Presuppositionalism Discussed, Hebrews 10:25, and the Trail of Blood

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Greetings and welcome to the Dividing Line, folks. It's a blustery, rainy day here in Phoenix, which we don't mind, again, because we know what's coming.

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So the more we can get coming down right now, the better off we're going to be over the next couple of months when nothing falls out of the sky.

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Nothing. Planes, maybe. Hopefully not. But that's about it. Bird once in a while,

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I guess. But yeah, nothing else. Not that precipitation stuff. I threw out that we might take some questions from Twitter today.

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But a friend of mine sent me a email question.

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And I have way too many. How do I get all these windows open?

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I'm not sure how I did that. Can't I drag these into each other somehow?

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I'm not sure. It now disappeared. Window. Which window do

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I want? OK, I've got four of them up. How did I do that? I don't know. Anyway, a friend sent me a question first.

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And then I'll get to some of the folks. My Twitter ID is DrOakley1689.

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I would assume most of you already knew that. But a few people have already sent some questions in.

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But the first question that I did promise to get to says,

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I've been reading a good amount of Bonson and Van Till recently. That'll melt your mind.

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And they talk about how scripture is self -attesting in its truthfulness. Can you explain what that means? It seems like the unique nature of fulfilled prophecy would be a part of this.

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But I'm not sure how that all fits together. Maybe another way to ask that question is, how can we differentiate between genuine revelation and counterfeit deception on a fully presuppositional basis?

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Now, that is an interesting, a real interesting question there at the end, because it does raise some of the important questions.

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When Reformed, as a general rule, not just presuppositionalists, but Reformed people have referred to the self -attesting nature of scripture.

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Once again, it takes us back to where we are as far as our theology is concerned in regards to the doctrine of scripture itself.

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Many of these questions are not nearly as relevant to modern people as they were to people only 50, 60 years ago.

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Because there has been such a degradation in our view of scripture.

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When you embrace the modernistic view of scripture, these questions become irrelevant.

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And again, just so everybody knows, the vast majority of seminaries and Bible colleges teach a view of scripture that basically takes out most of the historical conversation about scripture and its supernatural nature.

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Once you view it primarily as a collection of human writings that are elevated in some sense, but filled with errors, contradictions, hence you do not even try to find the unity in scripture or overarching themes or anything like that.

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Once you embrace that, what Christians have been talking about amongst themselves on these issues for a long, long time just become irrelevant.

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They become irrelevant. And so it's a smaller group that are discussing these things than may have been discussing them in the past, or at least a smaller group as far as percentage is concerned.

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So the only way to speak of scripture's self -attestation is to recognize it first and foremost as being theanoustos, as God breathed.

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So if scripture is God breathed, if as Peter says, men spoke from God as they were carried along by the

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Holy Spirit. And so it's speech that's coming from God through the intermediation of man, not in any sense thereby diminishing its nature and turning it into something else.

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If you have that understanding, which I believe was Jesus' view and the apostles' view, sort of makes it important.

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There may have been many people near the church that didn't have that view because of Greek philosophical considerations, but it's clearly the apostolic perspective.

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If you have that view, then the issue of the truthfulness of scripture is directly related to its nature.

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So the epistemological issue of the content of scripture being truthful is not based upon man's perception or experience of the truths of scripture.

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It is based upon the nature of scripture itself. And so you can see if you have that view of scripture, that what self -attestation is saying is that, well, let's use this illustration.

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If you go into a court of law, the

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Western tradition is that you would raise your hand and you would say,

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I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but truth, so help me God. And it used to be you'd actually put your hand on a

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Bible. That obviously isn't done anymore, but well, maybe someplace down South it is. But what were you doing?

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You were making a claim by the authority of something higher than yourself.

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So help me God, putting my hand on the Bible. You're recognizing

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God's authority in that Bible as being higher than yourself.

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And so you're saying, I will appeal to a higher authority to attest to my truthfulness.

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So when you talk about ultimate epistemological authorities, ultimate sources of knowledge and truth, what can it appeal to?

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I have to appeal to something else. I have to appeal to something outside myself.

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I'm a fallen human being. I am not the source of all truth. I am afflicted with tradition and ignorance and all sorts of things like this.

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And so I cannot self -attest.

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My nature is insufficient for self -attestation.

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It's limited, temporal, fallen, ignorant, etc., etc.

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And so I cannot self -attest even though I can speak. I have to appeal to something outside of myself.

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Most of the time we talk about self -attestation in the topic of Scripture, what we're doing is trying to warn people that Christians very often make a mistake here.

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And the mistake is to say, well, how many times have you heard somebody say this?

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Well, the Bible is the word of God because it contains fulfilled prophecy. Now, it is true that the

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Bible contains fulfilled prophecy. Jesus made that a central aspect of his own self -identification as the

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Messiah, as the Son of God. But is that what makes the

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Bible true? Because what most people are thinking about is, well, you can look at historical facts and the historical facts will attest to the truthfulness of the

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Bible. Now, the problem is that term, attest, we need to define that.

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And attestation, when we talk about self -attestation, there's something about the nature of Scripture that allows it to attest to its own truthfulness and supremacy because of its nature.

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I lack that in my nature. And what we're basically saying is, any other book also lacks that in its nature.

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If that is, in fact, the case, you're going to have to minimize something here.

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Interrupting me, there we go. What is it about the nature of Scripture that allows it to attest for itself?

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And are we saying, when someone says, look at this fulfilled prophecy, this historical thing, is that self -attestation or is that external attestation?

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Now, I'm not saying that there is not external attestation to the truthfulness of Scripture.

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Obviously, there is. I mean, we are constantly dealing with this issue, especially with regards to the

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Old Testament. And so, archaeological research is partial.

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Here's a good illustration. When people say, archaeology proves the bile to be the Word of God. OK, that's a good illustration.

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Why? Archaeology is a partial science. We do not have exhaustive knowledge of archaeological data increases every day.

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As new digs are done, information is collated. Honestly, sometimes that information increases on holes in archaeological data or assumptions in archaeological data that were then proven to be untrue.

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Or new information comes along, well -known that, for example, for a long time, we had no evidence of the

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Hittites. And so it was very common for a long period of time for people to say, it's all fictional.

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And then all of a sudden, we found the Hittites in history. And so very often, the conclusions that you come to, archaeologically speaking, have to be partial.

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They cannot provide an absolute foundation. So with that in mind, on the one hand, archaeology attests to the truthfulness of the

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Bible in a partial sense, but not in the ultimate sense. It's not that the

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Bible appeals to things outside of itself that have higher authority.

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There's the issue, is what is the highest authority? Because if Scripture is what it claims to be,

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Theanoustos, as the risen one said, have you not read what was spoken to you by God?

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In reference to the Pentateuch, the oldest of the Old Testament books, if it is

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Theanoustos, then it has to, by nature, be self -attesting. Because what does

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God prove his authority by? What does he swear by? When God walks into the law court, does he, what does he put his hand on?

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When he raises his hand, I swear by what? There's nothing that's greater than him.

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Everything he can swear by, he made in the first place. He defines it. It's his. So any ultimate authority, by its nature, is not demonstrated to be an ultimate authority by appeal to something outside of itself.

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Because if it appeals to something outside of itself as a higher authority, then it's not an ultimate authority.

