September 7, 2005

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. 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.

Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program, and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 1 -800 -602 -973 -4602, or toll-free across the United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341.

And now with today's topic, here is James White.

Reflections on the Seattle Conference and Debate

Alrighty, everybody who is at the conference and the debate has to call in now. If you are listening live, it is your moral duty to call 877 -753 -3341. You are required to provide your insights, your favorite moments, and those of you in channel get to tattle on anybody else who is in channel who did something really odd and strange during the course of the weekend before last.

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, I guess, conjunction of events. Events would be a better term, I guess.

Anyway, that Dr. Robert Funk, the co-founder along with John Dominic Crossland of the Jesus Seminar, passed away on September 3rd. That's when we were in Glacier Bay where those spectacular pictures were taken, if you've seen them on the blog, a little teeny tiny, I don't know, 300 by 120.

You know, little very small resolution pictures. They look fine at that size, but the originals are multi megas, mega size. 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.

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 gonna get done. 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 gonna try to be sending out and how many megabytes worth of stuff.

So we may as well disappear. That's the high tech that we have. Anyways, so yes, Robert Funk has passed away. 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 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 Theses to the Coming Reformation, that basically is a manifesto for atheism, denial of everything 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, what shape or form, or someone dies, that is enough for all of salvation in much of people's thinking. Have you ever 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 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.

I don't know if that means you're gonna be able to download it, or if I'm gonna just be able to play it, or what? I don't know, but the mp3 should be available, but obviously, you're all waiting very, very excitedly for the DVDs because you're gonna want to watch and but this one isn't, it's not like the 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, so other than Dr. Crossan's broad Irish smile at a few things that I said, you can figure out most of it, I would assume, from the mp3s, the CDs, things like that, that will be available.

For those of you who are stuck in the CD, in the 1980s CD, you know, kick, those would be available as well. 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, and I look over and her new CD player had fallen off of her belt, and she was gathering it up from the machine, 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 of that CD player, just going, you know, my little 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. 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, 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.

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. We did have a guy that had a bright, bluish-purple beard.

I pointed him out to Dr. Crossan as he came in and sat down, and I would be really interesting, it would be really interesting to get his take on the debate. I'm not sure exactly what it would be. 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.

I apologized to Dr. Crossan about it, but I guess afterwards, a young man went after Dr. 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, and 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 out of there because this guy was just all over him, 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, but I had a bunch of people coming up to me afterwards, and I just didn't see it happening, and by the time I looked over there, he was already gone because the situation had already developed, and we'd gotten him out of there, but that was the only downside.

The entire evening was very enjoyable. Had a real good group there up in Seattle. It did seem like the Seattle, what do you call someone who lives in Seattle? A Seattleite? A Seattle-ocean? A Seattle what?

You just call them normally fairly odd, but anyway, the Christians in Seattle all said the same thing. It was sort of like in this, in this, in this mode, too. Please come back. It was sort of like, I'm a conservative Christian in Seattle, and so there's only like 12 of us.

We're all alone up here. Please come back. It'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 Bible. Please come back. You felt so sorry for it, because you know, okay, all right, we'll, we'll find a way to do it, you know.

A lot of ships sail out of Seattle and Vancouver, so that's actually the second time in how, how long that we've, we've been up to Seattle, and I just felt terrible for them, because they, they obviously do feel like a very persecuted minority there.

It was funny. So, it was, it was good to get a chance to encourage them, and of course, we are extremely thankful to get to use the facilities of Emanuel Reformed Baptist Church. It was open to us. We packed that place out.

Let me tell you, I don't know if we could have, I just don't know that we could have fit anybody else in there, especially on Friday night. 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.

So, you don't need big air conditioning units in, in Seattle to handle stuff, but when you pack the place out, and then what had happened is that it turned off. It was on a timer, and it was thinking, hey, it's Friday afternoon.

Who cares? And so, it had turned off, and so the temperature had gone up and up, 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. 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, and I spoke, and you know, that was the low light of the evening, but we had Jim Renahan speak, and, and then 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.

There had been a lot of discussion of it. I had been very, very open in asking people to pray for the debate and for the conference, and, and there was a really sweet spirit as, as a result, because many people had been praying for that, and by the way, I, I was almost 100 accurate.

