The Hunter/Pritchett Insult Fest, Kwaku El Concluded, Jared Wilson on George Whitefield’s Soul

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00:31

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. It is a Tuesday and we're back at it.

00:37

We've got some dangerous stuff to be talking about today. There were developments in the

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Kwaku L saga over the weekend while I was gone, and so I had said on the last program when

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Brother Jeff had joined me that I was going to finish up, that we didn't have all that much more to cover from the original video that Kwaku had posted, and there's some church history stuff.

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I like to get to the church history stuff, especially because I think it is important to mention the fact that Mormonism does try, in a very surface -level fashion, to provide a very, very pick -and -choose style apologetic from early church sources.

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They get away with it because so few Christians read any of the early church fathers and don't really know where to look to check things out, that it would be useful to give that kind of a warning and to look at that type of information.

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So we will be doing that. Then I've got a just extremely dangerous subject to deal with toward the latter half of the program.

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But at some point recently, I gave in to the promptings of people online to review methodologically, as I have been doing for years, at least 15 years, the interview that Ben Shapiro did with William Lane Craig.

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And anyone who has listened to this program for any period of time would know that over the years,

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I have played clips from Craig's encounters with numerous people, with Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, and just answers on Molinism that have been given by reasonable faith and issues regarding time, the sovereignty of God.

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Almost any time he says something about Calvinism, I'm immediately overrun with people sending me examples and saying, really hope you'll address this, etc.,

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etc., etc. And so for a number of years, we have attempted to try to help people to understand why there are differences between Christian apologists as to how we address the issues presented by atheism, secularism, all forms of skepticism, and why we answer objections differently.

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Why, for example, over the past number of years, there's been the development of sort of a,

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I'm not sure what terminology I would use, but it's derived from embarrassment at the actions of God in the

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Old Testament, in bringing judgment against particular nations,

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Amorites or Gibeonites or whatever. And there have been some books published that basically try to, in some way, insulate

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God, move God away from being considered to be the terrible, horrible, guilty, bad

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God of the Old Testament. And we have criticized these things because we are very firmly convinced, as one of the reasons we oppose

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Andy Stanley's seeking to get people to embrace Marcion's position on the

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Bible, basically, we feel that fundamentally this is dishonoring to God, it is destructive of sound

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Christian orthodoxy. And once you get somebody into the church, you have to disciple them, and when you disciple them, you'll end up teaching them, if you're teaching the whole

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Council of God, something different than you use to convert them. And this is a fundamental problem.

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What you win them with is what you win them to, and we've seen the results of utilizing a sub -biblical apologetic methodology.

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And so, there was nothing new about my responding to Craig's assertions and his methodologies.

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This is – anyone who found that to be unusual or anything else just hasn't been listening very much at all.

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Just doesn't seem to listen to the program or really care about what it is we've been saying and all we're doing.

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And if you think that is an attack, well, it's an attack upon a methodology. And Dr.

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Craig is the leading proponent of that, and he has lots of opportunities, and so that's what makes it interesting for people, and that's what raises the question.

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Why is it that when – well, for example, if you listen to the debates

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I've done with Shabir Ali – we've got another one coming up later this year – if you listen to the debates

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I've done with Shabir Ali and listen to the debates William Lane Craig has done with Shabir Ali, because we've debated some of the same people, if you're an intelligent, thoughtful person, you're going to go, you know, they're both

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Christians, but they are really answering a lot of the key questions in a different fashion.

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Why is that? Well, we happen to think that it's important to address that issue and to explain those things, but some people seem to think that that's terrible.

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You're just not allowed to do that. You're attacking the greatest living Christian apologist in the world today.

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Who do you think you are, and you're mean, and you're nasty, and oh, no, no, no. Wow. I mean – and from the time we started doing this, we would see comments on the internet.

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We would see people saying things like that, but it's sort of like, where are you getting this?

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Why can't there be a discussion of these things? And so I'm pretty used to the imbalanced followers of William Lane Craig, and by the way,

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I don't blame him for his own imbalanced followers. I get blamed all the time for somebody who says,

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I like James White and then does something stupid, and I get blamed for it. Well, that's irrational. It's stupid, and so I'm not going to turn around and do the same thing to somebody else.

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But Dr. Craig has some very effusive followers, shall we say.

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And so I forget when it was, but it may have been shortly after the last program.

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A video started circulating that was put out by two men that I did not know,

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Hunter and Pritchett. The names did not ring any bells with me at all. I had never seen anything, never heard of any debates they'd ever done, books they've written, nothing.

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I didn't know anything about them. And people started listening to it and telling me about how nasty it was and mockery filled and condescending and just, you know,

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I'm like, okay, this is interesting. And then someone points out that Dr.

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Pritchett was Leighton Flowers' debate partner in the debate with Zachariadis and Hernandez.

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Was that early last year? I think it was maybe early last year or late the year before, I don't remember which. And I'm like, oh, okay.

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I hadn't thought much about that gentleman. I guess at some point in my review I had said I wasn't impressed because I wasn't.

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He really wasn't central to the debate as far as I could tell. I had focused primarily upon Leighton Flowers' comments and responding to that aspect of things, even though most of the commentary had been directed toward the wild misbehavior of the other side, the

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Calvinists who were attacking me as well. Anyway, so I was like, oh, okay. I don't know anything about him, but fine.

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So, oh, great. See Twitter? Carly is watching, but she has pink eye.

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Have you tested to see if you haven't tested? Got nothing.

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Because that is really, really contagious stuff. So should I not look at the picture?

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Look away. Okay. All right. We're sorry that you're feeling ill,

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Carly. And pink eye was really bad. Anyway, you know, you've got that camera all messed up.

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We shouldn't say that much of the Enterprise. It needs to go the other direction. So what?

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I'm way over on the left -hand side of the screen. What do you want? Durbin was in here, and in order to get him in the frame,

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I have to totally redirect that camera. It's a mess. You swung it back too far the other way.

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Well, anyway. Okay. So, yeah, don't look at pink eye pictures. That's Ryan's suggestion.

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So, okay, good. Conjunctivitis coming for Doc. Here we go. All right. Anyway, needed to take a small brief break from it.

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So, I guess you had listened to it before I did. And I just didn't.

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I was going down to Tucson. I had packing to do, and I just didn't have time for it. And so, unfortunately,

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I had to listen to that thing while riding on Mount Lemmon.

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Yeah, it was, see Mount Lemmon? Yeah, see, there's Mount Lemmon. It's a beautiful place, by the way.

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Summer Haven. I could live in Summer Haven. I really could. I mean, other than the forest fires.

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It's a great place up there. That's where I listened to this thing. And so I had heard

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Rich talking about this stuff. But I guess you, did you listen to the thing

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I posted this morning or last night? I haven't had a chance to listen to that one.

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I thought you did. I thought I saw some comments. I listened to a portion of it, not the whole thing. So I haven't had a chance to give that a listen.

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But it was, you know, what I did get was, wow, I thought the initial one was bad.

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But when you take all that and put it together, I'm amazed. I am honestly amazed that you came up with 11 minutes.

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I knew there was a lot there. But 11 minutes, wow. Yeah, so it was a two hour video.

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And I do want to eventually respond to it because it, as normal, gave a straw man view of presuppositionalism.

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Plainly sought to misunderstand what I was attempting to say.

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Attributed to me, for example, I am passing because I had just been reading articles and stuff regarding Fesco's book and the nature of presuppositionalism and stuff like that.

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A book that they couldn't even remember the name of, but I'm the dumb person. I mentioned in passing

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Acts chapter 17 as if it was supposed to be a paradigm of something.

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And they took that and ran with that and, oh my goodness, over and over and over again. The funny thing was,

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I'll just mention this in passing, the funny thing was there were three times when

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I made very important philosophical points in response to Craig.

