A Mixed Bag Including Possible Holiday Discussions with Unbelieving Family Members

And greenies, welcome to the Dividing Line. It's the week before Christmas, and all through Phoenix it was right around 70 degrees.

No, actually, it's a little bit cooler today. We had a cold front sort of brush by this morning, but nothing...

Huh? 61 degrees. Oh, well, okay. Yeah, it's still, I see a 70 in there.

So anyway, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow, but it's not gonna be snowing anywhere around here.

I got a few things to cover today. Got some interesting questions to address here.

I'm just not sure exactly which direction to go. I think I'll go with this first. I was listening to...

Actually, I was just doing a ride on Saturday. I was listening to some Christmas music, actually.

Some of my youth Christmas music going back a long, long ways.

Oh, by the way, I cannot believe this. I have not mentioned once on this program the fact that while I was in St.

Charles, I think. Yeah, while I was in St. Charles. Wasn't feeling all that good. I managed to get the

PDF finished, and we posted on the website, my 27 -page

PDF, a refutation of Jeffrey Riddle's attempt to blow sufficient smoke over the error in the

Texas Receptus City Ephesians 3 -9 to possibly result in the

Environmental Protection Agency investigating him for air pollution. So I did not even mention it last week.

We were doing all the stuff on Rosario Butterfield's position and stuff like that, and I don't think

I even so much as mentioned. And of course, it'd be people in this audience who would be most interested in the fact that that was posted on our website.

As I said, it's 27 pages long. That's only because it's quoting most of his. I don't remember how long his was, but quoted the vast majority of his paper and responded to it.

And no one has mentioned any response to that.

And in fact, if I were to predict, I would predict that Dr.

Riddle, if he continues his trajectory of behavior, will attempt to ignore it.

Because I think he considers it beneath himself to respond to full interactions with his own position.

But that is up there. So if you're one of those people with a serious interest in subjects such as the

Texas Receptus and issues related to that, we posted that last week, over a week ago now.

Just briefly, I also posted a link to some video we had mentioned on this program a number of weeks ago, right after ReformCon, the issue relating to the adoption of a special needs baby.

And we had mentioned when that special needs baby was due to be born.

And a few people, I think, have been somewhat concerned because they hadn't heard much.

But we posted a link, I posted a link in my social media,

Facebook and Twitter, to Jeff Durbin's video where he discusses the birth of his adopted son and the continuing story.

Because remember, how they made the decision to be involved in adopting this child, there was a lot of stuff going on.

Well, sort of now know in hindsight why there was a lot of stuff going on.

And I mean, supernatural stuff going on, because there's been even more of that. Look at my feeds.

If you just make sure you're sitting down, you have a box of tissues around, because you'll probably need it.

We're just rejoicing in the birth of a baby boy who is, as far as anyone can tell, perfectly whole, despite the fact that we have the ultrasounds of a baby with a bad case of spinal bifida.

And he doesn't have spinal bifida. You don't go from having a big old hole in your back with your spine sticking out of it, to perfectly whole in one week without something very, very, very, very supernatural happening, and something very, very supernatural happened.

And it's an amazing thing. So it makes perfect sense now, when you look back.

That's one of the problems is we don't see all of time, and someone else does.

And so sometimes we can see the connections, sometimes we can't, sometimes it's going to be eternity before we see all of them.

And I just want to make sure everyone understands. Well, I say everyone understands,

I'm assuming that there's a lot of false teaching out there. But if you have a child with spinal bifida, and you have been struggling with that from the child's birth, and continue today with all the therapy and the surgeries and everything else, having a child healed of that before birth does not mean

God loves you less or loves somebody else more. One thing that seeing miracles take place reminds you is that anytime something like this happens, it is all of grace.

Grace can never be deserved. And I don't know how people explain any of this if they don't really have a reformed understanding of God's sovereignty.

Because if little August had been born with bad spinal bifida, as was what was expected, as what was prepared for the whole nine yards, then the grace to deal with that over the course of the next 20 years would have been just as miraculous as the healing and the glorification of God and the obedience of his parents and the coming together of the community.

God would have derived his own glory from that situation, would have provided the grace, and would have been just as deserving of the thanks for all of that.

And that's where we struggle because let's just be honest, in some ways, in some ways, the mindset that demands the miraculous of God is similar to the same mindset that we're struggling with in the social justice movement.