I had said numerous times that Dr. 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. It was, it was not going to be one of those situations where you have escalating voices and, and so on and so forth, and if, if anything, it was the other way.

It was the reverse of that. He, he seemed to, it's very clear to me that this was a unique approach as far as Dr. Crossan was concerned, that I honestly don't know if he had ever encountered a 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.

I didn't see any, any way, any, any context in which he would have run into a consistent, apologetically-minded Reformed Baptist. So, that may have been just the very first time that that had ever taken place, and so I was at the break, and for those of you who weren't there, we had 30-minute opening statements, fairly long, 15-minute rebuttals, and we took our breaks, and so, I take it, it's okay, I don't know how long it lasted, it always lasts longer than it's supposed to, but anyway, took a break, 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.

I had quoted him very frequently, but I had to, as I pointed out in my opening statement, there, I was taking the positive, yes, but what is the negation of my position? I had to, I mean, there's all sorts of, I'm currently on the dividing line, I'll have to call you back later on, thank you very much, there are all sorts of ways of denying the historicity and accuracy of the Gospels.

I mean, if I was debating a Mormon, they'd be taking a very different perspective than I would, so I had to define his position, I had to, I had to quote him, and so I, you know, I felt like maybe he was a little upset that I had been quoting him quite as much.

Maybe, again, I could be misinterpreting it, I just don't know, and I didn't talk to him during the break, so I don't know, and, but then we got into the cross-examination, that's where I could, believe me, that was really, really, very, very, very, very useful.

The very first question, very first question, to me, established beyond all doubt what I had said in my opening statement, and that is that this is a presuppositional issue, and that, you know, I asked Dr. Cross, could there be any evidence whatsoever regarding the the historicity of the New Testament that would, that would convince you that a miracle, that God intervened in history in a special and unique, in a unique fashion, and the answer was no, no, no, there couldn't be, and that was my whole point.

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, so if he's not raising people from the dead today, he wasn't raising people from the dead in the first century, you don't believe in the afterlife, you don't believe in judgment, you, by absolute necessity, are precluded from being able to view the New Testament documents as anything more than, than allegory and myth.

That's just, that's just the only way that you could possibly do it, and so, anyway, the cross-examination was very free-flowing. In fact, I looked down once, and I saw Mike O 'Fallon getting ready to say something, and he didn't, but he was getting ready to say something, because Dr. Cross just sort of started, he was supposed to be asking me questions, but he was just sort of commenting, 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.

What needed to be accomplished was being accomplished. He wasn't trying to, trying to obfuscate, he wasn't trying to bluster, he wasn't trying to stonewall, no, 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, and so, but since there wasn't any malicious intention there, then you didn't have to necessarily clamp down on it 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, and so it was a very interesting period of interaction, and it, and just the conversation back and forth really got to the, to the main issues, and then the audience questions were pretty good.

The audience questions weren't, weren't, weren't bad at all. I understand that we, we have a non-caller here.

Well, I don't know if you want to call it a non-caller, but I was there. Yeah. You know, my impression, was similar to what you're, you're driving at there. The only difference in how I interpreted was, first of all, I think initially in the opening statement section, he really wasn't real sure what to think of all of this, you know, he, I think he was nervous, and I think your, your opening statement kind of threw him, it threw him off his game.

I, I don't think he expected, I don't know, frankly, I don't know that anybody has ever come at him like you did. No. And so I think that, confused him a little bit, but once you got to the cross-examination portion,.

He got comfortable. Yeah, that's what he likes to do. He likes, he likes to chat,.

He likes to discuss things. And that's, that's where it went, was into, you know, chat mode, but the, the neatest thing I found about that was, I think at that stage of the debate, I think he really became amazed with you.

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. And I think his first exposure to you was on that stage.

I don't think there's a question about that. And yes, you're right. He, I even asked him later on, if, 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?

Oh, that's right. I said something along the lines of how many of his books I'd read, and I'd spent all this, these hours listening to his stuff, and, and he, remember his comment that cracked everybody up was, well, it just shows you have good taste.

Yeah. And that was funny. It was very funny. Everybody started laughing. And then he, people were still laughing when he said something along the lines of it, but to listen while on a bicycle, oh my, you know, he, he did find that very strange that I had taken the time to really know where he's coming from.