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Two of the times they sat there as if they did not even hear what I was saying or did not seem to understand the significance at all.

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And once I mentioned, because of Feinberg's excellent work on this subject in regards to the cosmological argument, the issue of the principle of sufficient reason,

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PSR. And I've, a number of times, I think even in response to Craig in the past,

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I've addressed PSR and how it is a, not a bridge, but a connection between the assumptions of presuppositionalism and certain of the theistic arguments, which demonstrates that those arguments are valid in a theistic world, which can ground meaning because the acceptance of PSR.

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If you can accept the principle of sufficient reason, then you can accept the existence of brute facts. If you can have brute facts, then the cosmological argument falls apart.

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Feinberg went through all of this, that was one of his primary arguments against the cosmological argument, and then bringing in PSR and saying, this is why we can't know because can you really ground

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PSR and stuff like that. I assume these guys, they're both PhDs, they know this kind of stuff. When I mentioned it, they feigned, well, no, they weren't feigning.

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They were just, what did he say? What? I don't know. What? Do you understand that? I don't know. Right on by.

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It's like, okay, these are the same guys who, when I mentioned the teleological argument, are going, do you even know what that is?

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So you might wonder, you know, how is this relevant?

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Well, we've tried to, we've tried when dealing with the other side on these things to allow them to speak.

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We play Dr. Craig's comments. We're not afraid of people hearing what the other side has to say.

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We just want to be able to point out where we feel there are inconsistencies.

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But man, the other side just won't go there.

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So I have the recording. And I only posted it on Facebook.

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And the reality is that could disappear tomorrow. And I'm really not,

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I don't have a whole lot of confidence that that couldn't happen tomorrow. I think that's a, if it did,

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I would not be shocked type of a situation. So before you do that,

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I would like to chime in on one theme. And when I reviewed the

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Romans 9 debate, this was an assertion that I made then, and I believe that this event actually dovetails into that point.

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And what I was realizing yesterday, as I'm posting a whole stream on this thought about one's work product stems from one's training and abilities.

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Yeah, it's skill set, I think. Skill set, yes. The point of all of this really does, if these guys can go back on our website that we posted, you posted this back when the internet was very young in 1997, okay, when you announced that you had gone, you'd changed course and you'd gone the way of Columbia Evangelical Seminary for the purpose of the church.

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The education is for the purpose of the church. They're not going to go that far back then, isn't that? Well, they need to be.

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They need to read your rationale, because there's a case being made there. Oh, I know. A case being made about the sufficiency of the educational system.

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And I think we're seeing the roots, or not the roots, we're seeing the actual results of the argument that you were making then.

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I'll be honest with you. I think, well, for example, and it may be in this file,

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I'm not sure. I think it is. At one point Pritchett says that Leighton Flowers beat me in our debate because he provided an exegesis of Romans 9 and I did not.

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Now, you simply have to be self -deceived at that point. I mean, you're looking at something that is red and you're screaming that it's green.

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It's so completely self -deceptive, upside down. I mean, I would invite any fair -minded person to observe that debate and they're going to come to the same conclusion.

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So what can cause a person to have that level of self -deception? Well, there is a commitment.

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It's the team. These are my people. And so I'm going to see what

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I need to see and hear what I need to hear. We're all subject to this. We are all subject to this.

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It is not a lack of training because in some other area they'd probably see very clearly what the reality is.

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But your personal connections can produce inconsistencies and incoherencies as it does in that situation.

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And so when Leighton Flowers watched that video where he is, of course, lauded and said to be the greatest thing since sliced bread and so on and so forth, he actually says that there's no difference between the level of invective —

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Pejoratives was the word he used. Pejoratives in their video than what I use all the time in talking about him.

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Again, self -deception. It's just so — it's black and white, day and night wrong, but he doesn't see it because of that deep prejudicial tradition, commitment to a movement or a certain group of people or whatever else it might be.

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And we all have to be careful that we can all fall into the exact same trap that they have fallen into, but they don't see it and are not willing to do it.

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So, folks, these are two PhDs in apologetics to our attempted interaction with what you watched before in my response to William Lane Craig when he was on Ben Shapiro.

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And so what I did is I just went through it, used Audio Notetaker, marked — now, this wasn't all

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I could have pulled out, by the way. There was stuff embedded within other dialogue that I didn't pull out because you wouldn't have understood what was being said and how it was an insult if it was just isolated.

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So this isn't actually all of it, but this is the kind of stuff that we have challenged the other side.

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We've said, okay, you say that this is tit for tat?

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Prove it. I mean, how many thousands of hours worth of audio do you think we have posted, audio and video we have posted?

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You'd think it would be pretty easy, but the reality is what you've got here is not — they want to interpret my disagreement with Craig's methodology as a personal attack upon him.

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It's not. But what you're going to hear, especially from Pritchett —

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I need to be fair. Pritchett does 85 percent. Hunter only does about 15 percent.

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And Hunter said some nice things, but he also said a bunch of nasty things and untrue things and just sat there and let

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Pritchett rip and snort and said, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm sorry. You're just as guilty as he is, even if you're not the one that was doing the primary stuff.

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Despite this, we're still going to review the material. Not today. Let some time pass.

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Maybe let some emotions dissipate a little bit. But I'll ask other people.

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I'll probably ask Cy because Cy's name came up. Jeff's name came up. Did you catch they even attacked

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Jeff and Luke and Zach? Based on a lie. Again, one thing that — you guys' credibility as far as researchers and being honest about other people was severely damaged by this.

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Severely damaged. Pritchett doesn't care, but I think Hunter would. So here are quotations directly from — taken straight out of the two -hour response from Hunter and Pritchett.

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Let's see what they have to say. As he confuses literally everything he says about William Lane Craig.

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James White confuses everything. I don't think that's happened since he's been older. I think that he's been at this for a while.

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And I don't think that he's a very competent apologist. I don't think that he's a competent exegete. An expert on Islam like Dave Wood says he's not the guy to listen to a lot of times.

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So, you know, I know that it's customary before you rip somebody a new one for saying dumb things that you want to try to say a bunch of positive things.

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I have nothing positive to say about James White except that he needs to repent for being ugly to Layton Flowers. How many times has

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James White been on Ben Shapiro's show? None. How many times has he tried to evangelize Ben Shapiro?

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None. Publicly, anyway. Okay, so basically we have a guy here attacking another brother in Christ for sharing with someone that there's good reason to believe that Jesus was dead, buried, rose again, and that the guy needs to repent and trust in Jesus for his salvation.

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Here it's going to be a bit looser than that because James White doesn't really say too much that is of substance.

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It's more or less just, look how silly this is. But he does go for a full hour. And notice what we're doing.

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We're doing exactly what James White does. Play a fragment of a sentence and then talk for an hour. I don't know if that's lost on James White.

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A lot of things get lost on James White. I don't know. I don't appreciate most, if not the overwhelming majority, of presuppositional lists because they're horrible and they're jerks.

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Excellent. I was impressed with that. I wonder if James White will be impressed with that because so far he's found you unimpressive.

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Well, yeah, but that seems to be fine. James White's not impressed with anybody but himself. Even though he's not the best resource in this, when he's talking about other things,

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James White is tolerable. Out of all of his debate losses, which one was the least he got?

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No, even the debate that everybody cringes at, which is the Bart Ehrman debate about manuscripts,

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I thought he held his own pretty good. He got his butt kicked so bad that he abandoned his plans to get a

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Ph .D. in Islamic studies to go get a Ph .D. in textual criticism. That's how many he lost.

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I thought it was pretty good. No, I don't know if that's really what he did. I don't practice divination like he does, but I'm guessing that's what happened.

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I need to find a little sound thing. Give me a second to get the witching rod put back in the closet.

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I need to find a little ding every time Pritchett lies, because you almost don't get to hear anything.

