Road Trip Dividing Line: Conditionalism, Immaculate Conception

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line, a road trip dividing line. Probably the last one of this trip, we'll see.

Probably, hard to say exactly what was happening.

I'm still in Oklahoma. Last night I was in Ozark, well, in the

Missouri area. And a great church, I thought it was gonna be a lot smaller church than it ended up being.

It was a really decent sized church, nice campus, and had a lot of folks turn out for a get together on Mormonism.

And the reason being is Springfield, Missouri. Well, sort of south, yeah, south of Springfield, Missouri in Ozark.

And they're going to be building an LDS temple in Springfield.

And so they had contacted me through the road trip at aomin .org website. And by the way, the fellow who contacted me from Reno, Nevada, I think it's

Reno. I do have your email. I just have a lot of other emails too. So I'll get back,

I'll get to you, I'm sorry. Rich reminded me and I haven't gotten, I haven't just, you're on the road and things get busy.

Anyway, contact us through the road trip at aomin .org email address.

And so I, it was exactly on the way. Well, it's a 25 minute, half an hour drive each way, but that's one of the advantages of traveling this way with a fifth wheel that allows

Mesquite, Nevada. Okay, all right.

Anyway, that allows me to park the unit and disconnect.

And now I've got a vehicle and I can drive where I need to go and then come back. And that used to be a little scary when

I first started doing RVing because I had a lot of trouble hooking up and unhooking. Then we got the big diesel truck we have right now and it has this trailering package on it.

And it's just, a monkey could do it. Maybe not the first shot, but it's so much easier.

And so I drove down there. It was pretty nippy, wasn't too bad.

It wasn't as cold as it had been. I've definitely hit the coldest weather that I've pulled this unit in on this trip.

I think one night it was 12 degrees with a feel like temperature of four. So I haven't been in sub zero in this yet, but it's done really well.

I mean, this is, I've got a, I wish I could show you my fake fireplace over here. It looks really nice, but it has the heater in it.

And between it, two space heaters, the furnace. And for a while we had a heat strip working in the bedroom.

It died for a while, now it's back. So I haven't had any problems at all. And I've kept it,

I only keep it at about 64. So a lot of people would be, you know, but works for me, works for most guys,

I think, honestly. And had some, I haven't told you,

I'm not sure if we've done a program. Yeah, I think we've done a program since then, maybe not. Anyways, I was at another church on my way to St.

Charles. And I ended up this RV park that was muddy, snowy, icy mess and no gravel, just dirt, basically.

And I was really concerned because it was gonna get down to about 22,

I think, that night. And you put the struts down into the mud, basically.

It's gonna freeze. And so in the morning, you've got to pull the struts back up with a little hydraulic motor.

It's only about a day big. And the thought was crossing my mind. I mean, what if it can't pull them back up?

It did, it did just fine, thankfully. The tricky part wasn't what

I expected. There was a little, I don't know, maybe six foot tall hill, that's about all it was, covered with ice, couldn't get up it.

Back started sliding back down it. Once I was hooked up, so I weighed 23 ,000 pounds, 57 feet long, slid back down it.

Thankfully, there was another way to go out that was fairly ice free and I got out of there.

But yeah, for Arizona boys to be playing around and stuff under 20 degrees,

I think the all time record low in Phoenix is 18. I think that was the coldest it's ever been recorded there since like 1888 or 89 or something like that.

So yeah, we don't have a lot of experience, that kind of stuff. And I can't remember the last time it froze in Phoenix.

It's been a number of years now since we got below freezing. So it has happened.

I've seen snowflakes in my headlights in Phoenix, but very rarely, very, very rarely.

It never sticks either. The ground just never gets cool enough for that to happen. So anyway, it's been great, it's been fun.

And like I said, they're building a temple and this church wants to reach out to the

Mormons. And so we did a whole thing on Mormonism, had hundreds of folks there. I think it was,

I didn't count, but it was really, really good. And I think we'll probably be back before that temple opens to do some more training.

Maybe we'll come out when the temple opens. Maybe there'd be some way to make trips work and actually be out there and be part of the actual temple outreach that they'd like to do.

All depends on the size of the temple and where parking is and whether you can access people.

And there's a lot of thought and planning that has to go into that kind of stuff. But anyway, so that was enjoyable to get to do.

And as I mentioned tonight, it's the first time I have not had to use my heated hose.

