Calvary Chapel Split, Incarnation in John 1, More on Morey, Technical Problems

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Sorry about the technical issues today folks. Had some uber geeks in the office recently and, well, geeks play with things. But as I say, if it ain’t broke… Anyway, briefly noted the split amongst Calvary Chapel churches, and then spent some time (interrupted by technical issues) on the prologue of John and the Incarnation, then finished up with a response to Robert Morey’s further debate challenge.

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And greetings, welcome to the dividing line. I guess I should aim the... I was wondering where'd the microphone go? Oh, there it is.
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It's probably still working. I should actually probably get to some phone calls today. And I just realized that with the new
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Uber woo -woo lighting... Plug the sound back in.
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Was that you? Oh, wait a minute. Wait a minute. I asked, was it you?
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And you said the program has a mind of its own. Can you explain how you... The program has a mind of its own.
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It does what it wants to do. And sometimes it doesn't bring the mics up, even though it's supposed to.
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What can I say? It probably didn't even have... I didn't even know if we had intro music. Did we have intro music? I don't know.
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Silent movie version of the DL. I don't know, but hey, you somehow were able to fix it.
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Yeah, I have to click a couple of different things that are supposed to be automatic. Okay, there you go.
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So you did have a topic today, right? Yes, yes. And it will include phone calls eventually at 877 -753 -3341.
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I saved this a couple of weeks ago and I kept forgetting to bring it up. And I don't raise this to go nya -nya or anything like that.
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It's just, it is fascinating given some of the interactions we've had with Calvary Chapel, the non -denominational denomination over the years.
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Evidently, there is a major split in the Calvary Chapel movement.
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You know that Chuck Smith passed away. And evidently there was a
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CCA council. But now there has been a split with Brian Broderson and the
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Mamaship Costa Mesa Church starting the CCGN, the
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Calvary Chapel Global Network. And so CCA and CCGN are at odds with one another.
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And it's interesting the way they laid it out here. This is from CCA. This would just only be their viewpoint.
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CCA is building the foundations given to us by Pastor Chuck. CCGN is creating a new blueprint devised by Brian.
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CCA is being led collectively by a group of men. CCGN will be directed by one man.
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CCA is a fellowship of pastors and agreed upon philosophy of ministry. CCGN is a community with no formal affiliation.
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CCA will continue to have a regional emphasis. CCGN will be centralized in Costa Mesa, et cetera, et cetera.
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Well, I said long before Chuck Smith passed away that the unwillingness to be confessional and to have an objective statement of faith that would provide some parameters would eventually be a problem.
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I've been hearing, not only is the ecclesiology issue in Calvary Chapel rather important.
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What's the New Testament form of the church? You have the elders, elders, pastors, overseers, bishops.
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You have deacons. And you have a form of the church.
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You have the ordinances of the church. And obviously, if you have people, if you have excommunication in the church, if you have putting people out, that means you know who is in.
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You can't put out what wasn't already in. And one of the big issues with Calvary Chapel has always been its utter resistance to the concept of an accountable church membership.
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And so, once the strong leader in a movement dies, there has to be a strong leader in the second generation to hold together or any movement will just splinter off into a thousand different parts.
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And I'm no insider. I'm just reading this thing. But a lot of people had been expecting
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Brian Broderson to be sort of the replacement Chuck Smith. Maybe he did, too. It's sort of like I've met at least six men that have told me beyond all shadow of a doubt that Walter Martin chose them to be the
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Bible Answer Man. So there'd be a bunch of them out there. And so I'm sure there's a bunch of people that sort of figured by, you know,
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Chuck said something to me once while we were on a plane together. And I took that to mean, you know how that works.
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But quite an interesting development there. And it does make you wonder what the future is going to hold once they go start going different directions.
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What's that going to mean as far as what a Calvary Chapel is supposed to look like? Stuff like that.
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Does anybody even own that name? I really honestly have no earthly idea.
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So who knows? We will see. We will see. But that is an interesting development.
