Road Trip Dividing Line: Secularism's Emptiness, the Richness of the Trinity

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Well, greetings and welcome to Road Trip Dividing Line, the first one of this trip. I did do a driving line, which was posted earlier today and hopefully you had a chance to maybe listen to that and hopefully it was a blessing and encouragement to you.

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I think there was some important stuff that we talked about there. I am, I'm looking forward to this evening.

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I'll be honest with you. One of the fun things about doing this personally is when you get like rain at night and you can hear that right on the roof, right over your head as you're sleeping or when it's really windy and you can hear the wind whistling.

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We've got this one, we've got this one window, by the way, Rich, we've got this one window that we've had worked on three or four times and it's just never gonna be completely right.

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And so when it's really windy, you can, it does that wonderful whistling sound.

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And right now we've got some good 40 mile an hour gusts plus,

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I would say, coming straight at my six here. Just, this is if,

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I know you can't tell from looking at this, but I'm right at the back of the fifth wheel. There's the table that you can sit at with people.

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Well, you actually may have seen, if you saw the post debate stuff that we did when

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I was up in Moscow earlier this year, it was shot from that angle. So you could see

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Doug was sitting right here, I think. Yeah, Doug was sitting where I sit to do program. I was on the other side over there.

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Anyway, so I'm right at the back end here. There's a big old window here. And so I pulled my big old truck and it is a big old truck now, right up behind me here.

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I mean, I was getting a little worried about how close I was getting as a windbreak because nothing's moving that truck.

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It'd have to be a whole lot more than 40 miles an hour to move that truck. So it's sort of giving me a little bit of windbreak, but it should be,

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I should sleep really well tonight because, I don't know, there's just something really cool about that.

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Knowing my luck, right as I lay down, the wind will die. But it's supposed to get colder and colder and colder.

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It was actually quite warm here today. And as I said, as I said on the driving line, I'll be speaking

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Friday, Saturday, Sunday at the Covenant of Grace Church. Just visited with Pastor Van Lees. Brother Van, tremendous jazz musician, by the way, as is his son.

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I mean, we're talking world -class jazz musicians and extremely talented.

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And I think some of you may remember when I was in Ukraine, in Kiev, we went and listened to him team up with, if I recall, it was a, what was he, a trumpeter?

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I don't remember. Anyways, with another world -class guy there in Ukraine for a concert.

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It was really cool to see him because this will be the 22nd year consecutively that I've spoken at Covenant of Grace Church.

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I don't know why they can't get other speakers. They're just stuck with me, but that's okay. But anyways, we saw

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Pastor Van Lees today because he's just really, really struggled with his left ankle and foot.

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So he had major, major, major surgery last week. And he's four to six weeks, or was it four to six months?

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I don't know, it was a long time. Yeah, it was four to six months before he can get the stuff off of that leg.

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And so he's not gonna be able to be there for the first time during the conference, but we're gonna be doing the

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Trinity, why we believe the Trinity, and that will include issues such as, is the Trinity a biblical doctrine?

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What's the relationship of creeds and confessions? Stuff that needs to be talked about these days because it's, well, it's important.

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And by the way, I mentioned on the driving line, the Bible that I got from Jeffrey Rice.

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You can see the beautiful Cairo, Solus Christus. This is the

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ESV creeds and confessions. And so it's got the larger and shorter catechisms, got the

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London Baptist Confession of Faith right there, the Westminster Confession. It's got the Canons of Dort, the

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Augsburg Confession and the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, just one, it's interesting, it's just one, it's just the

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Chalcedonian symbol, the Chalcedonian definition of the hypostatic union, basically, but it's in there as well.

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And the wonderful thing about it is, and this surprised me, the print is so clear and large enough that I can utilize it without having to put my old man glasses on, which is really cool.

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So I'll definitely be using that this weekend as well. And then go to our calendar page.

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So you can see where I'm gonna be on Monday, Wednesday, is it

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Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday? Well, Friday, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I think of next week as I'm returning back through Arkansas and Texas.

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That's what it is. So check out the calendar for those things. Lots and lots going on in the world that I've just been listening to as I am driving along and catching the news and things like that.

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Not shocked whatsoever that Biden's undersecretary of energy guy who pretends to be a gal was arrested for stealing a piece of luggage, a woman's piece of luggage, and making exceptional use of the lingerie found therein.