There's so many little RV things that people don't understand. But yeah, it's a heated hose to keep things from freezing up.

It's not gonna get down to freezing tonight, so I didn't have to do that. Probably the next two nights as I go through New Mexico, it will be down there.

But get home later in the week and looking forward to seeing everybody, including the kitties.

My wife took two kitties in today to have them. I, you know,

I was a biology major, but it must be, I just, I guess I don't wear these enough.

Misgendered another cat. That's the, I think about the third one we've taken in to be spayed or neutered.

And they had to call us and go, this isn't a male or this isn't a female. It's the opposite.

It's funny how they're very specific about that. But with cats, I mean, spaying is a very specific thing and neutering is a very specific thing.

They're not the same operation. And so I'm really starting to wonder if, you know, if the leftists win the next presidential election, will veterinarians have to take whatever gender you list and spay and neuter on the basis of that?

I know, that's absurd, isn't it? Yeah, the whole thing is, that's the point.

Aye yai yai yai yai, what a world we live in. Anyway, all right, so here we are.

I'll go ahead and deal with this first because it's what everyone's thinking about. And well,

I'm not dealing with it. I'm just letting you know that the Kirk Cameron video hit a couple of days ago.

And now everybody's talking about a subject that doesn't often come up.

You know, it does, if you're doing any type of eschatology study or anything like that, it will come up within that context, surely.

But the issue of conditionalism, annihilationism, soul sleep, there's all sorts of different names and there's often differences between the understandings that people have and the presentations that they make and their particular arguments.

And it's extremely polarizing. I mean, extremely polarizing. Just immediately, you have to hold my view on every single issue or you're just basically heretic.

That's all there is to it. I've spoken both on universalism and conditionalism in the past.

I've said many times, I really don't wanna become the apologist for hell. And especially right now with the fact that we should fairly soon be announcing this major debate next year and the topic is on, most people sort of guessed it and know what's going on.

I'm gonna be so completely invested in that, that especially right now, this topic just isn't on the docket, shall we say.

But I have certainly spent a lot of time on this subject in the past.

And here's the comments I wanna make. There are a few topics where evangelicals as a whole have embraced a traditional perspective without knowing why they have than this one.

So much of the standard visualization people have of hell.

I mean, if you look at the Jack Chick tracks, I'm not sure there's a

Jack Chick track that does not have some kind of representation of naked people in hell.

I just, sometimes in color, sometimes not, you don't ever see anything. They're just sort of these vague figures, but it just seems to be constantly.

And you've got devils running around pitchforks and all this kind of stuff.

And it's not a topic that gets preached on biblically very often.

And so people can get away with a lot of stuff. And it's basically just communicated via tradition.

There are a certain number of texts that are cited, one interpretation on one side, one interpretation on the other side.

Unfortunately, most reformed evangelicals do not approach the subject of eternal conscious punishment, whether there is a point where punishment ends, what the nature of the punishment is, duration of the punishment, character of the punishment.

They do not approach this subject from a soteriological and anthropological perspective.

Most people's views of hell are more informed by Dante than by the Old and New Testament together.

And by, well, Greek tradition, honestly, there's a lot of stuff that's been influenced by Greek tradition, unfortunately.

So as I've said in the past, I think the real issues in dealing with eternal conscious punishment have to do with the nature of sin, the nature of punishment itself, how the glory of God is impinged or impugned.

What would be the basis for the ending of punishment? Is there a post -mortem instant sanctification?

Do you stop sinning when you die? Or do you actually increase in your sinfulness because the restraining hand of God is removed?

How is that relevant to punishment itself? Is it relevant to punishment itself? These aren't the questions that are normally dealt with.

Instead, it's, well, hey, it says the fire of their torment shall ascend forever and ever.

Or the other side says, yes, but death means annihilation here. It means destruction here. And so it's a cessation of existence.

And where do you get the idea that the soul actually continues to exist? And that's where most of the argument takes place.

And unfortunately, a lot of people,

I think on both sides, assume that the scriptures are much clearer on the eternal state than they actually are.

In other words, a lot of people fill in from tradition aspects of what they think the eternal state's gonna be.

And then when you actually get into the biblical argumentation, you find out there's, you find out you're using a different form of hermeneutic than you would for other topics.

That's one of the biggest problems from my perspective. And that's why I do not just go rushing into this topic because I know it's one of the most difficult topics to deal with.