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I don't remember. This isn't really story time with Uncle Jimmy.
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I read you a number of the more important Gnostic Gospels and things like that.
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And I suppose I could find some others, though they become less and less relevant the farther down the list you go.
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Story time with Jimmy, but it is sort of, you know,
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I just saw something in Channel. And even though, you know, this fellow is helping me out with something, it doesn't it doesn't matter because that comment was.
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Had to had to do it, had to do it. I hope he'll he'll survive. Anyway, sorry.
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Yeah. Yeah. Catch that. That's that's that's pretty. No, it wasn't.
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Why do you think that was funny? Man, I could use some friends.
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Really could. Chat is disabled. Everyone is is is upset with you that you have chat disabled.
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I just thought you should know that. Now they can hear me anyway.
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I don't remember if it was Christmas Eve. Or Christmas night.
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It would have been somewhere in the middle 1980s, I would guess.
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One of our family traditions. Was to get together.
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We had the same tree. We had the same tree for so long. That we had to put toothpicks.
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Into the holes in the you know, you had these wooden things you put together, then they had these holes and you stuck the the the branches into it was a it was a this is a night.
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My first recollection of that tree, you saw it. You remember it. My first recollection was when
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I was four years of age. What? You're sitting there with your hand on the on the tree was so old.
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How old was it? I would say it was from 1966.
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Okay, so I think it was about 1966 when we got that. So you have stick toothpicks into the holes because the holes had worn out over the years and the branches just sort of go.
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Well, anyway. Um, yes, poor friendless dog that yeah, Mark, Mark, Mark wants to be my friend.
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I need some friends. I've lost a few recently. Anyway, it was not a tall tree either.
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It was only like, well, I would say about four or four and a half feet, something like that. But we had it every year.
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And it looked it always looked the same. Every single there was consistency, shall we say.
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And one of our traditions would be to sit around, turn up, turn the lights off, except for the tree.
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And originally it was a 33. Revolution LP, you know, 33
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RPM record that we would play. I have it now an
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MP3, of course, I found on iTunes, believe it or not. But we would listen.
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Well, and back then we would have to turn the record over halfway through. Because it was both sides of the record.
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But it was only. I sent it to Summer recently, it was only like.
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Twenty four minutes long, but it was it was a. Very abbreviated version of A Christmas Carol by Dickens with Laurence Olivier.
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Doing narration. And it was just something we'd listen to on Christmas Eve if we were home, if you know how it worked out.
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And maybe it was after that or maybe it was a
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Christmas night. I don't forget. I don't remember which exactly one it was, but it had to have been somewhere around nineteen.
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Eighty four, because that's right around when I started learning Greek, taking
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Greek at Grand Canyon. And my father took
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Greek. At Moody Bible Institute, I have we both studied from the exact same
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Greek grammar, Greek didn't change a whole lot between fifty three and eighty three.
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And we both we both learned Greek from William Hersey Davis. Any of you who are older folks, most of you folks these days are probably children of William Mounts, as that's certainly what
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I've been teaching for a long time now, too. But we both studied from the same grammar.
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I've got his Greek New Testament in the other room. And so now the stream is gone.
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What? It's fine. That's not what they're saying on Twitter.
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It's on their end. You're shooting 1080p.
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So why are you telling people in channels, select a lower video setting? Oh.
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Even Turgeon fan says the video stream for everyone died, but it's our problem. Anyway, I don't know what's going on.
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I know that we had techno geeks around and they were playing with stuff.
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So when you play with stuff, stuff happens. Anyway, I had just started learning
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Greek and my. My dad started telling me the story about Kenneth Weiss, Kenneth Weiss was his
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Greek professor, I've told the story before that Weiss was a pretty tough teacher and at Moody Bible Institute back in the 50s, there were two tracks, there was the pastoral track and the missions track.
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And it was said that and you had to take Greek for the pastoral track, but not the missions track.
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And it was said that Kenneth Weiss sent more men in the missions field than anybody else.
