The Widening of God's Mercy: New Pro-LGBTQ Book, and Comments by Pope Francis

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So right as the music was going, the Babylon Bee posts, Vatican installs heresy jar in Pope's office.

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Obviously trying to get me distracted before we get to the important stuff. Yeah. He has to put, what, $0 .25

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in every time he says something heretical. We'll get to that later. We do need to address the open admission on Pope Francis's part of what

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I've been saying all along, that he is minimally an inclusivist. And I think, much more likely, he's a universalist.

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And as we will talk about later on, that's the end of everything as far as you guys are concerned.

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Sorry, you've put all your eggs in one basket, in the papal basket. And the papal basket never did have a bottom to it anyways.

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But all the fluffy stuff fell out. And I know there are a bunch of you sitting there saying, well, 40 years from now, we'll know that he was an anti -pope, and we'll have a true pope by then.

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And half of you will be dead, and you won't even know. So it's just an incredible demonstration of the utter worthlessness of the concept of papal infallibility.

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It truly is. But anyway, before we get there, I haven't seen anybody else say this.

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I'm just going to throw this out there, just for fun of it, before we get to the really important stuff.

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Sometime during the lockdown period, I did a dividing line that probably blew a lot of people away.

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But I talked about guns. And I corrected a lot of the stupidity.

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Anything coming from the left about guns is going to be based on utter stupidity. You know, one reporter who wrote something for some big publication back east.

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Uh -oh, Rich just turned the flashlight on his phone on, and he's getting ready to crawl under the desk in the other room.

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And that means we are doomed. It's all going to go poof in a second, and we'll be gone, and that's all there is to it.

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Anyway, the guy, what was it,

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New York Times or something? He wrote a piece about shooting an

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AR -15. Now look, you can use the

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AR platform for all sorts of different calibers. But 99 % of all

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AR -15s are 5 .56 223.

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223 is the civilian number, because that's in statute. 5 .56

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millimeter is the military, same round. It's a barely, just a little bit bigger than a 22 caliber slug.

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It's very fast. I don't want to get shot by one, but believe you me, in comparison to all sorts of other stuff, it's small beans.

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It really is. And this guy is talking about how he got PTSD from firing this thing, the kick on it, and when it hit the target and all those systems.

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And people were posting videos of their nine -year -old daughters with an

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AR, because there's very, very, very, very little recoil on a 223.

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I mean, it's just, I have a 223 sniper rifle, really, a bull barrel sniper rifle.

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And you're not even going to feel the kick on it. It's the rifle is so heavy, that bull barrel, it's just ping, ping, ping.

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That's all there is to it. If you want it, I would love to take that reporter out and have him shoot my 338

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Win Mag. That would give him

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PTSD. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. The whole world shakes when you fire that baby.

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Or my M500 50 cal. Anyways, we talked about all sorts of stuff, and we're trying to help people to understand what in the world's going on.

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Oh, good grief. I've got to stop. I've got to stop looking at what's popping up on the screen. But anyway,

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I'm not even sure how I got on that topic. What I was going to say was, when

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I heard that in the second assassination thing at the golf course,

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I heard today the guy was there for 12 hours. How in the world do you hide next to a fence for 12 hours?

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Again, so much of this stuff, huh? Yeah, I don't know.

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And I guess he had bulletproof vest plates and stuff.

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But everything that I've been told is it was an AK -47. And that was the first thing that I heard.

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Now, obviously, all those things can change. But let me tell you something. If I was going out to try to shoot somebody from long range,

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I ain't taking my AK. I've got one. How do you describe an

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AK -47? It's ugly, OK? It ain't pretty.

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But they're all the same, no matter where they're made. So you can take a part from Bulgaria and a part from over here and slap them all together.

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And it's going to look like my old 64 Dodge Dart. No two body panels the same color.

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But it's still going to work. And I remember I took a Marine. I think he was a major then.

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I think he retired as a colonel. I took a Marine major out once and let him do a 30 -round clip through the

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AK -47. And he knelt down. And I was taking some pictures and stuff.

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And he stood back up and he says, you know, I've destroyed thousands of these things. I've had my tanks, big one

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M1 Abrams, run over thousands of these things and crush them into worthless piles of junk, he said.

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But I had never fired one until now. And he said, that's a sweet weapon. And so, yeah, they're fairly reliable.

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I know when I got mine years and years and years ago, I got a jam in it. I could not get out for love nor money.

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And I took it back to the place where I bought it. Guy takes it, turns around to a bench, he goes, wham!

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Clears it and hands it back to me. And I'm just sort of, you know, he can see but look at my face.

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And he goes, you can't break an AK -47. Okay, all right,

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I won't worry about it. You know, I was all concerned about, you know, doing permanent damage. He's like, yeah, no, that ain't gonna happen.

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So all of this to say, I wouldn't choose an AK to do that.

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I mean, it's relatively accurate. But man, there are a lot more.

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If you're gonna take a 300, 400 yard shot, there are a whole lot more accurate rifles than that by a long, long shot.