Most people think it's simple. That's the problem. If you think it's simple and you think it's just a matter of listing 15, 20 verses, you haven't listened to the other side.

And of course, there's a lot of people on the other side that have done the same thing, though in my experience, well, yeah, most conditionalists, annihilationists were raised that way, that's true.

But when someone converts to that, then they tend to know both sides pretty well and vice versa.

So if someone started in Seventh -day Adventism or something like that and then came the other direction, they tend to have more knowledge of what the arguments are.

But here's what I think, I'd like to throw a few things out here just to maybe slow things down and turn down some of the volume and the heat and maybe try to create some space for some meaningful conversation.

If you believe in eternal conscious punishment of the wicked, that is that the law of God calls for punishment of sinners, they don't stop sinning when they die, the restraint is removed from their depraved nature.

And by the way, honestly, I think reform soteriology has a huge impact on this.

I'm honestly not sure how like a provisionist, an

Arminian, a non -reformed evangelical could really deal with this subject very well because they don't have a biblical anthropology of deadness and sin, restraint of sin by God.

So the stuff that I find most important just isn't a part of their thinking to begin with.

So I'm not sure exactly how they would pull it off. But anyway, if you believe in eternal conscious punishment, then you need to recognize something.

When it comes to modern day New Testament scholarship, there is a very large portion that while not necessarily emphasizing this, there's a very large portion of New Testament scholarship that is in some form of conditionalism or annihilationism.

Now, again, people define even those terms with variations. I'm not even getting into all that right now.

So you've probably read theologians in the past from which you got a lot of benefit.

And yet they didn't believe that the wicked will be punished for eternity in hell.

They may believe that they will be annihilated. There's all sorts of gradations.

I mean, all the way up to post -mortem evangelism and origin believed even

Lucifer himself would be eventually redeemed. So there's been all sorts of interesting perspectives out there over the years.

Anyway, so there have been some leading, John R.

W. Stott, most people know, actually wrote on conditionalism. And I'd say, especially in Europe, there's a tremendous amount of conditional understanding by people.

And so they're out there and there's a lot of them.

And most people don't understand that because they haven't listened to the other side.

They haven't considered how challenging the whole subject really is and what the real foundations need to be to be consistent.

So in other words, if you're reformed, you need to use the same exegetical methodology to address this subject that you address everything else.

And what that means is you're gonna have to be somewhat humble in just how broad a claim you can make.

You have to base things upon scriptural testimony. And there are some elements of just traditional doctrine in people's minds, the pictures that they have, that again, come from Dante's Inferno, they come from Greek philosophy and that kind of stuff.

They don't really come from a scriptural perspective. So you have to be very specific as to what you're saying.

And even most confessions of churches are not specific on the subject.

They'll make general broad statements, but when it comes to being very specific as to the nature of punishment, for example, a lot of people have the idea that I wanna go to hell because all my friends are gonna be there.

Hell is described as a very dark place where there's weeping and gnashing of teeth. And I don't think you're gonna be bumping into anybody.

I don't think there's gonna be demons running around coming at you out of the dark and stabbing you with pitchforks that you immediately heal from and do the

Wolverine thing or whatever. That's again, Dante's Inferno, that's later traditional stuff.

If I were to talk about this fully, more fully today, which I have not had time to do, it's a long day on the road.

I would speak about what I think the nature of the punishment is.

And I don't think God has to expend any power to punish the evil. I don't think there's devils running around or angels running around or anything like that.

I don't think it has to be, when you talk about hellfire, I don't think it has to be fire as in that physical thing.

It's punishment and it's highly unpleasant.

But my anthropology tells me that when God removes his restraint from someone that hates him and there's nothing left for that person to hate, can't express hatred toward God, can't express hatred towards creation, can't express hatred toward other creatures, then the only thing left to do is turn upon yourself.

I think it is the suffering of an image bearer seeking its own self -destruction.

And that's the nature of the punishment. That's vital and central.

So anyway, I hope, okay. When you get, huh,

I'm gonna have to, some, if I mentioned who that was, you'd know why I went ahead and read that message.

And it's about what we're talking about right now, but I'm not gonna sit here and type out that's what we're talking about right now. So I think abandoning the sinner to his own self -destruction is what the nature of punishment is.

Can I prove that? Well, I don't think that there's enough evidence to prove one way or the other.