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This is someone that this regime put forward to take care of nuclear waste in the

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United States. I hope you feel really safe from nuclear waste. This is what happens when you do this kind of thing where you make sexual perversity something that is morally good and therefore promote people based upon their willingness to engage in sexual perversity.

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Because there's lots and lots of pictures and evidence out there of just how perverse this particular individual is.

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Now, of course, when you use the term perverse, that's, you can't use it anymore.

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I just realized something, the wind stopped. I'm serious.

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I mean, I was rocking and rolling and moving back and forth and the wind stopped.

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How strange is that? Midwest is weird. They keep saying, if you don't like the weather, wait five minutes, it'll be different.

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Yeah, wow, it just stopped. It'll probably start coming from the other direction in a few minutes.

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Anyway, the term perversity, I was thinking about it because you can't use that term. You can't say anything is perverse any longer.

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But think about what the word itself means. There's a

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Greek term that Paul uses. When he says that the

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Judaeus want to pervert the grace of God, the gospel of God.

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And it means to twist, not so much that it's out of shape.

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It's not like taking a sword and bending it so that it becomes a circle or something.

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But it's like taking a key. I've noticed that they don't seem to make keys the way they used to out of the same stuff because I have this one house key.

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And I'm noticing it's bending. And every once in a while,

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I've got to bend it back. And especially with a key, if you bend something enough, it becomes non -functional.

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And that's the idea with the term that Paul uses, that there is a purpose, an intention for the gospel.

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And when you just twist it just enough, it doesn't have to be round up in a ball or something like that.

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You twist it just enough so it doesn't function anymore. And all of this assumes that when you use the term perversity that there is a definition of how something is supposed to function.

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So if you call a behavior perverse, what you're saying is there is a non -perverse behavior as well.

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There is a proper and good behavior and perversity is twisting and changing that proper behavior.

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And so here you have a man who pretends to be a woman.

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And very clearly, the evidence is overwhelming that this individual used to be one of those people that would slink around in the darkness because society rightfully shamed this kind of sexual perversity.

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And it rightfully did so. That's not wrong. We're being told today that what society used to do, that was wrong.

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No, we need to stand up and say, no, it was right. It was proper.

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Remember, there's a text that I think Tim Bushong made some comment to me on Facebook about something

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I had posted. I forget what the context was. And once again, my response was to go to Psalm 12, 8 and say, here it is.

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The wicked strut about on every side when that which is vile or when vileness is exalted among the sons of men.

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So the wicked strut about, they know they're wicked and they know that they love their wickedness and they strut about, they display their wickedness which is exactly what this guy does.

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Every time he shows up at his, I'm sure high paid government office in his slinky dresses and high heeled shoes, that's the wicked strutting about.

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Well, how can that happen? It can only happen when vileness, when that which is vile is exalted among the sons of men.

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When the sons of men do not exalt that which is vile, then the wicked cannot freely strut about because they're shamed for their actions.

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But we are now in a situation where we as Christian believers well,

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I think it was this morning I heard a discussion of a UK newspaper and I haven't seen much of it here and I didn't,

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I wasn't able to catch almost anything today. I had an appointment that I needed to get to and it was a good appointment, went really well,

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I'm very happy about it. But I had a point I had to get to today so I haven't been able to follow stuff this evening.

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So I'm not sure if media has picked up on it but there are people saying that Amy Coney Barrett should recuse herself from a case coming up before the

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Supreme Court in regards to quote unquote gay rights. Now, anybody who's listened to this program for decades will be able to testify that long, long, long ago before it was at all popular to say anything like this

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I said that homosexuals do not want equal rights, they want Uber rights. They want to force everyone else to celebrate their sexual perversity.

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And here you have a situation where because Amy Coney Barrett was a part of a very conservative

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Roman Catholic organization that it is seriously being argued that she should have to recuse herself from this case because they are so opposed to homosexuality.

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And I sit here and I listen to this and I just go, once you buy secularism, the most fundamental levels of logic just escape you.

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It is astonishing to me the foolishness of the leftist mind.

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How can you not see that Jackson Brown is even more committed to an even more obviously open worldview position that involves obvious prejudice on this subject?

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This is what we face in a society that has utterly abandoned its foundational commitments and is in the process of transitioning away from the former

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Christian consensus into the secular consensus because that's where we are.

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And so you're going to have the completely divided Supreme Court that we have right now.