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Now, maybe you're thinking, well, I'm gonna take the shot and then I have to be shooting at everybody else. And, you know, I don't know what this nutcase was thinking.

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But as soon as I heard AK -47, I'm just sort of like, who knows?

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The thing is, who knows? How can you trust almost anything that you see or read anymore?

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It's, I mean, there aren't, there are, the only journalists are not a part of the press anymore.

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So who do you trust? I don't know, I don't know. But since it's floating around out there, let me say one thing.

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I said on the Christian Worldview program with David Wheaton, I, that aired on the 14th and this happened on the 15th.

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And I happened to say in passing in the program what I have said, what Rich will confirm

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I said last summer when the first assassination attempt took place.

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That afternoon, I said to a bunch of friends, people in my family,

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I've said it to the guys at church, so on and so forth. Here's what I said. If Trump lives to November, and that's in no way, shape, or form a given, because there's just too many wackos out there and I don't trust his protection,

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I really don't. If Trump lives to November, if somehow he can overcome the obvious election interference from every which direction, foreign and domestic, cheating and everything else, and win the election,

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I just don't see how he lives to January to take office. Now, if you want to go on from there, like I've also said, and even if he were to survive all of that, and even if he were to take office, if he doesn't have the house, he'll be impeached the first week.

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Because these people don't care about law, constitution, anything like that.

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I reposted some House testimony today about how the regime has told the federal marshals, did you see this?

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Anybody that the federal marshals deal with, in prison, whatever, they are to provide to the person that they are interacting with voter registration material, and help them fill them out.

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So you have Mexican nationals, citizens of Mexico, already been kicked out of the country multiple times, they're in prison now for violent crimes, they will be registered to vote by the federal marshal.

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Is that constitutional? No. Is it legal? No. Are they doing it? You bet. Why? Because they don't care. We're no longer a nation of laws.

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The traitors have taken over, they're running things, and they're going to try to keep power every way they can. Mark it down.

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Mark it down. I'm not interested in, you know, five years from now everybody going, well, you sure nailed all that.

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Well, dozens of people, hundreds, thousands, tens of, anybody with a brain is seeing what's coming.

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But there's a lot of people without a brain right now, when it comes to this stuff.

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All right. Anyway, oh goodness, so much weird stuff happening.

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When the debate took place last week, I wrote an article and I put it on Twitter.

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That was dumb, because no one was paying attention and nobody cared. Actually, we posted the next day going, yeah, my timing on this is really dumb.

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Because about hour, hour and a half before the debate started, I hear the

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Amazon delivery vehicle or whatever outside and I go out and got my copy of The Widening of God's Mercy, Sexuality Within the

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Biblical Story. Christopher B. Hayes and Richard B. Hayes. So Christopher B. Hayes is the son.

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Christopher B. Hayes is D. Wilson Moore, Professor of Old Testament and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary.

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Richard B. Hayes is George Washington, Ivy Professor Emeritus of New Testament at Duke Divinity School.

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Now, Duke is not a conservative school, but I stretch the imagination. Fuller is no longer a conservative school, but I stretch the imagination.

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Father -son team. I had never been,

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I'd never really had any use for the older Hayes's New Testament stuff. Really wasn't along the lines of where I would be comfortable using it.

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And, but I saw other people quoting him and he would be quoted fairly regularly because in his original work, in his work many decades ago, he made it very clear that no meaningful reading of the

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New Testament is going to come up with any other perspective than that the

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Apostles held a universally negative view of same -sex relationships.

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So he'd get quoted a lot for that by people on our side and I was like, well, okay, fine.

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That's actually not all that exciting material for me, but okay, fine.

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So when I heard about this new book coming out and where it was going to be going, I was like, well,

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I wonder what, I wonder what other stuff is going to come out eventually.

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About relationships and the families and you know, all this other kind of stuff. Anyway, the book gets there and some people had already gotten pre -publication copies.

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I hadn't requested or anything like that. I had just pre -ordered it on Amazon. And so I start looking at it and I go to the scripture index in the back because you know, what, put yourself in my shoes, what am

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I going to be most interested in in this book is, okay, is there anything new in the biblical argumentation?

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So is there anything new about the Holiness Code, Leviticus 18 and 20?

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Is there anything new? Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 6, 1

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Timothy 1. Any discussion of arson and koitai?

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What's going to make this different than everything else that's come down the road? And so I turn to the scripture index and there's one page reference, one page reference, 1

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Corinthians 6. Now those of you that heard the debate that I did last year in Pennsylvania on side

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B, the side B perspective, will know that vast majority of the debate was there in 1

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Corinthians chapter 6. So I was really interested to find out what on earth we are going to see there.

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And so I pulled it up. I should have had this already put up this way.

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I tried to get rid of the thing on the left -hand side, but I can't for some reason get rid of it.

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And I've clicked on everything, view and all the rest of that stuff.

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There's nothing I can do about it. Sorry about that. So I want to have enough context here.

