Tons of Important Material Today!

Welcome to The Dividing Line, should be our last low quality program, image. Most people would say it's low quality on a regular basis, but image anyways. We're supposed to be getting this stuff fixed tomorrow.

I am just, you know, like recently I tackled some bike maintenance stuff I've never tried to tackle before because the bike stores are just so busy. And it took, you know, seven times longer than the videos said it would take.

You know, there's all this stuff that say, well, you don't even need tools for this. Yes, you do. I had to buy the special tool to do that. What are you talking about? You know, that kind of stuff. So I have that feeling about fixing anything.

And so we're supposed to get it fixed tomorrow. We'll see. We could be doing this from home for weeks in the future for all I know. I don't know. Anyway, so this just hit. Yet another judge tells Grace Community Church they cannot meet inside.

They can only meet outside and wearing masks and doing all the rest of the submit to Big Brother stuff that they're doing. Despite the growing amount of information about all of the stuff. So we'll see what happens on Sunday again.

We'll see what happens on Sunday again. That's interesting. Real quick. This also, I just ran into this. Yesterday, the story hit that this picture of Joe Biden and his son. I'm not sure if the son had died.

Probably was. I don't know. But this picture of Joe Biden with his holding his son as a child years and years ago. The child is wearing a knit cap because some of you live in places where it's actually cold enough to wear stuff like that.

And when CNN published it, they photoshopped it because someone looked up the original picture. It was a Washington Redskins football cap. And so it had the Washington Redskins logo right there. They removed it.

They removed it. It is seriously like either they've never read 1984, and so they're just following all of its stuff out of stupidity. Or they did read it and said, this is great. Let's do this. But 1984 needs to be put into the deuterocanon because it's prophetic.

And so another one just hit. University of Rhode Island to remove World War II murals due to lack of diversity. So there are murals of like D-Day invasion and stuff like that, but they need to be taken down because of a lack of diversity.

University of Rhode Island recently has plans to remove two murals depicting the events of World War II due to their lack of diversity. The decision was prompted after students complained that the mural was not compatible with the university's values of inclusivity.

According to the school's vice president of student affairs, some of our students have even shared with us they didn't feel comfortable sitting in that space. So the people who died so you would not have to live under Hitler's rule, we can ignore them because you don't feel safe sitting in the space because you have the mental development of a two-year-old.

I'm really getting sick and tired of this. When did we let the children take over? It's not just the children who are the students. It's the children who are the administrators. If you are so immature that you don't feel comfortable sitting in that space as if you think your comfort is what the world's about, you try to raise your children to stop thinking like this as early as possible and to become adults.

No society can survive this. No society can survive this. There's something new coming, folks. There's something new. Unfortunately, my gut feeling is there's going to be a period of time where what takes place see, the U .S. Constitution requires mature people with a worldview that corresponds to reality, and the people in these universities, they don't fit.

These kind of people end up under totalitarian rule, and that looks like what's coming, but it can't last. And so my hope is, hey, let's be long view here, okay? Long view. Teach your children well, and teach your grandchildren well, and pass this on so we can build something a whole lot better because oh, my goodness.

Some of our students have even shared with us that's the only way you can read it. You can't read this as an adult. Some of our students have even shared with us they didn't feel comfortable sitting in that space.

Okay, so oh, real quick. Sincere what do you say when someone loses their home in a wildfire? But Kofi did, and we love Kofi, and we've talked about Kofi a lot, and I've already told Kofi, Kofi, I'm on it.

I'm going to start surfing eBay. And as soon as you're settled someplace, I'm replacing the Coogie. So we're good on that. And I've also offered him one of my I only have, like, what, about three or four of the hardback God Who Justifies left from way back when I was because that was the only hardback I ever had.

So I'm going to wrap that hardback in a Coogie. Now, Rich is trying as best he can not to break out laughing in the other room, but Kofi knows Kofi has sat on the front row at G3 in that Coogie, okay, that I gave him.

So, yeah, that's right. You are going to put that microphone down because you would be convicted deep down in your heart if you said anything right now. That's right, and you know it. Anyway, there was a GoFundMe page up last night.

