Priests and Confession, Real Purgatory, TR Onlyism, and More!

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. It's late today for us actually, but we're doing this sort of remotely again, and it's been working out so far. We went and picked up the mobile command center today when I dropped it off.

I did not expect it to be sitting out there that long, but I had a lot of work done on it, and we'll be shaking her down on this next trip. Starting a week from Friday or Saturday, I think, somewhere around there, is when I'll be heading toward Conway, Arkansas and teaching apologetics at Grace Bible Theological Seminary.

Looking forward to that experience once again and interacting with all the students and things like that. It's always exciting. And then heading back to Dolores, Colorado, I posted the information about the little mini conference we're doing there.

And again, this is the kind of stuff that we've had the opportunity of doing recently. Going to smaller churches, some people say, well, that's the only people that have you. Well, if it turned out that way, that'd be great.

But the reality is you get to go places you don't get to go otherwise and meet people you wouldn't get meet otherwise. And especially for me, you get to hear stories about how the ministry has impacted people for years and years and years that you wouldn't get to hear otherwise.

And very much looking forward to that. Cut it shorter. Stuff didn't work out up in Denver, and so it's not as long as it was going to be. But that's okay because the trip in September is brutally long, well over a month, and brutally long distance wise, too.

So it's probably really best for my wife, especially if I cut this one back just a little bit. But it's about the right length to really shake things out, make sure things have been repaired properly and stuff like that.

So we got her parked in her storage spot under the shade, which is a good thing, even though, hey, just gotta be honest. Summer showed up for a few days last week, but it then went back on vacay. We're at least three or four degrees below our normal highs right now.

I think we'll pop over again in a few days. But I just remind folks, it was 35 years ago this week, 35 years ago, that we set our all-time record high here in Phoenix. The city's bigger, there's more blacktop.

How many billions of tons of carbon dioxide have been poured in the atmosphere but 35 years since our high temperatures? And in fact, there's a fellow on Twitter, fascinating, he posts a lot of stuff that's really interesting.

I did not know that, you know, I knew the 1930s, the Dust Bowl and stuff like that was just ugly. But the worst heatwave in New England, oh, I just had someone from New York complaining about how hot it is there.

The worst heatwave in New England occurred during 1911, so over a century ago. And remember, records only go back to the mid -1800s. Thousands of people died, and some people committed suicide to escape the heat.

Tens of thousands of people in Europe died from the heat that summer, especially children in France. And much, much, much hotter than it is today. But you never hear, you know, the lamestream media is not going to tell you about that.

They're not going to tell you, well, you know, yeah, it's really hot in Washington, D .C. today, but it was a whole lot hotter 70 years ago. They're not going to do that. That's not going to accomplish anything for them.

And so, yeah, those of us in Phoenix are going, hey, it's going to get hot, you know, July could be a real scorcher. But the fact of the matter is, the worst years are when it starts in April and ends in October.

And it didn't start in April or May. It hasn't really started in June. We had, I think Sunday, it was 98 for a high, which for us is just like, in the middle of June, what? What is even happening? The aliens must be coming.

Warfare, Drones, and the Rapid Change of Technology

Anyways, before I get into some of the theological stuff, you know, those B -2 bombers that the United States used a couple days ago, they're not new planes. They've been around quite a while. And, you know, we're still flying B -2s around, too.

And the technology, I haven't spent a whole lot of time, don't have time to do it, but I did watch a fascinating video. And again, these days, if you see it in video format, you probably should default to questioning its validity.

But these were, these seem to be battlefields. And of course, that could be from a game or something like that, but the source seemed to be all right. It was talking about how the war in Ukraine has changed everything, just everything.

Any battle planning that was back in the 60s, 70s, 80s, big fleets of tanks coming across borders, all that stuff has completely changed. And that's why, I'll be honest with you, I've wondered from the start if this war wasn't pretty much, I mean, the blood that's been spilled, the lives have been lost, unbelievable, but it just seems like the vast majority of it is a massive testing ground for new weapons systems.