And even when we, 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. Right, right.

And then again, but I think that's where the respect really kicked in. I think he, he, I could just tell he was now looking at you as this just, this isn't just another debater. This isn't just another guy wanting, wanting a notch in his gun belt.

I, I think he really started laying forward, putting forward a real level of respect for you as a debater, as someone who really knew the issues, and was able to understand him and where he was coming from in a much more, um, well, you were able to, to contrast.

All right, look, this is where, you know, Christianity has traditionally been, come from, etc. This is my position, and contrasting it over against where you're coming from is, which is here, and I think you nailed it, and I think that just blew him away.

Uh, he, he definitely seemed, uh, I'm, I'm cutting in out for some reason. In fact, now I can't hear myself at all. Hello, hello, testing, one, two. Am I, am I back? Okay. Uh, he, he seemed definitely, uh, a little bit, uh, 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.

Uh, there's, there's no question about it. Uh, the, the presuppositional emphasis and things like that, very, very important in, in that, and then combining that with the fact that, you know, if, if I sat down in a debate and discovered that the guy I was debating had done a whole lot more study of me than I had done of him, that, that would not exactly, uh, make me overly, uh, confident at that particular point in time.

So it was, uh, the entire debate, even when we got toward the end, you, if you recall in his, in his closing statement, he, uh, said, you know, could we possibly consider the fact that Christianity has a right side and a left side?

And could we look at, at opportunities that we would have to cooperate together and to get together and, and to do things like that? 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, and as I pointed out to him at that time, and he seemed to understand what I was saying, uh, and that is, I said, well, you know, you, you talk about cooperating, 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.

And the, the centrality of the gospel, the center of the gospel, is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And you're telling us that's not there, that, that element isn't there, and that God is not supernaturally changing people, and, and so on and so forth.

So how, how can we get together when, in essence, what you're saying is the, the center of our entire presentation is unreal. It's, it's, uh, just a parable. It's just a metaphor. It's not to be taken in the way that we've understood it all along.

It just, it just seemed to me very clear. And you know something that was missing.

From that, that we would have gotten if we would have been in New York? At that moment, I think the crowd would have gone crazy. Uh, having that declared and laid out there like that, um, this 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. And, 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, uh, like you said, the only difference between the John Dominick Crossan that started that debate and the one that finished that debate was, the one that finished it was much calmer.

Yeah. And much more comfortable than the one that started it. And, uh, and the audience really contributed to that with a great deal of respect for the entire event, which 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, uh, during the Q &A part. That poor guy is never going to live that down. Yeah, that was, uh, you know, uh, just a little, little, you know, attention drawing, uh, tactic there to, uh, you know, turn the lights.

The lights started dropping down and we all look.

Behind us at the wall and he's just standing there and kind of steps up away from the wall. Like, what? What did I do? And everybody's looking at him. 400 people.

Yep. Just something to remember. Very much so. Yes. But, uh, now I'm looking, uh, I'm definitely looking forward to, uh, I want to, I want to watch it myself. I generally don't watch, re-watch my debates, but I'm, I'm looking forward to, uh, watching this one myself and re-listening to, to everything because it was, uh, now, by the way, uh, oh great voice from, from beyond, have you now taken the time to look at the second debate yet?

Not yet. I haven't had a chance to. We've been, uh, Dave and I have been scrambling on getting the mp3 files from the original debate converted, uh, stripped down into tracks and, uh, uploaded to the website.

And then we're going to be probably tonight working on getting the conference, uh, stuff, uh, switched over. Dave, you didn't know that, did you? Um, so that that, uh, is up there and then linking it all to the website.

And then once that is there, then the next step is to get the DVDs, uh, going. Well, I can at least flip over, get, uh, the footage from the boat incorporated into the scenario. Uh, strip the audio out of that, get that up there and then, uh, do all three 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. No, I have not. So, so we're not actually 100 certain we even have the second debate on tape. Right? Um. Yeah. Okay. Well, just wanted to make sure, you know, I mean, uh, someone kept...

