. We can trust him to do that. And so that's what we do.

58:52

And so that was about 10 years of emphasis upon that. And of course, there's still all sorts of stuff in regards to Bible translation,

59:00

King James only ism. And, you know, there were smaller groups earlier on, the Way International, no one's ever heard of it anymore.

59:07

Victor Paul Weirwill did stuff with the Way, even had a few tracks on them. Worldwide Church of God, I was the first person to ever preach on the

59:17

Trinity in a Worldwide Church of God when they changed their theology and embraced the doctrine of the

59:23

Trinity on Long Island. I got to do that. And so there were all sorts of other things that went along in there.

59:32

But then, of course, you get into 2017, 2018, and now you have critical race theory, social justice, the

59:41

MLK 50 thing happening. We had actually had Votie Balcom on the dividing line in 2010.

59:50

And he had talked about ethnic Gnosticism and, you know, prophetically, all sorts of stuff that were buried in now.

01:00:01

Years before that happened, we were dealing with issues like that. But in the vast majority of instances, for many, many years,

01:00:12

I'd walk into the studio and I really wouldn't even know what we were gonna be talking about. That was especially true before Rich decided to stick a camera in my face.

01:00:27

I could wear whatever I wanted, you know, didn't matter because everything was just simply audio.

01:00:35

And then this YouTube thing started and we got cameras.

01:00:41

And so we have to build a, not only build the studio, but now make it look...

01:00:49

There's still a bunch of interesting programs out there where if you look at the background, it's a window with some blinds in front of it.

01:00:59

And in the corner was a prototype of the bookshelves that eventually are the bookshelves in my office.

01:01:09

But it was never stained. It was never completed. And I'm stunned that it didn't fall over during one of the things because it wasn't done.

01:01:19

It wasn't meant to actually be there, but we put some stuff on it anyways. And that was the background.

01:01:25

That was it. You know, it was, yeah. And I think we put like ceiling, we had ceiling tiles on the wall for the audio thing.

01:01:36

You can go look at it. They're still on YouTube somewhere. Still there.

01:01:42

But then I went on a long trip and came back and the studio, our normal studio in Phoenix came into being.

01:01:52

Again, Rich doing all that work. Painting and the whole nine yards while I was gone.

01:01:58

And then only just a few years ago, we did the big studio with the big board and everything else.

01:02:03

That was during COVID when it looked like no one would ever get to go anywhere ever again, anyhow.

01:02:12

So when this all started in 19, well,

01:02:23

I guess 82 when I first spoke to those missionaries, but 83 as far as when we incorporated the ministry.

01:02:32

When this all started, I'm glad I had no idea where it was going to go.

01:02:42

We are not smart enough to handle those things. We really aren't. And I am, if someone had told me in 1982, the things that I would be doing in the future,

01:02:56

I wonder how that would have impacted. I don't think we, we're not supposed to know the things we're supposed to trust.

01:03:02

We're supposed to just simply do. When God gives us opportunities, you take them. You have goals.

01:03:10

You have the desire to be consistent. The commitment we've always had that we are not a church.

01:03:18

We're not going to be a church. We are going to assist the church and our people are going to be a part of the church.

01:03:27

That's always been a guiding principle. We learned early on that when people have big money, they expect big results.

01:03:37

And big control. That we were never going to be big. We never, never, never, ever had, you know, there was a brief period of time with one individual,

01:03:49

George Bono, looking at buildings, stuff like that.

01:03:54

There was this idea. Never panned out. The Lord, it was not what the

01:03:59

Lord wanted. And to be honest with you, the reason that we can address the things that we address now in the way that we address them, is because we don't owe anything to anybody.

01:04:16

We don't have the big donors that can send in a little text message, hey, could you say something about this today?

01:04:27

Or could you not say something about this today? That's more often, I think, the case. We don't have any of that.

01:04:35

We have, we're in the same office we've been in since 2006. We pay a pittance for that office because at that church, and they support what we're doing, we're thankful for that.

01:04:49

We're not trying to build an empire. And when we die, you roll it up and give the library to somebody else and move on.