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There is a higher authority above it. That's a different issue than is there a consistency between the claim of scripture to be historically true and the analysis of archaeological facts or the consistency of scripture over time or things like that.

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It's especially problematic when people say, well, the Bible's word of God because there's over 5 ,000 manuscripts in the

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New Testament. I've actually heard people say that. And that has really concerned me because what is the logical connection?

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There are lots and lots of manuscripts of Homer, too. Not nearly as many, but lots of manuscripts.

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Does that make Homer the word of God? What if there were more manuscripts of some ancient work of his history?

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Does that make it the word of God? There has to be much more clear thinking than is evidenced when someone says, well, the

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Bible's word of God because there are all these manuscripts. That's not what makes the Bible the word of God.

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So self -attestation is a claim concerning the nature of scripture itself, that it is

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God -breathed, that it is the very speaking of God, and that it exists, therefore, on a completely unique level, not only in the individual books, but the entirety of the collection of documents because that's what the

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Bible is, as a whole. So the real question comes down to what's asked.

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Maybe another way to ask that question is, how can we differentiate between genuine revelation and counterfeit deception on a fully presuppositional basis?

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Now, I'm not sure what fully presuppositional basis means.

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There have been a lot of people that have utilized that terminology in a way that makes me very uncomfortable and that I would not agree with.

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So there are some who, example, have said if you function on a fully presuppositional basis that you would never make reference to theistic proofs or evidences in any way, shape, or form.

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And of course, Van Til and others said that all evidence is God's evidence.

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All evidence to be evidence has to exist within God's realm for it to have any consistency and any coherent way of being understood.

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But the argument I would point out to atheists that while they sit there and talk about evidence and science and things like that, they are seemingly unwilling to look at irreducible complexity.

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Or as I did in the debate with Dan Barker, I showed that if we ever could, all that demonstrates is it takes a lot of tech and a lot of brainpower to do something like that.

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And so anyway, there are people who would say that you're not being fully presuppositional.

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But you see, I don't believe that Van Til or Monson would agree with that, simply because you're demonstrating the incoherence and inconsistency.

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You're providing what's called the internal critique. You're pointing to authorities that they would accept, but they won't accept the results of what those authorities are saying.

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And so there are some who I think also define fully presuppositional as saying, well, if you're, for example, going to deal with Islam, then you can't really engage in criticism of the

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Quran or the Hadith or things like that. You just need to somehow present the transcendental argument to them, which with a

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Muslim is a challenging issue to deal with. And Islam really becomes the key issue there, because there are claims made for the

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Quran that sound very much like the claims we make for the Bible. And hence, the argument basically is, well, why can't the

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Muslim just presuppositionally assume the truthfulness of the Quran and then not engage in any criticism of the

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Quran? Well, that's one of the problems. I do not believe that to be consistently presuppositional means that you just simply ignore criticisms of the

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Bible. There are some people that assume that. They say, well, you're assuming the truthfulness of the

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Bible, and therefore, you can never honestly respond to criticisms of the Bible. I think that's not the case either.

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What you have to deal with, for me, to be fully presuppositional is to function consistently with a recognition that nothing that we do would make any sense outside of the existence of the triune

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God, and that, therefore, you need that foundation to be able to do anything else.

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And for me, honestly, and this sort of gets into some of the stuff that's been going on recently, that really, last week, for example, there was a bunch of stuff going on where certain people, and I'm not going to even give them free advertising on platforms that are not their own, but there are certain people out there that have dedicated their lives to the destruction of presuppositionalism as allegedly reformed people.

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What really, to be honest with you, far more than any philosophical argument...

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I mean, I'm a presuppositionalist because of Romans 1 in a number of different ways, not only

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Romans 1 in its teaching that man suppresses the knowledge of God, but that the revelation of God gets through and the whole biblical anthropology that flows from Romans 1.

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And so, for me, the real issue of presuppositionalism is that you're dealing with a rebel creature.

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We have... What's beautiful about presuppositionalism is that it recognizes that we, as believers, are called to this ministry of giving a reason within the context of being ourselves redeemed, hence recognizing that we needed a new heart, and dealing with a society where, unlike only 150 years ago, when the majority of the people you're speaking to still had a...

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In the West, Western world anyways, still had a very deep influence of Christian thought.

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Now, the vast majority of people you're dealing with, even in the Church, have a very humanistic view of the world, a very me -centered view of the world, and hence it's very incoherent.

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And therefore, the mechanisms of suppression have multiplied greatly over the past number of years.

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So, in other words, remember, Paul says in Romans 1, suppressing the knowledge of God. Well, man, people have got a lot of ways of doing that today.

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And so, that issue of suppression has to be dealt with. It has to be recognized.

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It has to be recognized that people are bringing presuppositions into the discussion

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Their worldview is based upon particular presuppositions.

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That must be challenged. Because if they're allowed to hold onto those fundamentally suppressionary presuppositions, they will never be able to meaningfully bow the knee to the

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Lord Jesus Christ, because they will not see themselves the way the Scripture sees them, as creatures made in His image, and hence will suppress the knowledge that is necessary for them to come to a true knowledge of God.

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And so, when I first started hearing about all of this stuff, when I—well, this was presented to me, by the way.

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I haven't told this story in years. But when I first encountered presuppositionalism,

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I didn't have any idea what the guy was talking about. I was in seminary.

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I had read Norman Geisler books. I thought that was pretty much all there was there.

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And then I took an apologetics class. And the professor was a

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Presbyterian. And the first few meetings—I was doing it through Fuller, here in Phoenix, Phoenix Extension.

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So it wasn't what you normally got on campus, which I'm very thankful for today. But, you know,

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I was already involved in apologetics. And so other people in the class were talking to me during breaks, going, do you have any idea where he's going?

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Why does he have us reading Francis Schaeffer? Why does he have us reading Pascal's Pensées?

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Which, by the way, if you're looking for books to be reading because you're out of work or on furlough or working from home and only have an hour's worth of work to do or whatever,

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Pascal's Pensées. It's P -E -N -S -E -E -S. It's French. The Pensées.

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The Thoughts of Pascal. Wow, that was important in my journey. I would highly recommend it.

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Anyway, add that, Matt, to your reading. Read the Pensées. You'll get it.

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And Schaeffer as well. Well, the first volume of Schaeffer's collected works are his— primarily where you'll find his presuppositional stuff and his apologetic stuff.

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Anyway, people were asking me, you're involved in apologetics, and I wasn't really tracking.

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But in God's providence, this is the same time that I ran into Sproul, who isn't presuppositional, but is

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Reformed. And so I started getting the Reformed doctrine of God coming at me.

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And so it was in that context one day in class— I remember what the room was. Unfortunately, that building has been torn down and replaced by something probably five or ten stories tall at Grand Canyon, which everything at Grand Canyon is now five or ten stories tall.

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I remember exactly what room I was in and which way I was facing when he started talking about Thomas Aquinas.

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And I had been reading—like I said, I read Geisler, so I'm reading Aquinas' arguments and stuff like that.

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And he says, fundamentally, Aquinas proved the wrong

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God. And I was like, what?

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What do you mean? And he said the biblical

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God is so much greater than what you could reason to based solely upon that which is less than him.

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Now, he wasn't saying—when he said the wrong God, he was saying a lesser God. He wasn't denying that Romans 1 says general revelation reveals certain truths about God that leave us unapologetus, without an apologetic, and reveals to us that we should honor

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God and give thanks to him as God. But it doesn't reveal the God as triune.

