September 7, 2005

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Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line.
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The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.
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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602, or toll free across the
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United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
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James White. All righty, everybody who was at the conference and the debate has to call in now.
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If you are listening live, it is your moral duty to call 877 -753 -3341.
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You are required to provide your insights, your favorite moments, and those of you in channel get to tattle on anybody else who's in channel who did something really odd and strange during the course of the weekend before last.
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I don't know if any of you have seen the blog right now, but just saw this morning a very odd providence, a conjugation of events,
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I guess, conjunction of events, events would be a better term, I guess, anyway, that Dr.
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Robert Funk, the co -founder along with John Dominic Crossan of the Jesus Seminar, passed away on September 3rd.
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That's when we were in Glacier Bay where those spectacular pictures were taken.
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If you've seen them on the blog, the little teeny tiny, I don't know, 300 by 120, you know, little, very small resolution pictures.
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They look fine at that size, but the originals are multi -megas, mega size.
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In fact, we may disappear for like 10 minutes here in a few moments because I'm, my wife asked for the pictures from the crews, just the ones, the formal ones.
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I sent them like 15 minutes ago. It's still scanning them. It's the virus thing and it's scanning these pictures and so it's 51 % complete and so all of a sudden that's going to get done.
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I can't stop it. I've tried to stop it, but I can't stop it and I'd probably just crash everything if I did. So as soon as that's done scanning, all of a sudden the system's going to try to be sending out on how many megabytes worth of stuff, so we may as well disappear.
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That's the high tech that we have. Anyways, so yes, Robert Funk has passed away.
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The irony was, as I mentioned, that I was playing clips from him in regards to that little encounter that we had in 1989 at the conference and that was just a week or so before he was going to be discovering that there are certain things in scripture that need to be taken very literally, not in a parabolic or metaphorical fashion.
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And that's, you know, there's a lot of stuff like that these days. We live in a culture where even a situation like that, someone who wrote the 21
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Theses to the Coming Reformation that basically is a manifesto for atheism, denial of everything
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Christian, but you're supposed to just simply give them a pass. As soon as someone, if someone is offended, if someone suffers in any way, shape or form or someone dies, that is enough for all of salvation in much of people's thinking.
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Have you noticed that? That's not how it works in scripture. I mean, Ananias and Sapphira were not saved by their suffering, and there was a lot of suffering chronicled in the
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Old Testament and it was not salvific. But anyway, I'm being informed that we will have, by the way, the audio of the conference and debate available tomorrow.
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So I don't know if that means you'll be able to download it or if I'm going to be able to play it or what. I don't know.
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But the MP3 should be available. But obviously you're all waiting very, very excitedly for the
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DVDs because you're going to want to watch. And but this one isn't it's not like the
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Wilkin debate where you have to have the DVD to really be able to make sense of it because of all the we weren't doing any video presentations.
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So other than Dr. Crossan's broad Irish smile at a few things that I said, you can you can figure out most of it,
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I would assume, from the MP3s, the CDs, things like that that will be available. For those of you who are stuck on the
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CD in the 1980s CD, you know, kick those would be available as well.
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I've tried to introduce my wife to MP3, but she just we were working out in the gym on the ship and I heard this crash.
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I look over and her new CD player had fallen off of her belt and she was gathering it up from the machine.
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You know, you know how it gets wrapped around stuff in the machine and everything else. Somehow it survived. But I was just looking at the size that CD player just going, you know, my little
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MP3 player doesn't fall off at all because it's so nice and small. Well, anyway, not everyone's up to quite that that speed.
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877 -753 -3341 is the phone number. Seriously, if you were there, you would like to participate in the program today if you observed the debate.
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We did have some interesting, interesting folks at the debate. And I'm not just talking about the odd people from the channel who were at the debate.
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We won't mention, you know, certain individuals who are listening even right now. We will not talk about any of those folks at all because they were nice and they worked real hard.
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We did have a guy that had a bright bluish purple. Beard, I pointed him out to Dr.
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Crossan as he came in and sat down and I would be really interesting.
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It would be really interesting to get his his take on the debate. I'm not sure exactly what it would be.
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We did have one fellow. It was a little bit of I don't know, it bothered me a good bit when I found out about this later on,
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I I apologized to Dr. Crossan about it. But I guess afterwards, a young man went after Dr.
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Crossan. And as it was described to me, he wasn't going to be leaving until Dr. Crossan was on his knees repenting right there.
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And that's that's not how you deal with someone like that, you know. And we had to basically spirit him away, no pun intended, and get him get him out of there because this guy was just all over him.
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And I just I was had even made a mental note to myself to watch for that type of thing and to try to keep that from happening.
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But I had a bunch of people coming up to me afterwards and I I just didn't see it happening. And by the time
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I looked over there, he was already gone because the situation already developed and we'd gotten him out of there. But that was the only the only downside.
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The entire evening was very enjoyable. Had a real good group there up in Seattle. It did seem like the
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Seattle, what do you call someone who lives in Seattle, a Seattleite, a Seattle Ocean, a
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Seattle what you just call them normally fairly odd. But anyway, the
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Christians in Seattle all said the same thing. It was sort of like in this in this in this mode, too. Please come back.
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It was sort of like I'm a conservative Christian in Seattle.
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And so there's only like 12 of us. We're all alone up here. Please come back.
