Is Galatians 2 Relevant to Modern Racial Theory? Michael Heiser & ANE, Brandan Robertson’s Apostacy

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. We're back again, and we're on a Monday because I'm busy tomorrow and didn't want to have to run around too much and be able to still get things done.

I forgot to bring something up that I'm looking for real quickly here. Why does it do that?

Not sure where to start off because so many of these things are related to one another.

So the direction is a bit of a challenge.

I guess I'll start with the racism issue and Gerald Wilson and Galatians 2 and then we can look at Duke Kwan's definition of racism and just sort of see where we go from there.

Yesterday I saw a comment from one of the staff at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Jared C.

Wilson, who has same initials, at least not including the middle initial, so that gets confusing.

So J .W. said this and J .W. said that and we have no idea who's talking about what. And he had written, some anonymous criticism bot has equated nonstop critique with Paul confronting

Peter, which is weird and hilarious given that Paul's concern was that racial justice was an entailment of the gospel.

And I wasn't the only one to look at this and go, Galatians 2.

So Nate Pickowitz interacted with him about this and Jared responded to him and I don't think,

I guess I can. Let me see here. Yeah, I can go full screen with that.

Jared said to Nate, not equating the gospel with racial justice here, saying that it's an entailment of the gospel because of our equality and reconciliation by Christ's sufficient work.

You don't see this? Oh, okay. When Paul in chapter 2 is talking about partiality and the men from James, it seems odd to think he doesn't have this in mind.

Well, now let me just comment on that. There is no question that Paul has in mind what we have been talking about for a long time, that is, there's one body in Christ in which there is no ethnicity.

So within the church, no question of the fact that the whole thrust of Paul's argument in Galatians 2 is against the grave danger that Peter's actions could result in the division of the church and the result being a

Jewish Christian church and a Gentile Christian church. But that has nothing to do with skin color and it really isn't ethnicity.

And the religious boundary marker of what's the one thing for Jews, for Paul, what's the one thing that defines that distinction between Jew and Gentile?

Just think about it for a second. It doesn't take much. It has nothing to do with skin color at all.

There was such a mixture in that day around the Mediterranean that it just, white -black would mean nothing to them, just wouldn't.

The only really white people they had seen were the barbarians in the north and maybe some

Anglo children out in England someplace. Skin color was irrelevant.

What was the dividing line? What was the thing? Circumcision. Circumcision, that's the issue.

And if you can stretch circumcision into modern racial categories, you can find it anywhere.

You can come up with it any way you want to. But it was circumcision. Circumcision is not ethnicity -related.

Nope, nope, nope, nope. No, it's not race -related. No, none of that. But the specific hypocrisy has ethnic import, does it not?

Are you saying Paul is unaware of or uninterested in the Jewish cultural superiority over Gentiles and that Peter's actions would have no comport with that sinful partiality?

What Peter was doing was giving in to Jewish tradition and law, which precluded table fellowship with Gentiles.

And the supremacy and superiority was not racial supremacy and superiority.

It was purity. It was purity laws. Again, circumcision, food laws, all this stuff.

Once you start trying to stretch that out to other stuff, folks, Galatians 2 is probably one of the three to four most important texts on the nature of justification, forensic justification, that there is.

And when we start diluting that to make application, and I'm sorry,

I'll just let you know right now, there's gonna be some sniffles, a little

Barry White going on today. Someone actually said that they remembered me being sick before I went to South Africa earlier in the year, but I don't remember having been sick this year.

So it couldn't have ever been very bad. So I'm very, very thankful for that. And this isn't bad, but I'm probably going to be someone really complained about some noise they say that I make that it just distracts them.

Remember when someone, that thing I had in the back, they can't listen to what I'm saying, because that's, I mean.

Anyway, so you're probably going to hear some of that today, though hopefully the

Barry White -esque level, you know, intonations of my voice will make up for that in the long run.

Sorry about that. But the issue of Galatians 2 and its relationship to justification, once that becomes diluted and made into application to American ethnocentric concerns in the 21st century, we got a problem.

We've got a serious, but that's not what Paul was addressing. And there are people in the social justice camp that recognize that the

Jew -Gentile thing does not really map over to modern

American concepts of privilege and oppression and systemic racism and all the new buzzwords that everybody's got to be on board now with all the new buzzwords.

No, it doesn't map over. It's just not there. He had said, he also mentioned me without tagging me.

I want to thank Dr. White for directing so many helpful exegetes into my mentions for another round of edifying concern for my soul.

I get the feeling that's sarcastic. What do you think? Hope you all have a wonderful Lord's Day tomorrow.

I will be preaching Christ crucified, which is the only hope for my sinful self. Well, that's nice.