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And. So he would come into the class.
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And he would start the class with a a a gem from the Greek New Testament or golden nugget, golden nugget.
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And if you've got the Kenneth Weiss set, I was going to bring I was going to remember to grab one of the sets
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I forgot, but golden nuggets from the Greek text and things like that. And so that evening,
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I remember because I had to sort of sit over toward the tree to have enough light to see the text.
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You know, it was now I realize it was Christmas night because we were sitting at the at the table and we had cleared all the dishes and stuff off from the turkey and turkey and dressing.
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Oh, wow. Anyway. And so my dad started telling me about something that Kenneth Weiss had explained one of those days long, long ago in the 1950s.
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And it involved looking at John chapter one, verse one, which I believe I am sending to you in some way, hopefully.
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There we go. And had to do and I shared this in my book years later, but it had to do with the verbs that are used in the prologue.
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Now, the prologue is verses one through 18 specifically. And you'll notice that there are two primary verbs.
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You have the verb ain, which is the imperfect form of I me turn on the details, their imperfect form of I me.
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And then elsewhere, for example, verse three, you have a genita, which is from the verb genemi being used in the aorist.
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So all things a genita were made through him. And apart from him, a genita udahen, apart from him, nothing was made or came into being.
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That which was made in him was life and the life was the light of men. And so when you look then at verse six, there came a man, a genita sent from God, whose name was
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John. And so when you're talking about other things in the prologue that come into existence, for example, the world
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DL2 through him, a genita was made. And so you have when anything that is created is being referred to, you have a genita.
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Now, the aorist is normally, the aorist is just simply, the aorist is the simplest way of stating an action.
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Normally, it is in the past. So evidently, we're just hopefully recording this for later use.
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So some people can see it and some people cannot. Oh, okay.
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That's interesting. Yep. Well, we'll probably have to go back to whatever settings we had before last time.
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Yes, yes. Thank you very, very much. Anyway, when anything is created is referred to, the aorist is used.
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Most of the time in almost any context, the aorist is going to be a point action in the past.
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A simple statement that something happened. I ate. Not I was eating.
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I had eaten. Anything along those lines. It's just, I ate. Doesn't say anything more.
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Doesn't say anything about whether I'm still full, whether I'm hungry now. Nothing along those lines.
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Yes, some people are getting it. That's interesting. I don't know. But there are some times when the emphasis is not upon the past, but just simply upon the kind of action.
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I know, for example, there are a number of really important places where the aorist is used to refer to, he loved us and gave himself for us using the aorist.
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And why would that be? Looking at a particular action in the past, pointing us specifically to the cross, the cross as the essence of the fulfillment of redemptive love.
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So that's where you have the aorist.
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The imperfect, however, is different. And we saw the imperfect up in verse one.
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And when the logos is referred to, rather than Ginnomai being used, you have ein, the imperfect.
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So NRK, ein halogos, kai halogos, ein prostantheon, kai theos, ein halogos.
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Hutas, ein NRK prostantheon. So this one was in the beginning. These are not aorists.
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These are imperfects of aimi. Now, aimi is the verb of being.
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The imperfect refers to a continuous action in the past.
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And unlike the aorist, it doesn't point to, in the vast majority of instances, it does not point to a origination, a point of origin.
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And especially when you say something like, in the beginning was the word. If you want to say the word came into being at the beginning, you'd want to use some type of form of the aorist for the verb of being.
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But by using the imperfect, what you're doing is you're saying, wherever the beginning is, the word is already in existence because it's a continuous action in the past.
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So I was eating rather than I ate. It's continuing.
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Now, syntactically, there can be places, especially in historical narrative, where you have the imperfect talking about the beginning of an action, the end of an action, so on and on.
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So there's ways of emphasizing different things. But the point is, it is, in its fundamental meaning, a continuous action in the past.
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And when the logos is referred to, John does not use the same verb that he uses of every created thing that is made by the logos.