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And yet the reality is what's being said is Christians should not be allowed to have a voice in what's going on in our society.

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And that's the ultimate authority claim of secularism. Now, secularism is self -destructive and will always destroy itself.

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It may build something up for a while. If people can numb the conscience long enough, then they can build something up.

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Look at China. China is a fascinating place.

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And I continue to pray that God would raise up sound

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Orthodox churches that are willing to pay the cost and that he would just bring revival in China.

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Can you imagine what would happen if just there was a massive revival in China? The complete alteration of the whole view of the world that would come from that.

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And guess what? God can do that. God can do that. Sometimes I think we

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Christians, sometimes I think we Calvinists will sit here and say on the one hand, oh yes,

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God can save whoever he wills. And then when someone dares to say, wow,

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I wonder if God could bring a massive worldwide revival that would change everything.

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Well, I don't know. God can do that.

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What if he did? But stuff's going on in China where people are standing up and say, we've had enough.

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And it's interesting because I've sort of said, I think the Chinese communists have gotten smart.

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They recognize what happened with the Soviet Union, why it fell. You've got to keep people satisfied to a certain level.

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You've got to meet their physical and other needs to a certain level at least.

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And the lockdowns that China has been using just go far, far beyond that.

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And that's what's going on there. So there is a worldview in action there.

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And here in the United States, we have a completely divided nation. It's never been this divided.

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I don't think it was not, in worldview issues, it was not nearly as divided during the civil war itself as it is now.

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Let's just be honest about that. And so here you have people seriously saying, if you're a

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Christian, if you operate on Christian principles, you should not have a voice in the legal system in the

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United States without recognizing that their wild -eyed leftist ideologues, that you can always tell how they're gonna vote.

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Well, okay, maybe on some issues that aren't necessarily right on the dividing line, but their own people, that you as a secularist have a religious worldview.

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You have ultimate authorities. You are making statements about God, his non -existence or his non -relevance, and morality and ethics and purpose.

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Yeah, you're saying there is no purpose other than that which we assign it. I get that,

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I understand that. But you're still making those statements.

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You're still making that kind of argumentation. There's no question about it. So when you hear this kind of argumentation being made, the duplicity of it, the hypocrisy,

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I'm just, again, reminded of the Dalrymple quote that that's the whole point.

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Hypocrisy is exactly what functions, it works for the left.

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And we see that happening all around us. It is an amazing thing.

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So yeah, looking at these things, it would be such a scandal only a matter of years ago that a high government official would be charged with basically stealing a woman's under things and then making use of them from an airport.

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That's my understanding. It was, he stole from an airport, like baggage, not difficult to do if you want to.

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And the guy would just be shamed out of all public life.

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Now, he may lose his job, I suppose it's possible. But these days, who knows, maybe he'll be celebrated.

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Every day, the things that happened. Speaking of every day, the things that happened.

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Oh, yeah, we gotta mention it.

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You probably saw the story and it was in the Telegraph. And I went and got, it was not a lengthy or in -depth, it was very short, very, very short.

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But there was the article from the 26th of November, three days ago. Jesus Could Have Been Transgender Claims Cambridge Dean.

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If you want to know how far gone Cambridge, Oxford, all of these places are as far as having,

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I just, I don't understand why Christians keep sending their young people to these places.

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They not only abandoned the Christian worldview a long, long time ago, they have adopted the exact opposite.

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In fact, did you see the guy that the

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Walker Seminary, Union Theological Seminary, I call them the Walker Seminary because TV series,

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Walker, The Walking Dead. It's a

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Walker Seminary because it died in the late 1800s and it's still shuffling along, trying to eat people and succeeding only because the people it's eating come running up and go, please eat me.

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And I'll give you money to do it too. But did you see, they've got a master's in social justice now.

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Did you see the guy they've got teaching? Wow, I don't know how the

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Babylon Bee does it anymore. When you've got stuff like this, because the competition's too much.

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If that guy and that class had been a satire piece only five years ago, people have gone, oh, come on, that's just, that's way over the top.

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And now it's just absolutely real and it's, wow. Anyway, back to the article here.

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The Dean of Trinity College said, such a view was legitimate after a row over a sermon by a student that claimed

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Christ had a trans body. And so Jesus could have been transgender according to University of Cambridge Dean, Dr.