I'm not sure if it still is because it looked like we were getting to the goal real fast. I thought that was great. I thought it was wonderful. I put the word out. Everybody's been putting the word out.

Something tells me that Kofi's going to be getting lots and lots and lots of books when he gets to where he's going. Though, I'll be honest with you, this is the one situation where we all sit around and talk about the superiority of the paper book and the beauty of the library.

The problem is it's all paper, and it burns. You can replace a Kindle a whole lot easier than all those books. It's just the reality. I know, I know, I know. It's the world we live in. That's the situation.

Cultural Amnesia, Totalitarianism, and the Loss of Historical Memory

Now, one thing that really is concerning to me is more and more that I'm seeing about a lot of people that are going, you know, like the Oregon fires are four times worse than they've ever, ever, ever, ever, ever had in as long as we've kept records.

Four times worse. There are a lot of law groups going, it's because they're being started. It's, hey, if people burn down buildings in inner cities, why won't they start a fire in a forest that is tinder dry during a time when a cold front's going by so you got lots of wind?

Oh, they've made the threat. They've made the threat many times. And I have a feeling that's probably what's going on. Can you imagine how evil you have to be to start a fire that wipes out all these people's homes?

And who knows how many lives are going to be lost in the process? I mean, how evil do you have to be? This is what the left wants to do. The left wants to destroy this nation. They are all out doing it.

All out doing it. And let me tell you something. This is absolutely, this is just my personal opinion, but I think if you are walking toward an inhabited building, home, anything else with a Molotov cocktail in your hand, that is assault with a deadly weapon.

And I think on any level of meaningful justice, you shoot that person before they can destroy that home, threaten lives, whatever else it is. Without this, we have nothing left. There will be no hospitals.

There'll be no schools. The death toll will be astronomical. You can't, anarchy is sinful.

And that's what these people are. Didn't the rule used to be, if you loot, they shoot. Looters will be shot on sight. It's not just, you know, threatening somebody's life. It's if you do any of this stuff, you'll be shot.

Now you've got public broadcasting interviewing authors who are writing books in defense of looting. Anyway, yeah, okay. So pray for Kofi. Pray for Josh Williamson. I first met Josh down in Australia, back when I would visit Australia.

Oh my goodness, the stuff going on down there. Did you see the most recent video? The woman who is 38 weeks pregnant goes for a walk. Ladies at that point want to go for walks because they want the baby to come out.

They're sick and tired of this. I remember very clearly, summer, I heard this walking, because we have gravel. I know most people outside of Arizona just do not understand this, but we have a gravel lawn.

You can hear people walking across a gravel lawn. I remember I could hear. It's one thing to hear it out front, because that sometimes happens, but you never hear anybody walking in your backyard if you've got a gravel lawn.

I'm like, what is that? I go rushing outside. It was summer when she was right toward the end of her pregnancy. She's walking around in the gravel. Please, baby, come. Come to mama. Just, you know. Here's this woman, 38 weeks pregnant.

In Australia right now, or at least in Victoria, you can't go five kilometers away from your house, and you have one hour to exercise per day. One hour. I'm just like, if you want to see totalitarianism, go to Australia.

The death numbers there are infinitesimal in comparison to lots of other places, but ah, give up all of your, everything just, and man, the cops just seem to love it. She's 38 weeks pregnant, so she sits down on a park bench because she's out of breath, and she's got cops on her like that, robotically saying, there are only certain reasons for you to be out here, and this is not one of them, and you're not supposed to be sitting up, you're just like, oh my goodness, what happened to humanity?

Oh, what? Eventually, though, they walked off. They didn't arrest her or anything, thankfully. Eventually, they walked off, because I think even they had to realize, especially when someone started recording them, boy, this is really bad.

We are being real jerks here. This is so obvious, but anyway. Okay. But Josh Williamson went from Australia to, I was told that it's not New Quay, it's New Quay. Why in the world it's spelled that way, who knows?

It's spelled Q-U-A-Y, but how that becomes Quay, I have no earthly idea, but I'm sure there's some story somewhere about 600 years ago they would explain it. Anyway, in Cornwall, in the Cornwall district of the United Kingdom.