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There's a clear distinction drawn all the way through the prologue until you get to verse 14.
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And verse 14, of course, is one of the key texts of the
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New Testament in regards to the subject of what we would call today, the incarnation.
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And there you have the text, and the word became flesh.
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The word became flesh. And you'll notice it uses agenita.
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Now, why would that be? Well, someone asked a question this morning in channel that sort of touched on this same issue.
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Jesus has not eternally been flesh. The incarnation took place at a point in time.
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There was no human nature of Christ prior to the incarnation.
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It goes back before Adam or someone. He's not the eternally incarnate one. The incarnation was a historical event.
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And this is necessary for Jesus to be a true human being and hence to offer his life and issue of the atonement and hence union with Christ and these other things.
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And so the logos, which has eternally existed, the logos through whom all things were made at a point in time entered into flesh, became flesh.
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And then the term to dwell, skenao, also an heiress, dwelt amongst us, plural.
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So word became flesh and then tabernacled because it's to dwell in a tent.
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And a lot of people have felt that there is a connection there to the tabernacle in the
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Old Testament. It is interesting that when the writer of the Hebrews draws attention to what
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God commanded to be done in the Old Testament, he focuses not upon the temple but upon the tabernacle because that was what
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God gave specific instruction on as to how it was to be made. And he tabernacled amongst us and we beheld his glory.
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The glory is of the monogamous, the monogamous para patras.
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And not going to get into the argument right now about how to translate monogamous.
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This is the unique one para patras. And as soon as you're using patras, you get the ideas of father and son, which are going to be developed so clearly in the rest of the
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Gospel of John. But this unique one, this only begotten one from the
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Father, this one is glorious. And it is a unique glory.
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And he is one that is full of grace and truth. And there is an emphasis here, of course, upon the reality of the flesh, the fact that he dwelt amongst us and that we are able to look upon him.
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Think about the beginning of 1 John, where what's the emphasis there?
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The emphasis is upon the touching, which our hands touched with the word of life, the reality of the incarnation.
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Jesus wasn't just some phantom. The incarnation took place at time, in time.
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It truly happened. It wasn't just made to look like it happened. The word became flesh.
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And this then becomes the amazing assertion that the eternal
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Lagos, the one who has eternally existed in relationship with the
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Father, which is going to be the emphasis of verses 1 and 18. That all of this is focused down into that reality that the word became flesh and dwelt among us.
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If I was just listening to somebody, I forget who it was, trying to argue that only
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Matthew and Luke have any idea of Jesus' birth or any concern about it.
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But I think that's completely missing what John's talking about because the word became flesh, tabernacle amongst us.
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Through the rest of the gospel of John, there's going to be discussions of brothers and sisters and things that, you know, where he was born.
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The idea that John is somehow trying to de -emphasize that, I've never understood.
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It does not make any sense at all. It is definitely there in what
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John is saying. So, in the prologue, then, you have this purposeful construction on John's part where he chooses the verbs that he uses to teach us things.
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That he speaks the Lagos before the incarnation only with these words that emphasize that Lagos is not created.
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Lagos is not just some creature. It's not Michael the archangel that became incarnate or something along those lines.
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The Lagos has eternally existed, and the Lagos is he who became flesh and dwelt amongst us.
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And when we think about where Jesus is today at the right hand of the
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Father, it's amazing how many people become Gnostics after the resurrection, where the body of Jesus somehow goes poof and disappears.
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Or you've got the very interesting Lutheran concept of the ubiquity of the body of Christ, where the divine attributes are communicated to the physical nature.
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So, the physical body becomes omnipresent. A very interesting perspective as well.
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But at least confessional Lutherans still believe Jesus has a body.
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It's just omnipresent, whereas a lot of Christians just don't even really think about it.
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They sort of turn Jesus into a merely spirit creature rather than still the incarnate one.
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It's important to realize our union with him and his incarnate state are pretty closely related to one another as the
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God -man. Is that the kind of stuff that we're hearing at this season of the year?