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It doesn't reveal God as Redeemer. That requires special revelation. And what he was getting at was, what's the real foundation of our epistemology?

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Even Adam and Eve were dependent upon revelation from God to have true knowledge, and they were unfallen.

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Now, you've got to be very careful. So you start talking about Adam and Eve, be very, very careful. You can make certain statements.

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It's the conclusions you draw that you have to be really careful about, or you'll end up like Jonathan Edwards, who was a thousand times smarter than me, and he ended up in a complete intellectual knot, trying to go too far on the nature of Adam and Eve, because we just don't have the information to come to the final conclusions on lots of things, lots of questions we'd like to ask, but they're just not there.

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Anyway, but I've wandered a little bit astray here.

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The issue for me in regards to presuppositionalism is theological.

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It's who you're dealing with. And then the transcendental argument just flows from the nature of creation itself and the highest view of Scripture.

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And so, one place where I would disagree with some presuppositionalists, there are some presuppositionalists, for example, who would say, and when

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I mentioned this before, I had some critics, they did not even listen to what I was saying, and it's a shame because it could open up some fruitful conversation.

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There are some presuppositionalists that would say that the common theistic proofs, cosmological argument, ontological argument, etc.,

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etc., have absolutely no meaning or relevance whatsoever.

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You see, I would say those proofs have lots of relevance within a

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Christian worldview, first of all. And of course, some would say, well, that doesn't matter because if you're already in the

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Christian world, you don't need these things. Well, the point is, if they work within a

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Christian worldview, and we say the Christian worldview actually matches with reality, then it is saying something about their truth claims.

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But when you talk about, for example, the cosmological argument, and I have developed this in the past, in the

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Church History series, did we ever... I did a class on the cosmological argument.

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Yes, I did get it. Yes, I did. I did upload it. It's not as long as some of the others. But in the

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Church History series, on Sermon Audio, PRBC's website,

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PRBC's part of Sermon Audio, there's a thing on the ontological argument. And I talked about some of the stuff at that point in regards to the ontological argument.

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And I don't remember if it went over the cosmological. Maybe I'll just have to do it someday. I've done it in the past. Could you do a search on PSR on edumin .org,

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see if that pulls anything up? I don't remember. But for example, one of the things that I have talked about in the past that I think is very relevant...

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Man, I'm going to take up the whole program. Thanks a lot. ...that I've talked about in the program.

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PSR, principle of sufficient reason. Nothing? Okay. Principle of sufficient reason...

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Well, look up sufficient reason in quotes. Principle of sufficient reason is basically the idea...

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I need to wrap this up. It's basically the idea that brute facts are irrational.

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You can't just simply say, it's just that way. You have to be able to justify knowledge claims.

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Principle of sufficient reason. There's a fascinating article in a textbook.

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I think the textbook is still available because I bought it on Kindle only a few years ago. Feinberg. I think it was

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Feinberg who was one of the editors. Reason and Responsibility. I think that's the name of it, too.

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If you read Feinberg's discussion of the cosmological argument, he comes to the conclusion at the end that if the principle of sufficient reason is true, then the cosmological argument is true.

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But the question is, is PSR true? Is principle of sufficient reason true? To me, that's a connection.

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That is a vital connection between what we're saying from a transcendental perspective, a presuppositional perspective, and what a lot of other apologists are saying who are arguing the cosmological argument.

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What I'm saying is, hey, guess what? The cosmological argument, the only way it can be true is if you start over here.

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Come on over, the water's fine, the theology's even better. Anyway. So, yes?

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Oh, I just wanted to get in on this a little bit. No. I'm sorry,

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I thought you had found something. There's nothing there. I'm really...

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See, I have a clear recollection of having done that. Go ahead, I'm not going to... You're the one with the buttons there.

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I want to go back and forth a little bit here. I'm not going to get to a single other

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Twitter thing. We may have to do a fourth show this week. What? We may just have to do a fourth show this week.

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Oh, well, we're doing another one tomorrow. I remember when you first started coming around the office when this stuff was happening.

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And I was none too happy about it. This is true. But there were a few points along the way early on that I was not happy.

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That's true. I've said before, I'm not... Yeah, you were sitting in the back the night I started doing

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Reformed Theology, just going, what is this guy talking about? I remember that.

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Part of what helped me sort through this, because I'm not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, I'm a simple guy.

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Okay, stop, buddy. But I looked at how

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Paul argues in the New Testament. And one thing that I did learn in high school was something called physics.

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And my physics... They taught physics in Prescott? They did. They even taught it out in Humboldt, which is where I went.

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The physics of keeping your hat on in the wind? Yeah, there you go. Well, we had little experiments like dropping refrigerators out of airplanes and when it reached terminal velocity and how big of a dent it would make in the ground, depending on how dense the ground was and stuff like that.

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We had fun experiments like that. But there were certain things about... I'm honoring Prescott right now, just in case people are wondering.

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Yeah, well. There were certain things about physics that were understood.

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Axioms, yes. They were constant things like terminal velocity and other things like that.

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And as I started reading Paul and I'm listening to you, I'm thinking, this is like that.

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You start seeing Paul's argumentation. There are things that just are.

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Okay? Well, because God can be those things. And as he argues about God, if you simply follow the way in which he uses the terms in the

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New Testament, whether that's 1 Corinthians 3, Romans 1, Romans 9. For the

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Apostle Paul, these things are just rock -solid realities.

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They are immovable objects. And they are, just like the word, all they want, they are constants in his thinking.

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And so when he comes and he talks about mankind's condition before a holy

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God and God's interaction with him, he's talking about constant, rock -solid things.

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He gets into talking about philosophy and the wisdom of men and the wisdom of God and the foolishness of God.

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The wisdom of man is foolishness to God. And you start seeing how far apart we are and yet God is thinking.

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And you start to see where, for Paul, these things are constants.

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They just are. And that's when you start realizing, that's when I, for me, I started realizing, okay, those are the presuppositions.

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They are built into his presentation of God throughout the New Testament. They're just there.

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Well, there's no question 1 Corinthians 1 is central to this, if we were going to be spending a whole lot of time on it.

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That would be definitely something to be digging into. I have not answered the question yet, though, and I need to get to some of these others.

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There's at least two I'm going to try to get to, Glenn and Cody. They've been up there for quite some time, so I'll try to get to them.

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I don't even know if any others are coming in right now. But in final, not in final answer, but so, the question then becomes how do you deal with competing ultimate authority claims based upon complete competing revelations?

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And if you say it is by looking at the relationship of that revelation to history, you're not saying well, the presuppositionalist would say it is acceptable

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I would say I'm not going to speak for all presuppositionalists I would say it is acceptable to engage in critique of the historical context of the

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Quran. Let's use the Quran. Because I also believe it is acceptable to look, to provide a defense of the historical claims of Scripture.

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If you're a presuppositionalist that says I won't do that, then you're not making the definitional difference that I made that says that Scripture will be consistent with what we know truthfully of history and reality.

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But it's not that truthfulness that proves the nature of Scripture. That doesn't change the nature of Scripture.

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Because Scripture is what it is, it will be accurate and we can engage in that. And so I can provide an internal critique.

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And that's the presuppositional terminology, is you provide an internal critique. So you can provide a historical internal critique.