That the global war hawks that make all the money from building the weapons systems, the Tony Starks, the real Tony Starks, that they're behind all this. And the the, the battlefield has completely changed.

You know, we have the M1 Abrams tank, we've had it for a long time now, super advanced, fast, maneuverable, great armor, and yet a drone. I'm not talking about a big drone, I'm not talking about those big ones that can fly hundreds of miles.

I'm talking about a guy hiding down under some bushes with a VR mask on, and a game controller, and a drone, you know, smaller than this desk, taking out one of those tanks. Because it can approach from the rear, there's less armor in the rear, and it can go straight for the joint between the turret and the body of the tank.

And I just saw Russian tank, after Russian tank, after Russian tank, just exploding and being destroyed by these Ukrainian drones. And of course, it goes both directions. But I also ran into a video of a Ukrainian drone taking out a Russian sniper.

I mean, even to the level of individuals, the battlefield has completely changed. And it really makes you wonder, with the droids, shall we call them that? Robots that will probably, my gut feeling is Elon Musk and SpaceX will send droids to Mars before human beings.

And that would make perfect sense, wouldn't it? I mean, if you saw the film The Martian, you know, really well done, excellent author. But still, there were no droids on that mission. And now it's pretty obvious that the first time that happens, and we're only talking a few years from now, there will at least be droids on the mission, if not the only things on the mission.

You know, you could send a half dozen droids up there and you don't have to worry about returning them. When you send humans, you know, they could start building a habitat or something there so that humans could come and stay or something like that.

But it truly is amazing how much of science fiction becomes science fact. But along with that comes all the really dangerous stuff that science fiction warns you about. All the AI stuff and everything else that we're facing today.

And it feels like we're behind the curve. And how else could it be? I mean, you can't see the future, though it sometimes seems that science fiction writers can and predict things rather amazingly. I mean, okay, I didn't think this up, but once I heard about the strike on, what was it, Saturday?

Yeah, it was Saturday. In Iran, in Ferdow, I think is what it's called. I'm just sitting here going, okay, who wrote Top Gun Maverick? And how did they know this was going to happen five years before it actually took place?

Because it's the same plot. It's almost exactly the same plot. I mean, it's not the big, massive ordnance device. But it's pretty close. Trying to put it down an air shaft, and you put the first one down to open up for the second one, and all that stuff.

It's just like, well, I suppose if you think about where people are building their nuclear stuff, you could extrapolate that out. Still, you're just left going, I don't know. It's easy to see how the conspiracy guys can just run wild with this kind of stuff.

Man, that's about all social media is anymore. If you're looking for a reason to be frightened of something, it'll only take you about five tweets scrolling through before you find something to go, blah, and completely freak out about.

But yeah, the nature of warfare, the battlefield, everything from swarms of drones to... Everything's changed. Everything's changed. And I'm just reminded very clearly of how the Japanese mistakenly forced the United States to modernize and change and adapt by striking Pearl Harbor.

The battleships that were sunk in Pearl Harbor were antiquated. They would have been pretty much worthless to us in the first place. The only way for the strike there to have actually hurt us greatly is if our carriers had been there.

We didn't have many of them. And within a month, everybody understood, battle wagons have their place, but it's no longer at the center of the battlefield out in the ocean. And we didn't really learn our lesson from that.

The armed forces that will survive are the armed forces that can adapt to a rapidly changing technological challenge. And the United States may have the advantage right now. It just makes me wonder how long that advantage is going to last.

It really, really does. So anyway, fascinating stuff, really fascinating stuff there. I just happened to see a YouTube video. The interviewer is Father James Martin, the Jesuit, the pro-LGBTQ guy that Pope Francis was big on and always encouraging and stuff like that.

And he's interviewing Pete Buttigieg. It does make me sit back and go, what is he going to be running for next? Will he be the next person up, or is that maybe too close? Maybe eight years down the road, something like that, maybe.