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Well, I'll be honest with you.
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Of any season of the year, you are definitely going to have at least a better chance of hearing a discussion about the incarnation, the nature of the hypostatic union, that kind of stuff.
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You're going to have a better chance this time of year than pretty much any other time of year, even more so than at Easter.
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Because unfortunately, at that time, there's not, in the
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West anyways, sufficient emphasis upon the relationship between atonement and incarnation. I've certainly noticed that, like I said, the third stanza, sometimes in some of our
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Baptist hymns in the Trinity Hymnal, it's like the seventh stanza, and we sing all of them.
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But the third stanza of many of the incarnation hymns will have some incredibly deep
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Trinitarian theology in it. Those are never the stanzas you hear on the radio, unfortunately.
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Okay, now I've got... Okay, this guy, really, Prost -Purgatory didn't get him any wiser.
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It generally refers to an ongoing process in the past, but imperfect always means that the action is more remote to the main action of the statement and narratives that supplies background info.
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Well, yes, I realize that Decker has some interesting perspectives, but no, it says always means that the action is more remote to the main action of the statement.
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How does that work in John 1 ?1? What's the main action of the statement?
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Hmm, huh, B Forbes, you want to tell us about that? Huh? Huh? Let's see what you come up with on that.
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Maybe I'll open the phone lines. Let's have a little cross -examination. Huh? We'll see what happens.
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Yeah. Okay. Yes, yes, it has. It has. Anyway, hey, if you're going to type it in the chat channel, there you go.
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Yes, we know the sound went off for a few minutes beginning and the stream has been doing strange things and I'm just doing my job.
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Whether other people are doing theirs is another issue. I leave that to the audience to judge by the results in essence.
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Yes, technical difficulties, bad connection. Oh boy. Look at that.
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Hmm. Something changed. Something changed. And I know what it was.
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We had geeks in the office and the geeks were playing with settings. And when you do that, well, things, things, things go wrong.
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So anyway, this time of year, you will get discussions about these things.
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Obviously, in a lot of churches, there's no real big emphasis upon incarnational theology or things like that.
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And I'm not even talking about the churches that don't even, you know, even take note of what time of the year it is what's going on along those lines.
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And that's fine. If you want to, you know, go out at that direction, that's perfectly understandable.
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But when there is a discussion of these things, I would surely hope that what would take place would be a real focus upon some pretty amazing teachings found in scripture regarding the incarnation and the person of Jesus Christ, because it goes far beyond what you get in, well, in the jingle bells and stories about Santa Claus.
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877 -753 -3341 will open the, open the phones for you.
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If you would like to call in while, while you're doing that, if the phones work, okay,
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I can't guarantee anything right now. If the phones work, you can call 877 -753 -3341 and we'll get to you.
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One other thing before we go to the billions of phone calls, I mean, we're just going to probably burn the phone lines down.
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I don't see anything happening. Then again, with the delay, where did
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I put this? Sometime Tuesday afternoon, the following email came into our contact folder.
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Here's what it says. Dr. Robert Morey challenges James White to a public debate on, one, is the threat of destroying the
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Kaaba a viable military tool in the West's psychological warfare with radical
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Islam? Two, where in scripture is there any basis for calling the military threat of a destroying the
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Kaaba a sin, all capitals? Three, where in scripture is there any basis demanding repentance, all capitals, for the military threat of destroying the
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Kaaba? Four, is the use of ad hominem name calling, stupid, ignorant, etc., a valid argument against the military threat of the destruction of the
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Kaaba? There was a return address that looks valid to us anyways, to Dr.
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Robert Morey. I fairly quickly put up a
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Facebook response. There aren't very many things that leave me speechless, but that was definitely one of them.
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I don't want to spend more time on absurdities than we have to spend on absurdities.
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But unfortunately, this was followed up on Twitter, I think the next day, with one of Morey's students who started off going, what's so big about destroying a building?
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And I'm like, you do realize that it's not out in the desert by itself, right?