I didn't direct anybody, of course, to say anything to Gerard Wilson. Evidently, you can't point out that Wilson's stretch of the covenant markings of Judaism over against the

Gentiles in the New Testament, stretching that into a connection to American ethnic concerns in the 21st century.

Is probably an invalid thing to do and a dangerous thing to do. I guess I'm not allowed to say that without getting the sarcastic.

Thanks for all that. You put it out there. I commented on it.

So the real question is, you know, what is going on in Galatians 2? It is interesting that Duke Quan put out a tweet today that says,

Conversations about racism often shut down because we define the term differently. We talk past each other, then wonder how the other person could be so obtuse.

Well, that's true. So what is racism? Here's my latest attempt to answer this complex question from a

Christian theological perspective. I'm going to see if I can't. I don't think that this will not allow me to full screen this baby.

So I'm stuck with what I've got here. And this is the biggest that I can get it. I wish

I could get it larger than this. Well, I'm getting it a little bit larger by working on it here a bit, but not much more than that.

Who knew that racism requires its own graphic to document that racism is pretty much everything?

It's, I mean, moral doctrinal dimensions, Imago Dei, idolatry, communion, moral law, social dimensions, internal, interpersonal, institutional, internalized.

Racism is the sinful devaluation or overvaluation, subordination or super ordination, and exclusion or preferential inclusion of God's image bearers on the basis of ethnicity, race, ethnicity, culture, or race.

It is an idolatrous ecosystem of beliefs. It's now an ecosystem of beliefs, behaviors, and social structures that assigns value or advantage, that's privilege, folks, that's privilege language, based on ethnicity, culture, or race.

Racism is individual and systemic, behavioral and attitudinal, conscious and subconscious, explicit and implicit, active and passive.

Which means it's everything. There's nothing. We've already seen it.

We've seen that people will use race to identify everything now.

Any attitude, any action that you don't like, must be racism. Because it has just become so expanded and so complicated, that you can attach it to anything.

Which means you can't attach it to anything, logically or rationally, if you cannot differentiate it from anything else. But what's interesting is that in both, under social dimensions, in both internal and institutional,

Galatians 2, 11 through 14 is cited. So this is one of the new

SJW perspectives that we have here. And so I want to take a few moments,

I'm going to go ahead and take this down. I'm going to take a few moments, and we're going to take a look at Galatians 2.

And especially verses 11 through 15 were noted.

And so that's a good thing to take a look at. Let's remind ourselves of what is going on here.

Paul has begun the epistle in fiery fashion.

Unlike any of his other epistles, all of which have rather lengthy introductions and blessings and thanksgivings, this epistle has very little.

It is addressed to an entire region of churches that have been infected with false teaching. And Paul's entire intention,

I'm not going to get to the text here for a second, Paul's entire intention is to get to his concern.

He knows this letter is going to cause havoc in the churches when it's read.

It's going to cause tears and wailing and probably division. He says he writes it with tears.

But he also writes it as has been commented by many scholars over the years.

When you read it, it's choppy. It does not have the same what we would call syntactical flow as a

Romans or an Ephesians. There's emotion expressed just in the very form of the letter itself, the grammar, the syntax.

And so he's given some background about his own calling to the gospel, the source of his gospel, the supernatural source of his gospel.

And finally, he gets to, he's already anathematized those who would preach another gospel.

And so he's laying the foundation for that. And so in chapter 2, he has introduced us to these individuals here in verse 4.

But it was because of Pseudodelphus, the

Pseudodelphoi, the false brethren. You know the terms Pseudo and Adelphos, so false brethren.

So these are men who claim to be brethren. They would claim to be

Christians. They would seek a place at the table, the

Lord's table, leadership in the church, whatever else. And Paul says, but it was because of the false brethren secretly brought in who had sneaked in to spy out our liberty, which we have in Christ Jesus in order to bring us into bondage.

And so there is the reality that there are false teachers, and there are false brethren, and there are those who will call themselves brothers who are not brothers.

And we have to be willing to utilize this language, though we should only do so in the biblical context.

That is, if you have differences with someone's views in eschatology or other non -definitional areas, you don't get to use this term.

You don't get to use this term of everybody who has a different eschatological viewpoint than yourself, that type of thing.

There is a tendency in our day to go one of two directions, one of two extremes.

The one is to never use this term pseudodelphoi. Some would argue we can't know now,

Paul could because of special gifts that were his that no longer exist today, and we can't go there.

On the other side are those who use it all the time. Everybody who doesn't look like me, dress like me, act like me, and cross their t's and dot their i's exactly like me is a pseudodelphoi.

That's just who there is. Pseudodelphos. Pseudodelphos? Since it's two words.

Anyway, so you've got the two extremes, and the one side can't identify error, and the other side cannot find any room for there to be any other views than their own in anything

Christianity. Obviously, somewhere in the middle, there is a balanced position that recognizes that a pseudodelphoi is a person who has a different gospel.