Now he's doing the beard thing, trying to look a little more macho manly. He's never going to be macho manly. But the Jesuits, man, Mitch Pacwa is so unlike the rest of the Jesuits. It's not even funny.

It's pretty astonishing stuff. Anyway, let's go ahead and look at this one. There was a thread not quite a week ago. Patrick Neve, former comedian with a Master's of Systematic Theology, helping thousands of Catholics share their faith, did a thread.

Why do I need to confess my sins to a priest? Well, you can confess your sins to God, but if you want your sins forgiven, Scripture says you should go through a thread. So here's a thread of a Catholic apologist attempting to substantiate the assertion that if you want your sins forgiven, then you should go through a priest.

When it's a whole thread on Twitter, it'd be really hard to do it that way. So where does Scripture say that you should seek forgiveness of your sins through a priest in the Christian church? Because I have said many times and have debated the subject, in the New Testament, there are Jewish priests.

There is a Jewish priesthood that is specifically said to have passed away, made defunct by the shedding of Christ's blood on the cross. Then we have the one high priest, and he is the Melchizedek priest.

He has no successors in that office, according to Hebrews chapter 7. And by one sacrifice he perfects for all time those who are sanctified. So, okay, there is what the Melchizedek priest can do. And then you have a discussion, you have a description of a holy priesthood, but it's all saints.

It's everyone who's in Christ. There is no sacerdotal priesthood, there are no qualifications for a quote-unquote Christian priest. The offering that is made by the Christian people is one of praise.

There is nothing in the New Testament about an office of a sacramental, sacerdotal priest. There is nothing in the offering of the Lord's Supper, and you can use that term offering, because we're talking about a commemoration, an anamnesis of a sacrifice.

The anamnesis of a sacrifice is not itself a sacrifice, or a continuation of that sacrifice. And so, there's nothing in the New Testament about needing to have some kind of sacramental ordination to be able to work the miracle of transubstantiation, to officiate at the table.

There's just nothing there. And if it were apostolic, it would be all over the New Testament. It would have to be all over the New Testament, but it's not there. There are two offices in the New Testament.

Just two. All the rest of the stuff that developed over the centuries is not apostolic, didn't come from the apostles. And of course, some will say, well, but yeah, sure, it came from the apostles, but it was oral tradition.

You know, that's the way out of everything. And you could substantiate and make credible anything using that kind of argumentation. The fact of the matter is, the concept of priest very plainly came from outside apostolic teaching.

It came from outside the New Testament writings. It began to have credibility in the church, even during a period of time before the New Testament canon was fully recognized and functioning. And it came from the religions of the peoples around them.

I mean, all the people around Israel had kings, so we want to have a king. And so same thing happens in the early church with the development of the concept of a priest, even though that early understanding of a priest had almost nothing to do at all with what would eventually be the Roman Catholic priesthood.

The monastic movement, central in the evolutionary development over time of the concept of the priesthood within Roman Catholicism. So, and by the way, I had a dear friend ask me, are you noticing that Roman Catholics are just having a hissy fit, if you call them Roman Catholics recently?

And I've seen that happen a number of times in the past over the years. And all you gotta do, I mean, there's so many places where Rome itself has referred to itself as the Roman Catholic Church. But no, I hadn't noticed it, but he pointed out a number of places where some fairly well-known Roman Catholic speakers were jumping up and down on it.

I said, oh, no, it's, yeah, it's happened before. I've had exchanges with people about the subject before, but I hadn't noticed it right now. And it seems to me to be sort of absurd. You know, what they want to do, well, we're not Roman Catholics, we're just Catholic.

That just means universal, and given that you say you have to be in subjection to that guy over there, that's not Catholic. That's not Catholicism. That's Roman Catholicism. You can either be accurate or you can be deceptive, but you can't be both at the same time.

Anyway, so looking at this thread, so here's how a Catholic apologist will tell us, again, specifically, if you want to have your sins forgiven, Scripture says you should go through a priest. Let's see if Scripture actually says you should go through a priest.