By God's providence. Someone kept asking, uh, whenever. Lord willing. Whenever I'd call home, uh, from the cruise, uh, so have you all checked that? 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 to do is have me fire up that camera. Let me show you how this thing works. And, uh, then it's, you know. I'll have to get you a Bluetooth device for that.

Uh, yeah, yeah, right. Sure. Uh-huh. So anyhow, so I was going to say, boy, we're looking forward to that. But you know, we, we can't say that yet because we just, we just don't know. So we'll, we'll find out.

But anyhow, um, yes, there, there was one other thing about the debate. And, uh, and that was the the fact that it was a Saturday night and, and there was, uh, there was, there was stuff going on at the, at the Marriott.

And that included a, a wedding party. A rather loud wedding party. And, uh, that they wanted to play their music. We were able to, uh, to, uh,.

Keep all that from getting in over the, uh, sound system. So it's not on the tape.

How, that's, that's, that's very good. But you'd still hear folks, you know, doing wedding party type stuff once in a while.

Yes, the cackling girls in the hallway singing was real fun.

Yes. Yeah, there was, there was some, a few challenges there that we had to work through. But, uh, hey, you know, we, we made it, uh, oh, two weddings going on.

Yeah, there was two weddings, one behind us and one in front of us as we were sandwiched.

One was a Filipino wedding, wasn't it? Yes. And the other one had, um,.

They had a, uh, a DJ in there who was trying to crank the music up as loud as he possibly could.

And he had about 12 people in the whole place. Ah, so they weren't exactly, uh, absorbing the music real well. No, no, no. Okay. Okay. Well, hey, you know, there's always something you don't expect to have to, have to, we have to thank, uh,.

A lot of the folks who, um, took it upon themselves to, to go out in the hallway and try to, um, plead with, uh, folks to try to keep the noise down. One of which I will tell you, you'd know this, I'll bet, but one of which actually went into the wedding party, uh, on the other side of the hall from us 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. Uh-huh. That's, that's interesting.

So, uh, but, uh, the, the pleas were made and there were some results, uh, it wasn't perfect, but, um, it certainly didn't get as bad as it could have. Yeah, as long as the back doors were closed,.

I couldn't hear too much, but it was, uh, the doors had opened and all of a sudden you, you realized that it was, the place was rocking. So, yeah, well, I'm glad that, uh, you know, and we, we, we had a challenge on the second debate too, and, uh, that one, that was, we, we came down and, and we had a lot of, uh, technical challenges, uh, as far as making things work with the, uh, with the ship and, uh, it, it didn't seem like the folks on the ship were overly excited about us, uh, sort of bypassing them and having our own system and all.

And, uh, by the time I got down there, uh, nerves were already rather frayed and, uh, then we discovered that they had, without telling us, moved us back. They had 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 1215 and the debate was supposed to start at noon.

So they double booked the room for about 15 minutes. And then of course, uh, 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.

And so the poor lady who was doing the bingo had been informed. Look, we have something in here right after you, you need to get everybody out. And so she did, it was a British crew. And so with her good British accent, uh, she, she basically said, no, we don't want to make anyone hurry, but, uh, please leave.

And so we have a, we have a, we have a private function going on. So please leave. And, uh, and they did thankfully. And so we were able to get things set up, but we didn't really get started uh, until 20, 25 minutes late.

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, uh, N47. That's N47. But, uh, it, it all ended up working out and they had this really cool stage thing that, uh, it's sort of like the, uh, uh, pulpits in, uh, Mormon churches where it can go up and down.

And, uh, so the, when we were going to put the four chairs out for the, the discussion and, uh, this, the whole stage is just coming up out of the, out of the floor and it did make it a lot easier. We, I was just sort of assuming everybody, everybody be looking down at us basically, but ended up that they were able to raise it.

I don't know about three feet or something like that. And that, uh, that made for a much, uh, much easier visual. Some of the picture is really good. I put another one up. That was very sharp uh, from someone who had a much nicer camera than mine and, uh, uh, so that, that debate we will comment on in, in just a moment.

The First Debate: Presuppositions, the Gospels, and the Resurrection

Are we going to be skipping our, our, uh, our break today since there's nothing to advertise? I mean, we don't want to hear Alaska, uh, or, uh, listen to the beautiful glory music anymore. In fact, we certainly need to get to the website and like, uh, remove that stuff sort of maybe, um, since it's still, still there on the right-hand side of the page.