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That's true. All of them were like, oh, it's so wonderful that you would come up here and do something where you actually believe the
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Bible. Please come back. You felt so sorry for it because, you know,
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OK, all right, well, we'll find a way to do it. You know, a lot of ships sail out of Seattle and Vancouver.
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So that's actually the second time in how long that we've we've been up to Seattle. And I just felt terrible for him because they obviously do feel like a very persecuted minority.
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It was funny. So it was it was good to get a chance to encourage them.
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And of course, we are extremely thankful to get to use the facilities of Emanuel Reform Baptist Church.
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It was open to us. We packed that place out. Let me tell you, I don't know if we could have
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I just don't know that we could have fit anybody else in there, especially on Friday night.
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It was just there just wasn't any room left. We and even in Seattle, where it doesn't exactly get overly warm, we overwhelmed the poor little air conditioning unit.
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You don't need big air conditioning units in Seattle to handle stuff. But when you pack the place out and then what had happened is that it turned off.
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It was on a timer and it was thinking, hey, it's Friday afternoon. Who cares? And so it had turned off as the temperature gone up and up.
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And finally, by the time we found the right thing to turn it back on again, it was there. It wasn't going to happen.
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It was not going to get caught up. So we were getting a little bit on the warm side, but it was it was good fellowship.
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And I spoke and that was the low light of the evening. But we had Jim Renahan speak and and then
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Steve Camp did a little over an hour. And it was just a wonderful spirit. And I think part of it was because there was so many people praying for these events this weekend.
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There had been a lot of discussion of it. I have been very, very open in asking people to pray for the debate and for the conference.
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And there was a really sweet spirit as a result, because many people had been praying for that. And by the way,
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I was almost 100 percent accurate. I had said numerous times that Dr.
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Crossan would be just as. He'd be at the exact same level at the end of the debate as the beginning of the debate.
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It was not to be one of those situations where you have escalating voices and so on and so forth.
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And if if anything, it was the other way. It was the reverse of that. He seemed to is very clear to me that this was a unique approach as far as Dr.
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Crossan was concerned that I honestly don't know if he had ever encountered a
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Reformed Baptist before in the entirety of his life and talking with him about his life and reading his autobiography and chatting with him for quite some time on the bus the next day as we headed up to Vancouver.
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I didn't see any any way, any any context in which he would have run into a consistent, apologetically minded
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Reformed Baptist. So that may have been just the very first time that that had ever taken place.
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And so I was at the break. And for those of you weren't there, we had 30 minute opening statements, fairly long, 15 minute rebuttals, and we took our breaks.
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And so I take it took a I don't know how long it lasted, always last longer than supposed to. But anyway, took a break.
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And I had in Dr. Crossan's rebuttal, I had interpreted and I could be wrong, but I had interpreted certain elements of what he said as somewhat of a complaint about my opening statement.
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I quoted him very frequently, but I had to, as I pointed out in my opening statement there,
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I was taking the positive. Yes. But what is the negation of my position?
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I had to I mean, there's all sorts of I'm currently on the dividing line.
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I'll have to call you back later on. Thank you very much. There are all sorts of of a ways of denying the historicity and accuracy of the
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Gospels. I mean, if I was debating a Mormon, they'd be taking a very different perspective than I would.
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So I had to define his position. I had to I had to quote him. And so I, you know,
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I felt like maybe he was a little upset that I had been quoting him quite as much.
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Maybe again, I could be misinterpreting. I just don't know. And I didn't talk to him during the break, so I don't know.
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But then we got into the into the cross examination. That's where I could believe me, that was really, really very, very, very, very useful.
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The very first question, very first question to me. Established beyond beyond all doubt what
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I had had said in my opening statement, and that is that this is a presuppositional issue and that, you know,
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I asked Dr. Cross, could there be any evidence whatsoever? Regarding the historicity of the
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New Testament, that would that would convince you that a miracle, that God intervened in history in a special and unique and unique fashion.
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And the answer was no, no, no, there couldn't be. And that was my whole point.
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I mean, if you believe that God in this concept of divine consistency, that God is not doing anything today that he did not do in the first century and vice versa.
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So if he's not raising people from the dead today, he wasn't raising people dead in the first century. You don't believe in the afterlife.
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You don't believe in judgment. You, by absolute necessity, are precluded from being able to view the
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New Testament documents as anything more than allegory and myth.
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That's just the only way that you could possibly do it. And so anyway, the cross damnation was very free flowing.
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In fact, I looked down once and I saw Mike O 'Fallon getting ready to say something.
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And he didn't, but he was getting ready to say something because Dr. Cross and just sort of started, he was supposed to be asking me questions, but he was just sort of commenting.
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He was just sort of going on and on. And and so once I jumped in, I asked him a question, sort of, even though it was when he was, it was very, it was much less strict because it didn't need to be as strict.
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What needed to be accomplished was being accomplished. He wasn't trying to trying to obfuscate. He wasn't trying to bluster.
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He wasn't trying to stonewall. Now, he honestly wasn't exactly sure where we were supposed to be at one point, who was supposed to be asking whom and so on and so forth.
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And so but but since there wasn't any malicious intention there, then you didn't have to necessarily clamp down on it with with the same kind of rigor that we would have in another situation where clearly somebody would be trying to avoid answering difficult questions or getting to difficult subjects and things like that.
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And so. It was a very interesting period of interaction and it and just the conversation back and forth really.
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Got to the main issues and then the audience questions were pretty good, the audience questions weren't weren't weren't bad at all.