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I mean, there are lots and lots of people around, it's in Mecca, and there's almost never a time when there isn't anybody around.
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Oh, collateral damage. Oh, okay. So the issue of actually murdering people is relevant.
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Well, it's collateral damage, collateral damage. And I guess that wasn't the only guy that was going, yeah, sounds like a good idea.
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That should be something that the West hangs over there by his head.
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A number of people point out, and I sort of mentioned it in passing, you do realize, because notice what it says, is the threat of destroying the
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Kaaba a viable military tool in the West's psychological warfare with radical
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Islam. Now, immediately, I go back to the original quotations from Morey. What was he talking about?
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He was talking about destroying the Kaaba. Why? So that the fifth pillar could not be fulfilled.
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That's religious, not military. That's a religious thing. So don't try to change the subject to avoid the fact that you're talking about using weapons of mass destruction against a religion on a religious basis.
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That's what you're talking about doing. And you're talking about doing this within the context of being a
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Christian leader, a Christian minister, which sort of puts you in the same mindset and behavior realm as the
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Taliban really does, just the Christianized version of it. But maybe he's not aware of this.
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Oh, yeah. The same troublemaker in channel did point out that at a later point in that conversation, the guy said, well,
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I always heard Morey say bombing, not nuking. Yeah, that's a big difference.
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Okay. Anyway, maybe Dr. Morey is not aware of this, but you do realize that there are many
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Muslim groups. And in fact, the most radicalized Muslim groups want to destroy the
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Kaaba. You're not aware of that. You don't know the many plots, the attempts.
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The building itself has been torn down and rebuilt a number of times. And the whole issue of the fifth pillar is irrelevant now anyways, because technically, there aren't enough places to go on Hajj for all the
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Muslims in the world to do it anyways. So all that is just the idea that Islam would end if the fifth pillar couldn't be fulfilled is just absurd.
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It comes from just not thinking or just being so radically Islamophobic that your thought processes become twisted.
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But Morey is suggesting what ISIS suggests, which wants to destroy the
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Kaaba because they view it as a place of idolatry. And the
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Saudis are constantly having to guard against suicide bombings and everything else of the
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Kaaba. So why say is the threat of destroying the
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Kaaba a viable military tool in the West's psychological warfare with radical
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Islam when you're actually agreeing with radical Islam?
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And in fact, they would think it would be pretty cool if you pulled it off. Could you explain that?
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No, let's not bother. Where in scripture is any base for calling the military threat of destroying the
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Kaaba a sin? What is a sin is for any person who pretends to want to see the salvation of Muslim people to think that that could be accomplished using weapons of mass destruction.
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There are little boys and girls right around the Grand Mosque in Mecca and you want to vaporize them?
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For what exactly again? To accomplish what? To destroy the fifth pillar of Islam? This somehow is going to cause
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Islam to collapse? And in regards to number four, it's if what
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I was saying, evidently, Dr. Mori does not understand what ad hominem argumentation is.
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Ad hominem argumentation would be, Dr. Mori is so stupid that what he says about Islam is wrong.
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Okay, that would be ad hominem because I'm basing my argument upon an argument against the man, ad hominem.
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Saying that it is stupid to say that nuking the
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Kaaba would destroy Islam is not an ad hominem argument. If you can't tell a difference between the two, you haven't done much study in the field of argumentation.
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Now, I generally don't refer to people's ideas as stupid, but there are some ideas that are just simply stupid.
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They are beneath a level of any meaningful respect.
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And yes, clearly, when someone has evidenced an ability to do meaningful work in certain areas, and then in this area, shows such outrageous disregard for every level of rationality, truth, scripture,
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Christian behavior, everything. Yeah, that's where stupid comes in at that particular point in time.