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Michael Banner, the Dean of Trinity College said such a view was legitimate after a row over a sermon by a

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Cambridge research student that claimed Christ had a trans body that telegraph can dispose. The truly shocking address at last

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Sunday's Evensong at Trinity Chapel College. Isn't it just so sad that these buildings that were built by believers to glorify the name of Christ, I hope and pray that God will either just knock them all down or that there'll be such a wonderful revival that they will be returned to their proper use and the true gospel will once again be heard in those walls to be never profaned at the way that it is profane now.

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The truly shocking address at last Sunday's Evensong at Trinity Chapel saw Joshua Heath, a junior research fellow, display

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Renaissance and medieval paintings of the crucifixion that depicted a side wound and that the guest preacher likened to a female sex organ.

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I'm not even gonna say what they've got here. Worshippers told the telegraph they were left in tears and felt excluded from the church with one, praise

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God, shouting heresy at the Dean upon leaving. Now, a number of people that I've talked to about this have said, hey,

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I'm actually shocked that there was an Anglican that would have said, yeah, shouted heresy and leave.

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And I'm like, no, there's still, if it happened out in Sydney, there would have been much worse consequences.

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But yeah, no, there's still a few out there. And I'm just really thankful that someone got up and yelled heresy and left.

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The sermon displayed three paintings, including, da -da -da -da -da -da -da, yeah, who cares?

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Heath, whose PhD, ah, was supervised by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.

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Oh, really? Also told worshipers in the prayer book of Bonn of Luxembourg, oh, okay,

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I can't even say this either, nevermind. Point is, this guy has a

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PhD, which tells you a lot about what PhDs mean in these places anymore.

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And his supervisor was the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. That tells you something about Rowan Williams.

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I cannot read half of this stuff. Trans people, again, okay.

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In Christ's simultaneously masculine and feminine body in these works, if the body of Christ suggests the body of all bodies, then his body is also the trans body.

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The sermon concluded, call that a sermon. A congregation member who wished to remain anonymous told

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Dr. Banner in a complaint letter, I left the service in tears. You offered to speak with me afterwards, but I was too distressed.

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I am contemptuous of the idea. Yeah, okay.

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I am especially contemptuous of such an imagery when it is applied to our Lord from the pulpit at Evensong. I'm contentious of the notion we should be invited to contemplate the martyrdom of a trans

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Christ, a new heresy for our age. The worshiper said the audience in choir in the traditional

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Anglican service with children present was visibly uncomfortable at the truly shocking sermon, which made me feel unwelcome in the church and his partner felt violated.

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Dr. Banner's response to the complaint seen by the Telegraph defended how the sermon suggested that we might think about these images of Christ's male, female body as providing us with ways of thinking about issues around transgender questions today.

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Yeah, let's look at some paintings of Jesus rather than, oh, what could we have come up with?

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Oh, yeah, yeah, could have gone there, but yeah, no, not anymore.

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Dr. Banner, who frequents BBC's Radio 4's Thought for the Day said that while the views were the speaker's own, he would not issue an invitation to someone who

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I thought would deliberately seek to shock or offend the congregation or who could be expected to speak against the

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Christian faith. Ha, ha, ha, guess y 'all don't know how to define the Christian faith anymore. A Trinity College spokesman said the sermon explored the nature of religious art in the spirit of thought -provoking academic inquiry and in keeping with open debate and dialogue at the

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University of Cambridge, which tells you all you need to know about how far

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Cambridge has gone. In fact, it just so happens, shifting gears a little bit, a

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Cambridge peer -reviewed study suggests authoritarianism might be necessary to fight climate change.

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Really, really? Well, yes. The study published in Cambridge University's American Political Science Review and first report by the

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Foundation for Economic Education leads to the question of is authoritarian power ever legitimate before the author outlines how it could be when combating climate change.

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Folks, as is normal, I really think that the church is pretty much on the back foot on this issue.

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I was told, Michael Fallon told me, what was that, late 2020?

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Somewhere around there. So right as the vaccines were rolling out and we were about to see the huge push for the authoritarianism that became very clear and continues to be very clear in the promotion of stuff regarding vaccines and things like that, despite the massive amount of evidence of the problems associated therewith.

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Anyway, he told me then, he said, the COVID thing is gonna die down and the real push, because it's always been the real push, will be climate.

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It will be, you know, we used to call it global warming. Of course, I'm old enough to remember global cooling.