That is, one of the big areas of struggle is that we have a lot of people today that don't recognize the difference between cosmic justice and the justice that will be accomplished by mankind in this life.

And what that means is that Christians in the past have recognized that there will be a day when justice will be done, and the whole universe will see that God was just and righteous in everything they did.

And, but that day of judgment is in the future, and in this life, we are fallen.

We seek to do justice as God has revealed it, but then we recognize, you know, what was one of the big things that everybody was angry about, what was it, about a year or so ago now, when we're talking about the issue of justice and we were saying, hey, there are times

God's law protects innocent people, meaning God's law will allow evil men to get away with evil in this life because they're not going to get away with it in the next.

And that's the whole point. You protect the innocent by demanding witnesses. You protect the innocent by having high evidentiary standards.

And yeah, that means that evil men can get away with evil in this life, but the whole point is this life isn't all there is.

Once you get rid of the life to come, you have to drag cosmic justice in from where it's supposed to be at the throne of God into now and put it in the hands of people who cannot operate it.

We can't create it. And so that's the stupidity in trying to judge people.

That's why when we still had a Christian worldview in general, you had something called a statute of limitations.

And it's pretty much gone now. You can now try people for stuff they did when they were 16 and they're now 66.

And it's like, how does that work? What standard of evidence, the standard of evidence had to keep going down and down and down and down and down and down and to make something like that work.

And the reason we didn't do that before is because we recognized, yeah, they might get away with it in this life, but life is short and justice is going to be done.

Once we're all just, I happened to see the Star Trek Next Generation episode yesterday, ugly bags of mostly water.

If that's all we are, then if you want justice to be done, it's got to be now because it's not going to be later.

And the reason I say this, and we already know, probably know a lot about why this is such a problem, is that I think a lot of Christians get this idea too.

And so you see God doing something for someone else and the whole word faith thing is, hey, you just speak it into existence and God's just going to do whatever whatever you tell him to do.

No, no, there will be justice done. God's glory is going to be seen in its fullest expression at that final day, but he's going to do it in the way he chooses to do that.

And with some people, that means walking through trials and difficulties and hardships and other people get to experience miraculous healing that has nothing to do with that's not fair.

And a Christian should never be the person. A Christian recognizes they've received mercy, therefore any grace is to be the reason of great rejoicing and thanksgiving.

And you never ever compare what you think the amount of grace you've received is compared to somebody else.

That's just, that should be foreign to the Christian worldview. Problem is, in many situations, we bring the worldview that we have absorbed from the world around us into the church.

And I'm going to tell you, when we bring that all justice must be done now mindset into the church, it's going to create absolute havoc.

And that's what we're seeing. Critical theory doesn't fit with the gospel.

And when you try to make it fit, something's got to and what gives is the essence of the gospel.

So anyway, I just mentioned that in passing, we're rejoicing, obviously, at the birth of the little one.

I think he comes home. I think he's supposed to be able to come home tomorrow. Amazing thing.

Just truly, truly astounding. You know, most people know that Jeff Durbin is nuts about Christmas, has been for many, many years, even more than me, which is saying a lot.

I was looking at my Christmas playlist on iTunes.

It's not even called iTunes anymore. You know what I mean. And how long was it?

It was how many days it could go before it started to repeat a song, and it was something like 18 days or something like that.

It's ridiculous. It was silly. Was there something you wish to say? So just for clarifications,

I'm sure now they've gone over this child, the fine -tooth comb, and they're just not perfectly healthy.

The doctors are just sitting there going, you know, and in fact, he told me that there was somebody else,

I think, contacted me and said that they had been working in neonatal stuff for a long time, and that in times past, a misdiagnosis would be understandable.

But with the clarity of ultrasound technology, and she was getting ultrasound every week, up to the week before birth, the clarity of ultrasound now, no.

The doctors are just going, I told you about circumstances in my family's past might explain some things about me.

I was supposed to be, when I was born, I was supposed to have an immediate blood transfusion, all kinds of things that I've seen in medical history, but nothing compares to this.

This is absolutely amazing, and if we do not look at this as God's hand fooling the experts.

Yep. It's great to see medical, I mean, it's great to have, you know, it's a wonderful thing that they had an operating room ready and a team of surgeons standing by.

Isn't it wonderful we live in a land where that can happen? There's many, many, many, many, many places in this world where that wouldn't have been a possibility, but it's even greater to have them standing around going, what in the world?

We can't explain this. What, how did this, you know? Yeah, no, it's great.