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For both of us, this new vision of the implications of Scripture's stories represents a change of mind, a revision of what we thought before.

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So they're admitting we've changed our views. We've now become, you know, affirming, so on and so forth.

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When the people of God change their minds about things, it is often because someone offers a new vision of God's will.

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And I would just stop and go, would that someone be God? And what would that require of God, that God change his will?

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Anytime we revise our plans, we literally re -envision things. This is what we have sought to do in this book, to re -envision and reframe the debate about sexuality in the church.

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Now, it was, I think, 11 years ago that Brownson came out with his

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Bible sexuality, gender book. And all the pro -homosexual guys just sort of abandoned their old arguments and just embraced whatever he had and whatever he had to say.

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Certainly, the Reformation Project did that, so on and so forth. So that happened because his son came out as homosexual.

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And many of the people who have, quote unquote, changed their views did so because of family issues.

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I don't know if that's the case here or not. I really don't know. But point is that what you have to have and the arguments, and the whole reason

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I'm taking the time to talk about this, I'm primarily doing this for people that are involved in ministry in the church. Because if you're involved with counseling, if you're doing anything along those lines, you need to be aware of what's out there.

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This book will be used, just as Brownson's book was used, as the most recent scholarship.

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And that's one of the main reasons I want to get it. What's the most recent scholarship on the key issues? But what you discover is this re -envisioning is a fundamental abandonment of the idea that scripture has any relevance to us today at all.

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That's what it is. So I had first heard this when Dr. Kirk, who at the time was an adjunct professor at Fuller Seminary, I wonder if he had contact with Hayes, younger

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Hayes. I wonder if they were both influenced by the same sources or if one was influenced on the other or whatever.

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I don't know. But it does make you wonder. When Dr.

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Kirk was debating Dr. Gagnon in Scottsdale, and again, it was one of the few debates

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I've ever attended where I wasn't doing the debate. And that is where Kirk made the argument that we've learned to think past the

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Apostle Paul, who was a first century Jew with his prejudices and things like that.

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And we need to learn to think past Jesus as well because he was limited by his first century context.

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And they took a break about halfway through and I approached Dr. Kirk and I was like, did you say that we need to learn to think past Jesus?

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He said, yeah, that's what I said. And I'm like, so I take it you don't actually believe

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Jesus was God in human flesh? He says, you don't think the apostles actually thought

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Jesus was God, do you? I'm like, most certainly do.

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Be happy to debate that one. Well, he didn't really take kindly to that. And I am thankful that I've learned since then that Dr.

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Kirk has left teaching. He's not teaching theology any longer.

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In fact, has become a paramedic. Interesting career move, but at least he's not warping the minds of students any longer along those lines.

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I suppose that's hope he's a good paramedic. Hope he's a better paramedic than he was a theologian. But anyway, the whole argument was a widening of God's mercy.

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The idea that the strictures and the argument used was, well, the

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Gentiles were excluded. And then God did something new by the Spirit and including the

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Gentiles into the covenant people of God. And that caused problems,

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Acts chapter 15. So, in our day, the

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Spirit of God is doing the same thing that he did in the time of the writing of the New Testament. Is that he is revealing to his people that they are to include in their numbers the

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LGBTQ array of perspectives. And to embrace these people as a gift to the church and so on and so forth.

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And so, the whole idea is that what was once true morally and ethically does not have to remain true just because it's found in Scripture.

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As if the particularity of the Jewish people was something that we had to get over.

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Rather than that was God's purpose to bring Messiah into the world and now the gospel is going to the whole world. Most people with common sense recognize that this is really an abuse of Scripture.

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And it is. But it's what progressivism is all about today.

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That's where they're coming from. And that's what you need to understand. So, that's what you're getting here.

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I don't want you to have to go buy this thing or read through it or do anything else.

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I just want you to understand what's going on here. So, they say, that is what we have sought to do in this book.

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To re -envision and reframe the debate about sexuality in the church. We believe this debate should no longer focus on the endlessly repeated exegetical arguments about half a dozen isolated texts that forbid or disapprove of same -sex relations.

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The regularly cited texts are Genesis 19, 1 -9. Leviticus 18, 22.

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Leviticus 20, 13. Holiness Code. 1 Corinthians 6, 9 -11. 1 Timothy 1, 10.

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Both use arson coites, in the plural. And Romans 1, 18 -32.

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That's a huge section that deals with all of human sinfulness.

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And then there is a central portion that talks about... It's probably the only place in the

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New Testament that talks about lesbianism as well as male homosexuality as an example of the twisting of the creator -creation relationship.

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I talked about that in the sermon last night at Apologia. That was my first sermon with hearing aids.

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It takes a little bit of getting used to. It changes the dynamics of what you're hearing.

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Even right now, it's different dynamics to how I'm speaking and stuff like that.

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And I probably sound somewhat differently too. Just how it works. Anyways, I did run through the beginning of Romans 1, 18 -24 in a sermon on the biblical foundations of the presuppositional method of apologetics.