Consider John chapter 20 verses 22 through 23. After the resurrection, Jesus breathes on the apostles and says, receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. If you retain them, they are retained.

No commentary given. Okay, so these are apostles. There are no apostles today. Well, they passed on their authority. Well, but you have to demonstrate that, and you have to demonstrate that they did so through a priesthood.

In fact, I've demonstrated that they themselves were priests. I know that's what you assert, but again, that's supposition on your part. It's not what the New Testament teaches by a stretch of the imagination.

And one thing that becomes very clear, the problem with Roman Catholicism at this point is the replacement of the power of the gospel with the power of the sacraments. What did the Holy Spirit allow the apostles to do?

To fearlessly, accurately, and truthfully proclaim forgiveness of sins in and through Jesus Christ, which is the gospel. So it is the proclamation of the gospel. It is a proclamation of what God the Father has done in Jesus Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirit, the Trinitarian gospel, that is it point here?

Well, no, if you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven, and so that's the priest. There's no priest here. Well, if you retain them, they are retained. How do you do that? Through the power of the gospel.

You tell people, repent and believe in Lord Jesus Christ, you'll be saved. Reject his message and reject his lordship, and you'll be responsible for your sins. They will be retained. That's what the gospel is all about.

There's nothing about priests here. Nothing in the context about priests, nothing about ordination of priests, nothing about a mark on the soul, nothing. It's not there. It's fictional. You believe it because you've been taught it, but it's fictional.

No interpretation given. In Mark 2, when Jesus heals the paralytic, he first says, your sins are forgiven. The Pharisees protest, only God can do that. Jesus proves that he has that authority, and then he passes it on to his apostles.

Well, he didn't in Mark chapter 2, and he didn't in John chapter 20. So yes, Jesus has the right to forgive sins because of who Jesus is. But to simply say, and then he passes on to his apostles, you didn't even try to substantiate that.

It's just an assertion, an empty assertion. Many Protestants echoing the Pharisees like to say, only God can forgive sins. But in John 20, Jesus gives men the power to forgive sins in his name. Actually, in John 20, as we saw, the gospel proclaims the forgiveness of sins to those who repent and believe, and the retaining of sins to those who reject.

That has nothing to do with priests. There are no priests there. And notice, gives men the power to forgive sins in his name. How about gives men the gospel that brings about the forgiveness of sins, or also brings about condemnation?

That's a part that's frequently lost today, but when people reject the gospel of Christ, there are results. There are consequences. When the gospel is authoritatively proclaimed, and you reject that, you're held accountable for that.

Nothing about priests. If he were setting up a system where a Christian can confess directly to God, why did he do that? Well, he wasn't setting up a system in the first place. You're the one trying to set up systems.

Jesus isn't setting up a system. He's saying to the apostles, here's the power of the gospel. This is what happens when it's proclaimed. There will be those who will accept, and their sins will be forgiven.

There will be those who will reject, and their sins will be retained. It's not about them. It's about the gospel. Some say the apostles forgiving sins was a one-time thing, but the Bible shows the opposite.

Paul forgave sins. 2 Corinthians 2 .10 says, God gave the apostles the ministry of reconciliation. 2 Corinthians 5 .18. Now, that was very poorly written. 2 Corinthians 2 .10, but one whom you graciously forgive anything, I graciously forgive also.

For indeed, what I have graciously forgiven, I have graciously, if I have graciously forgiven anything, I did it for your sakes in the presence of Christ, that no advantage would be taken of us by Satan, for you're not ignorant of his schemes.

There's nothing about priests. This isn't a sacramental discussion here. This is about Paul's relationship to the church of Corinth, and having been offended. This is in 2 Corinthians, 1 Corinthians. There was a response to Paul's first letter.

You've got the super apostles. That's what the context is. It has nothing to do with sacraments. It has nothing to do with priests. This is scripture twisting in its fullest form, and 2 Corinthians 5 .18, again, that is a classical text.