No, no two ways about it. And of course it has been pointed out by more than one person that in the vast majority of these instances,

August would have been aborted. Would have been aborted. That is their go -to.

I told you about my nephew. My sister had lupus in her 40s.

This child was supposed to have all kinds of problems. Cerebral palsy is what they were predicting, and she absolutely refused to have an abortion, and the doctors kept telling her, you have to abort this baby.

She wouldn't do it. He was a perfect, perfect baby. I showed you a picture of him.

He's now a 28 -year -old man, and his hunting pose with the bobcat in his hand and the

PETA picture in front of him, and yet they couldn't be told that they weren't gods.

They were the smartest people in the world. And you know what? It's, like you said, most of the time, sadly, they're right about these predictions, but trust

God. Yeah, yeah. No two ways about it. So a great blessing to be sure, and I'm sure there'll be more to be said.

I'm sure we'll get Jeff to come by at some point in the future. But all of that, what a great

Christmas blessing and Christmas story that we will have for years and years to come on that particular line.

Anyway, I jumped out of the fact that I was listening to the

Longene symphonette. Most of you never even heard Longene symphonette, but Longene symphonette, back in the 50s, early 60s, beautiful music.

And my family, I think it was a four record set, if I recall, four or five record set, maybe three.

I don't remember. I remember what it looked like. That was Christmas music for us before Mannheim Steamroller came around.

Yes, I'm that old. As in tomorrow, I'll even be older. But for some reason, isn't it weird how the mind works?

For some reason, I was listening to that music. I had that particular thing running on my phone.

And I heard a Christmas hymn that I have listened to for years.

I mean, that's how we knew Christmas was coming. It was my parents put that album on, that group of records.

And I was listening to the words. And I was once again struck by the reality that Christmas hymns have the deepest theology of any hymns, with the possible exception of Easter.

And here was one, you and I, we've all heard it, but have you really listened to it?

We three kings of Orient are, bearing gifts we traverse afar, field and fountain, moor and mountain, following yonder star.

Star of wonder, star of light, da da da da da da. Born a king on Bethlehem's plain, gold

I bring to crown him again, king forever, ceasing never, over us all to reign.

Well, there's some good stuff there. But then frankincense to offer have

I. Incense owns a deity nigh. Prayer and praising, voices raising, worshiping

God on high. Myrrh is mine, it's bitter perfume, breathes a life of gathering gloom, sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying, sealed in the stone cold tomb.

Then this is what, this is what I caught my attention. Glorious now behold him arise, king and God and sacrifice.

Alleluia, alleluia, sounds to the earth and skies, king and God and sacrifice.

I was thinking about the fact that the catechism question we're doing at church right now is the question about the offices that Christ bears in his incarnate state and his exalted state, prophet, priest, and king.

And here you have three, king and God and sacrifice. And I think of other hymns from the

Christmas season that talk about incarnation and the dual nature of Christ.

And unfortunately, they're frequently in the stanzas that get skipped, both in the hymn sing and in the more popular versions and stuff.

But there is a tremendous amount of really deep, now there are, there are also

Christmas hymns or Christmas carols that are reprehensible.

And I'm not talking about Santa Claus is coming to town either. There are

Christian songs that you listen to them and go,

I was a while back and, oh, really? You know, no crying he makes.

No, Jesus cried. Got a little Gnosticism going on there.

And there were a number of them that talked about how lily white he was, and he wasn't really white.

So you've got some westernized stuff like that. So I'm not saying that they're all perfect or inspired or anything else.

But it's just that the level of theology, given the context, is really, really up there.

It really is. And it's, so listen, listen to the hymns if you're going to be seeing any of them.

There's only one more Sunday before Christmas. We do this next

Sunday outdoors in a park. Uh, so that'll be interesting.

Um, but we will be, we will be, um, hopefully singing something similar to that.

There's some, there's some great stuff there. We did not test the computer again. Do you have me? Oh, wow.

Yay. Um, one of the other things that I, uh, did on, uh, on that ride,

I did a fairly decent sized ride on Saturday. And the first thing I did was I was listening to a debate from a number of years ago.

I happen to remember that I did listen or watch this debate while riding inside, uh, shortly after it took place.

But Matt Delahunty versus Saiten Bruggencate on the subject of, um, whether you can, whether belief in God is, is rational.

It did seem to me like it was a pretty one -sided crowd for the atheists.

Um, so kudos to Cy for, uh, walking into the lion's den in essence.