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So looking at the Quran in history, in comparison to the Bible in history, or the Book of Mormon if you want, which has no history,

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I don't believe. I don't believe it has any meaningful connection to any real history.

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I believe it's the product of Joseph Smith's mind in the early 19th century.

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And so I can say let's look at the people who lived here and compare them with the people that are supposed to have lived here according to the

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Book of Mormon. I can look at the historical aspects of the Quran. And then

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I can look at the what I believe are the inconsistencies of the Quran. What's one of my main arguments in regards to the

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Quran? It claims to be a revelation of the same God of the

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Torah and the Injil. And when you demonstrate that that's not the case, that the author of the

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Quran did not understand what is contained in either the Torah or the

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Injil, this invalidates that claim. What you have to recognize is that when

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I then defend the consistency, the internal consistency of Scripture, I'm not saying that my defense is a higher authority that then proves the

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Bible is correct. I'm saying the nature of Scripture as God breathed is what gives it its self -attestation.

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But because it is true, it will be true in these lower areas. So when

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I demonstrate, well, last illustration then I promise to move on.

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I apologize for spending 40 minutes on this. I'm not going to give out Matt's email address so that you all can write to him and get angry at him for asking me a question.

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Maybe go on forever and ever and ever. But I couldn't. Anyway, I remember that one of the most important things for me, right at the same time as I was getting my theology straight on the doctrine of God, apologetics, presuppositional methodology, the primacy of these things, is when

40:04

I started engaging with some atheists, which has never, you probably noticed, is not my favorite thing to do.

40:11

It's not. For some people, God just builds them that way and that's what they like to do.

40:17

I prefer engaging religious people. It's obvious. I do. I can grab hold of things in their experience that...

40:27

I just can't with the atheists. But I started engaging with some and that's when

40:32

I started getting, along with the Mormons, argumentation against the inerrancy of Scripture.

40:40

And so, what I did is I really started digging into alleged contradictions.

40:49

And I remember that one of the first contradictions that was thrown at me was by Elders Reed and Reese, who

40:57

I've given them credit for being the primary movers in starting Alpha Omega Ministries many, many, many years ago.

41:04

Coming up on 40 years ago. Elders Reed and Reese, who were my age back then, so they are now in their late 50s.

41:15

And it was about Paul in Acts 9 and Acts 22.

41:22

Whether Paul did or did not hear the voice. And, or the men around Paul did or did not hear the voice.

41:30

And, once I found what the answer to that was, it really opened up an understanding for me.

41:39

That the more you dig, the more you realize that either what you think is an error is because you're functioning on assumptions and ignorances.

41:49

Or, you dig through and you find what the actual answer is. So, remember Jim Lippard? He was an atheist here in the

41:57

Phoenix area. I don't know if he's still around or not. We had him on the program. What are you laughing about?

42:06

What? No. Oh, I don't remember that. Huh. Because we had him, what station was that?

42:16

KHEP. And we had him in and he and I did a debate on the air. We don't include those debates for those of you who are

42:24

Ernie Cantor fans. Otherwise, I'd have 300 by now.

42:32

so, Rich is telling me that he ate the microphone and was consciously breathing all over it and stuff like that.

42:39

Getting coronavirus. He was breathing on it. Oh, oh, oh.

42:46

Why would you remember something like that? I was debating the guy and you're listening to him breathing on the microphone.

42:53

What is this? We do sit around once in a while going, you know, about 25 years from now you and I are going to be sitting in rocking chairs someplace going, do you remember when it's going to be really funny?

43:09

Because we're already doing it on the dividing lines. And you all get to be a part of it. Isn't that exciting?

43:14

All you young folks going, just get to that point. You're going to find out someday that it's good to reminisce and remember these things.

43:22

Because it makes you feel good. Anyways, what was I talking about? So Moses was in the bulrushes. Jim Lippard had thrown an alleged contradiction at me.

43:33

And I remember it was, we were at, we were on 16th Street at the time. Because I remember,

43:39

I was, exactly what my office looked like. I think I had the compact then. And yeah, yeah.

43:49

And I was writing a response to him for a bulletin board post. And I used my copy of the

43:54

Mishnah to find an answer to his criticism. And it was a solid, it's the same answer

44:01

I'd use to this day. And it was digging through those things that was very important in my growth, in my understanding of my own faith and the truthfulness of that faith.

44:13

But it wasn't my discovering of those things, my finding a piece of information in the

44:18

Mishnah is not what makes the Bible true. Since the Bible is God -breathed, it will be consistent with those things.

44:27

And that doesn't mean that what I can do is because the Bible's true, then I can just do whatever I want out here in a cavalier fashion.

44:33

No, I have to be truthful with what I'm dealing with out here, too. There are some people that use that to go, well, just find something that supports it and move on from there.

44:40

No, you have to do serious research. The point is, an internal critique is an appropriate thing to provide of these other pretended revelations.

44:53

And the greatest internal critique will be that these revelations do not give us the

44:59

God that allows us to do any critique at all. That is the greatest internal critique.

45:06

That doesn't mean that the others can't be done. And if some presuppositionalists say, yeah, you don't seem bothered with any of that, then

45:12

I think there's two levels that's going on there. The fundamental refutation of the other pretended revelations is that they cannot give you the

45:23

God who can make any critique meaningful. But on a lower level, in light of that, then you are able to engage in these things.

45:36

And it's just like I've said over and over again, when I presented that evidence to Dan Barker in our debate, what was the preceding screen?

45:48

You can go and watch it. I wish we had a better video of it, but you can go and watch it. What I said was, by presenting this information,

45:57

I am not inviting you to judge whether God exists. I am telling you that God will judge you, and you will have no answer in light of what

46:11

His creation is actually like. And so, to me, the key issue of presuppositionalism is, if you want to see where the dividing line is, as far as the attitude that you are seeking to communicate,

46:27

I want to make sure that I am not communicating to any lost person that they have the right to judge whether God exists.

46:37

In my preaching, in my teaching, in my evangelism, I want to communicate to them that they can't climb up on God's seat, on God's throne, and put

46:51

Him in the dock and judge Him. And I'm not inviting them to do that. I want them to see themselves as the creature that they are, and I believe the

47:01

Spirit of God honors that by testifying to the person that they are the creature of God, and that they are unapologetus, they're without a consistent defense.

47:12

So, Matt, 48 minute Matt, how's that?

47:21

There you go. I haven't gotten an email from him saying, oh, wow, that was too much.

47:27

Can't you answer anything in a short period of time? Okay. Glenn, who is helping me, and by the way,

47:37

I'm enjoying this apologist thing on Twitter. Adherent apologetics is, he's put a lot of work into this.

47:49

I mean, there were hundreds at the start, and that takes a lot of work.

47:54

It takes a lot of time to track down Twitter handles and stuff like that, and so I appreciate it.

48:02

I don't know that adherent apologetics would agree with anything I just said. That's not the point. But there's something going on on Twitter.

48:10

It's the brackets thing. It's the only brackets going on right now. It should be even more popular than ever because it's got nothing else to be doing.

48:20

Debate was the big sport 500 years ago. That's right. I mean, y 'all, that Leipzig disputation and everything else, that was great.

48:27

Anyway, there's this big bracket going on.

48:33

We're down to the bracket of 64. Started at 256, I think, and so now we're down to 64.