01:05:00

Not trying to do legacy stuff and all that kind of thing. I mean, if God brought somebody along, great, fine, wonderful.

01:05:05

But that's not, that's not what, you know, I've been to ministry, where I spoke for them and I sat in an office and I was looking around and I realized everything everybody was doing was donator list maintenance and fundraising.

01:05:23

And Rich and I stink at that. We just stink at it. It has been very hard for me to do the fundraiser for this.

01:05:35

Because I just stink at raising money. When you're in apologetics, you've got to, you've got to have a whole lot of integrity.

01:05:46

You got to be pretty transparent. And so here we are. Could never have, when

01:05:55

I flew home from my last overseas trip in December of 2019 from Melbourne, just escaped in time.

01:06:03

And I started hearing about this disease in China. I didn't know what

01:06:09

God was doing. None of us had any idea. We've just tried to respond the best we can.

01:06:16

I never dreamed on that 17 hour flight home that that would be my last overseas trip.

01:06:24

And it may well end up being. I couldn't have seen this.

01:06:33

I don't even, I don't even know how I came up with the idea of let's rent an

01:06:38

RV and see if I can do this. I want to get out and see people again. I was 35 ,000 miles of pulling an

01:06:45

RV ago. And I've gotten really good at it. That's just all there is to it.

01:06:52

I got gas in a gas station that was not designed to allow a vehicle of my size to get gas.

01:06:59

But I did it. I made it through somehow. Anyway, here we are.

01:07:06

And I don't know what the future is going to bring. And I'm glad that I've never known what the future is going to bring.

01:07:13

All I can tell you is we haven't changed our message.

01:07:22

Rich will remember. It was a dark, dingy radio station lobby.

01:07:30

Most of the lights were off. And I had just done, I don't know, an hour or two hours on radio in Salt Lake City.

01:07:41

And with Van Hale, I don't remember that Martin Tanner was there. He might've been, I don't remember which one it was.

01:07:49

Did lots of them for a long time. Van Hale said something to Rich and I that I'll never forget.

01:07:59

And he had no idea that he was being extremely encouraging. But I had first taken on Van Hale on KFYI radio, no, no,

01:08:08

KFLR radio. And then I think KFYI in Phoenix.

01:08:14

And he wasn't used to encountering someone that could answer so much of, again, his using liberalism as his means of argumentation.

01:08:24

Van Hale was an LDS apologist, still is. And we just got done doing live radio call -in in Salt Lake City, talk about being the minority.

01:08:37

We think that's great. What an opportunity. And he said something to us.

01:08:42

He said, you know, he said, from the first time that we debated, you have been focused on who

01:08:53

God is and what salvation is. And you have remained consistent with that. You haven't gone after all the, because there've been a number of things that come up, the white salamander letter and all this other stuff in the field of Mormonism.

01:09:06

He said, you guys stay focused on the same thing. I don't know that he was trying to compliment us, but I know

01:09:14

Rich and I are both like, that's us. Maybe because we're just too simple to do anything else.

01:09:22

But we actually think that's a good commitment to be consistent, to give that type of example.

01:09:30

And we're just trying to continue to do that whatever we're facing today, whatever the issue is coming up.

01:09:40

The dividing line, the name, goes back to the early, early period.

01:09:49

And what the dividing line was, there is a dividing line between those who believe that scripture is

01:09:55

God's inerrant word and is sufficient and everyone else who does not.

01:10:03

And that's where we've stood for 40 years. And until the

01:10:09

Lord runs me off the road and into a ditch, off a cliff, gets me run over while I'm riding my bike or something, that's what we're going to remain focused on.

01:10:22

Making application of that in every way that we possibly can, including now in a society that is so intent upon self -destruction that it's absolutely amazing.

01:10:36

It's absolutely amazing. So we appreciate your support. Once again, my sincere deepest thanks for making this available.

01:10:45

It is wonderful. There are a couple of things I forgot to tell you. Over here, you know that Alvin Aga logo that Rich had made that's up on the wall in the big studio?

01:11:00

He's going to paint that probably, I think actually a better color would be silver. It's just highly reflective, because there is light hitting this.