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Either the man is just utterly clueless, or he's just willing to pop off anything that pops into his head, he'll just fire it out there.

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Because what he just said there was just laughably absurd. If you'll recall, the word that I kept posting to you when you were driving to Tucson was, these guys just despise you.

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Oh, well, he says that. Just despises you. He actually says that, but I'm not going to comment on this.

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I just wanted to say, I need to find a little ding sound to play just for all the really crazy things.

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He shoots himself in the foot any time he talks about Romans 9, or any time he talks about John 6, or any time he talks about Ephesians 1, or any time he talks about Genesis 50 -20, or any time he talks about the

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Bible. He's typically bad. I call him a fake -a -jeep. He's a fake -a -jeep that pedals his backward

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Jetix. I have my own lexicon, so you'll have to join the forum and talk to my keeper of the dictionary, the lexicon, that's

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Drew McLeod. Yeah. He keeps all these things. But James White, I find unimpressive, but he's unimpressive at all.

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Works for Strobel. Works for Hunter. Works for me. Works for the Apostle Paul. But forget all that.

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James White is speaking. Yes. And, again, if you think about it, do you understand the teleology?

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Let's start there. This makes no sense. No, it makes perfect sense.

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What it is is a bunch of sanctimonious pseudo -piety blather, is what it is. He's just cloaking himself in a...

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Are you flattening it out, Jonathan? No, he's cloaking himself in a piety cloak in the way that he cloaks himself in Technicolor Dreamcoats, or Dream Ponchos.

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That's all this is, is just pseudo -pious ranting. Yeah. Rhetoric.

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Yeah. Don't let them judge God. Well, that sounds pious, right? Yeah. But it doesn't mean anything.

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No. He'll be drunk and needing correction from... Okay, okay. I said I wasn't going to interrupt it, because it's the cumulative effect that is absolutely destructive of these guys' credibility.

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But I just have to explain that one. I had made reference to a key apologetic issue between classical, evidential, any man -centered, synergistically -based apologetic methodology, and presuppositionalism.

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And that specifically is that in the very approach that we want to take to the rebel sinner, we do not want by our own actions to communicate to that individual that they have the right to judge

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God, but that God has the right to judge them.

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Now, their response was, well, they're already judging. They're already doing that. I know. The point is that in our approach, in the presentation of our argumentation, we do not want to communicate to them anything that would encourage them in their autonomous rebellion against God to judge

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God. But this goes back to our soteriology and our anthropology. These men believe that man is autonomous and has the capacity to exercise autonomous choice to choose

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Christ. And so they can't even begin to grasp hold of the fact that apologetically,

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I would want to be consistent between what I believe as to their relationship to God and what

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I'm saying to them and how I would say it. So, that was what the judging

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God—and this is pious blather, etc., etc. No, it was actually key to an apologetic methodology and approach.

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These men do not understand what they are denying. They gave no evidence of having any meaningful first -level reading in Vantill or Bonson or Oliphant or whoever.

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I don't see any evidence whatsoever of any first -level reading in those areas.

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And if they have, then they didn't bother to read very well. His fellow elders, who drink a lot of beer.

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Oh. Okay, there was the lie. Just a shot. Just slander.

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Just simple slander that needs to be repented of. Direct forward slander.

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But this was part of the milieu. This was just a constant element of everything. It makes me wonder what kind of atheists he talks to.

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He doesn't. I talk to him all the time. He doesn't. The first words out of their mouth after,

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I don't know and neither do you, is, what does he do on this show? I haven't watched much of this.

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Does he basically just whine about other people? A lot of times. And sometimes he gets into, like,

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I used to watch the show years ago, until I realized how ridiculous and uninformed and uneducated he really is and how he's a terrible exegete, a fake -egete, doesn't really know much about the ancient world or much about the

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Bible in its own historical and sociocultural context, which is why he butchers every text in the world. There are competent Calvinists, by the way, like G .K.

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Beale is an excellent Calvinist, Daryl Box, these are the type of theologians that would laugh James White out of the room if James White started spewing his horrible misunderstanding of Paul's use of the

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Old Testament. G .K. Beale and Daryl Box would be like, here's the construction paper, carry on, let's go sit in the corner of James White.

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You don't know what you're talking about. But, but, but, Leighton Flowers is awesome.

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Yeah, Leighton Flowers. James White is unworthy to untie his sandals or whatever, but... If you've got a problem with it, with us talking this way, like, you need to understand, this is a man who is attacking, without question, the most prominent debating apologist on the planet right now.

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And this guy was evangelizing Ben Shapiro, one of the most prominent conservatives on the planet right now.

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And it's completely unnecessary. Evangelism and apologetics work like I really think God's called me to. I'm glad other people are doing that.

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But listen, James White can sit around and gripe about the way that William Lane Craig evangelized Ben Shapiro.

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All he wants to do, the rest of us are going to actually go out and do evangelism. Yeah, no, let's make this personal. To Christian apologists who are not listening to presuppositional whiners, this is why presuppositionalism is not only ineffective, if that's your main thing and that's your only tool, it's not only ineffective, but it's lazy.

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Yes. I was thinking that, as I was listening to him speak a while ago, it is lazy apologetics.

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It's lazygetics. It's, I... Backwardgetics? Yeah, backwardgetics, lazygetics, lazygetics.

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This whole thing is James White's train wreck. I was completely ineffective.

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I probably made that person even less inclined than before because I was a complete jerk to them.

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It doesn't matter because they weren't regenerated. Right, because all I did was make assertion after assertion after assertion and called them names instead of having a conversation like a normal person.

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But I stumped on my presuppositions, which is the only biblical, you can't find it in the Bible, it was the only biblical apologetic, and so I'll pat myself on the back.

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That's my consolation prize. Look how sanctimonious and holy and pious

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I am. And Van Til will be so pleased when I get to heaven. Yes. James White is just spouting off nonsense.

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How do I know he's never done much? He can talk about how he spent a lot of time in Salt Lake City 30 years ago witnessing the

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Mormons. Probably hasn't done it since because this is how I know he doesn't spend a lot of time evangelizing skeptics or just people on the street.

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Because you would never talk like that about your experiences.

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You would know what they say, and you would also know that they don't care what you think they should believe about it.

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How would Jeff Durbin sometimes evangelize since he's your elder? Go do some of that because it sounds like it's been too long since you have.

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What? Do you know anything about historical Jesus studies? That's just logically problematic.

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No, it's stupid. That's what I was saying more nicely. That's just logically problematic.

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It's stupid. Same thing. Yes. It just is. Good. I think that's the only ground. Yeah, you're a

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Christian. I'm glad you don't. It is so telling about James White that he so wants to disagree with William Lane Craig that even on the preeminent importance of the resurrection of Jesus, I'm not going to dispute that it's sinful kind of, but, gosh, do

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I have to agree with Craig here? Dang it. Yeah, shut up and let him talk.

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It's very common for both Jews and Muslims to misunderstand the nature of what makes the resurrection. And William Lane Craig makes that point better than you.

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Shut up. Actually, what he just said. That's again, I hate to agree with. What he just said is going to be a lot smarter than what he's about to say.

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Right. It's a cheaper shot than the ones I take at James White's expense. I do not have much respect for James White as a person, as a theologian, as a scholar, as an apologist, because of his career of attacking

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Christian ministers and ministers of the gospel, and especially attacking personal friends of mine.

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People will argue, well, you just don't like him because he attacks your friends. Yeah, I'm from Arkansas.

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We don't like people who attack our friends, especially over dumb things. And James White has made a career of it. So I hold this man with a certain level of disrespect and contempt.

35:32

Specifically, I don't hold all presuppositionalists that way. I don't hold all people who are complementarians that way, if they disagree with me on that, or they disagree with me on Calvinism or whatever.