Um, but what caught my attention was a couple of the questions from the audience.

And I don't know, I just, the, in the back of my mind,

I was thinking about how many in our audience might be having conversations over the holidays here over the holiday next, next week.

Um, and maybe this subject would, would come up. Uh, maybe this topic would come up and so it'd be good to address it and to, um, consider it, think about it.

Um, and it certainly struck me as, as indicating once again, how relevant the reviews we've done over the years of the many

Bart Ehrman debates that we've done. And of course the Bart Ehrman debate that we did, um, how relevant all of that is.

And, um, so this is from the Q and A portion of the debate and, oh, that's, that's what

I was going to cue up. I knew there was another one that I was going to cue up. Couldn't, I don't, don't have it.

I'm not going to sit here and waste your time trying to find it. But before we play this one, I think it was just before this one, probably wouldn't be hard to find, but I, I can,

I can repeat it for you. Um, Matt Dillahunty is a former Christian and I think at least two of the people who got up at the debate likewise testified to apostasy.

And it just really, really struck me with this one.

I think it was a question before this, two questions before this. Um, it really struck me that form apostates, apostates feel the need to verify, defend in some way, um, get the apostates like to be around other apostates.

Um, apostates love to be around other apostates. They love to have others join them in their rebellion.

And this guy gets up and under the guise of asking a question, um, you have this, how do

I express it? It was like, that was, this was the best thing I've ever done. And I'm so happy that I abandoned my religion.

And, and you can tell there are other people like this in the audience and they're, they don't realize how religious their non -religiosity is.

They, it is, it's really religious irreligiosity and they're, they're, they're feeding off of each other.

You know, isn't it great that we're now free and, and all the rest of this stuff. And I'm sitting back going, free of what?

Free to do what? You're now free to believe yourself to be a brain in a vat or you're, you're free to believe that you're a, uh, a bottle of fizzing chemicals.

And that in a very short number of literally minutes, you're going to be decaying and turning back to dust and everything you've done will be forgotten.

And, and that's it. And there's no transcendent meaning and the universe is impersonal and you're, this is freedom for you somehow.

How does that work? Uh, it just, it just struck me how

I've seen that so many times with atheists, with, especially with, you know,

I get the atheist who goes, not, don't believe it. Not really overly concerned about it.

I'm going to go on with my life. But the atheists who are just utterly absorbed with their hatred of God, forgive me,

I'm going to mention he who shall not be named again. Um, but it was

Doug Wilson who in his, um, comments about Christopher Hitchens, uh, said there, there are two things absolutely certain about Christopher Hitchens.

He knows God doesn't exist and he hates him. And he's exactly right.

Um, that was, that was the essence of listening to Christopher Hitchens talking about God is he, he knows

God doesn't exist and he hates him. His whole North Korea thing was just a fulfillment of what you have in Romans chapter one.

So that was the first one I was going to queue up and I forgot where it was and I apologize. I didn't, I didn't do it.

I, the second, the second question after this threw me off because I, I remember hearing it and thinking about it and going,

I want to talk about that one too. So I figured that was the second one, but it wasn't. Anyways, here's the question, caught my attention and, uh, here's, uh, here, here it is.

Hi, my question is for Matt. Uh, on my drive down, I listened to an audio copy of, uh, Bart Ehrman's misquoting

Jesus and it made me really wonder about how accurate any of the information or any of the words in the

Bible that are being currently used, uh, are. Do you think it's reasonable for someone to base an entire worldview, religious philosophy on the current

Bible because of how different it is from any of its oldest sources?

Now, now, first things first, before we listen to Dillahunty's response, which is interesting in and of itself, do you hear what this atheist heard?

Because remember, I, I really wish I could find it. I really wish I could find it. But one of the problems with, uh, modern day technology is once you've got terabytes of hard drive space, finding something from literally a decade ago, that was a short sound file.

You know, if you, if you don't have great organization, don't know the day, don't know the name, especially if, if, if it's not searchable,

I mean, is there such a thing? Is there a program that can search audio files?

I don't even know how it would do that. I bet somebody has something like that, but I've never heard of it.

Anyway, you can't find this stuff, but I remember on this program, we played it on this program in this studio.

I don't think the walls were this color yet. Um, but that, how long ago was that?

That wasn't all that long ago. It was less than 10 years. Yeah. Cause I'm, I'm thinking this is probably right around 10.