That's what Galatians is saying. Elsewhere, for example, in 1 John, a pseudodelphoi doesn't use the term.

He talks about antichrist. One of these individuals inside the church claims to be a

Christian, denies the physical reality of the body of Jesus Christ, a

Gnostic, a Docetic, an early Gnostic. There are only a certain range of topics that allow for the fundamental identification of someone as a false

Christian. Who God is and what the gospel is is pretty much it. So we have to be very careful.

We must, if we accept that the gospel remains with us today, defend it and identify as false brethren those who would compromise it.

At the same time, we have to constantly seek for the balance, because all of us have the tendency to lose that balance.

I think the first time I ever heard this term used this way was literally in military stuff, and now it's come into the culture.

The term is weaponized. To weaponize something. I think the first time I ever heard that was in weaponizing biological warfare and stuff like that.

So they weaponized this particular strain of a disease or something like that.

But now it's coming into more general, hence less accurate, vague, inaccurate usage to where you weaponize race, you weaponize women, you weaponize the

Me Too movement, you weaponize that, whatever. That's all over the place as well. The problem is that there are many immature

Christians who will weaponize valid and appropriate biblical actions, such as Paul's identifying these people as false brethren, and then use it outside of a context that the apostles intended to use it.

But this is the context, Galatians 2. This is Galatians 2, it's just earlier in the chapter, and Paul is talking about those who have snuck in, they have snuck in to spy out our liberty, which we have in Christ Jesus.

Now notice, Paul has in chapter 2 said, hey,

I submitted to the apostles the gospel which I preached, they extended me the right hand of fellowship.

He says, but, verse 3, but not even Titus, who is with me, though he was a Greek, was compelled to be what?

Circumcised. Not his skin color. Especially after the expansion of the

Grecian Empire under Alexander, there were Greeks who were all sorts of different shades of color.

Just as there were Romans who had Roman citizenship, who were white, black, but mainly olive, and tan, and brown, and all sorts of stuff like that.

The key was circumcision. That's what this is about. Verse 3, Titus, he was not compelled to be circumcised.

What's circumcision? It's one of the boundary markers of the covenant community. So that's what this is about, the covenant community.

It's not about race. It's not about race. It's just not there.

So, we did not, excuse me, I can't get excited either, or that'll get stuff going.

We did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

Not the social gospel. There's nothing here about social justice. This is about the truth of the gospel itself, how a person is made right before God.

Interestingly enough, partiality is mentioned here. From those who are of high reputation, what they were makes no difference to me.

God shows no partiality. Well, those who are reputation contributed nothing to me. On the contrary, seeing that I have been entrusted with the gospel of the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been to the circumcised.

Even the ethnic groups are defined as the circumcised and the uncircumcised. Nothing about color, nothing about race, nada, nothing there at all.

For he who effectually worked for Peter in his apostleship to the circumcised, effectually worked to me also to the Gentiles, and recognized in the grace which was given to me,

James and Cephas and John, who are reputed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right -handed fellowship, so they might go to the Gentiles, we might go to the

Gentiles, and they to the circumcised. They only asked us to remember the poor, the very thing

I also was eager to do. Well, I guess you could say that has something to do with social justice, but actually that has to do with Paul's collection for the poor in the church at Jerusalem in light of the famine, so even that doesn't.

So that's the background, but when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned, condemned, for prior to the coming of certain men from James, he used to eat with the

Gentiles. Okay, now let's ask a few questions here. First of all, who are these men that come from James?

Well, who's James? James is the head of the Jerusalem Church. And what do we know about the Jerusalem Church? It is very

Jewish, and it continues to practice many of the

Jewish traditions, and Taba Fellowship with Gentiles was not one of them.

Now, that might indicate to us that the Church in Antioch has progressed farther than the

Church in Jerusalem, or that there just weren't enough Gentiles in the

Church of Jerusalem for this to be an issue. I don't know. But that is an almost

Jewish -only context for the early Church in Jerusalem, even at this point. But Antioch?

You've got a Jewish settlement there, but the Church is going to transcend that, and so you're going to have to start dealing with the

Jewish -Gentile issue. But it's not race. It does not map to race.

It's not parallel race. So, when they came, he began to withdraw and hold himself aloof, fearing the party of the

Jewish race? No, of the circumcision. Circumcision.

That's what this is about. By the end of this book, Paul's going to use really harsh language about those who are trying to get people to be circumcised, not change their skin color, but to be circumcised.

Jewish markers of the covenant. And circumcision doesn't care what color the skin?