48:40

I'm still in there, and if you want me and Jeff to end up going head -to -head, you've got to be supporting both of us because I'm sort of hoping, personally,

48:50

I'm up against Paul Copan today. The votes are continuing. I've critiqued some of Paul Copan's stuff in the past, so he's definitely not a presuppositionalist, definitely not reformed, so it's fairly...

49:03

And if I win that one, guess who I'm up against? William Lane Craig. So I've got to get past William Lane Craig to get to Jeff.

49:13

And you voted? Very good. I appreciate that. So go online, track it down.

49:19

It's A apologetics, so two A's, capital A, and then apologetics.

49:26

And so you can find that there and vote. And size up against,

49:32

I think, Ravi Zacharias today. That's pretty tough. Especially because, let's just be honest,

49:38

Ravi just announced he's not well. He's got bone cancer, so, I mean, that's...

49:44

What are you going to do? You know, that's... Well, that's what

49:49

Jeff did to me, remember? Because when he against me, he had just had one of his seizures, and he makes a video about that.

49:59

I mean, totally going for the sympathy thing, and I'm just sort of like, wow. Still won, but it's like, wow.

50:05

So if you want to see that again, you've got to make sure all of us go there. I'm not bitter about...

50:11

No, I'm not bitter. If I had lost, I would have been bitter, but I didn't. It ended up being me and Summer.

50:17

How good could that be? That was awesome. That was great.

50:23

Anyway, Cody Lockhart... No, Glenn Hendrickson. I'm going to get to Cody, too.

50:30

I'm not in any major hurry. It's not like we've got anything to go do these days. The wife and I have been sitting out on the front porch, just having really nice conversations with the wind blowing, and stuff like that.

50:44

So it's been cool. Glenn Hendrickson, who is a former student of mine at Fuller Theological Seminary —don't hold that against him or me— would love to hear your thoughts on Hebrews 10 .25

51:01

in light of the coronavirus panic, or in general regarding church meetings during times of health and safety concerns, whether pandemics or on a smaller scale.

51:09

Well, this is, of course, the question of the day. It is the issue of the day.

51:16

No matter what I say here, I will be pilloried, vilified, and consigned to the flames of hell by somebody at some point somewhere.

51:25

Right now, to be honest with you, this is like discussing eschatology, which some other people asked about.

51:33

There is almost never a time when eschatology can be discussed without inflaming massive emotions.

51:43

And unfortunately, right now, we are seeing the truthfulness of —Dr.

51:51

Andrew Sandlin has posted a number of times links to a particular scholar.

51:56

I've gotten the book. I haven't had the opportunity to work through it, but I've read some stuff that Sandlin has said, and it reflects conclusions

52:06

I've come to, just not as deeply as, obviously, the scholars thought about these things. In regards to how people think, and that basically there's two kinds of thought.

52:15

There's a narrative thought, which is a high -speed, right -now, multitasking —the internet is built for narrative thought.

52:30

It is built for thought that follows current trends.

52:36

That's what the internet does, and my concern is, even in my own life, that when we use —and are now being forced to use ever more— when we use technology, social media, things like that, that our minds are being trained to think in a particular fashion that goes against the way that I naturally think.

53:08

I naturally think on a larger scale and a longer platform.

53:20

So what might be called slow thought, which doesn't work real well in social media, really seeks to understand the connections between things, thinks historically, values logic, values consistency and coherence over time, whereas narrative thought will, even if it looks for logic, is looking for logic in current trends, not looking at the historical ramifications or foundations for those things.

54:09

As a result, what is going on right now, I, for example, am well aware of the fact that two years from now the discussion of what's going on in March of 2020 will be completely different than it is today.

54:27

The problem is, I in my thinking will have tracked the process whereby that has changed.

54:35

For the vast majority of my fellow human beings, the issue will be the truthfulness of what is being said two years from now, not how it relates to what was being said today.

54:48

It's also relevant that I have always been criticized by many people for my concern about the role of emotion in thought.

55:05

We live in a day where the younger generation has been trained through film, through books, through education, through the societal normalizing of the process, to confuse emotion with logical thought, with reasoning.

55:31

I am watching regularly many people confusing their fears and their emotions with facts, or assuming that something is truthful if it confirms their emotions.

55:51

As a result, I'm not sure that this discussion is doable right now.

56:02

It needs to be done, but let's be honest, it should have been done a year ago.

56:09

But we couldn't have foreseen this. No, I'm not saying we should have foreseen it. One thing that, obviously, from my perspective,

56:18

I think that's very positive about this is that we are now thinking through very foundational issues.

56:25

Very foundational issues. Everyone has been changed by this. Now, we said the same thing

56:34

It's amazing that I'm talking to people that don't remember this. Some people that don't remember this. We said the same thing on the 13th of September, 2001.

56:45

Yeah, you can go back and listen to the recording, because I talked about this. We said everything's changed, and we were right.

56:52

Everything did change. There were some things that were fundamentally changed in society itself at that point in time.

57:01

There were things we thought might be changed that, with the fading of memory and the closeness of the event, have gone back to where they were.

57:15

Will that be the case here? Yeah. Certain things, fundamental changes. Other things, probably forgotten.

57:25

But in the church, me and my fellow elders, all elders that I know of in every church, all elders that I know of in every church, have been having deeper conversations with each other about the fundamental nature of the church and its mission than probably any time in the past.

57:51

Any time in the past. As a result,

57:58

I just don't think we can ever go back to where we were.

58:05

For me, this will be a new, vitally important aspect of what

58:13

I think about the function of the church, the mission of the church, the relation of the church to the world, the relation of the church to the worship of God, to worship itself.

58:24

Look, I've got to be very careful what I say here. Because I'm speaking into an explosive atmosphere.

58:40

There's a tremendous amount of volatile fumes. And I do not want to,

58:48

I don't think it would be appropriate at this time to explode them. I've literally been thinking over the past couple of days, should

58:55

I put a reminder in my calendar? Should it be six months? Eight months? A year?

59:02

To finally have the full conversation. I don't know, because as I'm thinking about this,

59:14

I think this is going to be an ongoing conversation. This is going to be something that goes up and down, up and down.

59:22

So it's going to be part of the new norm. And so at some point, you really have to dig into all of it.

59:31

But right now, I just think there are too many people, even in this audience, who are, well, my fellow

59:40

Trekkies will appreciate this, emotionally compromised. Emotionally compromised.

59:48

Fear has so taken over that nothing

59:54

I say will be either relevant to you or interpreted in any fair fashion at all.

01:00:03

At all. So I need to only partially answer this question right now.

01:00:12

I said yesterday on the program, and I said on Twitter, Hebrews 10 .25

01:00:23

is not talking about this situation. I'm sorry. If you think it is,

01:00:28

I just don't know where you're getting that. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.

01:00:38

And let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near.

01:00:54

So there's your section. There's your sentence. It is meant to be an exhortation in light of difficult circumstances.

01:01:07

We can use that. We need to hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering. Why can we do that?

01:01:12

Because he who promised is faithful. And so we're not trusting in our own accomplishment.

01:01:19

We're trusting in his faithfulness. As a result, we should consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds.

01:01:28

I am seeing some of that. I would love to see more of that. One of the contests right now, and that thing on Twitter, is between two dear brothers of mine.