I don't, I don't remember if it was before or after, I think it may have even been before my debate with Bart Ehrman. So it may have been 11, 12 years ago.

Anyway, it was an, Ehrman was on an atheist webcast and one of the things that I've faulted

Ehrman for is that he, in his populist writings, rather than his scholarly writings, in his populist writings, he leaves the impression that the scriptures have been wildly mangled.

When you dig into his scholarly writings, he basically says, we've gotten as far as we can get.

We're just tinkering around with a few readings here and there, but the task is pretty much done.

And we pretty much know what the New Testament read with a few exceptions. So in Mark 1 41, um, was

Jesus moved with anger or with compassion, uh, to, to heal the leper.

And in Hebrews chapter two, did Jesus die apart from God or by the grace of God?

And then you've got the conjectural amendation in first Peter, I think it is very, you know, when people hear those, they're not impressed because the idea that whether Jesus was angry or not in Mark 1 41 changes the message of the

Bible is absurd. Jesus was angry in other places in Mark. Um, so the idea of Jesus experiencing anger is not going to change anything.

Um, it's really hard to even understand what would apart from God meant, mean in Hebrews chapter two, given that God, the father is obviously intimately involved in the sacrifice of Christ and the very purpose of the cross and everything else.

So what people think when they read his populist books is that there's this huge op, all these options and, and it's just this total mess.

And then when you get into the scholarly work, it's a little thing here and a little thing there. And actually we, we know what the

New Testament was about to begin with. And so this atheist is hearing him talking about a couple of these passages and they, just like this guy, you heard in his question, well, if the, if the, if the

Bible that exists is so different from what it originally was, well, it's not.

So where'd you get that idea? He got that idea from Bart Ehrman. And is that purposeful on his part?

Bart would say it's not. Oh no, I know. I, I said over here, I said over there. Well, I understand what you're saying there.

Are you expecting untrained people to have the same care in making conclusions that, that you are saying needs to be exercised?

And so here's this guy that here's, there's the, there's the illustration. There's a guy listening to Bart Ehrman.

Oh, I keep skipping it. So the having heard all this stuff on the webcast asks

Bart Ehrman, he says, so Dr. Ehrman, after, after hearing all this stuff, what, tell us, what do you think the

New Testament was originally about? What do you think it was really about? And Ehrman's like, it was about Jesus coming as the lamb of God to die on the cross and give his life for the salvation of the world.

I mean, it's sort of like, and the atheist is just so disappointed. He was thinking it might have been like the original plot for Battlestar Galactica or something like that.

You know, something really interesting and exciting. But Ehrman's like, no, we pretty much know what the

New Testament was about. I mean, you know, my big thing is, do we know with absolute certainty?

And, and, you know, it's like, like the first time I ever understood, I was riding

South Mountain, I was listening to issues, et cetera, and Ehrman was on issues, et cetera. And Ehrman, that's when

I first came to understand what Bart Ehrman was saying was, is if the Bible was inspired, there would be no textual variance.

There would be no differences in the manuscripts. And I just rode off the edge of the mountain because I was just stunned that anyone could have that, that perspective.

And of course, that's what we wanted to debate in 2009. He would not debate it, will not debate it to this day.

I think he knows that that type of theological assertion would never survive, simply would never ever survive any meaningful, any meaningful debate.

But there's the illustration and that's what people hear. And you'll probably have people in your family who, at least this guy was listening to Bart Ehrman's book.

Let's face it, a lot of the people you're going to be breaking bread with on Christmas day have only heard what someone who graduated from a junior college, where they had a professor who read

Ehrman's book and then badly interpreted it to them, said. So they don't even get it straight from Ehrman, they get it second, third, fourth hand, and by then it's totally messed up, totally messed up.

So what do you do with that? This is why one of the reasons, not the only reason, but this is why we have spent so much time over the years on issues relating to textual criticism and the transmission of the text of the

Bible and issues like that. But hear how it's interpreted, hear how it is heard by the individual and how that ends up coming out.

It's just so different than it once was. It's not even actually what Ehrman is saying. And I don't know what audio book he was listening to.

I mean, in the, I'd have to double check this, but I know in the current edition of Miscoding Jesus, there's a

Q &A that I don't think was in the original one. It may not be a part of that, the audio that he listened to, but Ehrman in that says the scribes did the best job they could and the variations are relatively minor and do not impact any

Christian dogma or teaching. But that was added in later. So, the response.