Doesn't matter. Doesn't care. The rest of the Jews joined him in hypocrisy with the result that even

Barnabas was carried away by their hypocrisy. But when I saw that they were not straightforward orthopodeo, when

I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, walking in a straight line of the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in the presence of all, if you, being a

Jew, live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews, how is it you compel the

Jews to live Gentiles live like Jews? We are

Jews by nature and not sinners from among the Gentiles. Nevertheless, knowing that a man is not justified by works of law, but through faith in Christ Jesus.

So Jews by nature, we were born Jewish. And there is a contrast between being in the covenant and what's the description that Paul uses elsewhere?

Alienated from God. Aliens to the covenant. So, but then what is

Paul's immediate concern? Nevertheless, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but through faith in Christ Jesus.

So immediately you have the contrast between the idea of law works justification and justification by faith.

Even we, that is Jews by nature, have believed in Christ Jesus so that we may be justified by faith and not by the works of law.

This is by the works of law. No flesh will be justified. So what's Paul's, what's really concerned me about seeing some of the responses and the defenses of Gerald Wilson's comment has been, well, you know, maybe we're just too, you know, maybe we've lost balance.

So there's, nothing in the scripture can refer to race. Well, I think scripture refers to one race, the human race, but it does refer to ethnicities.

It says there's no such thing in the body. You know, that's Gideon's passage in Colossians 3.

So that is there, but what is really concerned me is there is a commentary provided by Paul as to what it is he's talking about.

And the context of his commentary is justification before God and the contrast between works of law and through faith.

That's what you have in Galatians chapter 2. So now we see Duke Quan, you know, institutional racism.

Sorry, but that's not what it's talking about. That's just not what it's talking about.

And what's, what needs to be kept in mind, and this is one of the things that struck me with a lot of the biblical comments in woke church by Eric Mason as well, what they want to present the

Jesus and the apostles as our social justice warriors. I mean, that's, that's what they are.

So they want us to be, see Jesus and the apostles as social justice warriors. That requires you to have some blissful ignorance of what

Roman society was like in the first century.

In case you're, you're not aware of it, Roman society was steeped in inequality and injustice.

As much better than preceding governmental concepts had been within Rome.

And as much as they talked about transcendent law and things like that, there was a tremendous amount of injustice going on all around Jesus every day, in the name of Rome.

Every tax collector ripped off the poor. There was sexual sin and debauchery.

Anybody who had been to Rome knew that even at this time period, things were, were bad there.

You got all this stuff. And the, the economy was very poor in Israel, subsistence level for many of the people out in the field.

And so if the social justice warrior concept is true, then we would expect a tremendous amount of activity on the part of Jesus and the apostles in opposition to Roman tyranny and to the injustices of their own way of life.

Do we get that? No, we don't. We are told to do good, especially those who are the household of faith.

But it is a given that we will experience and see injustice around us.

We are not to perpetrate it. We are not to perpetuate it. But the idea that Jesus and the apostles running around focusing upon all the inequities of Rome just isn't the case.

It just isn't the case. So I had every reason to make reference to Gerald Wilson's commentary and to express some concern over what it said and this attempt to read into the biblical text as a whole foundational passages relevant to the social justice movement.

Now, very briefly, I, because I, I almost didn't say anything about it, but yesterday

I saw, and I, someone else posted a link to it today, over the past decade or so, a few times

I have made reference to Dr. Michael Heizer. We get asked questions about him all the time, and I generally either ignore them or I simply link back to the, um, do you, do you see what's on Twitter?

Is it just me that can hear the audio but only see the logo? It's working fine.

Okay. So it's just you. That always makes you feel good.

Is it just me? Yep. Just you. Oh, uh, okay. I feel badly now.

Anyway, generally what I do is I, I think it was, was it 2009? I think it was about nine years ago.

A, if I recall correctly, it was a Roman Catholic who has left the Roman Catholic Church since then.

He's written to me and said, really sorry about that, but I forget what the context was, but there was something about Michael Heizer and Psalm 82 that was thrown at me by this

Roman Catholic. And so I took the time. I remember sitting right where I'm sitting over there right now in my office.

Um, well, not where I'm sitting right now. I'm spending a fair amount of time putting together an article on Psalm 82 in response to Michael Heizer.

Cause I, had he criticized what I had said about it? Was that what was in there? Did you start that trouble?

You've launched, you've liked starting trouble in this area. Um, it's you, you get me into a lot of trouble.

Don't even, don't even try. Um, that's why your office is over there and my office is over there.

Um, anyway, I wrote up a, an article on, um, the subject of Psalm 82.

It's pretty much the only thing I've interacted with Dr. Heizer's material on. 2010.

So eight years. And Psalm 82, if the, if the, if the name doesn't just automatically, it was your fault.

Thank you. Rich is confirming. He brought up the articles as, Oh, I did it. My fault.