We had talked about, oh, there's the COVID. No, it's not COVID. It was an almost 84-mile bike ride with all the wonderful smoke coming from California. That's a long tube of air to suck in, and I'm still trying to get rid of it.

Anyways, he and I had actually talked about my coming down there and doing something to the church, stuff like that, which would be great to do, and given how often I was going to London, certainly something I wanted to do.

It may never happen now, but as I mentioned in the last program, he made a comment on Facebook about the Cornwall Pride parade being canceled. Now, just think about this for a moment. In the year 2000, two decades ago, if any Christian minister, now we didn't have Facebook at that point in time, but if any Christian minister in a sermon had said, we are praying that homosexuality will not be promoted in the streets of our city, we are praying that young people will not be exposed to the nudity and perverted behavior that is almost always a part of these things.

I have seen pornographic videos. I mean, there were news reports, but they were pornographic videos of the types of things that go on during these gay pride things. Can you imagine if in a sermon a minister had said, we are praying that God will protect us from this, and then it gets canceled?

The pastor goes, thanks be to God. That's pretty much what Josh Williamson did, except now we live in a day where everything has changed. I think, especially in the United Kingdom, there has been a successful campaign to make regular British people incredibly guilty and embarrassed about what the United Kingdom once was.

I think it's been a purposeful campaign. It's because it's happening here. It certainly has happened here. The 1619 Project, all the rest of this stuff, it's all meant to say this nation has stunk from the start.

Nothing to ever be proud of. I remember the Bicentennial in 1976, and man, boy, everybody was celebrating, but we had nothing to celebrate. We were just pure white privilege. Even all the Black people had white privilege back then, evidently, because everybody got together, and we celebrated 200 years of this thing called the Constitution.

Anyway, really, I was just watching it on TV out here in Arizona, but we just moved here, actually. Anyway, I think that has been very successful in the United Kingdom. So even though people know in their hearts that that nation, only a matter of decades ago, would never have allowed this kind of behavior and stood against it, and kings and queens and members of parliament and Spurgeon thundering from his pulpit, they're now embarrassed by all that.

They're embarrassed by all that. Once a people is embarrassed by the very moral essence of what made their nation great, that nation's doomed. That nation's done. Here you have Josh Williamson simply saying what Christians believe and presenting that to some of the leaders from the Cornwall Pride.

Well, you just need to understand something, folks. 20 years ago, homosexuals do not want equal rights. They want Uber rights. And now everybody says that because everybody sees it all the time. I started saying that 20 years ago.

Nah, nah, nah, nah, nope, nope. Now it's obvious. And what is happening? I'm looking at a Facebook post and now the Baptist ministers are coming out in support of the homosexuals against Josh daring to take a biblical stand.

Now, not a one of them, not a one of them can provide any meaningful response to the same-sex controversy or anything that Michael Brown's written, certainly anything that Robert Gagnon's written. They can't.

They know it. They don't even try. They don't have to try. They already have the media on their side. So they didn't engage it. They'll lie about it. They'll say there's nothing in the Bible about this or that.

But they know in their heart of hearts, if we went one to one, they would have nothing to say. They know that. But a number of these guys are in the Baptist unions. And let me tell you something. One thing I learned as I traveled, primarily in Europe, is Baptist unions, when they go bad, they go real bad.

When a Baptist union goes bad, it's like when mayonnaise goes bad, okay? If you don't know it in time or don't smell it, it's going to make you vomit. That's what Baptist unions are when they go bad. When they stop having any kind of meaningful connection to the authority of the Word of God and stuff like that, it gets ugly.

And they're coming out of the woodwork, attacking Joshua Williams. So pray for him, because the reality is, this is what you live with in the UK. They're trying to get him kicked out of the country. They're leading boycotts.

They don't want any businesses in the town that have anything to do with anybody involved in that church. It's very similar in that context to what our... Apologia has a church plant in Kauai. Exact same type of tactic.

Isolate, shame. That's why you have to think through it. I've said this multiple times. When someone says shame on you, you automatically have to be thinking, what is the foundation upon which I should have any shame in light of what this person is saying?