I'm deriving that from the application of what I think is a sound reformed anthropology and what the image of God indicates and things like that.

I think that's an appropriate thing to do. But again, that's not the normal way that this is normally dealt with by people.

It's just, well, I'll list my verses, you list your verses, you don't agree, you're a heretic. Well, what

I'm saying is this is a more important topic and a more difficult topic than 99 % of people actually recognize and should be approached in that way with great care and caution and humility.

That does mean that I get really uncomfortable when people just respond in a knee -jerk fashion and just automatically, hey, if you don't agree with this formulation, or, and this is more important, with my understanding of this formulation, amongst fundamentalists and things like that, it's not just a doctrine, it's how that doctrine is interpreted within their circles that becomes the standard.

So that's why they'll, that guy is a mid -trip rapturous, he's clearly going to hell, and then there might be somebody else that views that as adiaphora or an error, but not some that would send you to hell.

There's so much stuff like that that just all the discussion comes to a screeching halt and it just becomes flamethrowing.

I'm not sure flamethrowing is the proper term to use in this particular context, but anyway. So my advice to people would be look at things like what

Dr. Peterson's written on this subject number of years ago. I was just preaching at the church that he's an elder at.

There have been discussions on this subject. Familiarize yourself with all of them, but at the same time, try to be consistent in the application of your exegetical standards.

Hopefully you have exegetical standards. And try to be consistent. Don't just kick people out of the kingdom immediately.

It's important, but there's a history that a lot of people don't know.

There are traditions that have infiltrated that people don't know. And if we're gonna be consistent, then we're gonna have to present a very in -depth foundation for an understanding of the nature of death, the nature of punishment, the nature of God's law, the nature of God's glory in regards to his broken law.

And I think that's the only way to approach the biblical evidence. I'll also say this. It would be a lot easier to be a conditionalist.

I would like to be a conditionalist. That'd be much easier. I mean, it gets rid of a lot of problems.

But does it create problems? That's the issue. What problems does it create? I think a lot of people don't really recognize what the problems are that it does create.

They assume certain things, but they don't really understand what the ramifications actually are.

So someone will say, well, if you don't believe this, you're not gonna evangelize, you're not gonna do this, you're not gonna do that. Well, maybe,

I certainly, it is very, very true that denominations that have no concept of punishment after death generally are not overly evangelistic.

Yeah, that's true. But the same accusation is made against all reformed people, that they're not evangelistic, but we are.

So how do you handle that? Consistency is the key. Patience, I think, is necessary.

And I think all of us need to have a considerably deeper understanding of what the issues are than is generally prevalent today.

Now, what that means is the conditionalists who are focused pretty much solely on this topic tend to have their arguments very much sharpened and others who don't deal with it hardly ever at all do not.

That is an advantage for them, I suppose. That doesn't make them right, it just means that this is not a topic that is the normal fare on Twitter or X or Facebook or whatever and hence, it's not overly surprising that what we've seen over the past number of hours has been fairly, why the mark, shall we say, in providing meaningful enlightenment on the subject.

So just a few comments. What I'm saying is it's a tough, tough subject, much tougher than people realize that it is.

And that doesn't mean that I'm a conditionalist. I do not kick conditionalists out of the kingdom of heaven, however.

There may be issues in cooperation, there are issues in being in confessional churches, but I don't think

John R. W. Stott went to hell. I don't think F .F. Bruce went to hell even though he was somewhat agnostic, seemingly, on the subject.

I think there are lots of Christians in Europe who tend to be annihilationists or conditionalists of various forms.

And yeah, it's a part of a lot of cultic belief, but that's a genealogical fallacy to say, well, that means it's wrong.

That's as bad as the one this Pentecostal guy years ago that I was debating and he said, look at all the

Roman Catholics that killed Christians and they're Trinitarians, therefore the Trinity is false. And we don't wanna argue that way.

That's not the way we need to go. So basically what I'm calling for is recognize this is a much more challenging topic than people recognize it is.

I've hoped and prayed that someone younger with more energy and time than me, from a reform perspective, would take up this challenge and write fully on it and engage with the people that are out there, both those who have passed away and those who are currently presenting this stuff.

And to provide that kind of consistent response, I could foresee upon completion of this major work that I think has significantly wider implications and application that maybe that would be something that I could do in the future, but it's not something of great passion to me.