Yeah. Yes. There it goes. Yes. Um, years ago, one of Michael Heizer's supporters contacted us promoting his views of Psalm 82.

Rich Pierce had some brief interaction with him. Yep. There you go. Um, yeah,

Carmen Massa and the, and dodging the real arguments. That's the one that, that is the lengthy article.

And if I recall correctly, Carmen Massa has left the Roman church. I think he wrote to me only a few years ago. That's my recollection at Carmen.

I'm sorry if I'm not trying to misrepresent anybody. I'm just, just going by memory. Anyway, the point is we've been asked,

I've responded. I think I've provided a perfectly clear argument as to why

I believe that Psalm 82, what? I'm sorry.

Just based on the video we just watched last night, the title is perfect. Yes. Talk about scholarly hubris.

Yeah. That sums up my argument. Yeah. So, um,

I gave what I believe is a perfectly defensible, perfectly logical and consistent with New Testament usage in John 10 interpretation of Psalm 82, which means

I don't believe is about some heavenly counsel of divine beings. Created sub subordinate to God, but divine beings,

I believe it's earthly judges. And I believe that's how Jesus uses it in John 10.

And I personally prefer Jesus's interpretation to anybody else's. I think that's probably the best interpretation always to have.

So yesterday a video appears that makes the statement,

James White is not a biblical Semiticist. That's correct.

Don't claim to be one. Now, I would assume that a Semiticist is a person who focuses primarily their attention upon the study of Semitic languages.

I've only studied 2 .1 Semitic languages,

Hebrew, Arabic, and a smidgen of Aramaic. That's the point one.

And I haven't taught Hebrew now for 10 years. Well, yeah, about 10 years. Maybe a little bit more.

Would like to do it again, but haven't. So I don't claim to be one. So announcing that I am not something

I've never claimed to be, not a big deal. Evidently what happened is

Dr. Heiser was doing a live online chat thing, and someone asked if he would debate me.

Now, I don't think I have ever said, hey,

I would love to debate Michael Heiser on anything, because the only thing that would be relevant would be, is the interpretation that I've given to Psalm 82, and which

I believe is consistent with Jesus' own interpretation in John chapter 10, is this a defensible and consistent exegesis of the text?

I don't think I've made any comment about anything more than that.

But the response is a dismissive, condescending, debates are a waste of time,

I would never debate James Watt, waste of time type of a thing. Well, okay.

I didn't bring it up. I didn't send somebody in there to try to, I'm not,

I have zero interest in debating Michael Heiser, none. I got no interest at all. Oh, but it would be so useful.

Yeah, well, there's a lot of things to be useful. But I will confess, I'm going to confess right here and right now in front of everybody,

I continue to experience a level of frustration. I've been, in working on the project that I'm working on right now, or trying to work on a project that I'm working on right now, which

I've shared with our audience, a doctoral level project in a cutting edge area, there's not many people working in it, that I think will have great value for the defense of the text and insight into the transmission of the text and just all sorts of stuff like that.

So I would appreciate your prayers and support in doing it. Part of the process of doing the research on a dissertation is that what happens over time is your focus gets narrower and narrower by necessity.

When you first start, you can't possibly know where you're going to end. If you do, you're probably not doing it right.

And so I was looking at a possible title in light of the narrowing of the focus from the work that I have been able to get done.

And in all probability, the work that I'm doing is far beyond Dr.

Heisser's area of expertise. He wouldn't have any knowledge of it at all. And that's the way it's supposed to be. No one can know everything about everything.

So it would be absurd for me to sit here and condescendingly come up with a title for something.

And I don't know where this video came from or who put it out there, why they wanted to put it out there.

Maybe they were trying to get this very thing started. I don't know. But it would be very easy for anyone to dismiss someone else on the basis that they're not possessing specific knowledge of a narrow field of studies.

Now, I do want to just, I want to try to make something positive come out of this.

So I thought I'd remind us of an, this is an older version now. This is only the third edition. I think, what edition are we up to now?

Because I think I have this electronically. But this is A -N -E -T,

Ancient Near Eastern Texts. This is the 70, copyright renewed 78.

So this says third printing 74. So I'm not sure how it could be. But anyways, early 80s, somewhere around there.

It's still got my old, oh, you can't see. There we go. There we go.

The old thing I used to put in all my books back when paper books were the primary way

I got a hold of stuff. So the Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the

Old Testament, third edition was something by Pritchard. This is just one of the standard resources that you have.

And if you're a Semiticist, this would be a key text that you would utilize and have in your library, make reference to and standardized reference source, that type of thing.

And what would be in that? Well, thankfully, it keeps expanding because there is still lots of great scholarship being done in that field and texts being unearthed and texts that have been unearthed for a long period of time, but are just now being translated.

Let's move over here. I'm gonna break my neck. Just now being translated and made available and all that kind of stuff.