35:44

But with this man, this one guy, I am happy to admit that until he repents of his career of vitriolic behavior towards other

35:55

Christians and seeking to undermine their ministries and their efforts for the gospel, and specifically repents for his vitriolic rant against a personal friend of mine by the name of Layton Flowers, to whom he lost the debate on Romans 9 because he didn't address the debate question like Flowers did.

36:12

I'm just not going to speak kindly of it. And this kind of methodological whining reminds me of the kind of stupid whining that people like David Platt and Paul Washer before him were doing.

36:27

See, this is, again, he doesn't know what he's talking about as far as, but you see his little...

36:33

So James White thing is, let's not use facts, I guess. This is the most ridiculous kind of attack.

36:41

This is what people have said that I think is valid, and I agree with this assessment, this is why

36:47

I'm going to say it. This is a systemic jealousy and hate parade from White on William Lane Craig that stems from envy.

37:01

I really think that that's probably true. This is absolutely absurd, and like I said, I would be more respectful to anybody, well, most people besides James White, but this is emblematic of why he doesn't deserve much.

37:17

So there you go. Yeah, it's great to be loved, isn't it?

37:23

It's wonderful. Yeah, how many times do we hear stupid, dumb, you know, all the rest?

37:32

It was great. I really don't think that Dr. Pritchett realizes...

37:39

Hello? Hmm. I thought I turned that off last time.

37:46

Oh, I have a browser up, that's why. Oops. Do I need to have this browser up?

37:54

No, I don't, so I can close that so it won't go bing anymore. I'm not going to take the time to talk about the transgender issue today.

38:01

Anyway, most people would probably say there's nothing redeemable in that, but because, and especially because, you know, you heard his theory that I'm envious of William Lane Craig, that's why

38:22

I do this. Here's my theory. I think Dr. Pritchett and Dr.

38:27

Hunter wanted to prove themselves to William Lane Craig as his hatchet men.

38:35

We'll go out there and we'll attack this guy so you don't have to say a word. And I think that's why they did this.

38:41

I think they just want to get in with William Lane Craig. They want to be at more of his conferences and invited to more stuff and just that kind of thing.

38:49

That's my direct theory. What else would explain someone going to press with something like this when they clearly didn't do any background material?

39:02

They talk about Act 17. They never offer a meaningful exegesis of Act 17. They say that I misinterpret every text the

39:10

Bible has ever addressed. It's a large portion of the Bible we've done over the years, and I didn't get the feeling that they had actually interacted or even read most of my material.

39:20

I don't know about you, but I don't get that feeling at all. Why do something like this? Well, I think the motivation was to get

39:29

Craig's attention and, hey, look at me, type of situation. Because like I said, I'd never heard of either of these guys before, and so I wonder.

39:37

But the point is their misrepresentation of presuppositionalism, their strawman argumentation of it, and their statement that presuppositionalism can be used as part of the apologist's toolkit.

39:53

So when it's appropriate, you can use it. When it's appropriate, you can't. When it's not appropriate, then you don't. No, it doesn't work that way.

40:02

Because there is an anthropology, a soteriology, and a theology that underlies presuppositionalism that you reject.

40:13

Your theology and soteriology, your view of man, is contradictory to the presuppositions of presuppositionalism.

40:22

And so you may pretend, and obviously there are times I've heard Ravi Zacharias make specific criticisms that sound very much like what a presuppositionalist would be saying.

40:35

But the issue is can you be consistent across the board in that way?

40:41

And without the proper theological, soteriological grounding. And this brings us back to the other issue.

40:48

Theology determines apologetics, not the other way around. Not the other way around. And so this idea that presuppositionalism could just be one methodology that you, you know, if you're in one particular argument and it would work well there, great.

41:05

If not, then you can just throw it out. That is, that is not a proper understanding of presuppositionalism in the first place.

41:13

So I don't get the feeling, you know, when I was driving up there, I actually switched out of this for a while.

41:21

I was listening to Van Til's Theory of Christian Knowledge. What a huge difference, listening to Van Til and then going back to that.

41:30

It was, put the, put the clutch in, burn it out. But I just don't,

41:36

I just don't think these gentlemen really understand the issues. But they're very quick to say it's everybody else, that I'm the one.

41:45

It's just all my fault, I guess, that I don't get it. But like I said, what really struck me was the couple of times

41:51

I really hit upon a key philosophical issue. They just were like, zoom, went right past him.

41:59

They didn't even notice it was happening, which is, which is rather interesting. Okay, spent more time on that than I expected to by a long shot.

42:07

Let's get back to, let's get back to Kwaku here. Jeff and I got to a particular point, and I wanted to respond to just a few more things.

42:18

And then we've got a really dangerous subject to address. So let's, let's get to it.

42:29

Well, what happened? Did you turn me off over there? Let's talk about eternity.

42:35

So I know you're thinking, the Bible says God is eternal, he is alpha and omega, he is beginning and end. Now, obviously, that has a little bit of a poetic gesture to it, right?

42:43

I hope you don't actually believe that God is the beginning and the end. So if you're an evangelical or Protestant or Catholic or non -denominational

42:49

Christian watching this, I hope you actually don't believe that alpha and omega, beginning and end, is literal and not poetic.

42:55

Because if it is literal, that means you believe that God had a beginning, and you believe he's going to have an end. Now, if you feel like we just shifted subjects, and you weren't with us the last program,

43:05

I apologize. But we are continuing and finishing up listening to claims made by a

43:11

Mormon from BYU named Kwaku L. Now, he's not a general authority or anything like that. But what he does represent, and one of the reasons that we engaged him on Apology Radio last year, and have done some responses to some of the things that he has said, is because he is representational of what

43:29

I call neo -Mormonism, the new Mormonism that is becoming popular amongst the young people, and hence deeply impacting the direction of the

43:37

LDS Church. A lot of us are very concerned about the direction that Mormonism may go. And it also represents a widening of perspectives within Mormonism.

43:47

There was a day when you could sort of sit down with folks, and you could really have a 98 % chance you knew exactly where they were going to be.

44:00

That day is passing. And as a result, we need to be aware of these things.

44:07

And so we're responding to Kwaku. He put out a video, the beginning part that Jeff and I responded to before.

44:13

He reads through portions of the Athanasian Creed, clearly does not understand what he is reading, contradicts what he's reading, twists what he's reading.

44:22

I mean, I could only liken it to if I were to read the King Follett funeral discourse, and then twist every word that I just read.

44:32

When I read the King Follett discourse, when I present the King Follett discourse, I want my audience to know what

44:37

Joseph Smith actually meant by that, and then how the LDS Church has interpreted his words since then.

44:43

The truth content issue here was missing with Kwaku's video.

44:49

And so now he's getting into a couple of the texts, such as you'll find

44:55

Isaiah, where in the trial of the false gods, there is a contrast between the gods, the peoples, and God himself.

45:05

And one of those phrases that is used is that he is the beginning and the end. How Kwaku gets from he is the beginning and the end, which means he encompasses all time, obviously, to he has a beginning and end,

45:17

I have no idea. How do you get that? To say

45:24

I am Alpha and Omega, as God speaking, as creator, means you're encompassing all of time.

45:32

Not that you're limited to it. Kwaku's God is limited to it. That's, I guess, maybe why he's thinking that way. His God is temporal.

45:39

His God has progressed. His God is limited. His God is just an exalted man. He doesn't even have a

45:44

God in the classical sense of a deity. Mormonism doesn't. If you have an unlimited number of deities who are all the same species, you don't really have a

45:53

God. You're not even in that conversation, really. And so maybe that's why he misinterprets it in this way so obviously.

46:03

But that's what he's arguing about right here. So you say Jesus is the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega. Well, doesn't

46:10

Jesus exist for eternity? And won't you exist for eternity if you're saved? If there's an ending, that means you're going to end and you weren't saved for eternity.