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If you want to look that up, you might find that useful. And I realized on the way home that I'd forgotten, by the way, if you go do that, to make reference to the fact that the

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Apologia Academy has twice, I think, flown

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Eli Ayala out to do stuff on Presupp. And Eli is just so good at putting the cookies on the lower shelf.

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Explaining things, showing how it works. Not getting so deep in the weeds that people get lost.

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And so take advantage of Eli's stuff. He has his own YouTube channel, Revealed Apologetics.

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But he's also got stuff with Apologia that I think you'd find really helpful too.

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I was going to mention that during the sermon, but I was also rushing because the pre -sermon stuff went really, really, really long.

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And I wasn't getting started anywhere near what we normally do. And our services go over two hours all the time.

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Anyways, last week, Jeff had gone an hour and 20. So I was going to try to make the mothers in the congregation love us again by getting done earlier than that.

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And I did. I think I did 58 minutes, as I recall. But I had to rush, and that's why I forgot. So sorry about that,

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Eli. I was going to do that. Okay, how did I get there? Anyways, Romans 1. So these are the quote -unquote clobber passages.

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We've gone over them a million times before. Every debate, you can go back and see the debates we did with Graham Codrington and John Shelby Spong and whoever.

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We've gone over them over and over again. I just honestly say we've just never really been challenged in it on any serious level as to what these texts actually say.

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And I think those debates will demonstrate that. So I go back to my quotation. In this book, we have not revisited them.

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It is relatively clear that these texts view homosexual sex negatively.

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Even if they do not envisage covenanted same -sex partnerships as we know them today.

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But drawing conclusions based only on these passages would be like basing a biblical theology of slavery on Exodus 21 .2,

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which assumes one can buy a slave, and 1 Peter 2 .18, which tells slaves to be subject to their masters, or a theology of immigration on Ezekiel 44 .9's

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exclusion of foreigners from the sanctuary. Well, I hope all of us can recognize that's foolishness.

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These are not parallels at all. The texts on same -sex sexuality cannot be, and they frequently are, but they cannot be separated from the positive presentation of the sexual binary,

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God's purposes in the family, Jesus' teaching on marriage.

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We mentioned this in the same -sex controversy 23 years ago,

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Jeff Neal and I, and that was one of Jeff's primary emphases as we were writing that book, is that so much of our problems in this area is because we don't have a positive theology of sexuality.

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We only know the negative verses, and I've admitted more than once,

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I graduated from seminary, I couldn't have given you those six verses. Off the top of my head, not then.

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That's how little discussion there was. In my upbringing, and in the church, especially fundamentalist -type churches, you wouldn't talk about stuff like that.

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You might quote a verse once in a while, but you're never going to quote it in context. I had no worthy idea.

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What's the contextual difference between Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20? Most people don't know. That's why

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I ended up doing the Holiness Code series, 35 sermons that's still out there.

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I think someone put those on YouTube, too, I think. I know the Church History series is on YouTube, I'm not sure if the

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Holiness Code series is on YouTube. Anyway, where we went through all of that stuff so that we can have a good, solid foundation.

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But these are not parallel issues where you have clear, positive teaching that these negatives are just providing the outer walls to.

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So I go on to say, instead, we hope to refocus the conversation on larger narrative patterns and precedents in the

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Bible. The stories we've summarized in the foregoing chapters disclose a deeper logic, a narrative pattern in which

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God's grace and mercy regularly overflow the prohibitions and restrictions that exclude and condemn fixed classes of human beings, even when those prohibitions were explicitly attributed to God in earlier biblical texts.

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We believe that our contemporary debates about sexuality should be shaped by that deeper logic. In other words, the scriptures are incoherent.

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They're incoherent. And they should be interpreted in the light of wherever our society has gone now.

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This is the widening of God's mercy. So you don't have an unchanging

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God. You have a very changeable God. You do not have transcendent moral foundations.

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Instead, you have the ability to alter biblical parameters, even parameters that were accepted by everyone, everyone up until the modern period.

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But the Spirit's still speaking. That's Dr. Kirk's perspective.

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The Spirit's still speaking and leading us to this new understanding. He says it may be difficult to get our minds around this idea, especially if we continue to believe the

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Bible, but if we take the biblical narrative seriously, we can't avoid the conclusion that God regularly changes his mind, even when it means overriding previous judgments.

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So obviously, to say it one more time, continuing the quote, our vision is this, the biblical narratives throughout the

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Old Testament and the New Testament, I'm sorry, the biblical narratives throughout the

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Old Testament and the New trace a trajectory of mercy that leads us to welcome sexual minorities no longer as strangers and aliens, but as fellow citizens of the saints and also members of the household of God full stop.

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So there is no sexual sin left in the Bible. And why you can't expand this out to thievery and everything else,

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I have no earthly idea, because this stuff is utterly incoherent. It is simply incoherent.

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Now what's fascinating to me is, you know,

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Hayes, the older Hayes, retired, is certainly behind this phrase.