Do I devalue this at all? I think it's vitally important.

And we should utilize, there's every good reason to read material that would provide us with any kind of contextual insight we can gain to the text of the

Tanakh. And so, is it helpful to know something about Egyptian religion?

It is. Canaanite religion? Oh, even more so. But Canaanite religion was deeply influenced by Egypt.

Babylonian? Oh yeah. Assyrian? Uh -huh. All of those major empires and many others, legally, religiously, and culturally influenced the land of Israel.

So if even on the level, just on the level of understanding the apologetic of the apostles, of the prophets, there can be great light shed upon certain arguments that the prophets give.

Because once you realize some of the specifics of the religious beliefs that they're warning against, all of a sudden it sheds whole new light on why the prophet would argue the way.

He was actually poking the other side in the eye, which we didn't know before. We didn't know before.

Very vitally important information. And those whose specific task it is to enlighten us on the backgrounds of the

Old Testament text have to, you know, got a lot of information available to them now.

A lot of information available. And if you are an Old Testament scholar, I would expect you have read all of this and marked it up and have familiarity with it.

You bet. But there's always the but.

The danger comes when we, again, don't maintain purposefully the view of the nature of the

Tanakh. And I like using the term Tanakh. Get used to it. Torah, Nevi 'im, Ketuvim. I'm talking about the

Old Testament. I'm talking about the Hebrew Scriptures. Hebrew Scriptures, Tanakh, both are excellent terms that I think are more accurate in their application than Old Testament.

But we must hold firmly to Jesus's understanding of the character, nature, and authority, and the

Apostles' view of the character, nature, and authority of the Tanakh. I've said it before,

I'll say it again. We, as a church, gave up the Old Testament to the liberals a long time ago.

And there are, if you hold to the views, if you believe with Paul that all

Scripture is theanoustas, which includes every word in Judges, you are in a small minority today, a very small minority.

You need to understand that. It bothers me. The reason Andy Stanley is getting away with what

Andy Stanley is getting away with is because there are a lot of people who have bought into the apologetic of, well, the majority of scholars say, hey, if you want to be in the majority of scholars group, you're not going to be a

Christian. You're certainly not going to hold the view of the Apostles in on almost anything.

Just realize that that's the case. You can go to the

Christian bookstore and pick up almost any commentary on the Old Testament that's been published in the past nearly 100 years or more and run into...

People ask me, what sets of commentary should I buy? Stuff like that. And it's like, well, I don't know of any one set that has a consistent theological standard, really, especially when it comes to the

Old Testament. It just, it's a mess. Are there good

Old Testament commentaries being written today? Yes, but the vast majority of them are crippled by having to deal with and review so much unbelieving literature that it just, it's tough to fight through all of it.

And here's what I'm trying to get to. I'm sorry, because I don't want to get to one other thing, and I really want to try to finish up by three o 'clock, mainly because my voice is going, and it's hard to breathe like this.

The vast majority of people, I'm not saying Michael Heiser, but there are people in that camp.

The vast majority of people are in danger of elevating the ancient Near Eastern textual sources to a lens through which the

New Testament, the Old Testament, the Tanakh, the Pentateuch especially, has to be read and enforced.

If a person accepts the JEDP theory, the Graf Wilhelm theory, which of course today has 47 ,000 permutations, the

Yahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomist, Priestly stuff, that our Old Testament is basically a badly redacted 4th, 5th century

BC conglomeration of contradictory texts.

That's what is taught in most seminaries. That's not what Jesus taught. That's not what the apostles taught.

But that is what's taught in most seminaries. You put that together with a knowledge of all the ancient

Near Eastern texts, and what you're going to start doing is you're going to start bringing the understanding of the concepts in the ancient

Near Eastern text into the text of the Tanakh and interpreting it in light of those sources.

That's where the danger lies. Again, that's what the majority of people do.

I'm putting myself outside of the mainstream to say, I think there's more to it than that, and I can't join in that type of a perspective.

Just as I would have to dedicate numerous programs to even the introduction of textual criticism of the

Old Testament, because it's a completely different world than that of the

New. It's a completely different transmission methodology, so it has to be completely different. It's much older, so it's a completely different world.

Part of this, again, is why Andy Stanley is getting away with what Andy Stanton is getting away with. In some ways, you've heard more about the background and reliability of the

Old Testament text on this program over the years than you would ever get in 90 % of seminaries you'd go to, which is a sad thing.

It's a sad thing. It really is. All right, so I didn't play that, but that's all right. Life goes on. There is something

I want to play for you. I don't know if any of you saw this, and if I go whole screen on this, it's going to be so pixelated, it's going to look horrible.

I had to grab this because I think it got deleted, but over the weekend,

I think on Friday, Brandon Robertson posted a video of him speaking to his church.