You have to think that type of thing through. Because these days, the shame will be on them. Just think of it. If you're standing before the judge of all the earth with this other person, and this incident that they're saying to you, shame on you, is brought before the judge of all the earth.

What will the judge of all the earth say? What will the judge of all the earth say? What will the judge of all the earth say about these Baptist ministers who bear that title but profane the office? Good question.

Josh doesn't have any worry about that, but these ministers who refuse to honor the word of God do. So that's going on. Keep that issue in prayer as well. A couple days ago, I had the opportunity to listen to Cameron Bertuzzi's video.

I'm not going to play any of it. I'm just going to summarize it for you. It caught my attention. I'm not sure how it ended up in my feed and stuff, but it caught my attention because it was on the best argument against Catholicism.

And we know that Cameron Bertuzzi has been playing footsie with Rome and moving that direction very plainly, very clearly. Had initially, when he first started talking about this stuff, made it very clear in the comments he was making, he really didn't know why he was a Protestant in the first place.

Did not have any dedication to the key issues of the Reformation at all. And so he's the perfect person to be called across the Tiber River in that sense, because he was already paddling around the middle of it anyways, even though he didn't know it.

So I was real interested in knowing what he thinks the strongest argument against Catholicism is. Then he had Jerry Walls on. Jerry Walls, as we know, we've covered a lot of Jerry Walls stuff on Radio Free Geneva.

I think he's a United Methodist, strongly Arminian, very anti-reformed, and hence would not have agreement on the key issues of the Reformation in regards to the nature of the will of man and issues along those lines.

So I was really interested. And he's written a book promoting the idea of purgatory, not the dogmatically defined Roman Catholic version of it with indulgences and satispassio and stuff like that, but a sanitized version of the concept of purgatory.

We're not talking about someone that I would expect to be overly strong in their stance when it comes to the issues of the Reformation and Roman Catholicism today. So I took it on a ride and I was listening to it and I was amazed.

It's simple. It's been a part of almost every debate we've ever done on the papacy. This is nothing new. In fact, I remember when we did those debates in 1991 in Austin, Texas with Dr. Festigi, and one of them had something to do.

I had quoted from a Roman Catholic scholar in one of the debates we did. During the break, because we did multiple debates, it was in a TV studio. During the break, he came over to my desk and we were talking about something.

That issue came up and he made the comment, he said, yeah, there's a lot of guys like that since we stopped the Inquisition. I was like, do you realize what you just said? But it was true. It was true.

Once there was significantly more enforced harmony as to what opinions you could express. Anyway, basically, Walls had written an article that said that there's all this evidence for the resurrection of Jesus and that's definitional of the faith.

In comparison to that, there's nothing to substantiate the idea of the primacy of Peter in the early church and the concept of apostolic succession in Petrine primacy. Basically, what his argument was is that this is the consensus of Roman Catholic scholarship.

Now, I found that interesting because that depends on how you define Roman Catholic scholarship. Now, here's the problem that our Roman Catholic friends have. The problem that Roman Catholic friends have is that there is, look, both on our side and on their side, there is a discernible divide between the bulk of scholarship and the bulk of people who do apologetics.

Now, on our side, that's because you got a bunch of liberals. Liberals don't do apologetics because they don't really have anything to defend and they don't really believe what the Bible says anyways.

So why would they be doing apologetics? And we have plenty of conservative scholars that provide meaningful foundations for a defense of all sorts of the key elements of the Christian faith and the claims of the Christian faith.

But the problem that you have for your Roman Catholic is that there is a very discernible and very clear contrast between Roman Catholic apologetics and Roman Catholic scholarship today. And that is seen especially and primarily in the Pope, and that's huge.

Even Ratzinger, Benedict, as a greatest scholar as he was, was way on the left. Not nearly as left as Francis, but in regards to all sorts of issues, biblically speaking. And so since Vatican II and even before, the Popes have been placing on the key Vatican committees, the papal biblical commission and stuff like that, leftist liberal scholars.

Leftist liberal scholars. And so I've pointed out many times, Carl Keating, Catholic Answers. One of the big things they would do back in the 90s is, if you ever listened to that debate, they did in Denver when they dodged me but debated somebody else.