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It is relatively clear that these texts view homosexual sex negatively, even if they do not envision covenant and same -sex partnerships as we know them today.

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This is the big thing. The Bible just didn't know about covenanted same -sex partnerships, lifelong monogamous relationships, as incredibly rare as those are in the homosexual community, almost non -existent, actually.

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But this is an argument we have dealt with many times in the past. There's a footnote. There's a footnote at that point in the book.

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The biblical authors did not have in mind the sort of homosexual relationships that the church now considers blessing.

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And it is not possible to imagine what they might have said about them. As it is, many of the passages are unambiguous in their disapproval of homosexual activity.

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See Richard B. Hayes, The Moral Vision of the New Testament, Community Cross, New Creation, 1996, pages 381 -389.

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This is what had been quoted by people for quite some time. I, Richard, the old guy, stand fully behind the descriptive, notice that's in italics if you see that, the descriptive exegetical judgments

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I made there about the meaning of all these texts. Well, at least, you know, I suppose we can understand why the older Hayes would not want to write a book saying,

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I was wrong about all that. There have been those who have done that. But what he's saying is, well,

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I was giving a descriptive exegetical judgment. But I also draw the reader's attention to the final sentences of my discussion of Romans 1, 18 -32.

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No one should presume to be above God's judgment. All of us stand in radical need of God's mercy.

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Thus, Paul's warning should transform the terms of our contemporary debate about homosexuality.

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No one has a secure platform to stand upon in order to pronounce condemnation on others. Anyone who presumes to have such a vantage point is living in a dangerous fantasy oblivious to the gospel that levels all of us before a holy

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God." Sounds wonderful. Except the only way to define holy

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God is if there is an objective standard of holiness. He continues to say,

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I now wish I had added another clause to that final sentence to represent my new viewpoint, so that it would read, the gospel that levels all of us before a holy

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God who welcomes all of us with infinite compassion and mercy. End quote.

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Again, this sounds wonderful until you realize what's being said. The cross was foolish.

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Not from the world's perspective. The cross was empty. If God can welcome all of us with infinite compassion and mercy without any reference to sin, there's no more sin.

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There's no more sin. Sexual sin? Oh no. Pedophilia, bestiality, doesn't matter.

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That's the way God made you. Right? There's no sexual sin. There's no reason for atonement for sexual sin.

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And once you do that there, what sin can you not simply go, but God made me this way.

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That's just who I am. You have to accept me for who I am. God's compassion and mercy is infinite in the sense that it brought the

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Son to the incarnate state in his self -giving for his people.

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But what's behind this is the very same thing that leads to Pope Francis and inclusivism and universalism.

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It's the end of the gospel. It's the end of atonement. It is.

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It's all over with. So he wants to say, yeah, I was still descriptively, exegetically correct.

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But then this other thing that we have to deal with is, well, we know the biblical authors, they weren't nearly as smart as we are today, and the biblical authors could not have imagined covenanted monogamous same -sex relations.

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That is absurd. That assumes that they would have allowed for the utter redefinition of what covenant means, that God defines these things, completely rejects

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Jesus' own teaching in Matthew chapter 19 about what the family is, made male and female, the gender binary, throws all of that out.

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Don't tell me you have any honor for the scriptures when you speak like this. You don't.

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You don't. You are using your scholarship to undercut the fundamental and foundational elements of the revelation of scripture.

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You are disturbing the faith of the saints. You are an enemy of the gospel.

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Just be upfront about it. Just be straight up front. Don't do this type of thing.

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Now, I just said, well, that's similar to what the

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Pope just did. And so let's go down to that, as long as I can find it here.

39:32

Of course, it will be one time that this doesn't work for me, but the Pope, we'll scroll past the,

39:45

I was mentioning to Rich, right, before the program started, I said, you know, for months and months and months, in 2020, 2021, into 2022, any of these studies that would come out about the vaccines and all the rest of this stuff, bookmark it, save it, download it.

40:03

There's so many of them now, you don't even bother anymore. But here's one. Neurological and cardiac complications from COVID -19 vaccines have fatality rates of 5 .9

40:15

% and 2 .5 % respective. That's much higher than COVID. Much higher by orders of magnitude than COVID.

40:28

And we were getting threatened with getting kicked off for misinformation. And believe you me, if those two clowns, and they are clowns, are elected and put in power,

40:45

Elon Musk might as well go ahead and launch himself to Mars. Because they will, they and their cohorts in other countries will do everything they can to take

40:58

X down. So they can completely control the narrative. And so this type of stuff will be buried once again.

41:06

Buried once again. You just, mark my words, it's gonna happen.

41:15

So here's the actual audio. Okay, here's the actual audio.

41:28

The Vatican's tried to do some damage control, but it really hasn't worked. But I won't put this up.

41:35

But here's the actual audio of the Pope talking to young people in a mix, it's an ecumenical mixed religion context.