I guess they speak to the church from comfy chairs, so it's the comfy chair church, and he is speaking.

I want you to hear right at the beginning. It says, I want you to hear me say this as a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Now, he and I, because I responded and said, well, his apostasy was inevitable.

Fact of the matter is, I normally don't use that language. I know some people would say, oh, you don't. No, I don't.

I don't. I want to believe the best about people, but when it comes to someone who claims to be a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, I will hold them to the standard implicit in that claim.

I do not hold Yasir Qadhi to the standard that I hold Brandon Robertson to, because Yasir Qadhi does not claim to be a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I will deal with him as a person to whom I want to minister the gospel, but if you claim to already be a minister of the gospel, and then you pervert that gospel and deny the content of that gospel, that's a completely different thing.

If you can't see the difference between those things, there's not much I can do for you. But he addresses, see,

I said that his apostasy was inevitable, because I remember not long ago, it was about, and again, it's one of those things where it's in my mind as to where I was listening to this.

I was listening to him out somewhere in the area of what are called the boulders out toward Cave Creek, and I was listening to an interview with him.

He was trying desperately to maintain some level of Christian orthodoxy while plainly embracing a bisexual, homosexual paradigm.

And I remember then, years ago, saying, that ain't gonna work, can't work, won't work, and eventually he will abandon the levels of orthodoxy that he claims to possess.

And then he was part of a group about two years ago where Michael Brown, Janet Parshall, interviewed

Michael Brown, Brandon Robertson, and a couple of other people at NRB or something, whatever it was,

I don't remember. And he had moved the progression away from truth was plain there.

Well, now he's at his own church, and he's talking about polyamory.

Yes, having multiple partners. And so I want you to hear what he has to say.

It sounds a little bit weird because I made the mistake of upgrading to iOS Mojave, and iOS

Mojave is still a little glitchy. And when I tried to record the video, it would not record the audio.

So I had to record the video, and then I had to record the audio separately in a different program, and then put them together. And that's why it sounds the way it sounds.

But it is accurate, and so it's all of 49 seconds. Let's listen to what it says.

For those who are in an open or polyamorous relationship here this morning, who might be squirming a little bit because this is an uncomfortable question to hear in church sometimes,

I want you to hear me loud and clear as a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. There it is. Your relationships are holy.

They're beautiful, and they are welcomed and celebrated in this space. And we call all of us together to the same set of standards that we call everyone to, to seek to follow

Jesus in all of our relationships, to seek to be honest and respectful and self -sacrificial and consensual and loving with your partners.

When any of us live into these standards, we can be sure that we're on the path to wholeness and holiness.

So there you go. As a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, listen to me, he says.

Your relationships are holy. So he said, your relationships are holy.

Your polyamorous, multiple sexual partner relationships are holy.

So you may have followed on Twitter. I very straightforwardly said, you, sir, are a false teacher.

You are deceiving, you are deceived and deceiving others. He, of course, returned the compliment, but only one of us could make any meaningful argument.

Now, of course, he said, oh, I could destroy your arguments, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, I would love to see that happen.

I sort of doubt that it will, but I would certainly stand ready just as I debated

Graham Codrington, I would debate Brandon Robertson, because here is a person claiming to be a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, absolutely rejecting the authority of what

Jesus himself taught, of what his apostles taught. Now, obvious, it did not take long.

It did not take long. I had a Twitter conversation with a guy who used to be,

I'm sorry that I didn't know the name and I didn't look it back up, but did music at Mars Hill for a while, and he was promoting process theology.

And I don't have time today to go into process theology, but the point was, every time there would be a discussion of anything in regards to divine revelation, his response is, well,

I don't believe in inerrancy, which is the same thing as saying, I don't believe that the Bible is inspired. I don't believe that it has special authority.

I don't believe it's consistent with itself. And so I get to pick and choose what I want to believe.

That's all there is to it. Did not take almost any time at all for Brandon Robertson in response to say, well, of course,

I don't believe in biblical inerrancy. Well, of course not. If you believed that the scriptures were consistent, you wouldn't believe what you believe.

That was what I meant by the absolute necessity of the apostasy of Brandon Robertson over time.

Who? Dustin? Okay. Someone named Dustin. I can't hear you.

I can't hear that from in here. So that's what

I mean by the inevitability of this apostasy, is you can't hold these things together. You eventually have to reject what the scriptures teach, because they consistently teach something completely other than to saying to people in polyamorous relationships, your relationships are holy.

That is a 180 degree contradiction of what the Bible actually teaches. And yet he sits there and claims to be a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

How does that happen? You've got to understand, because it's happening around us all the time. Almost any church you walk into of the old quote -unquote mainline denominations, this is what you're going to hear.