01:01:43

Dear friends of mine. One I know a whole lot better than the other, but I consider them both dear brothers and fellow laborers, both of whom

01:01:52

I have disagreements with. Michael Brown, Dan Wallace.

01:01:59

So I wrote something about it today. And what I wrote about it was to build both of them up.

01:02:07

To save the world. Man, Dan Wallace has been just such a tremendous servant for us all, and we've learned so much from him.

01:02:18

And, you know, I've known Dan since the Ankerberg show. That's when we met. 95.

01:02:24

Some of you weren't born in 95. I've known him for a while. And it's not like we call each other up and chat all the time.

01:02:33

But Dan will tell you, there was a time I was there for him. I won't go into it. I'm not looking for paths in the back.

01:02:39

But there was a time I was there for him. We still talk about that once in a while. He's been a tremendous help to me as a resource in textual criticism.

01:02:51

And you know that I love Michael Brown. You've seen the debates we've done with each other and against each other.

01:03:00

And what I did is I tried to build them both up. I tried to... I had voted for one over the other.

01:03:07

I had to make a choice. But I wanted to build them both up. And tried to.

01:03:12

And I hope they saw that. I know Michael did. Dan's not the social media maven.

01:03:21

Michael has his radio program so he's much more out there. The point is let us consider how to stimulate one another's love and good deeds.

01:03:33

We don't do that very well in social media. It might be time to really reconsider that. Especially if we're going to be spending a whole lot more time on it.

01:03:40

Because it's the only way we can communicate with people. But that's the context of not forsaking your own assembling together.

01:03:54

So the assumption is the assembling together is taking place. But there are some who are in the habit of not coming to the regular assembly of the church.

01:04:05

This isn't talking about how often the church should assemble. This isn't talking about whether the church should assemble because of the ease of transmission of COVID -19 or the plagues that would be coming upon the church within the next centuries, historically speaking.

01:04:22

The plague Justinian which may have been the plague itself.

01:04:28

We're not 100 % certain. We don't know. We didn't have doctors back then that could make the kind of observations we do today.

01:04:35

Anyways, it is saying that there were people who have a habit of separating themselves away from their fellow

01:04:47

Christians. And we're not to do that. How can you stimulate one another to love and good deeds if you're not in the body?

01:04:57

That's the issue. We are to instead encourage one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near.

01:05:04

Now, if you want to try to create an argument from that that says this should be the guiding principle as to whether the church must meet on a weekly basis face to face even in the midst let's not use because this gets into arguments about just how bad this stuff really is and how many people really die from it and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

01:05:35

Right now you can't even talk about that. Not even allowed to in our society right now.

01:05:41

You can't. Let's leave that off to the side. What if you were a part of a faithful church in 1349?

01:05:55

And if you don't know that date, you really should. I should just be able to sit here and go just think of 1347 -1351.

01:06:06

And if you listen to this program I'm going to make sure you know those dates. Sort of like 325. You do know that one don't you?

01:06:12

Yeah. Council of Nicaea. 1347 -1351. The Great Mortality. We call today the

01:06:17

Black Death. The Black Plague. They didn't call it that. Nobody called it that back then. The reason it's called the

01:06:23

Black Death is because one form of the plague caused these massive black bulbs to develop under your armpits and your groin.

01:06:32

Bad stuff. There was another form that was breathed in and that killed you in 24 hours.

01:06:40

24 hours. You're dead. Mortality rate 100%. There were no records to my knowledge of anyone who got that form who ever lived.

01:06:51

100 % mortality. The other form was about 85 -90 % mortality.

01:07:03

We're talking wipes out half the population of Europe in a matter of years.

01:07:10

And then goes away and then pops back a couple decades later and then it just keeps going.

01:07:16

It's incredible how long that lasted. The question is what about 1349?

01:07:27

Would Hebrews 1025 have said yep, you all gotta get together.

01:07:34

Now they didn't know what caused it and so they did get together and one of the main groups that died were all the priests.

01:07:45

Interestingly enough, the Pope at the time and this was during the schism so you had different Popes.

01:07:56

The Pope had a doctor and the Pope the doctor said what he needed to do was to stay in a room with two huge fires at each end of the room.

01:08:12

That would produce a lot of smoke but somehow they handled that. I'm not sure what. He did survive. And when you think about it, that probably wasn't

01:08:19

I don't think the doctor had any idea why that would work but a lot of stuff that was tried there was a lot of stuff that was tried that just killed people instantly but a couple of things that were tried actually worked for reasons that they had no idea why it was.

01:08:38

But if it was passed primarily by fleas those fires would probably keep the fleas away.

01:08:45

What are you doing with that microphone? It's driving me crazy. When you raise it, you're trying to talk about something.

01:08:55

So anyway, would you meet in 1349?

01:09:02

Would Hebrews 10 .25 have that meaning in 1349?

01:09:10

Today we have technology. So all these different factors what's the state up to?

01:09:26

What's the state's authority? What's our requirement to show love to our neighbor?

01:09:34

Will our meeting bring death?

01:09:42

And again, remember yesterday? One of the reasons I showed the mortality thing? We've already made the decision that our meeting is worth the risk of a certain level of death.

01:09:55

We've already made that decision. Everyone of you who's ever gone to church has already made that decision. What do

01:10:01

I mean? You get into a vehicle. You could kill somebody an unbeliever on the way to church.

01:10:08

You've decided that that risk is low enough.

01:10:13

It's still a risk, but it's low enough. Where is the risk? Why have we been given so much contradictory information?

01:10:21

What information can we trust? This is why I said I'm so disappointed that the people on the one side that say, we must get together.

01:10:35

We must meet. It's not just something that we can put off.

01:10:43

Let's talk about a couple days ago. There were some people over here, not all, but there were some, launching nuclear missiles at the people who didn't meet.

01:10:56

You're just a bunch of compromisers. You're bowing the knee to Satan. Caesar, Satan, whatever.

01:11:05

Launching nuclear missiles this way. Right now, the vast majority of nuclear missiles are coming from this side.

01:11:14

If you dare meet, you are an idiot. You are risking your own people because people are dying in the streets all around us.

01:11:22

Well, they're not, but it's going to happen. You've got the two sides doing this stuff.

01:11:31

What needs to be done is that the elders of each congregation have to assess the information as best they can as a group in light of their commitment to how important public worship and the ordinances is and how regular that must be.

01:11:59

You have standard New Testament revelation of meeting on the

01:12:05

Lord's Day. That's your standard. That's the norm. If meeting in 1349 or let's say meeting in certain war situations where because of bombardment you are greatly increasing the chances of your people's death by all getting in one place.

01:12:36

Can you put off that meeting in light of bombardment? Most people

01:12:42

I think would say yes. So it's all a matter of weighing the information.

01:12:50

And right now it does... I get the feeling that there is a consensus being created by something outside of theological considerations that's coming from one particular side.

01:13:09

We'll see. But the elders of a congregation have to make that call and if you're not a part of that congregation,

01:13:17

I don't think it's any of your business. Pray for them.

01:13:25

We're going to have plenty of time in the future to talk about how the relationship between the state and the church has been changed in 2020.

01:13:35

We'll have plenty of time to talk about it. Or will we? We may be talking about it in hushed tones over a cup of coffee in the corner of a restaurant with our phones turned off and hidden in a lead box because Israel just today passed a law allowing tech companies to use the location of your phone to track coronavirus exposure.