41:48

Okay? Rome's big on this type of stuff. Here we go. Yes, it's okay to discuss.

42:01

Because every religion is a way to arrive at God. Sort of a comparison, an example would be, they're sort of like different languages in order to arrive at God.

42:18

But God is God for all. And if God is

42:29

God for all, then we're all sons and daughters of God. But my God is more important than your

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God. Is that true? There's only one

42:46

God, and each of us is a language, so to speak, in order to arrive at God. She, Muslim, Hindu, Christian, there are different paths.

42:58

Understood? Okay. So there's the audio.

43:11

So I think this is, I think the

43:16

Vatican's trying to do I can try to put this out. Here's the text. One of the things that has impressed me most about the young people here in Singapore is your capacity for interfaith dialogue.

43:27

This is very important because if you start arguing my religion is more important than yours, or mine is the true one, yours is not true, where does this lead?

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Somebody answer. A young person answers, destruction. That is correct. All religions are paths to God.

43:40

I will use an analogy. They're like different languages that express the divine. But God is for everyone, and therefore, we are all

43:48

God's children. But my God is more important than yours. Is this true? There is only one

43:53

God, and religions are like languages, paths to reach God. Some Sikh, some Muslim, some

43:59

Hindu, some Christian. Understood? Now, I think the guy who was sitting there doing the translation probably was doing it better than they want to try to fix things now, as far as the alleged statement and stuff here.

44:19

But initially, initially what it said was all religions are paths to reach

44:24

God. They are, to make a comparison, like different languages, different dialects to get there. But God is God for everyone.

44:30

If you start to fight saying my religion is more important than yours, mine is true, and yours isn't, where will this lead us?

44:35

There is only one God, and each of us has a language to arrive at God. Some are Sikh, Muslim, Hindu, Christians.

44:42

They are different ways to God. Okay. So, we've all, you've probably seen this, and to be honest with you,

44:53

I think most people by now, this far into Francis's pontificate, there is, there is no way around the reality that Pope Francis is clearly an inclusivist.

45:15

Now, let's define these terms because we need to be accurate. Inclusivism is the idea that God, that you do not have to have explicit faith in Jesus Christ to be saved.

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That God accepts any faith move toward himself as if it is a faith move toward Christ.

45:46

So, a Muslim, who is a good Muslim, is moving toward God, hence is moving toward Christ, and that's accepted as good enough for salvation.

45:58

A Sikh, a Hindu, a

46:03

Buddhist, as long as there is a true desire to move toward God, that's enough.

46:13

You don't need to know who Jesus Christ is. There is no need for repentance, faith. In fact, it really makes, you know, it makes you ask the question, then why even bother with Christianity?

46:28

Because, I mean, why become Roman Catholic? Why worry about priestly absolution and purgatory?

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I think that's why so many Roman Catholics today have fundamentally abandoned purgatory.

46:44

They've abandoned the clear teaching of an extended period of time of purgatorial suffering in a place called purgatory that was so plainly the teaching of the

46:56

Church for hundreds of years, Roman Catholic Church. And now they're willing to go, you know, it might be instantaneous, you know, we just don't know, the

47:06

Church just doesn't define these things. They did, very plainly, but you just don't like it, and so you've decided to go another direction.

47:13

We get it. Anyway, so why bother with all that? If we're all going to end up in the same place, and Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, they're all going to get you there anyways.

47:28

It sounds like about the only reason to be a Roman Catholic as well, but, you know, you can, you get to pray to Mary, you get to carry statues of Mary around and get trampled to death carrying statues of Mary around and all the rest of that stuff we've seen just recently.

47:42

Um, it is so, that's inclusivism, okay?

47:48

I forgot to finish the definition. So, any faith movement, and I think that's really what was behind that very early indication of this in Francis's pontificate, within the first couple of years, where the young kid sits in his lap, seems like a nice old man, and my daddy was an atheist and he had us baptized, but he didn't believe

48:12

God existed, and he's died, did he go to hell? Now, I know what the theological answer to that question would be for every

48:23

Pope before Vatican II. Um, they may have said it very gently, they may have tried to find ways to get around it, they may have dodged it, but the answer of the church was well known.

48:39

Yes, he's in hell. He died outside the state of grace, um, there's no purgatory, um, and having somebody else baptized is not the same thing as you being baptized, in fact, it might even be worse, because you had somebody else baptized, but you refused it for yourself.

49:00

So it's not like you didn't know about it, you can't even argue baptism of desire at that point. So when he said that then, knowing he's from South America, knowing liberation theology and its centrality there, his own writings and activities for that, you know just how far to the left he is.

49:24

Now, what's the difference between inclusivism and universalism? Well, inclusivism means that God includes in what he will accept as faith statements in Jesus Christ, um, people who don't know who

49:44

Jesus Christ is, but they're making a positive move toward God. But that leaves open the possibility of people who make no move toward God at all, and in fact, live their life in rebellion against even, let's say you were raised in a completely

50:00

Muslim context, but you refused to say the prayers, you refused to give alms, or, you know, say the shahada, whatever.