And it helps, especially at my age, to really want to accomplish something. So the project that I'm working on now, the subject that I'm working on now,

I do have great passion for that. It makes it a whole lot easier to actually do it, but I'd like to see some others step up on this particular subject.

So just a few thoughts, encouragement to, I'm not kicking

Kirk out of the kingdom because I don't have the right to do it in the first place. I don't have the right to do it in the first place. He didn't talk to me about it.

I think I could present some thoughtful challenges, some consistent challenges.

They didn't talk to me about it. It's like when people leave my church and become

Paedo -Baptists, they don't talk to me about it either. So I'm like, okay, that's because you're so mean.

Nobody likes you. All right. Okay. I made a post on X.

I can't believe it's been, yep, half an hour. Yikes. I put a post on X.

I quoted the Vatican news. And I think that's why

I got so many responses is I guess if you quote some fairly famous or widely read thing, it gets more exposure.

Vatican news on December 8th. So yesterday, December 8th?

That was only yesterday? No way. Yeah, today's

December 9th. Anyway, each year on the advent journey, the solemnity of the

Immaculate Conception invites the church to turn its gaze toward Mary. 171 years ago on December 8th, 1854,

Pope Pius IX proclaimed this dogma of the Catholic faith in the Apostolic Constitution in Ephebelus Deus.

Well, we've certainly talked about in Ephebelus Deus and its anathemas and its prohibiting even the thinking other than what it says and stuff like that in the past.

And we have looked at that. And so all I did is I wrote one sentence.

I reposted it and I said a dogma unknown to the apostles, utterly outside of divine revelation, made de fide by Rome by non -existent authority.

Okay, let's make sure everybody understands even what this is.

I doubt honestly that 10 % of the

Catholic Church of believing evangelicals who are not former Roman Catholics could possibly accurately define what the

Immaculate Conception even is. And I don't know that the number of Roman Catholics would be much greater who could give an accurate definition of the

Immaculate Conception. So it's funny,

I posted this, I got 129 responses. 125 within 24 hours, now it's just gone dead.

No one's seeing it anymore. That's how it works on X. You get a big bang and then it's, after that it's gone.

We'll look at some of the responses here in a second. One of the problems in our modern evangelical context is that we, unlike our forefathers, we tend to be willing to address issues without really knowing a lot about it.

I mean, most Reformed folks from the time of the

Reformation, especially after the Counter -Reformation, the Jesuits, stuff like that, understood what the other side was saying and understood what the issues were and why it was important.

And if you had a confession of faith, you knew that that confession of faith made reference maybe to even specific

Roman Catholic beliefs. You know, the London Baptist Confession of Faith makes reference to the mass and transubstantiation and the papacy and stuff like that.

Because these were central in the cultures in which these confessions were birthed. And so there was a response, there was a pushing back against these claims.

And so our forefathers understood what the Immaculate Conception was about. Let's make sure you understand it.

The doctrine is, the doctrine has nothing to do with the virgin birth specifically.

A lot of people just assume that, that, well, that means Jesus was conceived immaculately.

No, it's not about that. It's about Mary. And it is about the fact that Mary was sinless in her life.

And so how was that possible? What's the relationship between Mary and original sin?

Now, the form of the Immaculate Conception defined in 1854 originated with a

British monk named Edmer in the 13th century. So this is not apostolic.

As we're gonna see here, we've got some really good illustrations of, you know, when I said that, how people respond to that.

How do you know it's not apostolic? They didn't write everything down. And it's just amazing the circularity that people immediately default into.

But there is no evidence of this being believed. None whatsoever.

For the first 500 years of the church, maybe more. And everything that is pointed to, it is based on anachronistically taking categories to develop later and reading them back.

So you can have references to Mary as immaculate. That doesn't mean what the

Immaculate Conception meant. That is reading something that came much later and reading it back into sources that had not developed this stuff.

It wasn't there yet. You're reading into it. You're twisting history. This happens all the time.

The Mormons do it, the Roman Catholics do it, the Eastern Orthodox do it. It's just, it's an epidemic of it.

So even Thomas Aquinas disagreed with what became the eventual definition, which is that by a preemptory application of the merits of Christ.

So these merits would be considered from an eternal perspective, because this takes place temporally and logically before obviously the virgin birth and the ministry and death, burial, resurrection of Jesus.