Yeah, so there's one little thing to correct there before I say the no, which I'm going to say, which is that there's not a current

Bible. So, Ehrman's got some good books, and studying the history of both the canon and trying to determine how reliable the current text is to the original is something that lots of Christian theologians and New Testament scholars, whether they believe or not, have been engaged in.

And the truth is that we don't know how close the

Bible is to the original. And what's more significant to me is that it doesn't matter if it was 100 % accurate to the original, because the question is, is the original true?

Is the current version? We have no reason to think that any of them are true, except where they are.

When they talk about, you can find all kinds of facts and place names and, you know, if archaeologists dig up New York in the future, that doesn't mean that Spider -Man existed.

And so, you have to take each individual claim in the Bible separately. And so, the idea that someone would base their worldview entirely on what any particular

Bible that they got their hands on now says is, to me, absurd. Now, if they can go and investigate and make a demonstration that there's some truth there, and if they can demonstrate a mechanism, even if it was divine revelation, if they could demonstrate that they had this revelation and that this led to truth, then you've got a different issue.

But absent that, I don't think anybody should base their life on any book. Okay. I don't know,

Matt Dillahunty, but it almost strikes me that he is somewhat aware of the fact that, as Ehrman said in our debate, we have much earlier attestation for the

New Testament than for any other work of antiquity, and hence have a significantly higher level of confidence as to its textual transmission than any other work of antiquity at all.

So, I guess what he was trying to do was move away from the textual critical issue, not offering a correction to what the guy had said, but move away from the textual critical issue toward a more general philosophical assertion of, well, if it's divine revelation, we shouldn't be trusting any claims of divine revelation to begin with, basically, seems to be what he was attempting to do there.

And then, let me see here. He's talking about truth again, not belief. Now, the reason all

Sai says there is he's talking about truth, not belief, is because prior to this, there has been extensive debating back and forth on epistemology.

And, in fact, if you've not watched this debate,

I'd recommend it to you. It's very useful in illustrating what solipsism is and the whole issue of epistemology and things like that.

But Sai had prepared so well that he had quotation after quotation after quotation of Dillahunty on his computer ready to go.

So, he let Matt make a lot of his points for him as a part of his own presentation. That's very effective, especially when you're dealing with someone who does a regular atheist program.

And so, you'd have a lot to draw from, but man, it would take you a lot of work to do it. I don't know that I'd have that kind of time.

But then Dillahunty read his rebuttal.

He said, normally, a rebuttal is meant to be done live, so you're responding to what the other person said. He's exactly right.

I'm always more than just a little bit put off when

I debate someone who has a pre -written rebuttal, which means what

I said was irrelevant or what I said was going to be so predictable. Well, Dillahunty knew what

Sai's presentation was going to be, and so that was one of his points was

I was able to write this rebuttal before the presentation. So, they both sort of did the same thing to each other at that point, demonstrating a knowledge of the person's position.

But they had gone back and forth on the difference between belief and an assertion of truth.

Dillahunty doesn't want to say that what he believes is true, but he really can't respond to almost any question without going beyond the parameters of what he wanted to defend, in essence.

So now, I'm not gonna spend too much time on this next one, but I want you to hear what this next guy says, because this is something we've covered many, many times.

My question's for Sai. Currently, it's estimated that there's about 350 ,000 versions of Christianity.

So, how exactly do you know that your version is the correct one?

This is... Talk about inflation, man. 350 ,000.

350 ,000. Now, there will not be a correction from Matt Dillahunty on that number, and you can understand why that would be the case.

He's really not interested in correcting things like that.

But... Hey, Rich, you remember back in our day, there was only 28 ,000.

I mean, you know, okay, some of you watching are going, what are you old men talking about?

Back in our day, when we first started debating

Catholic answers, the guys with Catholic answers liked to say that there are 28 ,000

Protestant denominations, and it might have actually only been... It might have only been 22 initially, but I remember 28 was big for a long time.

Then it went to 33 and 35, and now if you listen to them, they're talking 40s. And this guy, 350.

350 ,000. And I don't remember how many years ago it was.

Well over a decade ago now. Probably more than 15 years ago. In fact, it's probably around 2000, so it's been close.

20 years ago now. We tore that whole thing apart. We went to the sources that they were using, demonstrated that basically, you know, every independent church was being identified as an entire denomination, and that the same source had 350

Roman Catholic churches, which obviously they weren't going to buy that. You know, we went through all that stuff.