50:13

If you did not make a positive movement toward God, which in the case of that atheist, it was the baptism of his kids, that would be the positive move.

50:24

But if you didn't do that, then the option is left open that there would be people who die outside of God's grace.

50:33

And so an inclusivist does not necessarily have to be a universalist.

50:39

A universalist is simply a person who believes that everyone will be saved. And in fact, there are forms of universalism that would say that all of creation will be redeemed in the sense that even

50:53

Satan and the demons will eventually be redeemed. And it's all going to be wonderful.

51:02

We're all good down here. But again, universalism might only be limited to humanity, normally is, but there is wider forms of universalism as well.

51:24

So anyway, where does Francis stand?

51:31

Clearly the words that he has spoken fit into an inclusivistic paradigm.

51:40

Minimally. Could he be a universalist? Yeah. There are many universalists in the

51:51

Roman Catholic Church, in the Roman Catholic hierarchy, that reject what the

52:00

Roman Catholic Church itself has taught for centuries in regards to eternal punishment, things like that.

52:05

You bet. He could be. Might he reveal himself? Well, he keeps talking the way he's talking.

52:12

Now, a number of people say, but this wasn't an official statement. Let me tell you something. When you're explaining something to kids, you reveal more about what you really believe than when you're talking to scholars.

52:28

Because you can use all sorts of fancy language to redefine things and do all the nuance and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

52:36

He's talking to young people from other religions. Well, that's not official. It expresses what this man believes more clearly than all the nuanced, written statements that have been gone over with a fine -tooth comb by Tucho Fernandez, his primary guy for writing that kind of stuff for official people.

53:07

It says more. And here's your problem. Which pope is appointing people to all the positions of power and teaching in the

53:21

Roman Catholic Church? The careful, nuanced, this -is -going -to -be -parsed -every -which -way -and -Sunday papal statements?

53:32

Or the pope who's talking to the kids? It's the pope who's talking to the kids because that's what he really believes.

53:41

And so those are his guiding principles. And no matter what you do, here is the reality.

53:49

This man does not believe what his predecessors did. Oh, you might argue for one of the

53:57

Pauls or something like that in the last century. But let's leave the 20th century out.

54:04

There is not a single bishop of Rome prior to the year 1900 that would have said what he said to those kids.

54:16

And you know it. Stop deceiving yourself. You're lying to yourself.

54:22

You know that's true. Have you noticed, in a couple debates now,

54:29

I have made the statement that Francis, if he were to stick to his guns, stick to his beliefs, and express the beliefs he has expressed today, both officially and then unofficially like this, in the year 1600, in Italy, he would have been burned to the stake.

54:56

I would defend that statement in debate. And I don't think anyone with a brain who knows anything about history would dispute it.

55:06

So what does it tell you? You have to do the

55:12

Cardinal Newman doctrinal development thing, but then you've got to put on steroids and some

55:17

LSD to actually make it work. You really do. And you know it.

55:25

And there's a bunch of you sitting there going, yeah, he's a mess, but I still believe.

55:34

I still believe. And I just have to ask you, what would it take?

55:41

What would it take? How far would you have to go? And, you know, in the debate a month before last, an answer was given to that.

55:56

My good Roman Catholic opponent in that debate, Alex Strato, he said, if the church ever blessed same -sex marriages, same -sex relationships, then you can know that Roman Catholicism is false.

56:14

And I was looking out. I was looking out at the audience. And it was a primarily, there are lots of Catholics there, but it was a primarily

56:22

Protestant audience. And there were a lot of folks going, oh, we're marking this one down.

56:29

What's the time on this one? What's the timestamp on that? And we were all thinking the exact same thing.

56:36

But here's the problem. This moves slowly. These major mainline denominations that have fallen into the utter abyss of rainbow stole -wearing priestesses giving the most absurd self -help talks ever heard on the planet, that didn't happen overnight.

57:03

That took decades and decades. And here's the problem. It might be

57:09

Alex's kids that find out and experience that. What do you do then?

57:14

When it moves that slowly? And what does it do to your confidence that you have the infallible vicar of Christ on earth?

57:28

When I first started debating Roman Catholics, you had John Paul II, nice, stable, long pontificate.

57:36

Throw a little liberalism out here, a little conservatism out there, keep everybody happy type thing.

57:43

And over and over, you listen to those early debates. We have the

57:49

Pope. We don't have all the contradiction. We don't have all the confusion. Yes, you do.

57:56

They did back then too. But it's so much more clear now. And the point is, let's say 40 years from now, the church proclaims

58:08

Francis an anti -Pope. What good is that to you now? You got no way of knowing.

58:16

You do not have what you all have been telling people for a long time.

58:23

You have. You guys have that uncertainty.

58:28

Just give you uncertainty. You have certainty about Pope Francis? No, you don't.

58:35

And you know better. Yes, sir. You realize that I was timing this perfectly. I know you were.