46:17

And that also means Jesus will essentially come to an end. So, no, that's not what that means. And so those texts stand without a response from Kwaku El.

46:27

I believe in the Holy Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price. That's what I consider to be scripture.

46:32

But if you only believe in the Bible, here's what you have. You have the creation to judgment.

46:38

That's all you've got. I'll even throw the Apocrypha. Let's say you believe in the Bible and the Apocrypha. You've just got creation to judgment, right?

46:44

That's all you've got. Anything that happened before creation is we don't really know. And everything after judgment, we don't really know.

46:51

We know there's a heaven. And the definition and nature of heaven changes depending on what church you go to and what pastor or theologian or scholar you talk to.

46:58

All you have is creation to judgment. So you say God is God of everything eternally? Well, the only context that you have is creation to judgment.

47:06

That's it. If you have a theory about what happened before the creation, well, that's all well.

47:12

But then you're just as guilty as the Latter -day Saints, as Mormons, because you're adding on to the Bible.

47:17

You're adding something in that may not be clearly explained. Except that he is in error, of course, in his understanding of what is in scripture.

47:27

You have explicit statements of God's eternal existence in Psalm 90, verse 2.

47:33

Numerous texts in Isaiah say the exact same thing. His own misreading of the beginning and end, first and last,

47:39

Alpha and Omega passages, in light of his limited semi -deity theories from Joseph Smith.

47:47

We already just made reference to that just a moment ago. But, of course, there is likewise the eternal relationship that exists between Father and Son.

47:57

You have John 17, 5, before the world's made, the Son is glorious in the presence of the Father.

48:03

He skips all that stuff. And really, when you think about it, when someone says, well, I believe the

48:08

Book of Mormon to be the Word of God, you think about how shallow the Book of Mormon is, and how un -Mormon it is, as far as these doctrines are concerned.

48:20

That is somewhat humorous as well. There are texts later in the Doctrine and Covenants that pretend to give us these things.

48:28

And then you've got, of course, that goldmine of deep theological truth called the

48:34

Book of Abraham, which actually came from an Egyptian funerary papyrus, from which

48:40

Joseph Smith didn't get a single word right, except the word the. But that was amongst 84 other words that he pretended to come from the same symbol.

48:49

In other words, it's extremely embarrassing. Clear documentation. The fact that Joseph Smith had no idea what he was talking about when he talked about ancient

48:59

Egyptian and all the rest of that stuff. But you will find in the Book of Abraham, you know, God lives on a planet named Kolob.

49:04

Well, it's a planet that circles a star named Kolob. And that kind of stuff. And if that's what you're referring to, okay,

49:12

I'll be perfectly honest with you. I will take Isaiah any day. Another important thing is that English is not the original language of the

49:21

Bible. In Hebrew, the word eternity or eternal is often translated to olam. Olam has about two definitions, and they both kind of work within each other.

49:29

One means eternity, forever. So now we get Kwaku, the biblical scholar, who is going to give us the meanings of words.

49:41

And it is somewhat educational to listen to how biblical information and a real ancient language, unlike Reformed Egyptian, which has never been found, but a real biblical language, like Hebrew, gets reinterpreted in light of the dizzying dreams of a treasure seeker from the 1830s.

50:07

It's selective, shall we say, minimally. Now think about something for a second. I want you to try to define eternity without using a synonym for eternity.

50:16

So you can't say forever. You can't say all. You can't say, you know, but has always been or anything like that.

50:22

The relevance of this is what? That's like, here's a thought experiment.

50:28

I want you to define orange without using a synonym of orange. Does this mean something?

50:34

There's only a certain number of words in a language to express a particular concept. So what? I don't know.

50:40

Those are synonyms, and it gets redundant, right? So try to define eternal or eternity or forever or all or things like that without using any of those words.

50:50

We talk about eternity, but we don't know what it means. We can't even define what eternity means. It's just an abstract concept in our head that we haven't defined.

50:59

Yeah, we have defined it. And your lack of training in this area, which came out in your idea that since we believe

51:08

God is a material, it means he's just an idea, comes out here as well. Before the mountains wrought forth, or ever thou hast formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art

51:21

God. Psalm 90, verse 2. Song of Moses. I think Moses knew something about God.

51:28

And the God he worshipped was not the God you worship, Kwaku. The God he worshipped had eternally been

51:34

God. Not an exalted man, not in the species of man. Before the mountains were brought forth, before the creation of the world, from Olam to Olam.

51:47

You want to use that terminology? What terminology would you like to utilize?

51:52

How else could it be expressed? It's not just from one horizon to another horizon.

52:01

Which, by the way, again, you can take partial statements of truth and then twist them into untruths.

52:16

I love accordance, but it is not the fastest thing to pop references into.

52:30

Yeah, I was just double -checking here. So, Umayyalam Ad Olam.

52:38

From Olam unto Olam. You, El. Ata El.

52:48

How else could we put it? What other terminology would you like to use? Are you really going to say, from one horizon to another horizon, after the text has just said, before the mountains were brought forth, or before the earth and the world?

53:05

You've just said, before creation, there cannot be a horizon. From everlasting to everlasting.

53:11

This is eternity. This is Yahweh. The one true living

53:17

God, whom you do not worship. You do not worship Him.

53:22

You have an exalted man from another planet, who is not worthy of worship.

53:28

So, we say that God is eternal. You don't really know what that means. So, again, all you have to work with is what the context of the

53:34

Bible gives you, if you're a Bible -only -ist. Another definition for Olam is, as far as you can see back to as far as you can see forward.

53:41

Sunrise to sunset. A long span of time. That's really important to know. Because the

53:46

Bible could be speaking about either. It could be speaking about eternity in an undefined way that you can't comprehend, that isn't laid out, and that can't be understood.

53:55

Or, it means a long period of time. Or, it means what Psalm 90, verse 2 said, which Joseph Smith said.

54:01

Now, remember, this is the key. Joseph Smith said, and this is in context, this is in the King Follett funeral discourse, we have imagined and supposed that God was

54:09

God from all eternity. I will refute that idea and take away the veil so that you may see.

54:17

Now, that was Joseph Smith's context. That was Joseph Smith's intention. And by uttering those words, he separated himself and anyone who would follow him from biblical

54:29

Christianity until you repent of following Joseph Smith. Or, it means a long period of time.

54:35

So, according to the original Hebrew of the Bible, you could believe that God has been God for a long period of time and not be heretical and not be out of the realm in which the

54:45

Bible gives. Again, the way the Bible is preached in English in America is not exactly the way the original writings are.

54:50

So, let's compare. Psalm 90, verse 2 means the same thing in Hebrew or in English. And Joseph Smith contradicted both of them.

54:58

It didn't matter what language he was speaking. And what you're presenting is a contradiction of biblical truth.

55:04

That, as opposed to the God who is a body of flesh and bone, who walks around, who is created, but is not responsible for evil and only organizes.

55:13

Now, here's his God. This is who he is describing. This is the God that he says he's worshipping. Listen to what he says.

55:19

That, as opposed to the God who is a body of flesh and bone, who walks around, who is created, but is not responsible for evil.

55:27

Who is created and is not responsible for evil. So, he's a created being, does not control things, has no sovereignty, and hence is excused from evil.

55:42

And, in fact, when you really get into what Mormonism teaches about Adam falling upward and all the rest of that stuff, they have a horrifically unbiblical, anti -biblical, harmartiology doctrine of sin.

55:55

Wow, it's way out there. Who only organizes good, who provides you with a savior, and who wants you to become like him.

56:02

Provides you with a savior from what? And how does that savior even function is yet another major issue.

56:10

Whenever the Bible speaks about no other gods beside me, before me, or after me, and no other gods, the context is toward the

56:16

Jews who are worshipping false gods, who are building up these idols and worshipping those idols instead. The Jews think that, oh, they can worship these gods and they're going to give them blessings, but he's saying, no, these gods don't even exist.