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I understand that we have a non -caller here. Well, I don't know if you want to call it a non -caller, but I was there.
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Yeah. And, you know, my impression was similar to what you're you're driving at there.
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The only difference in how I interpret it was, first of all,
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I think initially in the opening statement section, he really wasn't real sure what to think of all of this, you know, he
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I think he was nervous. And I think your your opening statement kind of threw him threw him off his game.
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I don't think he expected. Frankly, I don't know that anybody has ever come at him like you did.
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No. And so I think that confused him a little bit. But once you got to the cross -examination portion.
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He got comfortable. Yeah, that's what he likes to do. He likes he likes to chat. He likes to discuss things.
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And that's that's where I went was into, you know, chat mode. But the the neatest thing I found about that was
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I think at that stage of the debate, I think he really became amazed with you.
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He really became amazed because I just started seeing these this this comfort level of him realizing, my goodness, this man has really studied me.
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Well, I think his first exposure to you was on that stage. I don't think there's a question about that.
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And yes, you're right. He I even asked him later on if it sort of bothered him at all that that I had spent so much time and even during the debate at one point he made the comment he he how did how did he put it?
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Oh, that's right. I said something along the lines of how many of his books I'd read and I spent all these hours listening to his stuff.
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And and he remember his comment that cracked everybody up was, well, it just shows you have good taste.
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Yeah, and that was funny. It was very funny. Everybody started laughing. And then people were still laughing when he said something along the lines of it.
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But to listen while on a bicycle, oh, my. You know, he did find that very strange that I had taken the time to really know where he's coming from.
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And even when we talked personally on the bus, he would start telling me a story and I could finish it for him because it was out of his autobiography.
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Right, right. And again, but I think that that's where the respect really kicked in.
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I think he. I could just tell he was now looking at you as this just this isn't just another debater.
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This isn't just another guy wanting a notch in his gun belt. I think he really started laying forward, putting forward a real level of respect for you as a debater of someone who really knew the issues and was able to understand.
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Him and where he was coming from in a much more. Well, you were able to to contrast, all right, look, this is where, you know,
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Christianity has traditionally been come from, et cetera. This is my position and contrasting it over against where you're coming from is which is here.
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And I think you nailed it. And I think that just blew him away. He definitely seemed
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I'm cutting it out for some reason. In fact, now I can't hear myself at all. Hello. Hello.
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Testing one, two. Am I am I back? OK, he seemed definitely a little bit off of his game when he started his opening statement because the fact that I don't think he'd ever been approached that way.
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There's there's no question about it. The presuppositional emphasis and things like that. Very, very important in that.
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And then combining that with the fact that, you know, if I sat down a debate and discovered that the guy was debating had done a whole lot more study of me than I had done of him, that that would not exactly make me overly confident at that particular point in time.
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So it was the entire debate, even when we got toward the end, if you recall, in his in his closing statement, he said, you know, could we possibly consider the fact that Christianity has a right side and the left side?
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And could we look at opportunities that we would have to cooperate together and to get together and to do things like that?
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And and I didn't get a chance to respond to that because I went first. And so he was going last. And but then during the the question answer period, that opportunity did come up.
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And as I pointed out to him at that time and he seemed to understand what I was saying. And that is, I said, well, you know, you talk about cooperating.
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But when we talk about changing the world, the only thing that has been given to us to change the hearts of men and to actually create true justice is the gospel.
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And the centrality of the gospel, the center of the gospel is the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
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And you're telling us that's not there, that that element isn't there and that God is not supernaturally changing people and so on and so forth.
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So how how can we get together when, in essence, what you're saying is the center of our entire presentation is unreal.
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It's it's just a parable. It's just a metaphor. It's not to be taken in the way that we've understood it all along.
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I just it just seemed to me very clear. And, you know, something was missing from that that we would have gotten if we would have been in New York.
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At that moment, I think the crowd would have gone crazy. Having that declared and laid out there like that, this
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Seattle crowd was very respectful. Yeah, there was no, you know, no jeering, no sudden, yeah, you know, or any of that kind of stuff.
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And I think that allowed him to be much more comfortable as well. And looking at the footage, listening to the footage that I've listened to so far, like you said.
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The only difference between the John Dominic Cross and that started that debate and the one that finished that debate was the one that finished it was much calmer and much more comfortable than the one that started it.
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And and the audience really contributed to that with a great deal of respect for the entire event, which
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I really appreciate. And that's going to help a lot for folks who are going to view this stuff later. Yeah, except for the people who turned out the lights during the
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Q &A part. That poor guy is never going to live that down. Yeah, that was, you know, just a little, you know, attention drawing tactic there to, you know, turn the lights.
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The lights started dropping down and we all look behind us at the wall and he's just standing there. Like, what, everybody's looking at 400 people.
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Yep. Just something to remember. Very much so. Yes. But I'm looking I'm definitely looking forward to I want to I want to watch it myself.
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I generally don't watch rewatch my debates, but I'm I'm looking forward to watching this one myself and re listening to everything because it was now, by the way.
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Oh, great voice from from beyond. Have you now taken the time to look at the second debate yet?
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Not yet. I haven't had a chance to. We've been Dave and I have been scrambling on getting the MP3 files from the original debate converted, stripped down into tracks and uploaded to the website.
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And then we're going to be probably tonight working on getting the conference stuff switched over.