But by a preemptory application of the merits of Christ, Mary was protected from the stain of original sin.

So this is, so when you look at Luke chapter two and Mary uses the language, the

Lord, my savior, which is standard language of any believing

Jewish woman of that day, the idea is, well, yes, the

Lord is her savior through this preemptive application of the merits of Christ at the time of her conception.

So she is not stained by original sin. Because you see, even with the definition of the bodily assumption of Mary, Rome left it open as to whether Mary died or not.

You don't have to believe one way or the other. It doesn't make sense if she didn't have, if she never sinned and she never had a stain of original sin, why would she die?

But you can believe that she ended her earthly course. What you can't believe is she experienced was corruption.

Instead, she was bodily assumed into glory, either at the point of her death or her departure from earth, however you wanna try to parse all that stuff.

So the immaculate conception is just the next step in the development of these

Marian dogmas down through the centuries. And really was the first big major step since the dogmatization of the concept of the perpetual virginity of Mary and the title,

Theotokos in modern Greek, Theotokos, the God bearer, especially by the time of the

Council of Chalcedon after the Council of Ephesus, early on in church history. So this is a major thing in 1854, but then it leads to bodily assumption and then all the co -redemptrix, co -mediatrix stuff that we've been talking about comes after that.

And especially bodily assumption and mediatrix and redemptrix comes from the same type of literature, the same authors that are promoting that kind of stuff.

So anyway, that's the immaculate conception. And I simply identify for what it was, it's a dogma unknown to the apostles.

There is zero evidence that any apostle of Jesus Christ ever taught anything whatsoever about this topic.

Trying to find this in the pages of scripture is a fool's errand. It requires, again, the eisegesis of concepts and beliefs that would not arise for hundreds and hundreds of years back into the pages of scripture.

And Rome's willing to do it. Rome does it all the time. You can see it, I saw it right before the program started.

There was a Roman Catholic priest online doing the same thing. As I said, 129 responses, 125 in the first 24 hours.

Just simply saying a dogma unknown to the apostles ugly outside of divine revelation. It's not found in scripture, it's not found in divine revelation.

Made de fide, that is by faith, definitional of the faith, by Rome, by non -existent authority.

Roman Catholic Church does not possess the authority to add to the apostolic deposit of faith, the once for all delivered to the saints faith.

She does that, she does it regularly by redefining what the apostles taught.

And by disconnecting what she calls apostolic tradition from anything that has to do with the apostles historically.

That again is the great usefulness of John Henry Cardinal Newman, the

Roman Catholic Church. They can go, oh, it was there, it was implicit as a seed in the apostolic tradition delivered orally to the church, but we don't see it beginning to grow until a thousand years later.

And that way we can go, yeah, no, we can't really honestly find anything in the first five centuries, six centuries, seven centuries, we really can't find anything.

But now that we have John Henry Cardinal Newman, we don't have to worry about any of that. We don't have to worry about finding anything in history anymore.

I just don't think a lot of Roman Catholic apologists get that Rome has abandoned history.

Because Rome can use history any way it wants to. Poor Joshua Charles running around out there, trying to say about how reading the early church fathers made him

Catholic. But once you got Newman, you don't need any of that. It's silly, it's a waste of time.

The church told you to believe it, you believe it. It's how it works, just run with it.

Be free, be free from the task of doing history. So anyway,

I wanted to look at some of these responses because they do give you an idea of what we're up against.

So the first one here, you have zero evidence that it was unknown to the apostles and outside of divine revelation is based on your manmade doctrine of sola scriptura.

Well, I think that was supposed to be two assertions. One is that you have zero evidence that it was unknown to the apostles.

Think about that for a second. Okay, if you're trying to make a logical statement, this is demanding evidence of something being unknown.

Rome is claiming that it was known. That's the positive claim.

Therefore, logically Rome should be able to provide evidence of the positive preaching and teaching by the apostles of this belief.

Since there is none and since Rome just elevated John Henry Cardinal Newman to the position of doctor of the church, which is an implicit acknowledgement of that, then here's someone who just doesn't even understand what the issue is.

Very confident, but doesn't understand. Uh -oh, looks like we're crashing here.

Huh, all right. Yep, looks like we're going down.

So those in the live audience, we'll see you later. Maybe, I'm catching up a little bit now.

So maybe, yeah, I'm catching up a little bit. We'll be back here in a second. I just happened to look over and saw the cache going up.