01:14:00

I don't know why it's not hepatitis and meningitis and H1N1 or anything.

01:14:07

I don't know why this is the one thing. I don't know why when people say there could be 500 ,000 deaths from this.

01:14:20

There's 2 .8 million in the United States each year. There's never any context.

01:14:28

I don't know why but it's the first time we've ever seen this to where it is reported in numerous mainstream sources that Google, Facebook, all these tech companies are working with governments and Israel has come out and said we're going to do this.

01:14:49

We're going to track your phone and then we're going to use algorithms to find out where you've been and if you've run into somebody else and then we're going to get you.

01:14:58

If we find out they have it then we're going to drag you in and we're going to test you. That's how we're going to get rid of this thing.

01:15:08

Why don't you do that with AIDS? Oh, I shouldn't have asked that question.

01:15:16

There's just so much going on here that it just makes you go wow going down the road here.

01:15:25

I don't know what's going to go on here. So, and now

01:15:33

I give you Rich Pierce. My turn. It occurred to me this morning and I actually have been thinking about it on and off the past few days.

01:15:44

One of my elders in my church has shut everything down except for the worship service.

01:15:51

The church will open ten minutes before the service starts and close ten minutes after.

01:15:58

Okay. So no fellowship afterwards or before. Yeah, no small groups, no nothing beyond that.

01:16:04

But one of my elders talks regularly about the fact that he has high blood pressure and I've been thinking about the anxiety that this causes and I think that may actually be the bigger threat at this moment.

01:16:21

I don't know what tomorrow brings. I don't know what next week's going to bring. But the anxiety of this is causing people,

01:16:29

Christians, believers, a great deal of trouble, I think. And I was reminded, frankly,

01:16:39

I was reminded of the men's Wednesday night prayer meeting at PRBC in so many different ways in which the men prayed there.

01:16:50

Talking about the God of all comfort. The God of all hope.

01:16:57

And believers, if we should model anything right now, it should be to a world that is frantic, that is in panic, that we know the

01:17:12

God of all comfort and that we rely on the God of all comfort and that they can know the

01:17:20

God of all comfort. This should be part of our prayer.

01:17:28

We should be turning to the God of all comfort. We should be pleading for comfort, mercy, healing, all of those things.

01:17:38

But ultimately, the taming of the anxiety, when Jesus said, be anxious for nothing, when you rely on God, when you turn to God, when your hope is truly in God and you know

01:17:58

Him, despite all of these terrible things, the anxiety should be quelled by all of that.

01:18:06

That was Jeff's text on Sunday. And the irony was,

01:18:14

Jeff started preaching, I was about three rows back, and right then, the thing when the governor came out.

01:18:29

You sent it to me. Yeah, you sent it to me during church. Thank you. And so,

01:18:36

I go out the side, and I meet with Luke and Zach, and there's no way to... I'm not going to interrupt

01:18:42

Jeff. But that stuff's going on during...

01:18:51

While he's preaching from Philippians about being anxious for nothing. Right. And so, yeah, you ruined the sermon for me, so I just thought

01:18:59

I'd let you know. But no, it's seriously difficult to do, because as soon as he got done, and we're about to do the

01:19:09

Lord's Supper, and we're doing it differently because of this. You know this.

01:19:15

We've got hand sanitizer, and all the rest of this stuff going on, and we've separated the bread out, and at a church, you and I both know, how do they do the bread?

01:19:26

Yeah. First time they've ever done that differently. Yeah, I'll bet. Pre -broken. Yeah. We're setting up, and I'm showing

01:19:34

Jeff the article. What are we going to say now? So yeah, stress is...

01:19:41

No, I will say this, and I think part of why we're seeing what we're seeing has to do with the messaging.

01:19:47

Oh, there's... Actually, I told you a week ago or so, I was very skeptical of this being overblown.

01:19:57

Then I saw the rationale of the approach, and the way in which they want to attack it.

01:20:03

Okay, I get that. Be careful. There's stuff you can't say right now. But the messaging really could have, and I'm going to quote a rank liberal.

01:20:18

I sent that same message to my pastor, and he started digging into it.

01:20:24

Is this an edict? What is this? What exactly is he saying to us that we're allowed to do? Because he can't do that.

01:20:32

And he then sent me a message back from the mayor of Los Angeles, and he said, look at this.

01:20:39

This is how we need to interpret this. And the governor in California said the same thing.

01:20:45

We can't force you to do it. And this is about messaging. My Reader's Digest version is, look, we can't order you to do this.

01:20:54

We don't have that authority, but we're asking you to. Yet. Well...

01:21:00

I think if martial law was proclaimed, then they would. But to my knowledge, martial laws never actually happened in this country.

01:21:07

I don't know. At least not in... Are you telling me that seeing the panic that you and I are seeing right now, that that couldn't happen?

01:21:13

Yeah, but it might be for a very different reason. Yeah. And we're back to the anxiety factor.

01:21:19

But we're getting into stuff we can't talk about! But ultimately, if we digest this in a way in which, like for instance, the mayor of Los Angeles put it, hat in hand, rather than the iron fist inside the velvet glove, if the government comes to us with a hat in hand, how would we respond as opposed to interpreting them iron fist in the velvet glove?

01:21:47

We need to ask ourselves those questions, I think. Oh, I agree. I agree.

01:21:55

You're done. Good. Okay. Um... I'm scrolling through this thing right now.

01:22:06

The... Cody Lockhart, and I'll finish up with this.

01:22:13

In South Central Kentucky, the trail of blood landmarkism is still quite prevalent, especially in your smaller, older congregations.

01:22:20

Is there any resource out there that specifically deals with this mistake, this error? I was looking...

01:22:27

I tracked down the booklet, easily enough. Um...

01:22:33

And, you know, it... I'm sure there is somewhere.

01:22:43

I'm sorry. It's never been an issue. I mean, I was given the booklet called

01:22:50

Trail of Blood, I was given the booklet as a teenager. And...

01:22:57

It's jack -chick level type stuff. And what it partakes of, um...

01:23:07

It is very easy to take a narrative and press it upon the historical documents.

01:23:17

And then select the documents you're going to cite and the material you're going to cite from them to substantiate the narrative that you want to present.

01:23:30

Um... Rome does this. Rome does it very well. You have to spend a tremendous amount of time to expose how well

01:23:40

Rome does this, because she's been doing it for a long time. Her doctrine of the papacy is based upon long -term utilization of fraudulent documents.

01:23:53

The Nation of Constantine, the Pseudo -Isidorean Decretals were central to the development of the papacy in Western Christendom.

01:24:02

And yet, nobody, nobody believes those documents were historically valid.

01:24:09

Now, but when people thought they were, the papacy was developed, now you've still got the papacy and the foundations are gone.

01:24:17

Just an illustration of what you're dealing with here. And so, um...

01:24:25

What you have, it's not that everything in the material is false.

01:24:33

There were groups such as the Waldensians, the Albigensians. Is it true that, well, there had to have you know, for example, um,

01:24:44

Anatomy of a Hybrid and Reformers and Our Stepchildren. Leonard Verdine.

01:24:51

Leonard Verdine, brilliant guy. I got to meet him before his death. He was a hundred and five.

01:24:59

A hundred and five when I met him. And took me out.

01:25:04

He lived in Apache Junction back in late 80s, early 90s.