56:25

They're just a figment of your imagination. I know of no other gods. There are no other gods beside me. I am the one at the throne.

56:32

I know of no other gods. How can any LDS god ever say that? Oh, what he meant was,

56:39

I know of no other idols. No, he knows of lots of idols. The very fact that he utilizes the phrase,

56:47

I know no other gods, means he is speaking as God and saying he knows of no other.

56:54

In your theology, he once worshipped one. You can't put those together.

57:02

There is a fundamental contradiction between the words of the Christian scriptures and the beliefs of the

57:08

Mormon church. That's why you have to say that the Bible's word of God, as far as it's translated correctly, but the

57:14

Book of Mormon, even though the Book of Mormon doesn't teach this either, Joseph Smith did not believe any of this stuff in 1830.

57:22

I think most Mormon historians are now being honest about that. I think most Mormon historians recognize

57:28

First Vision's story is an evolutionary concept. Joseph Smith didn't. Nobody knew about it.

57:35

Nobody knew about it back then. When E .D. Howe wrote Mormonism Unveiled, he never even mentioned it because it wasn't being taught.

57:42

It wasn't there yet. It developed at a later point in time. I am in charge. I am in power.

57:48

You have a covenant. You have a relationship with me. I'm the way to eternity. Follow me. The only way the Jews would get the idea that there were other gods they could make covenants or worship with is that there are actually other heavenly beings that exist.

58:00

Now remember, the Jews did not view God as a Trinitarian spirit essence idea. They viewed God as a heavenly being.

58:06

And since there are many heavenly beings, they got stretched into thinking they could worship a different one. So this is your standard liberal theory today, that the

58:15

Jews were not originally monotheists and all the rest of this stuff, rather than God had revealed himself, and the

58:21

Jewish people are constantly falling into syncretism, into allowing, you know, because the high places, the groves, the

58:28

Ashtaroth, all the people around them that would cause them to pollute their worship, they would start joining the worship of Yahweh with other deities.

58:40

And that happened. I was really impacted when

58:45

I was in Israel to see one of the high places of Jeroboam right near the city of Dan.

58:53

And in fact, I saw the oldest arched gateway in the world is the ancient entrance to the city of Dan there in Israel.

59:05

And it's called Abraham's Gate. Abraham may have walked through it. That's how old it is. And it's within walking distance of one of Jeroboam's high places where there are offerings being made.

59:18

Now, they didn't deny that Yahweh was worthy of worship, but this syncretism is what the prophets spoke so strongly against.

59:31

Now, that's partly the case in the trial of the false gods in Isaiah 40 -48, but that's a little bit of a different context, because now you have major religious concepts coming in that are not just Canaanite, but Babylonian, which hence have more context with other religious concepts around the world.

59:54

And the prophet Isaiah then demonstrates that none of these gods who did not create this world, which your god didn't,

01:00:03

Kwaku. He only organized it. None of these gods who did not create this world are worthy of worship. That's why

01:00:10

Jeremiah, for example, in chapter 10, utilizes the Aramaic language to tell the people, if your god did not make this world, your god will pass away from this world.

01:00:20

Your god didn't make this world, he'll pass away from it. There will be a day when the god of Mormonism will never be known by anyone again.

01:00:29

Pass away, because he's not a true god. Then they can be fooled into thinking that there are other heavenly beings that they could worship, and they couldn't.

01:00:37

And that's where the frustration comes from. In fact, non -biased scholarship is increasingly pointing to the fact that the

01:00:43

Jews of the Old Testament were not monotheists. They believed in multiple gods. Because they believed in multiple heavenly beings, they believed in the hosts of heaven.

01:00:51

They believed that there was more people than one there. The Jews of the Bible did not believe in the

01:00:56

Trinity. They did not believe in a triune, immaterial, omnipresent, incorporeal, idea -essence god.

01:01:02

They believed in, well, the prophets taught, as Moses did, that there is one god,

01:01:10

Yahweh. And are there heavenly beings? Yes, they're all created by Yahweh. But there is one god who is the origin source of all things,

01:01:20

Yahweh. And that's Moses' revelation, that's

01:01:26

Isaiah's revelation, that's Jeremiah's revelation, etc., etc., etc. Now, there are some who actually teach that the

01:01:37

Jews were Trinitarians. I could never substantiate that. It's just simply not the case.

01:01:44

The revelation of the doctrine of the Trinity takes place between Malachi and Matthew.

01:01:52

There are lots of places in the Old Testament that, just as we have

01:01:58

Messianic prophecies, are shadows of what would be revealed in the

01:02:04

Incarnation, ministry, life, death, burial, resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the outpouring of the

01:02:09

Holy Spirit. Yes. But that does not mean that the revelation took place in the

01:02:15

Old Testament. It takes place between the Old Testament and the

01:02:21

New Testament. The New Testament then becomes the record of that revelation. It does not take place within the

01:02:26

New Testament either. It had already happened historically. That's why the doctrine of the

01:02:32

Trinity appears in the form that it does in the New Testament, is that those who are writing it have already experienced that historical revelation of the doctrine of the

01:02:43

Trinity itself in history. In fact, in Psalm 82, it talks about how God is sitting among a table and he's judging the other gods.

01:02:51

He's literally sitting at a table and he's with these other gods and he's actually, like, getting really, really mad.

01:02:56

Now, a lot of Christians today interpret that as God speaking to a bunch of false idols. You can compare this with verses in the

01:03:02

Bible that says, God is the God above all gods. Now, if there are no other gods, that's like saying God is the

01:03:07

God above all the Santa Clauses. Doesn't really make sense, does it? He's the God above all the... Now, in Kwaku's attack piece that he posted, in response to Jeff and I taking his arguments apart and he's not capable of responding to them, and so he went drama to try to hide all that, he made reference to the fact that he had mentioned

01:03:35

Psalm 82. And I remember turning to Psalm 82. And I remember my text just sitting open to Psalm 82 for quite some time and we never got back to it.

01:03:46

I would like to have, but notice, Elohim takes his stand in his own congregation.

01:03:56

He judges in the midst of the rulers. How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked?

01:04:02

I don't see anything about a table there anywhere. And who are these judges?

01:04:10

Well, they are told to vindicate the weak and the farthest, do justice to the afflicted and destitute. We only know of one group of people who are tasked with that duty amongst people of Israel.

01:04:22

And it's not heavenly beings. It's the judges of the people of Israel themselves.

01:04:28

Rescue the weak and needy, deliver them out of the hand of the wicked. That's exactly what the judges are tasked to do.

01:04:33

I've never had anyone show me where heavenly beings are tasked to engage in these duties.

01:04:41

Nowhere. They do not know, nor do they understand, they walk about in darkness, all the foundations of the earth are shaken.

01:04:48

So, if justice is not being done, if the people who've been tasked by God to represent him in bringing justice are not doing that, then all the foundations of the earth are shaken.

01:05:00

I said, you are gods and all of your sons the most high, nevertheless you will die like men and fall like any one of the princes.

01:05:08

So, the judges are put in God's place. They are to judge with his authority, but since they're not doing that, nevertheless you will die like men and fall like any one of the princes.

01:05:20

This is judgment that is coming upon the unrighteous judges of Israel. So, arise,

01:05:26

O God, judge the earth, for it is you who possess all the nations. Don't say anything about tables.

01:05:33

God is called upon, since the judges won't judge the earth, there's nothing here about intermediate beings, we call upon this intermediate being or that, no.

01:05:45

Arise, O God, judge the earth, for it is you who possesses all the nations.

01:05:54

Yes, sir? He also made the claim in there that it's been the Christian rebuttal that those are talking about idols, the dumb idols.

01:06:05

And, no, we've never made that argument. It's always been the judges of Israel.