01:11:07

It'll reflect whatever light is being projected on the wall. So we're probably gonna put that right over here because this is a cabinet. There's a mirror there.

01:11:14

We do not need a mirror there. I already know what I'm going to do with that. I've already got my plans on that and it's just a matter of getting it ordered and getting it stuck up there because we don't need the reflection.

01:11:27

But there is one other thing I can do. So right now, we have my beautiful dancing water on the wall, which

01:11:38

I really, really like. But if I wanted to, I can sort of signal that I'm angry about something and I'm going to start really going at people by changing colors.

01:11:56

So if the wall becomes red, look out. Because things are going to get ugly.

01:12:04

And there are different colors I can do back here. And I can make it change colors and do all sorts of fun stuff like that.

01:12:15

It's fun. It's enjoyable. Uh -oh, it looks like I'm stuck on red for now. These Chinese -made remotes, they're not always all that reliable.

01:12:27

Anyway, so we can have fun with that too. Uh, in the process. So, touchscreen, accordance.

01:12:36

I've got all the stuff here on my laptop so I can do the videos. We can do video reviews and all the rest of that kind of fun stuff.

01:12:43

I do need to make sure to install the programs I have at the office on this

01:12:48

Mac so I can do some of the stuff that I do there. Switchers, microphones, streaming, satellite.

01:12:55

And I can go right from here to the kitchen and make myself a sandwich and then go to bed.

01:13:04

Because I already drove 300 -some miles today and have every day so far this week as we're heading to Georgetown, Texas, where I think that's where I get.

01:13:14

Yeah, I get there tomorrow. I get there tomorrow. So that will be lots of fun. Very, very interesting.

01:13:21

I don't know when the next program will be. Uh, but the nice thing is,

01:13:28

I can do this in the morning. I can do this whenever. And we'll just make it work out.

01:13:37

And I think from what Rich told me, he's doing something to where I can pretty much record everything right here and just straight upload.

01:13:48

And so the thought in the back of my mind is when I am stressed for time, and it's going to be hard to get he and I to mesh,

01:13:58

I can simply do a DL short, do a 20 -minute program, a 30 -minute program, jump in here, record it, upload it myself.

01:14:06

That's one of the advantages of Starlink. We have a really good upload speed on it.

01:14:13

And just pop it up there directly myself. We'll see how that works out.

01:14:21

But I mean, literally my shower is eight feet from me right there.

01:14:30

So this is where I live. So jumping in here and doing stuff. This is also my office now on the road.

01:14:35

Why wouldn't it be? It's a lot more comfortable than sitting at a kitchen table. It really, really is.

01:14:42

It's great. So our sincere thanks once again. Sincere thanks to Rich Pierce for a tremendous amount of work.

01:14:50

And of course, the tremendous amount of maintenance that may have to end up being done. I'm sure when

01:14:57

I get back, he's going to be coming in here and checking the mounts. What's been bounced loose?

01:15:04

Is there anything that needs to be tightened up? Stuff like that, because this is our first run.

01:15:11

And this is a 4 ,100 -mile trip. In July, I've got a 33 -day,

01:15:17

I think, 5 ,300 -mile trip. That's a lot of bouncing around. And so I bet you he's going to be checking the mounts on the

01:15:24

TV and everything else to make sure that this stuff doesn't end up... The worst thing would be for me to walk in and find stuff laying on the floor.

01:15:34

That's not what you want when you get where you're going. So our sincere thanks.

01:15:41

I hope you've enjoyed it. I love doing this. You are the best audience around.

01:15:47

You're all pretty weird if you really want to be honest about it. Because we don't have the entertaining stuff, jingles and sound effects.

01:15:59

And we do have... Right now, he's stuck on red light. Stop that, stop that, stop that.

01:16:07

We have a few things like that. But if you watch this program, it's because you want to.

01:16:15

It's because you know that we cover a wide variety of issues. And we do so...

01:16:22

We try to do so with integrity. And that's why you're there. So thank you, everyone who made this possible.

01:16:30

Like I said, we still need to finish paying off the studio. So aomin .org if you want to help us with it.