So maybe we'll get back. If not, I'll just finish up and I don't have to do an hour.

It's been a long day in the saddle. It really has been. So, hey, we caught up.

Yay, we're back. Hi, great to be with you. So what I was saying was, Rome's making a positive claim, but can't provide evidence for it.

So to say you have zero evidence that it was unknown to the apostles is not a logical or rational statement.

A person who knows what argument is isn't gonna make that kind of argument at all. And outside of divine revelation is based on your man -made doctrine of sola scriptura.

Well, you can call it a man -made doctrine. I consider almost everything you believe a man -made doctrine but the point is there is divine revelation.

And if you're gonna say you've got divine revelation outside of scripture, then you need to substantiate that.

Now I agree, Rome in essence does claim continuing divine revelation.

She denies that, but functionally, immaculate conception, bodily assumption is continuing revelation.

It did not come from the apostles. Everybody knows it. Rome knows it. So yeah,

I reject post -apostolic claims of divine revelation.

So I reject Rome's dogmas and I reject those of Joseph Smith because they have the exact same character.

So I know that really offended you, but that's the way it is. Then some guy named

Evangelist Nick Garrett said, must be a new concept to be able to look at the institutional church 2000 years rooted in five ancient centers and criticize a dogma only a few hundred years old given that while your entire belief system is constructed thus, that takes some nerve.

Are you arguing divine revelation took place any time between 1500 AD and the present or that singular retranslation or interpretation is valid?

If oldest is best, certainly then you are good with virgin birth, mother of God and perpetual virginity.

So again, so many of these individuals are just so confused and they have to be.

I mean, once you accept the ultimate authority claims of Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodox, if that matter, to what you have to find in history, then you can never allow history to speak for itself anymore.

So I am not claiming that there was a divine revelation in the year 1500. Martin Luther didn't think so.

John Calvin didn't think so. It's amazing to me. I almost never find

Roman Catholics who've actually read the institutes who are involved in apologetics.

There are scholars that do and they're not gonna be saying these kinds of things because they know that Calvin's argument, which is really, it's certainly not the first, but it's the earliest and best argument that the

Reformation is actually a return to apostolic and early church parameters.

That's what they were arguing. The reformers, remember when, oh, good grief.

There was another name, Candace Owens, there we go.

I was coming up with Kirk Cameron. Kirk Cameron and Candace Owens are not the same people. When Candace Owens was talking about converting to Roman Catholicism, and she was saying, you know, the tough question that my husband asked me was, how can you believe that there were no

Christians before Martin Luther? And it's just so frustrating.

Luther never said that. Calvin never said that. Zwingli never said that. Are there independent fundamentalist

Baptists that would say that today? Yeah, except most of them would do the same thing with the Lutherans. So I'm not sure how you get around that, but that was not what the claim of the

Reformation was. They believed there were many Christians. Their issue was a return to apostolic biblical norms, a removal of the traditions that developed over time that obscured the gospel.

And that's the argumentation of the Institutes. And that's why you find so many quotations from Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, all sorts of people like that.

They didn't even, I mean, they clearly believed that Bernard was a Christian and he would have believed all sorts of things they would have disagreed with, but they weren't independent.

Calvin wasn't an independent fundamentalist Baptist. So he didn't just kick everybody out for disagreeing with them on key issues.

So no one believes that there was some revelation 1 ,500 years ago or near 1500.

Are you arguing a divine revelation took place anytime between 1590 and the present? No. Nope. Or that singular retranslation or interpretation is valid.

I have no idea what that means. None whatsoever. If oldest is best, certainly you are good with virgin birth, mother of God and perpetual virginity.

Well, I am quite good with virgin birth. I'm quite good with Theotokos as a

Christological title and perpetual virginity is absurd. Perpetual virginity is a denial of the gospel.

Perpetual virginity has Jesus beaming out of Mary. It fundamentally denies the incarnation.

You have to debate that. Yes, it's early. Jerome, Helvetius.

We don't have Helvetius' writings. Jerome's writings were horrible on this topic. Horrible on this topic.

People say, oh, Jerome vindicated the truth. Have you ever read it? It stinks.

It's super poor argumentation. And again, somebody, we can't even read what he actually wrote or if he ever replied.

But Jerome won. Wow, really? Seriously, did you ever think that through? No, most people haven't.