01:06:10

But I've never heard any Christian make the argument that it's talking about the idols. I don't know.

01:06:16

I don't know. You may be correct about that. Early Christian church fathers even interpreted Psalm 82 as meaning that there are other gods.

01:06:23

Now, you hear that sound in the background? That's what he does when he puts up a screen. And here is the screen that was put up.

01:06:34

I'm not sure if that's coming through. But here's the first of the, I said

01:06:40

I wanted to get to some of the early church stuff. Here is a quotation he puts up from Tertullian.

01:06:46

He doesn't give references, unfortunately. It will be impossible that another god should be admitted when it is permitted to no other being to possess anything of God.

01:06:56

Well then, you say, we ourselves at that rate possess nothing of God. But indeed we do and shall continue to do. Only it is from him that we receive it and not from ourselves.

01:07:05

For we shall be even gods if we shall deserve to be among those whom he declared, I said you are gods, Psalm 82, 6.

01:07:12

And God stands in the congregation of the gods, verse 1. But this comes of his own grace, not from any property in us, because it is he alone who can make gods.

01:07:21

Now, what, and years ago

01:07:26

I wrote a book called, Is the More of My Brother? And in one of those chapters, I dealt with the concept of theosis.

01:07:36

And Eastern Orthodox concept of deification. And in there,

01:07:42

I documented very fully from numerous sources the fundamental flaw in utilization of patristic sources,

01:07:50

Christian patristic sources by Mormons. And specifically the fact that they ignore one fundamental reality.

01:07:57

If you are going to try to assert that Tertullian believed what you believe, that men can become gods as Mormons understand that, then you would have to find

01:08:09

Tertullian saying that God was once a man. And you would have to find Tertullian saying that there are many gods.

01:08:15

Even in this citation, even in this citation, he says it will be impossible that another god should be admitted when it is permitted to no other being to possess anything of God.

01:08:30

And even when he says, be made gods, but this comes of his own grace, not from any property in us.

01:08:38

In Mormonism, we are all the same species as God. We were all pre -existence intelligences and we're simply at different places of exaltation.

01:08:51

There is no way to, with even the slightest bit of honesty, read

01:09:00

Tertullian and think that Tertullian was a crypto -Mormon. Then why do we see this stuff?

01:09:07

Because they're not reading Tertullian. And that's why they're reading the internet.

01:09:14

They're getting a quote from a professor someplace. They're not reading Tertullian. And they have no care as to whether they're accurately reflecting what

01:09:21

Tertullian actually taught or not. They just don't care about something like that.

01:09:28

It's better to just try to promote Mormonism. And so that's what happens.

01:09:33

One more quote. They just did. It's not up to debate. It's just a fact. Also, it's important to note, if God is a

01:09:39

Trinitarian God of two spirits of one being, then how can two spirits of one being sit down at a table of other gods?

01:09:46

Because this is an essence idea. See, there was no table of other gods to begin with. There's nothing about sitting down or anything else.

01:09:53

That God can't sit down. That's impossible. It doesn't make any sense.

01:09:59

And of course, this is the Old Testament. This is before Jesus Christ was on Earth. So, did he have a physical body before he was on Earth?

01:10:05

Christians don't really know. That's up for debate. And in fact, the Trinity before Jesus Christ may have been a duality.

01:10:11

It may have just been two spirits. But no, Jesus was the Word of God, made flesh. And of course, words are just expressions.

01:10:17

They're the declaration of God. Maybe Jesus was just an omnipresent, immaterial spirit as well.

01:10:24

So, three omnipresent, immaterial spirits that can't be divided at no -no bounds, but you've differentiated and divided them together are sitting down at a table?

01:10:32

No! That's not possible. In fact, that sounds like Hellenistic Greek philosophy. It doesn't sound like the

01:10:39

God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Now you might be saying, well, the Bible says that God has wings. And it goes on from there.

01:10:45

I evidently, and again, we already refuted his misrepresentation of the

01:10:50

Athanasian Creed. Can't distinguish, but you did distinguish being a person. He just refuses to deal with his sources correctly.

01:10:59

But I thought, and I must have missed it, at one point he put up on the screen another quotation from Theophilus of Antioch.

01:11:08

If he man would incline to the things of immortality, keeping the commandment of God, he should receive as a reward from him immortality and should become

01:11:17

God. It might have been right after the other one, now that I think about it. Maybe that's why it didn't pop up. But there you get this idea.

01:11:24

He should receive as a reward from him immortality and should become God. So, was Theophilus a polytheist?

01:11:32

Did Theophilus believe that there are many gods? That's the assertion that's being made. But I looked it up, and it's in a section he's writing to Autolychus.

01:11:44

Theophilus of Antioch is writing to Autolychus. This is a section called The Nature of Man. And here's what he says. But someone will say to us, was man made by nature mortal?

01:11:55

Certainly not. Was he then immortal? Neither do we affirm this. But one will say, was he then nothing?

01:12:02

Not even this hits the mark. He was by nature neither mortal nor immortal, for if he had made him immortal from the beginning, he would have made him

01:12:11

God. Now notice, man is a creature. He is made by God. Nowhere does

01:12:16

Theophilus even hint at the idea that God himself was created, or was himself a man, any of these things.

01:12:25

That's completely outside the realm of any of the early church fathers.

01:12:32

Again, if he had made him mortal, God would seem to be the cause of his death. Neither them, immortal nor yet mortal, did he make him, but, as we have said above, capable of both.

01:12:41

So if he should incline to the things of immortality, keeping the commandments of God, he should receive as reward from him immortality and should become

01:12:49

God. But if, on the other hand, he should turn to the things of death, disobeying God, he should himself be the cause of death to himself.

01:12:56

For God made man free and with power over himself.

01:13:02

That, then, which man brought upon himself through carelessness and disobedience, this God now vouchsafes to him as a gift through his own philanthropy and pity when men obey him.

01:13:12

For as man, disobeying, he drew death upon himself, so obeying the will of God, he who desires is able to procure for himself life everlasting.

01:13:20

For God has given us a law and holy commandments, and everyone who keeps these can be saved and obtain the resurrection, can inherit incorruption.

01:13:27

Now, there's things we could take issue with all along there, but the point is, it is very plain that Theophilus is not a crypto -Mormon.

01:13:36

He does not believe God was once a man, he does not believe we're of the same species, he doesn't believe any of the things that would be necessary for the misreading of his words, the misreading produced by Kwaku El.

01:13:49

And so, that finishes up what I had marked in the original. I think we've given plenty of reason to recognize a serious problem on the part of Kwaku El.

01:14:04

His response to that was to post a was to post a very nasty video that will be responded to by Jeff Durbin and the others in the appropriate time, coming up in a short period of time.

01:14:25

All right, I keep saying that we're going to do something dangerous, and so we're going to do this to wrap it up.

01:14:32

I'll try to do this in 15 minutes, though I may not be able to, but I will do my level best to try.

01:14:39

And this is a very, very important topic. An article was posted yesterday by Jared Wilson titled,

01:14:55

Was George Whitefield a Christian? Dealing with the Tainted Legacy of American History's Greatest Preacher.

01:15:05

Now, most of you probably have not read the two -volume set

01:15:16

Life of Whitefield and biography of him.

01:15:24

Extremely challenging, but if you're wondering why someone would ask this question, it is because of what has happened in the rise of the woke church movement and the influx of social justice into the consciousness of a much wider portion of the church.

01:15:56

And so I want to read a section here. Before this,

01:16:02

Dr. Wilson has made the assertion that George Whitefield knew that slavery was a pernicious sin in the sight of God, but was unrepentant for that sin, promoted that sin, not only owned slaves, but was instrumental in getting the state of Georgia to allow for slavery, so that he would have enough people to support and to work a plantation that supported his orphanage, which was there in Georgia.

01:16:46

And so he has already made the assertion that Whitefield basically has the knowledge that we have today.