The two fundamentalists just were not prepared for that. One of the things they asked the fundamentalists is, how do you know Matthew wrote Matthew? Well, the problem is the papal biblical commission doesn't believe we have any idea that Matthew wrote Matthew.

Because the people on it are leftist liberals. So you've got the apologists giving one answer, whereas the scholars give another answer. And it's because of the left-leaning perspective of the papacy.

And so we both have liberal scholars. There's no question about that. Now, Walls, I think, is probably right when it comes to Roman Catholic historians as a whole. I think you should go to Boston College.

I've debated the papacy at Boston College, but you go to Boston College. And I would imagine the vast majority of those teaching at Boston College chuckle, laugh at the pretentiousness of papal claims, especially historically speaking.

They know about the donation of Constantine, the role that it played. It was a fraud. They know about the pseudo-Isidorean decretals, frauds. They know that well into this millennium, the papacy was citing fraudulent quotations from early church fathers in support of their position.

They know all that. And one of the issues, and this is one of the primary issues that Walls brought up, was the, as he put it, consensus of current scholarship, that there was no monarchical episcopate in Rome.

Now, he said until the end of the second century. I thought that was a little overblown. I think that more like midpoint, but that's what he said. He said the end of the second century. And so he presents this and he says, so clearly, whereas the resurrection defines the Christian faith, and all Christians believe this.

The claims, and of course, he's saying this, starting off saying Roman Catholic brothers and sisters, and for his perspective, the gospel isn't an issue here. He may disagree with some things on the outside, but we're pretty much all on the same page there.

It's just this authority issue. It's this papacy issue. So that's where he's coming from. But he's basically saying there's a consensus of even Roman Catholic scholarship. Historical scholarship. That the concept that Peter had a successor in Rome, and that this was what Christians understood, and that Jesus had established this, and all the rest of this stuff, it's just a layer of development.

And he's probably right. I would say that that probably is the case. Now, the dogma of Rome hasn't changed. The dogma can't change. The dogma has been defined by the Roman Catholic Church that Jesus established this, that this was understood by the apostles from the start.

This is the faith, the ancient church, etc., etc., etc. None of that's true, but that's what's being stated. So here you have the contrast between the dogma and the history. So what I found fascinating is, okay, I agree that there is no question in my mind that that is a good argument.

It's one of many good arguments. The papacy is built upon error, and the papacy, there are so many problems with papacy. I don't think that there's... You go back to the debates we did with Jerry Matitick, over seven hours of debating in Denver.

First night at Denver Seminary, second night at the Presbyterian Church locally. Over seven hours worth of debate. Available on Sermon Audio. At least I'm pretty certain it's available on Sermon Audio.

So you listen to that. Not much has changed. We didn't get overly deeply into that early period as far as the monarchical Episcopate stuff, but that has been hashed out for quite some time now. This isn't anything new, all right?

This was not new, and I agreed with Walz at least to the point of saying, yeah, this is a very valid argument, and Roman Catholicism really does not have meaningful responses to this. They have to make stuff up.

They got to do a lot of special pleading to make this work. But then the questions started. Then the questions started, and at one point, Walz pretty much dismisses Catholic apologists, I think Trent Horn specifically, as being disconnected from their scholars.

There's an element of truth to that, depending on how you define scholarship, and obviously Walz takes a pretty wide definition there. And this is something I've brought up in regards to Roman Catholicism.

It primarily has to do with the fact that the dogmas of Rome allegedly can't change, but the world has, and how Rome interprets those dogmas has, and that creates a conflict with history. There is a fundamental conflict with history.

No two ways about it. And you can quote Roman Catholic scholars about the papacy who have a naturalistic bent, and you have to be honest about that. You have to be straightforward with that. And just like there are Muslims that will quote our liberals against us, and you point to that, they have people that are less than conservative teaching in their schools and things like that.

I think maybe even worse in some ways. But anyway, so he sort of just dismissed Catholic apologetics. So when certain Catholic apologists started asking questions, I was really taken aback because Walz's answers were really poor and showed that he really had never done any meaningful interaction with Roman Catholic apologists.