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So, where in scripture is there any basis for demanding repentance for the military threat to destroy the
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Kaaba? Anybody who cannot understand, you know, look, to all of you
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Bob Mori fans that think that I'm soft because I want to take off the table the threat of nuking the
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Kaaba, let me just tell you something. I cannot begin to understand for a second how anyone could have spent any time whatsoever on their knees praying to the
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Lord of the Harvest to bring the gospel, and use me to do it, bring the gospel to the
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Muslim people, to reveal Jesus Christ to the
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Muslim people. I cannot begin to believe that anyone who has any meaningful compassion in their hearts for the
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Muslim people could even begin to contemplate the foolishness of the concept under discussion here.
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I can't believe it. I can't begin to understand it. If you are praying for those people, you are not going to want to nuke those people.
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And I can't see any way for you to say, oh, yes, yes, yes,
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I want to pray for them. I pray for them, and I weep for them, and I'm doing everything I can to present the gospel of grace to them while holding over their head the possibility of nuking the
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Kaaba, just so that we can nuke the Kaaba, because it wouldn't accomplish anything. Well, it would.
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It would accomplish something. It would unite Muslims around the world in a way they've never been united before. That's painfully obvious.
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But I'm sorry, your actions are speaking louder than your words.
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Your concepts, the incoherence of your concepts are speaking much louder than your words.
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You can pretend all you want that you have a heart for the Muslim people, but if you want to vaporize them before you even get an opportunity to evangelize them, then how are you different than al -Qaeda?
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How are you different than ISIS? I don't see any difference. You're just the westernized version, and you make a mistake.
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And this is an interesting insight. I find your claim to believe the gospel to be as incoherent as many of my
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Muslim friends find the claims of the al -Qaeda murderers and the
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ISIS murderers to be Muslim. They go, that can't be my faith.
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Those people are doing things that are totally against what I understand my faith. Well, I think it's far clearer, far clearer for a
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Christian to look at the New Testament and go, hmm, where does the
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New Testament give warrant for Christians to promote the use of weapons of mass destruction as a means of, well,
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I guess that couldn't be evangelization, huh? Are you just assuming that Mecca has been thoroughly evangelized?
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And they've all turned their back. And so we can just assume they've all heard the gospel with clarity.
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And so now we can, what's that? Beyond God's reach.
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Well, maybe. I see you in the same way that they see them.
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And I get the feeling that most of you who take this perspective, you don't see differences between Muslims anyways.
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They're just all the same. And you're one of those that always gets angry when
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I try to point out the differences between Muslims. No, no, no, no, no. One big monolith.
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They're all the same. And if they pretend they're not, then they're just trying to fool you. It's just taqiyah.
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And my experience in the past continues to be my experience today. There's no reasoning with folks like that.
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There's no reasoning. People go, well, you should have an argument that can punch through that. No, if there's any meaningful argument requires reason on the part of the person to whom you are presenting the argument.
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If there's no reasoning going on, argumentation is irrelevant. And there are people on both sides, thankfully, they're the minority in the fringe, but there are people on both sides where the rational processes have stopped.
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Now, have they stopped? Why have they stopped? And I've said before, remember
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Christopher Hitchens used to say religion poisons everything. He was wrong. False religion poisons a bunch of stuff.
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So he was close, but he missed the important part about true religion and true faith.
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But religion can poison many things. And that religion can take many different forms, many different forms.
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And there is a nasty military, any type of militarized
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Christianity is going to be a perversion. Because what's the power that has been given to the church?
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Is it a missile? Is it a bomb?
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Is it a plane? Is it some type of modern weapon of mass destruction?
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What's the one power that's been given to the church? Power of the gospel. That's it.
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That's all we've been given. Only the gospel can change hearts and minds.
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There's nothing else that can do it. Nothing else can do it. So there's a fundamental distrust or abandonment of belief in the power of the gospel when you start looking for other things, or certainly a redefinition of what church is supposed to be about.
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But I really do start to wonder at times how many of those who will speak out and calling for radical actions like this have spent one moment in sincere prayer to God that the gospel of Jesus Christ would be caused to go forth with power amongst the
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Muslim people. Now, of course, as soon as I mentioned that, I had some anti -Calvinist zealot write back going, oh, you're more loving to your
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God who doesn't elect all of them. It's like, oh, social media, the whole thing.