01:25:12

Took me out for a walk in the desert, showing me flowers. And the guy was over a hundred years old and was fascinated with flowers and had examined them.

01:25:21

He was just a brilliant mind. Like I said, when I was sitting there talking to him, um,

01:25:28

I've told this story before, but when I was sitting there talking to him, I mentioned, he said something

01:25:33

Luther said, and I said, Luther said that? And he just smiled and said, would you like that in English, Dutch, or German?

01:25:41

And I was just like, oh man, I hope, I, I, that would be awesome if, if I could keep a mind like that.

01:25:51

I'm not sure. But anyway, uh, Leonard Verdine's Reformers and Our Stepchildren, been criticized for which sources you're using, so on and so forth.

01:26:00

Every historical source, you've got to be careful on that. But, but Trail of Blood has a specific theohistorical or historical theological narrative that it's attempting to create that simply runs into, there are too many facts that it's ignoring and that it won't allow into its, so can we, can we feel for the

01:26:35

Albigensians and the Valdensians for the fact they're persecuted by what would eventually be the

01:26:43

Roman Catholic Church? Of course. Does that mean that they were

01:26:49

Baptists using the King James Version? No, it doesn't. Would, would either of those groups have accepted

01:26:58

Fundamentalist Baptists as brothers? I don't think so. Should we, and here's the thing, the thinking is, well, but remember, it's the

01:27:12

Catholics that wrote the history of these people so actually they were just like us, but the Catholics messed it all up. But once you adopt that kind of thinking, then any counterfact, any fact that's opposed to your narrative, just, well, they, someone corrupted that and blah blah blah blah blah.

01:27:28

That's what you've got here. And what it feeds on are people who, you know,

01:27:35

I'm just looking at this. I was just scrolling through it here. I was looking for my own copy, because it's in there someplace, but something that small, next to impossible to find.

01:27:45

I thought I knew where it was, I couldn't find it. Anyway, just scanning through here. Years later, 1139

01:27:55

A .D., Pope Innocent II called another of these councils especially condemned, two groups of very devout Christians known as Petro -

01:28:02

Brucians and Arnoldists. How much do we know about these? How do you know that they're very devout

01:28:08

Christians? What do you really know about them? Same thing here.

01:28:20

I was going through my Kindle edition before the program today, didn't get finished. This does the same thing.

01:28:27

It's a modern word. It does the same thing. It utilizes language within the context of the citation of actual sources to create a narrative that is not being derived from the sources.

01:28:43

That's what you've got here. You've got devout Christians. Alexander III called yet another,

01:28:49

A .D. 1179, just 40 years after last, and that was condemned, what they called the

01:28:54

Errors and Impieties of the Waldenses and the Albigenses. There is great value in trying to more accurately understand the

01:29:07

Waldensians and the Albigensians movement, but you have to accept the reality that there were things they believed which just make this narrative not fit at all.

01:29:24

The point is who knows who Innocent III was?

01:29:30

Who knows who Alexander was? If people haven't read widely in church history, if you haven't read 2000

01:29:40

Years of Christ's Power by Nick Needham, read it. It'll give you the context to be able to go, Whoa, wait a minute.

01:29:47

I'm going to ask Nick, you may be behind on this, but could you direct me toward some specific articles?

01:29:58

I'm going to write to him today. If he catches this, or maybe I doubt he's listening live at this late hour in Scotland.

01:30:07

Nick would be my go -to guy to track something down for you there, Cody. Maybe he'll be able to give me something that would be even better than even some of these thoughts that I've shared with you even now.

01:30:21

Having rambled on well past the jumbo level, but that's okay because we all have lots of time today.

01:30:32

I used to think, I was thinking of Gene Squirrel. You do a long dividing line so they can drive for hours and hours and hours and listen to stuff, and now it's everybody.

01:30:47

It's just, we're all there. Did you see his Facebook post about the latest load he's had on his truck?

01:30:54

No. He can't reveal where or where he's going because it's loaded toilet paper.

01:30:59

He doesn't want to get hijacked. I really hope he comes to Arizona since I saw that graphic that says that we are the worst toilet paper hoarders in the

01:31:08

United States. And it wasn't me! I'm telling you right now, I've taken inventory.

01:31:15

I have not bought a single roll of toilet paper since this started because there hasn't been any available for me to buy.

01:31:23

So I know exactly how many rolls I have. I have eleven and a half. That's what we had from whenever the last time the wife bought a big thing of toilet paper was long before this all started.

01:31:35

That's what we've got. I've got eight in the storage room, it's locked and alarmed, and I've got guns. And I've got three and a half in the house,

01:31:44

I think. Along with a number of wet wipes. So we're good for now, but you try to get my toilet paper and I will reveal right now,

01:31:53

I do have an AR -15 and I'm a very good shot. Just so you know. I will defend my toilet paper. A couple of things here while we're having a little bit of fun at the end here.

01:32:01

First of all, what's with the milk? Well, I haven't had any problem yet because I get fair life.

01:32:07

Oh, our store got totally cleaned out of milk and eggs. Yeah, I got the last eggs at Target a couple days ago.

01:32:12

Come on, people. You do realize that these... It only lasts so long. The funny thing is if they took the regular milk, fair life milk lasts for weeks.

01:32:21

So if they wiped that out, at least it would last for a while. The guys on Slack? Yes, my watch has been vibrating thanks to you guys on Slack.

01:32:31

Since the government's going to send us a check for $1 ,000, we're all going to head to the store and buy guns. Actually, one of my fellow elders during the program, which is one of the reasons

01:32:41

I closed the thing, was talking to somebody else on Facebook about how the gun stores are wiped out of ammo.

01:32:48

Yep. There's a big surprise, right? So how many supporters will we lose if I go,

01:32:57

I don't care because I'm already stocked up? I think they'd probably pretty much stay right where they are.

01:33:04

I'm not... I am not concerned. I think that might be the new me too. Oh, me too?

01:33:11

Yeah, me too. Yeah, I'm ready. Me too. How many cans you got?

01:33:16

I'm not saying, but I got them. No, I'm not worried about that at all. No, this is true.

01:33:25

We should wrap up before we get into... You're the one that keeps raising the microphone.

01:33:30

I'm not... I was just... I was finished. And I'm almost hesitant to stop because then

01:33:41

I have to check what the most recent news is. And these days, that's not a whole lot of fun.

01:33:48

Honestly. Whiplash. Oh, what happened? Oh, goodness. I'm not really personally, majorly...

01:33:57

Well, yeah. Actually, I was just thinking about my life insurance policy is probably... Because all those stock market gains since Trump became president are gone by one virus in two weeks.

01:34:10

That's pretty amazing. But I have a friend who tells me... Just hang on. Six months from now, it'll all be back.

01:34:18

We're all fine here now. I actually was watching that because I saw

01:34:24

Rise of Skywalker finally on my own computer. So I went back and was watching the original going...

01:34:33

1977. Seneca Pre -Theater. We need to wrap this up. Thanks for watching, folks.

01:34:39

We're going to be back tomorrow. So we can just continue this conversation tomorrow. Or just continue till tomorrow.

01:34:44

Whatever! Doesn't matter. I think we have at least ten rolls of toilet paper here, too. So we're good.

01:34:51

So from our bunker to yours, we're all fine here now. How are you? We'll see you next time.