So here you end up with someone who has now taken that number out to 350 ,000.

What? What? Okay, folks, all you have to do is go to aomin .org, go to the search engine, and put in the word denominations.

And here we have it. 2012, 33 ,000. Whoops, now 36 ,000. 2011,

Michael Voris, 40 ,000 denominations. 2010, it's not 33 ,000, but millions.

2009, 33 ,000. 2009, 33 ,000. So we've covered it a few times.

It just keeps going. We've covered it a few times. We certainly have.

And so leave it to the atheists to increase it by a factor of 10.

350 ,000. Well, you know, if you take every single individual as their own denomination,

I guess you can come up with millions. But that's really not overly helpful.

Not overly helpful at all. Two other topics I want to squeeze in here before the end of the hour.

One, just a brief comment. You need to understand that when you do what we do here, when you do what

I do here, I have so often been misrepresented, interpreted in the worst, most unkind, and often absurd ways, that I would be a glowing hypocrite if I did not recognize when that was being done to others, and then jumped in on top of it.

So I recognize that my personal experience of constantly being maligned, constantly being misrepresented, constantly being lied about, especially by people who call themselves

Christians, let alone atheists or Muslims or anybody else out there, but by people who call themselves

Christians, I recognize that that impacts my mindset and how far

I'm willing to reach out to someone who disagrees with me. It's funny. On the one hand, people view me as a horrific, fundamentalist, hate -filled dogmatician, and then you've got the people over here that I'm a liberal, squishy, ecumenical compromiser, etc.,

etc. So you've got the two extremes, and you try to remain comfortable somewhere in between.

So, I'm not stunned at all, honestly, with the response that I've seen to the relatively brief—it's only 55 minutes—conversation that we recorded right here—got something in my eye, sorry about that—that we recorded sitting right here on Friday—I just got an eyelash in the eye, it happens once in a while—with

Douglas Wilson. And of course, you should know that on the technical side of things, he could see me,

I could not see him. So we had a conversation sitting right here about federal vision issues, justification issues.

We asked—we went through the definition of federal visionism as had been given, and Douglas said, actually,

I disagree with this, this, and this. This is my understanding. When I use the term federal vision, this is what I mean. And then you've got people on this side, and we talked about the real concern about sacramentalism and what baptism does and does not do.

And we talked about justification, the grounds of justification, the instrument of justification. And do not color me surprised whatsoever by the fact—because we even,

I even said at the end of the program, I said, I'm not naive enough to think this is going to mean we're all going to be holding hands and singing

Kumbaya, and that everything's because it isn't.

But it is troubling. Thankfully, at least it remains troubling for me to watch people who just go,

I don't care what he says. I just detest him so much that I'm going to believe that he believes something different.

And you can tell this is exactly what's operational, because within a couple hours after the interview dropped on Saturday evening, within a couple of hours,

I'm seeing these memes where you're quoting little segments from Blog and Mayblog, and see, he used a bad word here, or he did this over here, or dragging up stuff from the church, and all the rest of this type of stuff.

And so it's just this whole spectrum of things that you put together.

And I'm a good Baptist, at least. I don't think that I have the calling, or the capacity, or the right, or a biblical standing for sticking my nose into the middle of what the leaders of another local church someplace else have done.

You may say that we need to do that. What you're saying is you want cosmic justice now.

That's what you're saying. And you think that your Presbyterian organization, your Episcopalian organization, your

Catholic organization, your secular organization, whatever, is going to guarantee you cosmic justice now.

No. I just want to go, show me where the New Testament establishes those organizations,

A, and then B, establish that it is God's intention that that kind of cosmic final justice be done now.

We want God's will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. So we work toward that. We do seek justice now, but we seek it within the parameters of his law and his revelation.

We don't come up with stuff that we think is just going to work. Anyway, I could tell immediately, because instead of dealing with what he said, instead of rejoicing with how many times he affirmed the absolute sovereignty of God, election, the righteousness of Christ, all of that, none of that matters.

That's irrelevant. Who cares? There can be no rejoicing in any of that. That's irrelevant.

Instead, we have to focus on this person thinks that what he means by this is this, and therefore, he really isn't saying what he said there.

He's saying something like this over here. See? And there's no reasoning with those folks.

There just is no reasoning that you... And I, like I said, I can see it with clarity because I have people who do the exact same thing to me.

I can stand right in front of them and say, I believe it. No, you don't. Oh, okay.