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You know, we were all supposed to be an ice age. But that's what we're seeing happening.

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I mean, it is truly frightening when I see, for example, the

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Netherlands talking about forcibly taking over farms in the

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Netherlands, which produces a huge amount of food to meet climate goals.

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Now, where do these climate goals come from? From the fertid minds of cultists.

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These people have pretty much the same kind of utter imbalance as Joseph Smith.

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And yet they have found a way to take over the reins of government in much of the world.

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And all you have to have is a climate goal. You know, 1 .5

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degrees Celsius. Where'd that come from? Totally pulled out of the air. Completely pulled out of the air.

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Now, if there was not literally trillions,

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I mean, you heard about the UN, right? The, and I was gonna sit down and get a calculator out.

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Maybe somebody else already has. But the UN climate thing that just got done where, you know, 400 private jets flying in, all the rest of the stuff.

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They wanna set up a fund from the rich nations to give to the poor nations.

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That's called global Marxist communism. Where the rich nations, except for China, which is doing most of the carbon pollution anyways, will start off with $2 trillion to give to poorer nations to offset the carbon pollution being done by the, which makes zero difference, has no impact whatsoever.

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None of the carbon stuff does. It's all a myth, complete myth. And can be demonstrated to be a myth.

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That's why they never debate it. They won't allow people to talk about it because it's indefensible. Do you have any idea how much that is per person?

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I mean, these people are literally financially enslaving you, your children, your grandchildren, and smiling while doing it.

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That's why that dolt in the WEF video can sit there and by 2030, you will own nothing and you'll be happy about it.

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Yeah, you'll own nothing, all right, because you will be a slave. Your central bank digital currency will have been turned off because you dared to question the regime in social media and you will be a slave.

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It's just amazing. So here's Cambridge. While under normal conditions, maintaining democracy and rights is typically compatible with guaranteeing safety.

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In emergency situations, conflicts between these two aspects of legitimacy can and often do arise. Assistant professor of political theory at the

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Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, Ross Mitiga writes in the study's abstract.

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A salient example of this is the COVID -19 pandemic during which severe limitations on free movement and association have become legitimate techniques of government.

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Oh, so as long as you got away with it, that makes it legitimate.

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Climate change poses an even graver threat to public safety. No, it doesn't.

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Consequently, I argue legitimacy may require a similarly authoritarian approach. The abstract includes while unsettling, this suggests the political importance of climate action for if we wish to avoid legitimating authoritarian power, we must act to prevent crises from arising that can only be resolved by such means.

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So as long as we create the crisis, we will always use it to be able to promote our agenda.

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And there was a day when 95 % of the

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American populace would have looked at something like this and gone, you people are nuts, get out of our face. But the public education system has been incredibly effective at basically sucking any critical ability to think logically out of the rising generation that will very soon outnumber all us old folks that still realize this is just pure hogwash.

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Now, same time, when I say that, I also recognize that these leftist in the, young generation aren't reproducing, they're not.

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And of course, they're going to try to penalize everybody who does in many, many different ways.

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Or what they'll do is they'll, the state wants your kids. And I said on wretched radio a number of years ago, they're gonna come after homeschooling.

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They have to, they have to, especially with its explosion of late.

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They can't, that is their, that's the Holy grail. You've got to get the kids.

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So come after it, there's no question about it, they will come after it. I've been listening to a lot of, and reading more and more of the discussions that are going on regarding the blessed doctrine of the

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Trinity. On one level, I am very thankful that there are lots of conversations going on, on the doctrine of the

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Trinity. When I wrote the Forgotten Trinity, we used the title that we did because there was just, there was so little discussion.

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Nothing in comparison to what we see going on today.

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And so I'm never gonna complain about lots of people talking about the doctrine of the Trinity. The issue obviously is where we draw the line between speculative theology and authoritative dogmatics.

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That is, where do we say this is revealed truth and this is speculation based upon revealed truth?

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I think there still needs to be a lot of discussion in that area. One of the most, and especially this season,

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I mean, I've got a little tweet back there. And I'd like to show you my

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Charlie Brown tree, but that would mess up the camera badly. But I have a Charlie Brown tree over there and it's gorgeous,

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I love it. It's what, two feet maybe at most?

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Not quite two feet. And it looks a lot like the Charlie Brown tree does.