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Dave, you didn't know that, did you? So that that is up there and then linking it all to the website.
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And then once that is there, then the next step is to get the DVDs going. Well, I can at least flip over, get the footage from the boat incorporated into the scenario, strip the audio out of that, get that up there and then do all three
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DVDs at once, which is no small task. I'll have you know. So we don't actually you have not actually put eyes on the recording yet.
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No, I have not. So so we're not actually a 100 percent certain we even have the second debate on tape.
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Right. Yeah. OK, well, just wanted to make sure, you know, I mean, someone by God's providence, someone kept asking when
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Lord willing, whenever I'd call home from the cruise. So you all check that.
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Well, no, I mean, I don't know how to run those things. I'm not going to touch it, man. That'd be the dumbest thing in the world. Do is have me fire up that camera.
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Let me show you how this thing works. And then it's, you know, I'll have to get you a Bluetooth device for that. Yeah. Yeah. Right.
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Sure. So anyhow, so I was going to say, boy, we're looking forward to that. But, you know, we can't say that yet because we just we just don't know.
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So we'll we'll find out. But anyhow, yes, there there was one other thing about the debate.
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And and that was the fact that it was a
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Saturday night. And there was a there was there was stuff going on at the at the
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Marriott. And that included a wedding party, a rather loud wedding party, and that they wanted to play.
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We were able to keep all that from getting in over the sound system. So it's not on the tape. How that's that's that's very good.
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But you'd still hear folks, you know, doing wedding party type stuff. Once in a while, the cackling girls in the hallway singing was real fun.
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Yeah. Yeah. There is there is some a few challenges there that we had to work through. But hey, you know, we we made it.
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Oh, two weddings going on. Yeah, there was two weddings, one behind us and one in front of us as we were sandwiched.
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What was it? What was the Filipino wedding? Wasn't it? Yes. And the other one had they had a DJ in there who was trying to crank the music up as loud as he possibly could.
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And he had about 12 people in the whole place. Ah, so they weren't exactly absorbing the music.
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No, no, no. OK. OK, well, hey, you know, there's always something you don't expect to have to have to we have to thank a lot of the folks who took it upon themselves to to go out in the hallway and try to plead with folks to try to keep the noise down, one of which
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I will tell you, you'd know this, I'll bet, but one of which actually went into the wedding party on the other side of the hall from us.
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And got the mother of the bride, he figured, you know what, if I'm going to get somebody's attention, if we're going to actually get a result here, this one, this lady is going to be the one to do it.
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Uh huh. That's that's interesting. So but the pleas were made and there were some results.
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It wasn't perfect, but it certainly didn't get as bad as it could have. Yeah. As long as the back doors were closed,
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I couldn't hear too much. But it was the doors that open and all of a sudden you realize that it was the place was rocking.
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So, yeah, well, I'm glad that, you know, and we we had a challenge on the second debate, too, and that was that was we we came down and we had a lot of technical challenges as far as making things work with the with the ship.
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And it didn't seem like the folks on the ship were overly excited about us sort of bypassing them and having our own system at all.
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And by the time I got down there, nerves were already rather frayed. And then we discovered that they had, without telling us, moved us back.
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They sort of double booked the room and the room we were to be in for the debate was going to have bingo in it until twelve fifteen.
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And the debate was supposed to start at noon. So they double booked the room for about 15 minutes. And then, of course, folks who play bingo are not known for being, you know, moving really quickly and they sort of like to sit around afterwards and stuff.
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And so the poor lady who was doing the bingo had been informed, look, we have something in here right after you.
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You need to get everybody out. And so she did. It was a British crew. And so with her good British accent, she she basically said, no, we don't want to make anyone hurry, but please leave.
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We have we have we have a private function going on. So please leave. And and they did, thankfully.
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And so we were able to get things set up. But we didn't really get started until twenty, twenty five minutes late.
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And I don't know. It just seemed rather odd to me that we were sitting there. I was sitting there very focused on the debate, listening to N47.
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That's N47, but it all ended up working out. They had this really cool stage thing that it's sort of like the pulpits in Mormon churches where it can go up and down.
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And so the when we were going to put the four chairs out for the discussion and this the whole stage is just coming up out of the floor.
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And it did make it a lot easier. I was sort of assuming everybody would be looking down at us basically, but ended up they were able to raise it,
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I don't know, about three feet or something like that. And that that made for a much, much easier visual.
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So the picture is really good. I put another one up that was very sharp from someone who had a much nicer camera than mine.
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And so that that debate we will comment on in just a moment, are we going to be skipping our our our break today since there's nothing to advertise?
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I mean, we don't want to hear Alaska or listen to the beautiful glory music anymore.
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In fact, we certainly need to get to the website and like remove that stuff sort of maybe since it's still still there on the right hand side of the page.
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I noticed that every once in a while. I'm actually going to adapt that to the DVDs and the
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MP3s and CDs and stuff like that. So that's why I left it up there so that we could, number one, keep that in front of people.
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And then when we switch over to, you know, get the the products from it. OK. All right.
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Well, that's fine. That's that'll work. Eight seven seven seven five three three three four one is the phone number and the phone lines are ringing.
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Unfortunately, I I see. OK, I'll just I'm going to take a wild guess here since I'm not given a line on my stuff here.
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The professionalism is definitely breaking down the program today. But anyways, let's talk with Dave. Hi, Dave.