And maybe that's why he just sort of dismissed them. Well, I sit around and have coffee with Roman Catholic scholars all the time. We're buds. And so why should I worry about these fire brand apologist type guys?

So his answers were surface level or sometimes just didn't even show any understanding at all. And what was really embarrassing was one of the questions was, could you please comment on 2 Timothy 3 .17 in regards to material and formal sufficiency?

Now, I'm sorry, if you're going to wander into the area of dealing with Roman Catholicism, you better know exactly how to respond to that right now. Don't be looking that up in your Bible. If you don't know 2 Timothy 3 .17, if you don't recognize that it is the classical text and the very fact that the question used material and formal sufficiency would be more than enough for anybody who has even marginal knowledge of the apologetic approach of Roman Catholicism and the responses that have been provided.

You don't have to stop. It was embarrassing. Embarrassing. He looked up the wrong Timothy and then Cameron got confused and they read the wrong verse and eventually they got to 3 .17 and didn't even recognize the connection to 3 .16 and never addressed material and formal sufficiency.

And it was a disaster. It was horrible. But that comes from sipping lattes with your liberal Catholic professor friends at the seminary and never being challenged to actually engage any of that stuff.

So yeah, that was fascinating. And you could tell that the people in the chat asking questions were both Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox, and hence you could sort of see who was spinning which direction on the questions they were asking.

But again, the question, very valid, very worthwhile, but the answer's really, really, really bad. All right, I'm going to try to get through this. It's going to be tough. I'm going to run into the wall here pretty soon.

Just, I think my blood sugar levels are going to just crash and I'm just going to, and if all of a sudden it just fades to black and the music starts, you'll know. What happened at the, yeah. And I don't even have any of my apple cider vinegar stuff today.

So I'm just running on plain old cold water, which is good too, I suppose. I'm sure I'll be rehydrating forever. A couple weeks ago, a series began to be posted on the Bible Answer Man blog. I guess that's what it is.

No, Siri. Shut up, Siri. And it involves Francis Chan, Metropolitan Johannan, and Hank Hanegraaff discussing the Eucharist. Now, Jeff Durbin and I have talked about doing a real nice quality response to this, especially on the issue of the Eucharist.

I told him recently he has his MDiv now. So he survived these hours and hours and hours of oral examination. So he can just do all this by himself now. He doesn't need me around, but he thought it might be fun, I guess, to have another person to, so he's not talking all the time.

Anyway, the issues of the early church and the Lord's Supper and the real presence of Christ and the development of the doctrine of transubstantiation and the relationship of the teaching of the New Testament on the Supper to that of the relationship to the atonement, hence to soteriology.

All these are vitally important things, and they are things that we have addressed many times in the past. And they're part of what I would address regularly in teaching church history. And I can't tell you how many times I point out to people, you don't even get to your first full-blown treatise on the atonement until the fourth century.

There are all sorts of theories on the atonement. This is very important in understanding the development of various perspectives and viewpoints in the early church and in regards to Eucharistic celebration and what it meant and things like that.

And there were many different viewpoints. There were all sorts of nuances, and a lot of people near the church assumed everybody believed just like they did, which was easy to do. You didn't have the level of communication, the speed of communication that we would have today.

And so it's very worthwhile to discuss the issue. It's very worthwhile, I think, especially for modern Christians who so often have a liturgy. We all have a liturgy, whether you know you have a liturgy or not.

The more you know that you have a liturgy, the more careful you can be in analyzing it for being biblically consistent and harmonious with the message you're preaching and things like that. But we all have a liturgy, and unfortunately, the vast majority of evangelical liturgies are just developed on a whim, what works, what looks best with our color of pews, whatever else it might be.

And certainly, there is therefore reason to discuss the decline in focus upon the Lord's Supper, lamentable decline that I've preached on numerous times over the years, and I can document that. And preached on just recently at the end of 2019, right before the end of civilization as we know it.

Anyway, so there's good reason for us to be trying to find the time to do that. But as I listen to this, and as I listen to this beginning portion where Francis Chan has sort of kicked things off, and now Hank's doing his thing, it's just so sad to me.