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But I have it taped. It made 1 ,500 miles without moving at all.

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And getting shaken around, because that's the whole point of one of these little units is they have to be designed to be able to handle 20 earthquakes per day.

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And it reminds me, Rich, we've got some stuff on the slide out that is coming off and needs to be nailed back in.

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Hey, it happens. You get shaken around that much, stuff's gonna happen. Anyway, so it's that season of the year.

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My favorite time of the year. I was born in Minneapolis. I imagine it's probably really cold up there right now.

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Only spent five years there, but I just remember lots and lots of snow. And I really, really, really enjoy.

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Mm -hmm, mm -hmm. I should send you a hammer then.

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Actually, the hammer is right over there. I didn't do a really, really good job. Those little

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Brad -type things, once they come out, they don't like going back in. But I'll show you.

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We'll figure out some way of doing it. Anyway, favorite time of the year, and especially thinking about the incarnation.

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And everything that's involved with it. Everything that it means.

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It's just so central. You cannot place the incarnation above the cross, the cross above the incarnation.

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They're divine revelations, and the one tells you everything you need to know about the other, and vice versa.

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It's the one who gave himself. But you can't think about the

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Christmas story without encountering the one who gave himself. And the depth of the biblical revelation, of the relationship between the

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Father and the Son, and really the sending of the

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Spirit as well, but especially the relationship with the Father and the Son. When you think of Jesus' own words, that he has been sent,

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I have come, the Father sent me. These are words of one who recognizes not just a sense of mission, but of pre -existence.

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And that leads to the depths of the conversation that we have in John 17, and the prayer that is found there where Jesus addresses the

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Father. And you so clearly have one divine person speaking to another divine person.

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There's a lot of discussion right now about terms like appropriations.

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Okay, it's not a term you're gonna find in scripture, and it's not a category you're gonna be seeing used in scripture.

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It's speculative. It's a mechanism of trying to deal with making your own systematic theology.

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But my assertion is that no matter what you do, first and foremost, you must begin with this idea that no human philosophical system can ever fully adequately deal with the depth and breadth of biblical revelation.

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My deep concern is that there are many people in this world, and now many people in Baptist circles, who function on an embarrassment concerning the lack of sophistication of the scriptural testimony, and hence believe it is necessary to have a metaphysical external framework to literally make up for what's not found in scripture itself.

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I saw someone just this week saying that you need a particular form.

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It was Christian Platonism. You need a particular form of metaphysics to be able to defend the

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Trinity. And I simply say to everyone, Plato did not understand the

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Trinity, and Plato is not necessary to the defense of the

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Trinity. And if you think he is, I suggest you don't know how to defend the

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Trinity from scripture. It is chilling to my bones.

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It truly is. To think about how many Christian scholars today act, they will not say this, but they act in such a way that it clearly demonstrates that they are embarrassed by anyone who would say that this is enough in and of itself to speak the truth about how

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God exists and wants us to worship Him, that there's just not enough here.

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There's not enough philosophy here. Now, is there philosophy here?

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Well, in the sense that we are given enough to build a orthodox, functioning, worshiping

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Christian view of the world, we are given enough to know the

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God that we are to worship and how He wants to be worshiped. Then if you want to call that Christian philosophy, then most definitely, but what's its standard?

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Christ. Christ is the standard. He's the God -man. He's, for in Him, all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form.

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So He's the standard of all things. Now, that doesn't fly in the academy.

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And so since it doesn't fly in the academy, people get embarrassed by it and they want to bring in other things.

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One of the casualties of that is the depth of that father -son relationship.

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Now, I'm not talking about issues relating to EFS and things like that.

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May I just say one more time, since people don't seem to listen or remember,

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I have never held to EFS. When the big explosion took place in 2016,

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I said, I can't go there because I've agreed with John Calvin since I knew what the issues were, that the son is autotheos, that he is

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God in and of himself. And that's a minority view amongst

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Reformed theologians, and very clearly a view that certain people they would like to see canceled, including canceling

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Calvin. It's coming, just watch. Just, it's happening right now. Just watch.

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Calvin himself will end up being canceled. We've already had some of the younger folks. Well, Calvin wasn't much of a

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Trinitarian theologian. You couldn't touch him with a 10 -foot pole.

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But anyway, we don't believe in EFS and Alpha Omega Ministries.