01:17:00

So he asked this question, was George Whitefield a Christian? To the million -dollar question at hand, how can anyone believe

01:17:06

George Whitefield was a genuine believer? First, I have no complaints with those who cannot believe he was, because my faith does not rest on George Whitefield's eternal state.

01:17:17

I can honestly and sincerely see how so many simply cannot answer this question favorably. I especially understand not just how my

01:17:24

African American brothers and sisters cannot answer in the affirmative, but also how they cannot abide white evangelical whitewashing his legacy.

01:17:32

I cannot feel what they feel, but I can understand why they feel it. I have no interest in diminishing that or chastising that.

01:17:40

A good tree does not produce bad fruit, after all. As far as we can tell, Whitefield never repudiated sin, never repented of it.

01:17:48

That alone brings the genuineness of his faith into question in many of our churches today. Why should

01:17:54

Whitefield get a pass from the same scrutiny? If he held his same views as a member of your church, would he not face discipline?

01:18:02

I affirm the rationale of those who answered the question of Whitefield's salvation, no. And I affirm their freedom to do so.

01:18:09

I see how you get there. I respect the conclusion. I will not argue it. For my part, however, I want to believe all things, hope all things.

01:18:17

Why? Because George Whitefield was a great preacher and left many contributions that stir my heart toward Jesus above all?

01:18:23

No. Because I do not presume to know the eternal fate of anyone who professed Christ crucified as their only hope for salvation.

01:18:30

I have my doubts and questions and concerns. If I were Whitefield's pastor today,

01:18:35

I would plead with him to repent as I would any professing Christian living a life that brings their profession into question.

01:18:41

And if he were unwilling, I would recommend my congregation to remove him. This is what the church has been tasked to do.

01:18:51

He says at the end, In the end, I hope and trust Whitefield was saved, not because I have benefited from his work, though I have, but because I am sure

01:19:00

I will die with sin unrepented of myself. As the worst sinner I know, my only hope is found not on the grand scale weighing my good against my bad, but on the grand cross of Christ, where even the vilest of sinners may find atonement.

01:19:14

Well, certainly, we can all agree with Dr. Wilson's statement there at the end.

01:19:21

And that would be true of anyone, no matter what their history at all.

01:19:28

But what really concerned me about this article was even how one defines a

01:19:34

Christian and how this would be applied at various times in history in the church.

01:19:40

It is true that by the days of Whitefield, especially in England, there was a growing recognition of the depth of evil that was represented primarily by the

01:20:01

American system of slavery, but by any system of slavery that still existed in what would be called at that point the modern world.

01:20:10

But it's also very clear that when he says

01:20:16

George Whitefield knew, knew in what way?

01:20:25

Let's apply this to two other situations and maybe it'll help us to elucidate this some.

01:20:35

Would Jared Wilson excommunicate Philemon from his church?

01:20:43

I've heard it said over and over again that Roman slavery was different than American chattel slavery. So I purchased a bunch of books, secular books, not religious books, secular histories of slavery in Greece and in Rome.

01:21:07

And I came to the conclusion from reading those that the secular authors would not have agreed with that assertion.

01:21:14

While they would have recognized differences, the reality was that slaves, especially under Grecian rule, which then is taken over by the

01:21:25

Romans and it's modified in some ways, but they were property.

01:21:31

They did not have individual rights. You might have some slaves that had incredible power, but they were still completely owned by their master.

01:21:40

And that's the context in which Philemon exists. And so the question would be, did

01:21:46

Paul call for the excommunication of Philemon?

01:21:55

Did he even ask that Philemon repent of his sin?

01:22:06

That's the first question. Secondly, right around the same time as this, over the past couple of days, further information has been published and come to light in regards to the personal life of Martin Luther King, including summaries of tapes that my understanding is will be under FBI seal to at least 2027.

01:22:33

But summaries have been discovered and have been published that are stunningly devastating to the personal life and integrity of Martin Luther King.

01:22:52

To say that they give testimony of sexual debauchery and activities far beyond anything that was ever even hinted at in the

01:23:07

Kavanaugh hearings, for example, would be an understatement.

01:23:13

I'm not going to go into details. You can look it up yourself. But would it then be proper to remove

01:23:25

George Whitefield's name from Jared Wilson's article and put Martin Luther King's name in its place?

01:23:32

And what would be the result? What would be the result? Would anyone argue that George Whitefield had a clearer understanding of the inveterate sinfulness of owning slaves in the

01:23:58

South in his time frame than Martin Luther King had of the inveterate sinfulness of his sexual escapades and orgies?

01:24:18

Then add to that what I think is an extremely important further element.

01:24:26

And that is, Whitefield was an Orthodox Christian.

01:24:33

His sermons are filled with calling men to trust solely in the divine

01:24:41

Savior who physically rose from the dead. This is not the theology of Martin Luther King.

01:24:54

Whitefield believes in the deity of Christ. He believes in historic

01:25:00

Christian theology about who Christ was and who it was you were believing in.

01:25:07

There is insurmountably strong evidence that Martin Luther King did not.

01:25:16

And so, you can't just do the name replacement thing.

01:25:22

Because, for example, in this section, when

01:25:30

Wilson is saying, from my part, I want to believe all things, hope all things, because I do not presume to know the eternal fate of anyone who professed

01:25:39

Christ crucified as their only hope for salvation. The only way I can understand that phraseology is you're talking about an

01:25:46

Orthodox understanding of the centrality of who Jesus is, the deity, resurrection, purposeful self -sacrifice, all the rest of that, which is absent when it comes to Martin Luther King.

01:26:04

So, you can't do a direct replacement because there is more evidence of the

01:26:12

Orthodox faith of George Whitefield than there is for Martin Luther King. But what concerned me about the article was the very fact that we are seeking to determine someone's status as a

01:26:28

Christian based upon these things. I've told the story,

01:26:35

I've got to be brief, I've told the story about when we were in Germany, and talking with one of the folks who went with us after we visited

01:26:43

Fritz Erba's place of imprisonment and death there at the Wartburg Castle, the

01:26:48

Anabaptist who was imprisoned for, thrown into a dark hole there at the

01:26:53

Wartburg Castle for seven years before he died, Martin Luther fully knowing that he was there.

01:27:01

And the conversation I had with someone who said, I just can't believe that Martin Luther could be a

01:27:07

Christian and know this. And I fully understood the emotions.

01:27:14

We're standing there looking down into that hole. It's emotionally, wow.

01:27:23

But my response was, got to be careful. Because if you go in that direction, there won't have been any

01:27:29

Christians back then. And over time, visiting other sites, talking about sacralism and things like, look,

01:27:41

I think sacralism was a horrible, false belief that led to wars and all sorts of things.

01:27:50

But Christians believed it. And so the real question is, we have to, this is one of those places where we're in severe danger of replacing the gospel as a means of salvation with obedience to current understandings of social justice theory.

01:28:08

And trust me, you look down through history, and you're not going to have many Christians left.

01:28:14

In fact, in entire periods of time, you're going to have none, if that's the standard you're going to start using. Did George Whitefield cast himself totally upon the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ as his only hope?

01:28:34

We have no reason to think otherwise. We have no reason to think otherwise. Same thing with Jonathan Edwards.

01:28:46

And 50 years from now, will it be some other standard that is being utilized?

01:28:54

Some other thing that we didn't know we were supposed to have to believe to be a Christian? Some other thing? Will there be some day when someone's going to be asking, could

01:29:02

James White possibly have been a Christian when he spoke so boldly against transgenderism?

01:29:11

We need a gospel that doesn't change. And we have one, thankfully, in the scriptures.

01:29:19

Well, I told you. Danger, danger. But I don't have to answer the phones.

01:29:27

Somebody else does who will not be mentioned right now. So, thanks for listening to the program today.