Because I've sat, starting in the 90s, over 10 appearances on the Bible Answer Man broadcast, and I don't mean just 10 as in 10 times. Normally, when I would be on, I'd be on for two, three hours at a time.

That's two or three programs. So actually, it was many more than that. All the way through the attempted ambush with George Bryson, which I knew was going to be the end of my relationship to CRI and to Hank Hanegraaff, and it was.

That came from the other side. That was their choice. But I could tell by what had happened in that particular instance. I mean, I was never on again, and I knew I was never gonna be on again. But I debated Tim Staples on there.

I debated Jimmy Akin on there. So we dealt with Roman Catholic issues a number of times. Sola Scriptura, Sola Fide, these things like that. So to know that Hank denies these things today as the quote-unquote Bible Answer Man in a way that Walter Martin would have caused him to roll over in his grave is a sad thing.

I do not rejoice in providing this response to Hank's comments, but I have to. I have to respond to his comments. And so what we need to do is we need to listen to what Hank has to say and then point out the errors, because Hank presents this with a level of confident authority that church history should not be giving him if he were really familiar with it.

And it really impacts the view of Scripture and what he says about Scripture. Now, he's gonna start off talking about the centrality of the church, which is wonderful on a certain level. The problem is, and I'm not trying to be mean or anything here, I just need to point out that this is how people end up converting.

Hank was never a churchman when I knew him. He was never a churchman. And what I mean by churchman, I'm a churchman. I've functioned as an elder in a church majority of my adult life, and I'm deeply involved in the life of the church and preaching.

I'll be preaching this Sunday at Apology of Church. I'll be preaching on the Big Three and on John 3, 16, Objections to Reformed Theology. So that's what I'm gonna be doing on Sunday. Involved with the church, and that just wasn't where Hank was.

Hank had his thing, and like most apologists, that did not involve the church in that way. So now this swing to where the church is everything is interesting to observe. And it's interesting in the impact that it ends up having in the view of Scripture as well.

The Church as Pillar of Truth and the Authority of Scripture

So here is Hank Hanegraaff. You can see the conversation here. Let's listen in.

With respect to church history, I think that we have to, first of all, look at the centrality of the church. In church history, the church was the epicenter of everything. It was the epicenter of the universe.

And why is that? It is because Paul, in his didactic epistle, 1 Timothy chapter 3, says that the church is the ground and the pillar of truth.

I'm sitting here thinking, if I just play this and then go back, we're gonna be here long past my energy levels that will allow me to do so. Okay? So I will need to stop start. 1 Timothy 3, 15. I just happen to have this sitting here.

Yeah. Yeah. Pillar and foundation of the truth. We're supposed to be getting these, right? They've been up there, but you haven't ordered our batch. This is the old version. There's supposed to be a new version.

This is what we passed out. This is a special lightweight version. At least that's what we told people when they were walking to the mass at Cherry Creek State Park in Colorado without masks on. That was back in the old days of freedom and liberty and things like that.

This is what we passed out to people. And this has a whole discussion of this particular issue. We went over it on various Bible Answer Man broadcasts as well. But 1 Timothy 3 is talking about the local church, not the universal church.

It's talking about how a person is to behave in that local church. This is Paul giving Timothy instructions as to what's to be happening in the local church. And the church is the pillar and foundation, which is...

What does a pillar and foundation do? It holds something else up. It holds something else up. So it's not the definition of truth itself. It's holding something else up. So to translate the text that is talking about how the local church...

Because the highest positions in the New Testament are elders in a local church. There are no patriarchs. There are no metropolitans. None of that stuff did the apostles have any idea of. And to establish those things, you've got to get rid of Sola Scriptura.

And that's what Hank has done. Hank does not believe in Sola Scriptura any longer. That is very plain, very clear. Eastern Orthodoxy doesn't believe in it. He's the Eastern Orthodox answering man now.

So he doesn't believe in Sola Scriptura. I don't think you should use a title that was started by people who firmly defended Sola Scriptura, personally. But there you go. That's where it is. So anyway, 1 Timothy 3, the church is absolutely central because it is the body of Christ.