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How you doing? Hi, Dr. White. How's it going? Pretty good. I went to the conference and debate first time
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I've ever been to anything like that. Yes. I just give you a couple comments.
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I think the very first. Thing at the conference with Dr. Renahan really set a good tone for the whole thing.
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Yes, I had an awful lot of notes from that. Authority of the scripture, I'm looking forward to getting a.
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Tape of it and be able to listen to it again, and I don't really think he was able to finish everything he wanted to get to at that particular point in time.
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So, yeah, just using the two different words for scripture and Second Timothy and how Josephus used the one word and the other references, it's just a lot of stuff
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I hadn't really thought about. Yeah, that's I was very, very pleased with that, especially because he was saying the exact same things that I would have said if if I had been in that situation and yet having multiple people saying it and having him saying in a different way with a different cadence and and yet the exact same presentation,
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I was extremely, extremely pleased about how we got things started. And on the debate, the one thing
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I took from Dr. Crofton is he was trying to say it wasn't a presupposition that, you know, after years and years of study, he's come to the factual conclusion that pre -Enlightenment documents were real free with miracles, be it the
32:03
Bible or any historical document. So, yeah, that was sort of his I don't know if he that was his presupposition going into the study, but he made it sound like that was the only logical conclusion from all these years of study.
32:16
Yeah, but the problem was, as as I pointed out, you know, it's just possible that he had never been been challenged to consider that element of of presuppositionalism.
32:28
But as I point out, the very first question, could there be what what would a what would be required to provide to you evidence from ancient history that that anything outside of a naturalistic worldview, anything outside of just just a completely secular view of what took place in history?
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What could there be any evidence that would convince you or that would cause you to consider the possibility that something unusual happened in the first century?
32:59
And though I must confess, I didn't always get answers to the questions that I asked that were overly direct.
33:07
The fact of the matter is, he in essence, he said, no, it was kind of amazing that, yeah, no, it was not the network.
33:15
And so in essence, he said, there you go. There's there is the proof of what
33:22
I have what I've said from the beginning, and that is that he starts with a presupposition, a worldview that absolutely precludes those documents being taken in a historical way to that also ends up resulting in his unwillingness or his lack of desire to harmonize these things.
33:39
And it was interesting to me and other people notice the same thing. I'm not sure if you would. Is this the first time you'd ever heard him speak?
33:46
Yes. OK, the clips you've played, except the clips. OK, if you were to listen to those lectures, very, very similar.
33:54
I mean, even to the it's a parable dummy stuff that was I've heard two or three times in other contexts, except that when he was debating
34:06
William Lane Craig at at Moody Church. And then in Seattle, there were a number of conclusions that he would present when he was speaking, for example, at Chautauqua, which is a rather liberal context that he did not present in the debate at Moody Church or the debate in Seattle.
34:28
And so he's a very bright guy and he knows his audience. And that was one of the reasons why
34:34
I had to a couple of times, like in questions, draw out the conclusions of the of the situation, because I couldn't tell if everyone else would really be able to know exactly where he thought a certain line of reasoning would end up going to.
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And so there was a little bit of a difference there as far as he was giving us his I'm in front of evangelical conservatives.
34:55
I will use this presentation type of a situation rather than anything else.
35:01
And so that, I think, did impact some of the some of the debate as well, though, especially people who would take the time to either listen to some of those lectures or read who is
35:12
Jesus and then listen to the debate will get a lot more out of it because the fact that if you've got that background, then the questions
35:21
I'm asking will actually make more sense as to why I'm going where I'm going. OK. All righty.
35:27
Yeah. Well, thanks for being there, Dave. Appreciate it. Did you like did you like the the music in the background, too? Yeah. That's the first time you had a cash bar outside the hallway.
35:39
No comments on that whatsoever. None whatsoever. Thanks, Dave. All right. God bless. Yeah, I actually walked down the hall to the room where we had the debate followed by one of the brides.
35:55
That's a strange, strange little connection there. Let's let's go up and talk to Scott, who's up in up and up in the liberal northwest.
36:05
I don't Scott. Oh, I just have one question. Yes. When are you coming back?
36:11
Yeah. Please come back. Please. See, I told her that's really either. Yeah. OK.
36:17
I don't know, man. But, you know, that did you all sort of feel like like the entire population of conservative
36:27
Christians, like quadrupled for an entire weekend? You know, is that what you're sort of feeling? Well, considering about half the people there were actually my friends and people
36:34
I went to church with. Yes. I kind of had a pretty good idea of the population of conservative Christians in the area.
36:40
When you start seeing everybody, you know, from your church, you kind of figure, oh, I guess this is it. Wow. That's amazing.
36:47
Yeah, they actually got me holed up in a closet right now. So I had to do the call on the on the down low.
36:53
Oh, I see. Oh, OK. I'm sorry. Is that just because of your work?
36:59
Is that the whole idea? Well, yeah, I'm skipping out of work. But I was actually just joking. But I felt the moral duty to call.
37:05
Well, I said I think there is a moral duty. Yeah. So so what church what church can you name the church you're from up there?
37:13
Oh, yeah. I go to a fairly reformed church. It's called Mars Hill. Oh, yeah. I've heard of it.
37:19
I've heard of it. And, you know, it started out as not reformed and it's becoming more so.
37:25
It seems right now we're kind of struggling with the whole limited atonement idea, but we're at least talking about it.