Where do you go from there? Have a nice day. See you later.

That's all you can do. You put it in God's hands and say, it's all you can do. All right.

One last thing real quickly. I saw that someone tracked down the

Latin of this, but I did not have time to dive into it. But here is the report.

Pope Francis appeared to flatly reject proposals in some theological circles to add co -redemptrix to the list of titles of the

Virgin Mary, saying the mother of Jesus never took anything that belonged to her son and calling the invention of new titles and dogmas foolishness.

Quote, she never wanted for herself something that was of her son, Francis said. She never introduced herself as co -redemptrix.

No. Disciple, he said, meaning that Mary saw herself as a disciple of Jesus. Mary, the

Pope insisted, never stole for herself anything that was of her son. Instead serving him because she is mother, she gives life.

When they come to us with the story of declaring her this or making that dogma, let's not get lost in foolishness in Spanish.

He said. Francis's words delivered in Spanish came while celebrating a

Thursday evening mass in Rome for the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The title of Mary is co -redemptrix dates the

Middle Ages and the idea of declaring his church dogma was discussed, though not adopted, at the Second Vatican Council. In the 1990s,

American Catholic theologian Mark Miravalli launched a petition asking the Pope to make such a declaration, and today the co -redemptrix devotion tends to be strongest among more conservative

Catholics. What Francis said Thursday is in line with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican's doctrinal chief during most of John Paul II's papacy and now

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. And what did

Benedict say? He said the formula co -redemptrix departs to too great an extent from the language of Scripture and of the

Fathers and therefore gives rise to misunderstandings. Well, here's the problem.

Popes for over 100 years have used the term co -redemptrix and co -mediatrix of Mary in their teachings.

It's already been made a doctrine, just not a dogma. And what this illustrates, once again, is just how far away from his predecessors,

John Paul II, how far away from his predecessors Francis really is, and it probably explains why, though there were millions of signers of those petitions, and John Paul II, his papal coat of arms had a

TT on it, totus tuus, addressed to Mary, totally yours. I mean, there was reason to think that he might declare the dogma, but this might give us an insight into why he didn't, because Ratzinger was one of his right -hand men and he undoubtedly was resistant to it.

So, is that movement for the fifth Marian dogma over? You can't tell.

That's just it. There's no way of predicting. Rome is Rome. Who knows who the next pope will be?

Once you deny sola scriptura, there's no way of knowing.

This pope could say, that's foolishness, and the next pope could say, you need to believe it. That's your problem.

This is the same pope who sat on a plane talking about homosexuality saying, who am I to judge?

Well, who do you claim to be? Who did your predecessors claim to be? That's the question.

What an amazing time we live in. I remember the bold bravery of the followers of Mark Miravalli, University of Steubenville.

That's an important place. I mean, that's where Scott Hahn went and taught and things like that.

It wasn't long ago that they were riding the crest of the wave and now the pope foolishness.

What's going to be foolish next? Historic Roman Catholic doctrine?

Look what the German bishops just did. The German Roman Catholic bishops just declared homosexuality a natural human behavior over against the

Catholic catechism. Well, the pope's changing the catechism on on capital punishment and nuclear weapons, so why not?

Why not? Rough day to be a Roman Catholic apologist. Rough day.

What? Right.

Well, of course, yeah. That is the question. Maybe on this issue,

Ratzinger and Francis are in agreement, but there are many other issues that they are not. So a fascinating day.

I remember I was at a sonic drive through and I heard about Ratzinger's Benedict XVI's resignation.

I was like, oh, is this going to change everything? And it has. No two ways about it.

No two ways about it. Well, so I suggested a schedule for this week to you, and I didn't hear back from you as to whether it was going to be possible.

You're not you're not heading anywhere. OK, so probably looking at Wednesday, Friday this week and then nothing the week after.

Wife and I are heading up to see the grandkids and be with the grandkids for Christmas and looking forward to that.

And so you've got stuff to do, too. Hopefully the conversation today has been helpful to you in thinking about some of the objections that might come your direction over Turkey.

If you do Turkey, it's not as big as Thanksgiving. We're going to be trying to do Turkey, though. I think we're going to be trying to do a

Turkey. We hope it'll all. Is that what you're doing? Oh, well, that's fine.

That's fine. Well, not everybody can do Turkey as well as certain certain other families. So, hey, you, you, you, you know, my dad's dressing.

So if we do a good job coming up with that, then that's that's all that matters. All right.