2 Corinthians 5 .18. Now, all these things are from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. So, who does the reconciliation? God directly, through Christ, and once we are reconciled, then the ministry of reconciliation is what?

The proclamation of the gospel, which is what John 20 was about. Nothing about priests. Namely, that God was in Christ, reconciled the world to himself, not counting their transgressions against them, and he has committed to us the word of reconciliation.

That's not Rome's message. Not counting their transgressions against them? Who's that? That's the blessed man of Romans 4. There is no blessed man in Roman Catholicism. You commit a mortal sin, held accountable.

Menial sin, held accountable. You don't have the righteousnesses of Christ imputed to you. So, not counting their transgressions against them. What's that? But again, and it says 5 .20, so then, we are ambassadors through Christ.

So, as God is pleading through us, we beg on your behalf, Christ, we are reconciled to God. Why not say we are priests? Why not say we can give you forgiveness of sins through our sacerdotal authority?

It's not there. It's not there. It's pure eisegesis. This is the essence of Rome looking backwards and inserting into the text of scripture, just as they do the early church fathers, the things that they want to find there.

Then, just sort of in passing, he says, James commanded verbal confession in James 5 .16. Yeah. Therefore, confess your sins to one another. Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.

The effect of prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. Where are the priests? Is James written to just a community of priests? No, this is within the fellowship of the church itself. Be willing to confess when you've sinned against another person.

It has nothing to do with sacramental forgiveness, priests. I mean, if it was a New Testament teaching, don't you think by now, the guy would have come up with something that's actually semi-relevant?

How about going to Hebrews, where, you know, priests are talked about? No, we don't want to go to Hebrews. No, no, no. Sin harms our relationship with God and with the body of Christ, the church. Jesus wanted to give us a way to be reconciled to both simultaneously.

Okay, where are you getting that from? The priest acts as a representative of the church and of Christ. Okay, so here again is how we have, this is, he goes back to 2 Corinthians 2 .10, it's the reference he gives, but one whom you graciously forgive anything, I graciously forgive also for indeed what I have graciously forgiven.

If I have graciously forgiven anything, I did it for your sakes in the presence of Christ. It's nothing about priesthood. This isn't the priest acting as a representative of the church and of Christ. I mean, this is the best you can find?

Is Paul saying to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians after what, you know, 1 Corinthians caused all these problems, and the super apostles, and the fractures in the church, and Paul's talking about, you know, harmony and unity has nothing to do with sacraments, has nothing to do with, and it's all you've got?

Wow, that pretty much should tell you that you're not preaching and teaching like the apostles did, are you? No, you've got a completely different system, a completely different system. But God could forgive me directly, absolutely, but he chose to do so through a sacrament.

To reject the method he gave us for your own method is disobedience. Well, that's nice, but you didn't bother to even try to isageete a text there, did you? Because you can't. Because you can't. The reason you believe this stuff is because Rome tells you to.

Stop pretending it's because the apostles taught it, because that's all it is. It's pretense. And I think in your more honest moments, you know that. That's why you attack sola scriptura, that's why you elevate tradition.

You know that that which we really do know came from the apostles directly doesn't teach what you teach. So you have to attack its sufficiency so that you can bring another source of authority in to teach this kind of stuff.

That's what's going on here, very clearly. People often accuse Catholics of going to confession to receive forgiveness on demand. I'm not going to say that people haven't said that. I've never said it, and I don't really understand what the basis of it is.

But if you only confess directly to God, you are guilty of seeking forgiveness on demand. You decide when to say sorry, and you decide God must have forgiven you. While a priest can tell in extreme cases that you aren't really sorry and withhold absolution in extreme cases.

Yeah, don't worry, there's no scripture reference there because there isn't. You know, there is no priest. He can't tell that. And withhold absolution. Oh, okay. Well, the absolution comes from proclamation of the gospel.

The absolution comes from repent and believe, receive forgiveness, reject, your sins are retained. That's the gospel, not some individual that has some supposedly special power. Jesus gave the church authority to bind and loose, not individual Christians.