37:31
So it's, you know, God is sovereign. Things are working out. We'll see what happens. So there is a number of folks there from that church.
37:39
Was there any discussion of it in Sunday school on Sunday? No, actually. Actually, there wasn't.
37:45
We don't really have. Actually, we do have a Sunday school, but it wasn't running right now. It doesn't start up again till October. We kind of take the summers off.
37:51
That's that's a fellowship and stuff like that. So I did bring it up at one of those kind of churches.
37:59
But I did bring up a community group and we talked about it. And it was actually I got to share with some people there and a couple people from my community group had actually been there, too.
38:08
Excellent. Well, well, I appreciate everybody who did come out. We had a pretty good group. Now, you weren't the one with the bluish purple.
38:15
Beard, right? No, no, I wasn't. I was the one who the first night had you sign the God who justifies.
38:21
Well, I signed a few of those. Well, my my buddy was the one who went to a fuller and you were talking to him.
38:28
Oh, OK. All right. All right. That helps out. Now, I was also I was also the guy who told you that Crofton was in the bar right before the debate.
38:35
Oh, thanks for that observation. Could have been getting, you know, water at that particular point in time.
38:43
You know, you never know. You never know. You just never know. So but no,
38:48
I did appreciate the support we have from the local folks up there. And as you have said, there is just a bunch of folks that, oh, please.
38:57
OK, Dr. Oh, what is Scott's last name? Bluey needs to know he goes to Mars Hill, too.
39:04
So someone someone in channel named Blue Ode wants what you need to do is you need to get in the channel and meet
39:13
Blue Ode, who goes to your church so that you all can meet up. OK. Yeah, I'm in there sometimes. I'm Hedgy 78.
39:19
And oh, OK. All right. Well, when you come in and talk to Blue Ode, who actually lurked in channel for like a month recently without saying a word.
39:28
So whether you'll be able to get his attention or not, I don't know. All right, man. Thanks for being there. OK. All right.
39:34
God bless. Bye bye. 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number.
39:40
And we were we helped to get believers together here on the dividing line. So we'll get get everybody together in the channel there so they can they can talk to each other.
39:51
But let me mention that that was not the only debate. And that wasn't all we did.
39:57
Of course, the conference continued on and the conference was Friday night and Saturday morning. The debate was
40:02
Saturday evening and the conference went wonderfully. And then a bunch of us got on to a ship.
40:09
Actually, we got into a bus first and had a nice little ride. Very easy this time.
40:15
We didn't all have to get off the bus like we've had to do so many times before going into Canada. And I spoke with Dr.
40:24
Cross for quite some time on the bus, just chatting about various sundry things, especially about his
40:30
Roman Catholic background, things like that. And then we got on the ship, beautiful ship, the Sun Princess.
40:36
It's 10 years old, but it doesn't look like it's 10 years old. I've been on ships much newer than the Sun Princess that looked much older than the
40:42
Sun Princess. And I've got to give I got to give the line kudos. The ship was beautiful.
40:49
The ship handled the ocean incredibly well. I almost felt a little bit bad for some of the first time cruisers because on Saturday, was it
41:02
Saturday or was it Sunday? On Sunday. Yeah, on Sunday, we had category five and six winds.
41:11
We had white caps. And when they would white cap, the foam would be blown horizontally the other direction.
41:17
It was it was really, really blown. But even with that, and you can you can feel it.
41:23
You can feel the ship moving. But even with that, the ship was just one of the most stable, smooth sailing ships we've ever been on.
41:32
And the food was about the second best we've had of all the ships.
41:38
The best the best ship we've ever had food wise was the Celebrity Mercury. No, no question about the
41:44
Mercury was was the best ship we've ever been on. That's the first trip to Alaska we did a few years ago. And this was a second or third excellent food, just just really, really, really good.
41:56
And the service was wonderful. It was it was a great time on the ship. But I wasn't able to really even notice those things very much until the the the debate was over.
42:07
And as you know, this was a a four person debate. You've seen some of the pictures on the website, hopefully on my blog of what it sort of looked like.
42:17
It was not as formal at all as the previous debate, of course. I. How do we do this?
42:26
I think I began and then Marcus Borg spoke and then
42:32
Jim Renahan spoke. And I believe Dr. Crossan was last. I think that's how we did that.
42:37
We had 10 minutes each. And Dr. Renahan and I, what would you expect from from two
42:46
Reformed Baptists, two Reformed Baptist elders? Dr. Renahan teaches at Westminster Seminary in Escondido.
42:54
And he's the head of the Institute for Reformed Baptist Studies. So what would you expect from us? Well, we have between us 20 minutes.
43:00
That's not a long time. That's that's a very short period of time. We, of course, gave.
43:09
Presentations based upon biblical passages, and I focused I started off by focusing upon what agyro and anastasis mean.
43:19
The Greek terms to be raised up and resurrection, and I focused on the interplay between those two terms in First Corinthians, chapter 15, because, of course, that is where you have one of the most primitive traditions in the
43:36
New Testament. What I mean by that is there when you have the gospel laid out for us.
43:45
By Paul, I delivered you what had been delivered to me, what had been passed on to me, that Jesus Christ died for our sins, according to Scriptures, and he was buried and rose again the third day, according to Scriptures, and then being seen by 500 various people.