So yeah, there you go. There's an interesting thing there. Someone says non -existent authority of Rome.

I can understand skepticism about the authority of the church, if you mean the Roman church, but I can't understand this sort of definitive claim about the church lacking authority as though you know.

No, what I'm saying is I know that the Roman Catholic church does not have the authority to define something as a dogma that has no connection to the apostles.

Yes, I know that. I reject non -apostolic authority. Just as I reject

Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses and everything else, it's the same thing. But we're a lot older.

Well, okay. As I've said over and over again, name me a single bishop at the Council of Nicaea in 325 that believed a fide, everything you must believe to be

Roman Catholic today. There weren't any, and you know it. That demonstrates you're not the ancient church.

Unless you do, unless you slap some Newman on it. And then you're actually not making any claim about the ancient church at all.

You're just saying it was a seed and it was developing the womb of the church. And you see all this wonderful, warm, fuzzy stuff that has no meaning at all, none, zero.

Liam Memento says, you don't know if it was unknown to the apostles. Yes, I do.

Because I have what the apostles wrote. Oh, but I mean, they may have believed things they didn't write.

Oh, so they may have believed in Martians. They may have believed that the

Arizona Cardinals would win the Superbowl someday, right? And I can make that de fide dogma, right?

Come on, this kind of thinking is cultic. Most of them didn't write anything.

And those who did, did not record every tenant of the faith. However, we know it's dogma because the church that Jesus started said so.

There is one of the greatest examples from Liam Memento of the circularity of the

Roman Catholic claim of authority. I know this is the church that Jesus started.

It doesn't look anything like it. And we're having to do the Newman thing all over the place.

But I know it. By what authority? By his. You see, once you buy into this, your only ultimate authority is the decision you've made to submit to that ultimate authority.

Just like when the Mormon submits to the Mormon prophet, the witness submits to the

Watchtower of Alan Tract Society, you made a fallible decision to follow that infallible authority, and it'll never get any more infallible than your fallible decision.

You'll pretend otherwise. You certainly do that. But that doesn't actually mean you have an infallible foundation for your belief.

You work through this and you can see just the astonishing circularity.

Someone, non -existent authority. Please, you're surrounded by the church's authority. Use the

Gregorian calendar. Ooh, wow, big deal. You'll celebrate

Christmas and Easter on the dates it's set and you accept the canon, misspelled, is set even if only in part.

Okay, nope, that wasn't Rome that did that. Rome did not do the canon.

I can give you all sorts of arguments about Easter between the East and the West, the quarter decimant controversy in the early church,

I bet you don't even know about it, and the date of Christmas, I bet you've never read Roger Beckwith's material on the courses of the priests, and the time period of that,

I bet you haven't done any homework on any of this. But you're confident because Rome told you.

The very essence of ex -theology all over the place. You mean by 2 ,000 years of guidance by the

Holy Spirit? See? That's Bellator Catholic.

2 ,000 years of guidance. Don't worry about the fact that the guidance being defined now is different than the guidance only 100 years ago.

That's, oh, it's still all the Holy Spirit. Just close your eyes, plug the ears, ah, don't worry about it.

It's astonishing. It really is astonishing to read this stuff. Someone suggested that Cernovich contact me, by the way.

He had asked a question. I'll finish up with this. He had asked, yeah, here it is.

Can a prot explain to me why sports ball Christians are so hostile to Mary, the mother of Jesus?

And my response was, not sure I want to even try to talk to someone who thinks sports ball Christian is a meaningful descriptor.

What is that even supposed to mean? I have no idea. I have no idea. He was quoting somebody who just denied one of the dogmas of Mary, and that's not disrespectful.

In fact, asserting those dogmas of Mary is what's disrespectful. But I don't think

Cernovich would ever respond to me anyways. So there you go. There's some of the stuff popping along out there that I ran into as I was looking at stuff this morning before a very long five and a half hours in the saddle today.

So hopefully that's helpful. Again, I don't know what the rest of the week's gonna look like.

Really depends on travel and stuff like that. I'm gonna be going to higher altitude on the way home so it's gonna get cold.

So I've got to set up differently unless it's gonna be below freezing and stuff like that.

So we'll see. We'll see. We'll do our best. And yeah,

I think we'll just call it a day at that part and say thanks for watching

The Dividing Line. We will see you next time. Thanks for your support as well. God bless.