When you reject confession, you try to take the authority for yourself, and you can't. Well, again, that's just here's what my ultimate authority says, and I'm going to believe my ultimate authority, and I'm not going to bother to pretend to even bother to try to give you a reference here because even the references I've already given you are laughable, and they are laughable.

They truly are. And that was it. He went on to advertise some ebook on 100 questions about Mary. I'm sure that's just as equally eisegetical as that particular thread was. So there you go. Just some thoughts once again.

Timothy Easley at some point was, if I recall correctly, yeah, this, he quotes from a, I believe, a Catholic that said, Purgatory is not a bridge from torment to paradise. Purgatory is the state of those who die in God's friendship, for sure their eternal salvation, who still have need of purification to enter into the happiness of heaven.

So in other words, the nice sanitized, the way he puts it, this sanitized fluffy pillow God hugging the bad out of you kitten version is such a new concept, I can still smell the paint. He says, allow me to share what Saint Bridget wrote in the 14th century.

It's super fluffy and not torment at all, just friendship and rainbows. Okay. So he's doing what I did six, eight months ago. I think I put the book back. Yeah. I know where it is in my office. FX Shoop, Purgatory, tan books.

Look it up. This is so obvious that there is no debating it. There's no debating it. What Purgatory was, what it meant, the fact that involved time and suffering, even if people didn't know the Latin satis passio, was a given for many centuries before Trent up to minimally the 1950s and the new instantaneous, again, fluffy pillow, God hugging the bad out of you kitten version, which some pretty well-known Catholic apologists are hawking that one now.

Well, the church never officially defined this or that thing. It's so great when you, you know, the church has to officially define things. Who gets to determine what the church officially defined? Well, the church does.

So did the church officially define that a capital punishment was given by God to the state to protect society? Yeah. But now that's sinful because the church says, we it's, it's lots of fun. But yeah, it's absolutely beyond question.

Anybody who honestly reads go back to Bellarmine. I mean, he's, he's one of the best they had read the saints. And the stories like this are just, they fill volumes. You can't explain them away. Okay.

So yeah. Okay. So St. Bridget revelations and prophecies. There you go. This would have done well on TBN book for chapter seven. Then the son's voice was heard to say, thanks to the prayers of my friends, this man will yet receive enough godly contrition before death.

So it's not to go to hell, but he will be purged among those who have the heaviest punishment in purgatory. Once his soul has been purged, you'll receive reward in heaven in the company of those who had faith and hope, but only small charity on earth.

Once this had been said, the demons fled. Then it seemed as though that a terrible and dark place was opened up before the bride in it, there appeared a burning furnace. The fire burned on no other fuel than demons and living souls, but there's, but there's no fire officially in purgatory above the furnace purgatory appeared.

The soul whose sentence was mentioned earlier, its feet were affixed to the furnace and it stood upright like a man. The soul stood neither on the uppermost part of the furnace nor the lowest, but as it were on one side of it, the shape of the furnace was terrible and awesome.

Its fire seemed to push up through the bottom of the soul's feet as when water pushes itself upward through pipes and it went up over his head with such violent pressure that the soul's pores were like veins coursing with hot fire.

His ears looked like a blacksmith's bellows that continuously fanned the whole brain with their flapping. His eyes looked like they were inside out, sunken all the way in and attached to the back of his head.

His mouth was open and his tongue was pulled out through his nostrils. It was hanging down to his lips. His teeth were like iron nails attached to his gums. His arms are so long that they reach down to the feet.

Both hands seem to be holding and squeezing a greasy tar-like thing that was on fire. The skin that covered the soul looked like an animal hide just hanging over his body and he was dressed in a cloth that was like a sheet drenched with something I won't mention.

This cloth was so icy cold that anyone who saw it shivered. Pus oozed out of it as from a wound with putrid blood. A stench came from it that was so bad that it could not be compared to the worst stench in the world.