It's happening everywhere. And before you just go, the world has gone insane, and want to get off, you need to understand what's going on.

And the dividing line, when we named this program back in the 1980s initially, the dividing line then and the dividing line now remains the same.

There are those who believe that God has spoken with clarity and consistency in his word, and there are those who do not.

That's still the dividing line. That's still the dividing line. That's all there is to it.

So, I wanted to play that and wanted to explain why I said very strongly, you know, there must be a difference in how you deal with a person who says, well,

I struggle with same -sex attraction, but I am under the authority of the word of God. And someone who says, I likewise have same -sex attraction, and I'm a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and I'm going to contradict everything that the

Bible says on the basis of my sexuality. That's Brandon Robertson. You cannot deal with those two people the same way.

And some of you might say, yeah, it seemed like you were different with him than you were in the debate with Michael Brown. That's because it's a completely different context.

I mean, yeah, they both claimed to be ministers, and that's why we brought the word of God to bear, and very plainly said, not what, you know, what you're teaching, nope, it is untrue, and here's why it's untrue.

And we explained that, and we did that clearly, and we called them to repentance. Brandon has heard it all. He's heard it all.

He knows what the arguments are. And eventually, once you get to the point where you're actually sitting in front of people and helping them to justify their sin by calling it holy, got to be called out for what it is.

Call him to repentance? Yes, God could save anybody. But you likewise have to protect the flock.

And people need to, well, not that there are too many true Christians that would be tricked into something like that, but there are young ones that need to know.

There are young ones that need to know. I forgot to mention on the last program, you know, you're going to need to check where those shoes were sent.

Either that or I need to check on where those shoes were sent. Might they be in the other room? You neither deny nor confirm.

Confirm nor deny. So all I can say is that if I get my hands on those shoes, you may be getting photographs on the internet of them in various places around the state, the country, perhaps even the world.

I really think that the kind folks who have made it possible for me to have those

Coogee shoes would really find it very unkind of you if you were to do something like that. Kidnapped Coogees, baby!

Kidnapped Coogees! Now, for those of you who did not read the description of the last program, hopefully by Thursday, I will be able to lift my foot up.

I need to ask the people who are saying, where did you send them? Did you send them to the office or did you send them to the post office box?

I have to keep on the guy in the other room, because he would sort of like forget them, hide them, refuse to accept them, ship them back, things like that.

But some folks online found these Coogee shoes.

I love Coogee sweaters, but Coogee makes Coogee shoes. When I saw them, in the back of my mind, there was a familiarity.

I'd seen these before. Well, they've gotten them for me, and I promised to show them on the program.

And so I will, when they arrive, I will show them to you, and I will wear them. When they arrive, they will be shown on the program.

No matter what someone tries to do, tries to change camera angles, whatever, we will make sure that they are shown.

That's a blur feature. A blur feature. Rich is going to be installing the blur feature to try to hide these things from happening.

Anyway, yes, it was me, myself, return on Twitter that got them with her points on Amazon.

So you need to be a nice person. And did she contact you?

Maybe. So you know exactly where they're going. So they are supposed to be coming here. Okay. All right.

I'm getting more information here. But the thing was, they looked familiar to me.

And so all of a sudden, across my mind, I opened my Amazon wishlist up.

What was the first thing on it? Those shoes. I had put them there, just to remember where they were.

Sometimes I throw stuff on there for that. And so if anyone does go searching for my

Amazon wishlist, good luck on that. I can't find anybody's. I try to find people's, and it's like, it just doesn't work.

I deleted them. Because one pair is great. Two, Rich is not going to take the other pair.

Okay. Yeah. No, not gonna. I don't know anybody else that would want a pair of size 11

Coogee shoes. So I deleted them. But they were sitting there right above the one thing that I'll never, ever get.

The point was, it proved what a geek I am. Because if you open up someone's wishlist, the first item is

Coogee shoes. And the second item is Schmidt -Cassegrain 12 inch telescope. Not sure what that says about that person.

I'm really not sure what that says about that person. But I got the shoes, which gives me a smidgen of hope someday, maybe.

Because that telescope, I could take some awesome pictures with that. But anyway, they have Coogee shoes.

Yes, they do have Coogee pants. But the pant fabric isn't

Coogee. They're like jeans, and they have trim and stuff like that.

But these shoes are totally... You saw them, right? Yeah, he saw. He's just miserable in the other room.

I'm miserable in here. So with that, we have covered about... Did I cover everything? Let me just look at this real quick.

Yep, pretty much covered everything we're looking for there. We got everything played. We got through it. So we talked about everything from Coogee shoes, and Schmidt -Cassegrain telescopes, to ancient

Near Eastern texts, to polyamory, to racism, to Galatians 2.

That's enough for one program, I think. So thanks for watching. We'll see you on Thursday.