58:41

It occurred to me as you were saying this, the question of a

58:47

Roman Catholic. Yeah, I know he believes that. I know he says that. But I still believe. My immediate thought to that was, what?

58:58

What is it that you believe? Do you believe what he believes?

59:03

Because he's the head of your church. And then your follow -up on that, you described the frog in the pot.

59:11

So 40 years from now, this is not going, he's not going to be an anti -Pope.

59:17

He's going to be the norm. Because he's setting the stage for this to become the normal thing.

59:24

And what they're going to be doing is they're going to be taking people, Popes who believe like you do, now, and making them the anti -Popes.

59:35

If that's what they're going to do, they're going to start separating that off. Well, they already are. Look at the people the

59:41

Popes kicked out. They're all the conservatives. The ones who know that his position is not consistent with the papacy of the centuries past.

59:49

That's the ones they're getting rid of. So your point is well taken. It's not just this guy. It's the legacy that he is staging going forward, decades, maybe even centuries forward, that this, he's diverted your train off its tracks and it's not stoppable.

01:00:09

And what I mean when I said they still believe, what they believe is they see that danger, but they believe

01:00:15

God will stop it. God's going to fix this. He's going to bring us a true

01:00:21

Pope. And they still believe. And they'll believe right up until their death.

01:00:28

And it's sad, but that's, it's very, very similar to when, you know, we think about, we think about what is available to us today in regards to the seer stone and Joseph Smith's diary, all the stuff that back in the 80s, we were telling people outside the temple in Salt Lake City and they're, no, no, no, that's just anti -Mormon fiction.

01:01:02

Now all of it is documented by LDS sources themselves. And they still believe.

01:01:11

They still believe. Now back then they would have said, oh yeah, if that's true, then sure, yeah, you bet.

01:01:18

Nope, still believe. Unless there is a work of the Spirit of God. That's what's going to happen.

01:01:26

Well, anyway, again, I realize books like this, getting this out there, getting to the heart of it, telling you this is where it's coming from, this is what you need to be prepared for, this isn't how you get people excited.

01:01:44

And you'll notice there have been no appeals for money on this program.

01:01:50

There almost never are. In fact, I saw some... Rich saw it too.

01:02:00

I wonder if I can find it. I think it was this morning, wasn't it? There was a guy, and I almost wrote back to him where I think it was in one of the threads.

01:02:13

I probably won't be able to find it. But this guy basically was responding to this guy who was calling me a money grubber and all the rest of this kind of stuff.

01:02:21

And the guy was saying, actually, to be honest with you, I've tried to give money to Alpha Omega Ministries, and you all don't make it very easy to do.

01:02:31

And I'm like, I'm sorry, we really don't try to make it hard. Really, honestly.

01:02:40

But... Is that pretty... Our marketing technique is brilliant.

01:02:46

It is pure reverse psychology. It really is. We need to give money to these guys because they don't know what they're doing.

01:02:54

We don't know what we're doing, we haven't got a clue, we're not even trying, and you feel sorry for us.

01:03:01

Anyway. That's the method. Brilliant. Madison Avenue, Top Rung. We thought of that 30 years ago.

01:03:08

We've been living with it ever since. But it's true. Look. This isn't exciting stuff, but this is why

01:03:17

The Dividing Line exists. And over the years, I just...

01:03:23

How many times people have come up to me at a church someplace, and that's what I like about how I'm traveling now, is

01:03:28

I get to talk to people like that. And they said, you know what? You covered this topic.

01:03:35

I never thought I'd run into it. And lo and behold, someone in my church came up to me and I knew where to go because you had talked about this stuff.

01:03:44

And that's why we're here. That's why we do what we do. And... That's why we do once in a blue moon.

01:03:52

Let people know that we're supported by you guys. We're not supported by big, huge, massive...

01:03:59

There are no corporations. Why is it that we don't have to be worried about following all these trends?

01:04:10

Because it's individuals giving relatively small amounts of money that have kept us going all along.

01:04:19

And so be aware that just because we don't talk about it, doesn't mean that this ministry doesn't need your support.

01:04:27

We do. But we want that primarily to be churches and people.

01:04:33

Churches and people, not corporations, not these... You know, if you've read

01:04:39

Megan Basham's book, we ain't in there any place because there's nobody dropping big

01:04:46

Chinese money on us. They know that would be a really bad investment of their time because it ain't going to get them anything.

01:04:54

That's how it works. But that's why we do this kind of stuff. I wanted you... I pre -ordered that because I knew somebody in this audience over the next couple years, maybe the next couple weeks, is going to be running into this stuff.

01:05:08

And you need to be aware of what the fundamental re -visioning of Scripture is that's being proposed by the

01:05:17

Hazes and by everybody else that says, yeah, God's Word, it said this but God's changed

01:05:24

His mind. God's changed His will. God's changed His law. And we don't want to talk about what that actually means as far as the cross is concerned.

01:05:33

That's where the real problem is. So, that's why we did that. Thanks for watching Dividing Line today.