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It used to just be comment boxes or the internet ignorance aggregators.
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Now it's Twitter and Facebook as well. Just as soon as a thought crosses your mind, no matter how facile, incoherent, or erroneous it might be, we can now express it.
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Just let's make sure the whole world catches our thoughts.
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But there you go. I have absolutely positively no interest whatsoever in,
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I cannot, well, first of all, as I said last time, given how
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Dr. Morey has debated, has behaved in debates past, I have no basis upon which to believe that any agreed to set of parameters, behaviors, anything like that would ever be followed, followed, ever be followed.
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But more importantly than that, when I engage in debate,
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I want to debate something that has some meaningful content to it.
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And there is, from a Christian perspective, there is no meaningful content to the assertions that Morey has made.
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Now, I know he's trying to dial them back to say, well, the West has to have in its psychological warfare with radical
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Islam, even though radical Islam, many of those groups want to destroy the Kaaba. But again, let's not worry about the disconnectedness of these thoughts.
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Trying to dial it back to just a military type thing, that's not what was said. The original statement had to do with ending
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Islam's ability to fulfill the fifth pillar, and that non -fulfillment of the fifth pillar would be the end of Islam.
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And that's just at its best naive and at its worst, well, look, let me put it this way.
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Any Christian who would seek to engage in apologetics to the
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Muslim people, who will not openly and without reservation condemn any kind of threat to use military force in a religious context, on either side, should have no place at the table of discussion whatsoever.
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None. On either side. And that means if you as a Muslim will not condemn what is being done to Christians in Pakistan and Afghanistan and Muslim countries, then you shouldn't have a place at the table either.
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But to be consistent, I've got to look at the lulus we have on our side and go,
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I condemn that. And here's why, this is not Christian behavior, this is not
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Christian belief, this is not consistent with the proclamation of the gospel. I condemn it and reject it.
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And I think anyone who does not do that should have no place in the discussions at all.
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And it needs to go both directions. Needs to go both directions. I think any
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Muslim standing up to engage in meaningful dawah and debate should be more than...
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There was a suicide bombing at the largest, I think it was
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Coptic church in Egypt, what, five days ago, something like that? 47?
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I forget how many people lost their lives. There should be no question that that kind of behavior would be condemned.
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That you do not use military force in theological issues.
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Now, does that raise questions about Muhammad's examples and his campaigns and things that happen?
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That's debatable, we can debate it. I think there are questions about that, but those things have to be on the table.
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And we, in the modern period, must be very clear where we're starting from. And as a Christian, I say to the
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Muslim people, our message for you is of a Lord who rules over you.
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He is your creator, he is your maker, but today is a day of salvation. If you will turn to him in repentance and faith, you will find him to be a perfect savior.
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He is your Lord, you need to confess him as such, and you will find in him everything that you're not finding in the religious duties that you fulfill, but do not bring you peace.
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That Jesus came that we might have life and might have it more abundantly.
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And therefore, anyone who claims to be representing Jesus, who would be willing to see life indiscriminately wiped out through the weapons of mass destruction, is either not a
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Christian at all or is a Christian in a deep state of ignorance or rebellion or deception.
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Those are the only possibilities. Those are the only possibilities. And so, anyway, going higher, huh?
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Who knows? Who knows? Maybe some people caught back up. I don't know. I don't know. But with that,
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I think the technical difficulties either meant that no one ever heard the phone number or didn't figure it was going to be working anyways, or maybe it's not.
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I'm not sure if we checked that. Hadn't even looked into that. That's a possibility.
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But anyways, thanks for watching The Dividing Line. Next week, huh?
58:56
Probably going to be normal. Yeah, probably going to be normal. Well, we don't know. Who knows what kind of emails we might get from this?
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Well, this is true. This is true. This is true. All right. We'll see you next time. Thanks for watching.