I noticed that every once in a.

While. I'm actually going to adapt that to the DVDs and the, uh, 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. And then when we switch over to, you know, get the, the products from it.

Ah, okay. All right.

Cooperation, the Gospel, and the Limits of Common Ground

Well, that's fine. That's a, that'll work. 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number and the phone lines are a ringing. Unfortunately, I, I, I see. Okay. I'll just, I'm going to take a wild guess here since I'm not given a line on my stuff here.

The professionalism is definitely breaking down the program today, but, uh, anyways, uh, let's talk with, uh, Dave. Uh, hi Dave. How you doing?

Hi, Dr. White. How's it going? Pretty good. Um, I went to the conference and debate first time I've ever been to anything like that. Yes. Um, I just give you a couple comments. Um, I think the very first thing at the conference with Dr. Renahan really set a good tone for the whole thing.

Yes. I had an awful lot of notes from that authority of the scripture. I'm looking forward to, uh, getting a 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. So yeah.

Just using the, you know, 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 I hadn't really thought about.

Yeah, that's a, 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, and yet having multiple people saying it and, and having him saying in a different way, uh, with a different cadence and, and yet, uh, the exact same presentation, uh, I was extremely, uh, extremely pleased about,.

Uh, how we got things started. And then on the debate, the one thing 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 documents were real free with miracles.

He had the 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. Yeah. But the problem was, as, as I pointed out, uh, you know, it's just possible that he had never been, been challenged to consider that element of, of presuppositionalism. But as I point out the very first question, could there be a, what, what would a, what would be required to provide to you evidence from ancient history that, that anything outside of a, a naturalistic worldview, anything outside of just, just a completely secular view of, of what took place in history, 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.

And though I must confess, I didn't always get answers to the questions that I asked that were overly direct. Uh, the fact of the matter is he, in essence, he said, no, um, it was kind of amazing. Yeah, no, it was nothing that would convince him.

So in essence, he said, there you go. Um, there's, there is the, the proof of what I've, what I've said from the beginning. And that is that he starts the, with a presupposition, a worldview that absolutely precludes those documents being taken in a historical way, uh, to, that also ends up resulting in his unwillingness or his lack of desire to harmonize these things.

And it was interesting to me and other people notice the same thing. I'm not sure if you had heard, is this the first time you'd ever heard him speak? Yes. Except for the clips you've played. Except for the clips.

Okay. Um, if you were to listen to those lectures, uh, very, very similar. I mean, even to the, it's a parable dummy, okay. Uh, stuff that was, I've heard two or three times in other contexts, except that when he was debating 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, uh, Moody church or the debate in Seattle.

And so he's, he's a very bright guy and he knows his audience. And that was one of the reasons why I had to, a couple of times, like in questions, draw out the conclusions of the, of the situation. Cause I, I couldn't tell if everyone else would really be able to know exactly where he thought a certain line of 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.

I will use this presentation type of a situation and rather than, um, anything else. And so that I think, uh, did impact some of the, uh, 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 Jesus and then listen to the debate.

We'll get a lot more out of it because of the fact that if you've got that background, then the questions I'm asking will actually make more sense as to why I'm going where I'm going. Okay. Alrighty. Yep.

Well, thanks for being there, Dave. Appreciate it. Did you like, did you like the, uh,.

The music in the background too? Yeah. Is that the first time you had a cash bar outside?

No comments on that whatsoever. Uh, none whatsoever. Thanks Dave. All right. God bless. Uh, yeah, I actually walked, uh, down the hall to the room where we had the debate, uh, followed by one of the brides.

So that's a strange, strange little connection there. Let's, um, let's go up and talk to, uh, Scott, who's up in, uh, up in, up in the liberal Northwest. How you doing Scott? Oh, I, I just have one question.

Yes. When are you coming back? Please come back. See, I told her, but that's, that's fairly either your, yeah. Okay. I don't know, man, but, uh, you know, that, did you all sort of feel like, uh, like the entire, uh, population of conservative 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 I went to church with. Yes. I kind of had a pretty good idea of the population of conservative Christians in the area.