43:58
This is clearly taking us back. All the way back to no no later than the 40s, and what was significant about that to me, and I never really got much of a rise out of either
44:15
Dr. Cross or Dr. Borg on this, is that their theories put the cross gospel, and I'm saying let's talk about crosses specifically there, because Borg may not follow him on all that, but then you have
44:30
Mark in the 50s, and you have Luke and Matthew in the 70s, 80s, John 90s, 100, and they put this very strong prioritizing and order of the dating of these various gospels, and yet what
44:46
Paul gives us predates all that. It predates all of that, and so I focused upon that.
44:54
I focused upon Paul's statements, you know, if Christ be not raised, if the dead are not raised, Christ is not raised, Christ is not raised, and we are of all men, most be pitied, and I really focused in upon the meanings of those terms.
45:07
Laid the foundation, and then when Dr. Renningan spoke, he then went to Acts and looked at some of the passages in Acts where Paul preaches this, and the responses to them, it's very clear that Paul should be recorded numerous times correcting people, saying, no, you misunderstood what we meant by resurrection, if resurrection is just simply that Jesus has been exalted to be absorbed into God, or that the disciples are continuing
45:40
Jesus' program of radical egalitarianism and shared meal, which is what the kingdom of God is, according to Dr.
45:46
Cross, and therefore, that's what the resurrection means. The responses to Paul's preaching don't make any sense, if that's what they meant, because over and over again, they would have had to have said, look, no, no, no, no, no, that's not what we mean, we're not talking about Jesus rose from the dead, come on, we don't mean that literally, no, that's just the exact opposite of that happens.
46:08
And so we presented a very strong biblical presentation. I was interested to note that both
46:14
Dr. Cross and Dr. Borg did not have notes for their presentation. I had a presentation on my palm, and I had timed it out, and I think
46:24
I ended 9 minutes and 48 seconds into my 10 minutes, but they just sort of talked a little bit about what they think resurrection means.
46:37
And in fact, if I recall correctly, Dr. Borg gave introductory comments in a general sense for about the first four minutes, so he only had about six minutes to then present his perspective.
46:51
And so I understand why they would need to do that, recognizing the audience you're speaking to.
46:57
But still, it was very informal at that point from their perspective, and I don't honestly think that almost anything
47:04
Dr. Renahan and I said in our presentations ever really got addressed at all.
47:09
Because once the presentations were over, we then did a, it wouldn't be cross examination, it was a discussion.
47:19
And I knew as soon as Michael Fallon said, okay, gentlemen, you may begin. That there was going, we were all going to look at each other and nobody would say anything.
47:28
I knew that was going to happen. And so I knew, since this was, you know, I'm the group leader, blah, blah, blah, blah, that I would need to start things off.
47:38
And so I started off with some questions. And so for the first, I don't know, 15 minutes or so,
47:44
I'm pretty much just asking questions of them and using the questions to keep illustrating certain elements that had come out in the first debate, presuppositional elements that are a part of their approach.
47:57
And then they started asking us some questions. Dr. Renahan jumped in and he had some, he sort of took it another direction for a while and, which again, highlighted the presuppositional nature of the discussion.
48:09
But it really surprised me when we got toward, there was a little more vim and vigor, shall we say, in the conversation than there had been in my one -on -one with Dr.
48:21
Croson. A couple of things that really stuck out in my mind is I asked
48:26
Dr. Croson, I'm not sure how we got here. I'm going to have to, you know, Lord willing, it was recorded since we haven't double -checked it,
48:35
I'm going to have to go back and watch this and see how we got there. But at one point I went to John 8, 24.
48:43
And, you know, it's sort of sad to even think when you are, when you're commenting on a biblical passage like John 8, 24, to have the thought immediately cross your mind, you know, for the people
48:56
I'm commenting to, this is merely the reflection of a later generation.
49:02
It's not considered authoritative in that sense at all. There's a vast difference between believing that this is the
49:09
Theanostas Word of God and believing, well, you know, a later generation thought this was important so we can sort of look at it allegorically and metaphorically and read something into it.
49:18
It means this and that's how I find it to be useful or something like that. Maybe that's what it's all about.
49:27
I really, really, really don't know. But be that as it may, I asked what
49:35
Jesus meant in John 8, 24 when he said, unless you believe that egoi me,
49:41
I am, you will die in your sins. Now, I had to finally bring it out because we're talking about resurrection here.
49:48
I had had to finally bring out the fact that Dr. Crossan doesn't believe in an afterlife. Dr. Borg doesn't believe anything happened to the corpse of Jesus.
49:56
And these are, how can you have a discussion about these things and not raise those issues?
50:02
You have to raise those issues. And so, how do you understand what
50:08
Jesus said? Unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins. Dying means you simply cease to exist.
50:16
So, what does it mean to die in your sins if your sins don't follow you, if there's no judgment, if there's nothing?
50:23
Certainly, the people hearing those words in the first century, that's not how they interpreted it. That is simply not how they would have understood those words.
50:33
And I never did get a really clear understanding of exactly where Dr.
50:40
Cross is going. But I even said to him at one point, I said, now, I know you don't believe Jesus said this, and he sort of objected to that.
50:48
And so, I asked him later, I asked him Monday morning, just 48 hours ago or so.
50:58
Yeah, almost exactly 48 hours ago, as I'm sitting here thinking, it was about 48 hours and 30 minutes ago. We were saying goodbye.
51:06
I hope I have said enough times in the blog, Dr. Crossan was extremely friendly, amiable.
51:14
Very much just a wonderful man to talk to.