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And every time I hear someone saying, well, what I heard you believe,

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I just wanna look at them and go, please. So I wanna make sure everybody understands that.

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What we do believe, and what I've written on and I've lectured on and debated, is that the scriptures reveal to us there are places in scripture.

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And the terminology I've used is where the spirit draws aside the veil of eternity, just a little bit.

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And we are able to see a little bit of the relationship of father and son in eternity past.

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We see some of this in Colossians 1. We see some of this in Philippians 2. We see some of this in John 17,

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Hebrews 1, those great Christological passages. And especially in the high priestly prayer, that fifth verse, glorify me with the glory which

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I had with you, in your presence before the world was, there is a deep, oh, there is a deep, deep revelation there of the fact that whatever you do in defining divine persons, you must start.

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And this is one of the things that's really bothered me. You cannot start with Aristotle.

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You cannot start with Thomas Aquinas. You cannot start with Plato. You will not come to know the true

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God if you do these things. You start with what

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God has spoken. And that means the richness and the depth of the interaction of father and son.

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If you adopt a theological formulation that flattens that out, that says that the son in, well, in the

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Carmen Christi, did not give consideration, but rather made himself of no reputation.

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Those are reflexive pronouns. That's a reflexive pronoun. He did that to himself. This is a divine person thinking and acting, resulting in events in time.

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This goes back to what theologians talk about when they talk about the pactum salutis, the eternal covenant of redemption, the cooperation, the communication of father, son, and spirit in laying out the different roles that father, son, and spirit will take in the economy of salvation.

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Because the son has done things the father did not do. And if your theology requires you to say, well, no, the father did everything the son did, then there's no longer any reason to talk about father, son, and spirit.

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There's no longer any foundation to be able to say that the I have come because that could just as easily be said of the father, the spirit.

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Oh, no, no, that's where you have appropriations. That's peanut butter theology. That's something that you use to cover over the inconsistencies in your position.

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You didn't get that from scripture. You've gotten that from taking this stuff over here and cramming it on scripture.

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If you cannot allow the son to do something in the economy of salvation that's different than the father, where are you getting that from scripture?

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You're getting that from John 17? Who's, well, you see, this is where, again, we have to do part of exegesis.

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And so, okay. Are you seriously saying that you read scripture and the natural reading of scripture?

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I'm not saying that the son decided to do something separately from the father, against the father, that there's three different persons running around doing three different things.

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None of that, not saying any of that. What I am saying, especially in light of the fact there's only one

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God, Yahweh, accomplishing his own self -glorification in all of this. What I am saying is that you have to be able to recognize the deep personal nature of the humiliation of the son in submitting to the father so as to bring about redemption.

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That's something that the son does in relationship to the father, but the father doesn't do that.

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Same thing with the spirit. I mean, the spirit really gets the short end of every theological stick, it seems.

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But if the spirit is sent by the father and the son, and if, as Jesus puts it, if the father and son will make their presence with God's people through the

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Holy Spirit, is this not likewise an act of great love, and in many ways, condescension on the spirit's part?

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Think about it, think about this for just a second. What is it like to be the

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Holy Spirit? And Scripture warns us not to do what?

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Grieve the Holy Spirit. Think about how the spirit so many times seeks to lead us in ways to glorify

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Christ, and we don't even listen. That is a role that is not the father's, and it's not the son's, it's the spirit's.

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And if you say, no, they're all doing it the same way, and it's just appropriations, then you've destroyed the roles of each of these persons, and you don't get any of that from here.

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You're left reading John chapter 17, and just trying to paper it over so that you don't see the intimate relationship that exists.

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Again, Isaiah chapter nine, unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given.

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Child is born, that's the natural birth.

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Jesus was truly man, wasn't a phantom, was truly born.

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No perpetual virginity. You believe in perpetual virginity? You don't believe that Jesus was truly born.

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I'm sorry, you just don't. Not if you actually believe the dogma of the perpetual virginity, you don't believe that.

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You think Jesus beamed out? Anyway, but unto us a son is given.

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There the son is the one being given, and yet in Philippians two, he's the one giving himself.

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Perfect unity of the actions of father, son, and spirit, yes. But if you say we have to flatten that out so that it's one simple action, and there's nothing special about the son in his self giving, that's the father, that's the spirit appropriation.

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There's not an apostle that ever spoke like that. And I just wanna ask you, do you really think that the apostles would have gone, oh yeah, once you translate it into Greek.