But it's just God hugging you, loving you. After the sight of this torment, the soul's voice was heard to cry out, woe, five times, weeping with all his might. He said, woe is me, first of all, because I loved God so little in return for his great virtues and for the grace given to me.

Woe is me, second, because I did not fear God's justice as I should have. Woe is me, third, because I loved the pleasure of my sinful body and flesh. Woe is me, fourth, for all my worldly riches and pride.

Woe is me, fifth, that I ever laid eyes on you, Louise and Johanna. Yeah, you know, that kind of story just doesn't really seem to sell books today. How do you put that kind of thing together with Father James Martin doing the pro-homosexual thing with Pete Buttigieg?

Yeah. So, Martin is still a priest, hasn't been excommunicated, but that poor soul has got fire going. It's just a vision. It's not official. Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, let's shift gears for our final topic here.

Sorry about the grossness of that, but hey, go read them for yourself. Every time you hear one of these popular guys or these popular Catholic apologists soft-selling purgatory, just go find a few stories like that and go, hmm, wonder what's going on here.

It's pretty obvious. Anyway, so totally shifting gears here. I happen to note a a tweet today that made reference to Dr. Jeffrey Riddell. Now, some of you may recall back in 21 or 20, trying to remember, might've been 20.

Anyway, it was sometime during the high water mark of the pandemic, and we decided to go ahead and do two debates between myself and Jeffrey Riddell. And Jeffrey Riddell is a Reformed Baptist, and he is really probably the...

TR-Onlyism as a Greek-ized Form of King James Onlyism

You know, we had ecclesiastical textbooks before, like Theodore Elitist. Interestingly enough, I had exchanged with him back in the... probably about 96-ish, I think. Probably about 30 years ago. And he was killed in a motorcycle accident.

And he was an interesting theological mixture of things. I think he was a Lutheran at his death. I'm not sure. Anyway, and then there were people before that, but they have all passed away. So as far as in the current context, it would seem to me that the best-known promoter of the ecclesiastical text, traditional text, TR-only position is a Reformed Baptist, Jeffrey Riddell, who teaches for IRBS.

That's not the official position of IRBS, as far as I know. It certainly wasn't in years past when I was associated with IRBS. But things change over time, and have changed over time. So maybe that's something that will happen in the future.

I don't know. Who knows? But anyway, we debated two texts. Specifically, we did the longer ending of Mark, and we did a text from Ephesians chapter 3. And the outcome of those debates was, I think, very, very clear.

The argumentation that Dr. Riddell used to defend the long writing of Mark is not the argumentation used to defend the reading of Koinonia versus Oikonomia in Ephesians 3. In fact, the entire form of argumentation used in the second debate was contradictory to the form of argumentation used in the first.

And that was my point. My point was, it is very, very plain that TR-onlyism is just simply a Greek-anized version of King James only. There really isn't any difference. When push comes to shove, just as in the debate only a matter of months ago in Louisiana, it does not matter what the facts are.

It does not matter what any manuscript says. It does not matter if you end up with a few words of commentary being inserted in the text of the Book of Revelation because Erasmus was in a hurry, and they were having problems extracting the Greek text, and the editors made a mistake.

And so the King James has words in it that no one had ever seen in that text in a biblical manuscript up until the TR. Well, up until Erasmus's first edition. Sorry about that. That becomes the basis of the TR, obviously, 100 years later.

So none of that matters. In King James-onlyism, you start with the King James text as your final authority, and then history, readings, manuscripts, everything else simply becomes secondary to that ultimate authority.

In TR-onlyism, it's TR. And you don't really want to answer questions about, well, which TR and what about the variants and stuff like that. You just call it the Protestant text. And it's the final authority.

And you develop your arguments to defend your final authority. It doesn't matter if the argument you use to defend this is a complete contradiction. It doesn't matter. You can contradict yourself right, left, and center.

It doesn't matter. All you got to do is say, but without this, you've got all that stuff. You've got the Bart Ehrmans out there, and you've got all this stuff. And they all do the same thing. In fact, it's fascinating.