51:20
Really was. Everybody on the cruise will tell you the same thing. No two ways about it. All those people, and let me emphasize this.
51:30
There are people who've never listened to a single debate I've ever done, who constantly rip my face off, slash my face with razors about how mean and nasty and horrible
51:39
I am. But in reality, when you actually listen to the debates or watch the debates, there are so many of them that demonstrate that you can have extremely strong disagreements.
51:56
And do so in such a way as to show mutual respect for one another, and even more so, respect and an honor of God's truth.
52:06
And that's what I really appreciate about the debates themselves. Anyway, I asked
52:12
Dr. Crossan about 48 hours ago. I said, you know, a couple of people have asked me and I've thought that I should have asked this during the course of the debate itself.
52:22
But you sort of objected to my saying that Jesus didn't say
52:29
John 8, 24. And yet, how did you vote on it?
52:37
And of course, you know what I'm talking about there. I'm talking about the whole concept of the
52:45
Jesus Seminar. The Jesus Seminar gets together and you vote on stuff. Isn't that what the five gospels all about?
52:51
You take the marbles and you drop them in the bag. And I didn't get an answer.
52:58
I didn't get a direct answer. He didn't tell me how he voted. But in essence, he affirmed, well, yeah,
53:07
I don't believe Jesus ever said those words, which is what I had said. But he said, but I think that's what he would have said had he ever been in that situation.
53:17
I'm not sure what that means. Obviously, I think he was in that situation, first of all.
53:24
And what's more from that, the words indicate a claim of deity.
53:33
Unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins. Ego, I, me, Anahu, Isaiah, blah, blah, blah.
53:41
I mean, all that's there. I didn't get a really firm answer on that. And I really, you know,
53:47
Dr. Crossan and Dr. Borg are the leading historical Jesus scholars, at least their books say so.
53:55
And they certainly, I mean, I think both have served as chairperson of the historical
54:01
Jesus section of the Society of Biblical Literature. So once you've done that,
54:06
I guess that you can put that on your resume most definitely. But if you just sit back and listen to both debates, but especially the second one, and ask the question, who is handling the scriptures and allowing them to speak for themselves?
54:29
I think it was very, very clear. There was, especially when Dr. Crossan tried to explain what
54:36
John 824 is all about. A lot of folks were like, huh, what?
54:45
Then right as we got toward the end, there was a few audience questions. But as we were getting toward the end of the initial interaction,
54:54
Dr. Borg got a little bit more active at that point. And in essence, I don't know if he just wanted to bring it out, or if he was just now coming to realize that this is where we were.
55:06
Because I got the feeling that this, and I could be wrong here, but my feeling was there was some confusion in the minds of both
55:18
Dr. Crossan and Dr. Borg. Because the fact that Dr. Renahan and I both know the biblical languages, we can discuss their materials on a scholarly level, we've studied their materials, we can discuss history, we can discuss this as scholars.
55:37
But we are believing scholars. And I just don't know how much interaction either one of them have had with that kind of scholarship.
55:48
And so Dr. Borg was like going, so you're really saying that the resurrection, in fact,
55:54
I was asked a question early on, is there any gospel without the physical bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ?
56:00
And I was very happy to say, no, there is not. And so basically at one point the comment was, so,
56:08
I mean, from your perspective then, we are really at loggerheads here.
56:14
I mean, we are really at opposite ends of this issue. And I think it had something to do with the cooperation thing and stuff like that.
56:21
And I'm like, yep, there you go. That's right.
56:27
That's, yeah, that's very much the case. And here's the reasons why. It was the same thing when
56:33
I explained to Dr. Croson, when he said, you know, what about cooperation? Cooperation in what?
56:40
We think the only way to change this world is to change the hearts of men through the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
56:47
And if there is no resurrection, there is no gospel to proclaim, there is no supernatural power whereby that heart of stone is taken out and a heart of flesh is given.
56:56
And it just seemed like for them, they were looking at us like, well, you folks are an odd breed.
57:04
You're really an odd, odd breed. I was just asking Channel, when does the DVD come out? Are there pre -orders?
57:10
I imagine the pre -order form will come up fairly soon. As I mentioned earlier, the
57:15
MP3s and CDs, Lord willing, will be available tomorrow of the first debate.
57:21
We haven't even started looking at the second debate yet. Hopefully we will think through these issues and maybe make them as a set at some point.
57:32
Maybe we'll come up with a way of putting like, you know, scripture alone and the two debates together as a package type situation.
57:41
I don't know. But just keep an eye on the website, keep an eye on the blog. Of course, I will announce it on the blog and it'll be on the right -hand part of our beautiful 1993 vintage website in the ad column there.
57:57
It'll be announced as to, yeah, as to when those things will be available.
58:04
And we're going to want to make them available as soon as possible, of course. We want to get this stuff out as well as the conference and things like that.
58:13
So for all of you who prayed and supported, thank you very, very, very much. The Lord truly blessed.
58:18
Hopefully we were able to communicate that to you over the course of the cruise as well as we were able to have better internet access.
58:27
Didn't get to talk about all sorts of other things, but that's why we have another dividing line tomorrow to talk about other stuff like Katrina and things like that.
58:36
And so that's what we'll be doing tomorrow afternoon at 7 p .m.
58:42
Eastern Daylight Time. That's when we'll be having another dividing line. We'll see you then. God bless. For the dividing line.