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Yeah, yeah, that's what we're talking about. Do you seriously think that maybe there was some backroom special studies that were going on?

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Maybe that's where they're getting their Plato studies in, in the backroom type thing.

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It really concerns me. And I just wonder if any of these guys, especially this time of year, my prayer is that at this time of year, many of these guys would just stop and go, man,

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I really have to stand on my head to make this text, not say what it's saying.

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Also, I can say I'm being, I'm keeping up with this theological paradigm or that theological paradigm.

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Don't let your theological speculations rob the word of its ability to reveal the depth of the relationship of father, son, and spirit.

01:00:05

Just don't do it. Just don't do it. We wanna honor all of God's word at that point in time.

01:00:17

So anyway, I need to,

01:00:23

I will try to tomorrow. Well, yeah, I need to get to it. Get some more details put together about the debate coming up in February in Tennessee.

01:00:35

I know a lot of folks like to attend debates and that would be one that'll be very interesting and hopefully helpful to folks.

01:00:45

And again, I mentioned some more, I mentioned a little bit about that on a previous program and on the driving line, which

01:00:53

I will try to be doing a little bit more than I did on this trip out, especially now that I just love it.

01:01:00

I have this, it's a freebie audio recorder for my phone. It drives me crazy because it's always trying to get me to download and install a different one, which

01:01:12

I don't like. I didn't install it. I didn't like it and I deleted it. Anyway, I was trying to get the file to Rich and I just couldn't do it.

01:01:19

I couldn't do it. It just wouldn't work for me. It was the way that I'd done it before, it just wouldn't work. So I was about to give up and since I was just trying to find a way to just get it off my phone somehow, get it on my computer or something.

01:01:31

And I stumbled on a way to do it that was actually much easier than the way

01:01:36

I've been doing it before. That means I'll be able to continue using that program because it does a good job. I mean, the quality of the audio, given you're in a vehicle driving down the road is really pretty good.

01:01:52

So I wanna try to keep using that. And doing those. It's hopefully edifying to you and it helps keep me focused.

01:02:01

To be perfectly honest with you, you don't get fuzzy brained when you're doing something like that. So when we get back on the road again,

01:02:08

I'll try to make sure to do a little bit more of that. So anyways, the wind has died down but it comes back every once in a while.

01:02:18

So here's hoping that, I'll be going to bed here in a little while. Here's hoping that, still get to feel a little rock and roll and hearing stuff like that.

01:02:32

It's enjoyable, it's fun. Believe me, I know a lot of speakers that would not know, would not find any of that enjoyable or fun, especially because in the morning it's gonna be really, really cold.

01:02:45

And that's fine, that's wonderful. That's what they made blankets for. It's great. Anyhow, thanks for watching the program.

01:02:52

Thank you, Rich, for getting this put together. Like I said, I had an appointment today, it went really well.

01:02:59

And, but I was rushing around trying to get back and man, just real quickly, the last traffic light before coming into the place where I'm parked.

01:03:12

I don't know if I've ever seen that many emergency vehicles in one place. And when I got up to the corner, there's one car on its side, whole nine yards.

01:03:22

Somehow I was able to get through, but it was, yeah, someone's day didn't go too well in that situation.

01:03:31

But be careful out there. I certainly, when people say to me, be careful out there, I take that very seriously because I see some interesting things and the 20, about 22 ,000 miles of pulling this unit

01:03:47

I've now done. And I'm still going to tell you, in the back of his mind, Rich never thought, never thought

01:03:53

I'd be able to do this for this many miles without completely cracking it.

01:03:59

I really, back of his mind. But now he's sitting there going, okay.

01:04:08

It'll happen sooner or later, probably. He's going, yep, yep, mm -hmm, yep.

01:04:13

That's why I got the insurance. So anyways, like I said,

01:04:19

I wish you could see the lights that I have up in festive mood. And I think it's wonderful to remember the incarnation and to celebrate the invasion of his own creation by the very son of God.

01:04:37

What an awesome message we have for the world. Okay, anyways, thanks for watching the program today.

01:04:43

I'm not sure when we'll see you again. We'll get back to you, but we're gonna keep trying. Pray for the events this weekend and next week as we're traveling.

01:04:50

Lord to be honored, his people be edified. We'll see you next time on The Divine Line. God bless. How long was that?