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Example, next Saturday, we will be on a cell phone during most of the program, live from Salt Lake City, Utah. What are we going to be doing in Salt Lake City? Well, every six months, the first weekend April and the first weekend October, we go up to Salt Lake City, that is Alpha and Omega Ministries, and we pass out tracts and witness to people right outside the gates of the Mormon temple in Salt Lake.
This time up will be my 29th consecutive general conference, standing outside the gates, sharing with the LDS people. So we will be live from Salt Lake City next week via the miracle of cellular technology and taking your calls about Mormonism and about what we're doing up there in Salt Lake.
So we have that type of direct evangelistic outreach. I've also had the opportunity of writing a number of books on many different issues. Many of those books are published by Bethany House Publishers.
The most recent, for example, is entitled Mary, Another Redeemer. This is a book that deals with the subject of Mary and the current push to have her defined as co-redemptrix, co-mediatrix, and advocate for the people of God in the Roman Catholic faith.
Another book that came out about the same time, a youth book, is called What's With the Dudes at the Door? And that's a book that is for youth on the issue of cults and isms, how to recognize them and how to respond to them.
Other books include The Roman Catholic Controversy, The King James Only Controversy, Letters to a Mormon Elder, Is the Mormon My Brother?, etc., etc. So we've had the opportunity of producing written works, published works.
We also provide many tracks for distribution to Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, and others. And then one very unusual area in our society today, public debates. I've had the opportunity since 1990 to do 24 moderated public debates, primarily on the subject of Roman Catholicism.
I'd like to start today by having you listen to a short section of a debate. Let me give you the background of it. This debate took place in 1996 on Long Island. There on Long Island, you will find a whole bunch of good Roman Catholic folks and a whole bunch of good Protestant folks.
And we get together every spring for a debate series. This was the first in the debate series. I'm debating a former Protestant by the name of Jerry Matitix. Mr. Matitix was a graduate of Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary.
He was a doctoral student at Westminster Theological Seminary before he converted to Roman Catholicism. We had about 600 people in the Coral House in Baldwin, Long Island this evening, debating the Marian doctrines.
This is a section of the cross-examination period from the fourth part of the debate. So we were all warmed up by them. And here you have a little bit of an idea of some of the programs we'll do in the future because we want to do some of these debates on the air here on The Dividing Line.
So here from 1996, the discussion on the doctrine of Mary. So what I had said in regards to transitive literature, are you familiar with the claim by numerous Mariologists and scholars, Roman Catholic scholars, in fact, including Ott?
Do you agree, let me put it this way, that the idea of the bodily assembly of Mary is first expressed in certain transitive narratives of the fifth and sixth centuries? Would you agree with that statement?
Of the extant literature that we have? Yes. But I don't share your prejudice against literature that has some gap with the immediate events that it chronicles. Okay. We have a lot of Augustine's writings, right?
Yes, we do. Did he say a lot about Mary?
Here and there in his writings, yes. Did he ever say anything about it? Not to my knowledge. How about Ambrose? Ambrose was a real big fan of Marian devotion, wasn't he?
Not especially among the church fathers of his age.
He did say a lot about Mary, though, didn't he?
Not out of the ordinary, in terms of his contemporaries. Did he say anything about this doctrine?
I'm not aware that he did. Did anyone in the second century say anything about this doctrine?
Well, again, that's a question begging questions we don't know.
In the extant literature, did anyone say anything about the doctrine?
We don't have an explicit testimony to it in the early second century, yes, you're right. Third century? It doesn't really matter, Mr. White. I'm asking the questions, Mr. Mattox.
Fourth century? No. Not to my knowledge. Did these individuals, during this period of time, and you're familiar with the 38-volume set of the early church fathers published by Erdmann? I'm not familiar with it, but I have it.
Okay, so do I. And in all of that set of writings, are there not numerous commentaries on the Gospels by people like Augustine and John Chrysostom?
You understand, Mr. White, that the Gospels, the commenters on the Gospels are not going to mention this because the Gospels don't record her assumption to heaven, precisely because they were written prior to the fact that it, prior to its happening.
So, do they comment upon any of the passages that you use, including Caleb, Elijah? In fact, do you know of anyone who has made the identification of Elijah with Mary in the first thousand years of the church?
It's irrelevant, Mr. White. Okay. Well, when we talk about... That's not the source of the doctrine. Would it not be fair, then, to say that the universal tradition of the church stands solidly against the position that you now define as being the position of the church?
No, I wouldn't say that at all. So, you can't show me this doctrine in the greatest fathers of the church for six or seven centuries, and yet they discussed these things, they discussed Mary, they discussed all sorts of other aspects of Mary.
You've made reference to them like Jerome. Did he mention anything about that? Mr. White, you bring your Protestant prejudice in favor of written documentation, Sola Scriptura. Excuse me, let me finish.
You're bringing it to the life of the early church. One thing you're forgetting, Mr. White, that life is not simply found in books. And simply because we don't have books, and we only have a fraction of the books that were written at that time, doesn't mean that the church didn't believe things, celebrate them.
You've got to look at things like liturgy, Mr. White. You've got to look at things like feast days. You've got to look at things like popular piety.
Okay, how about any of those things? You have the assumption. I'm asking the questions right now. Are they there? So they're there. So Ott was wrong. The first expression is not in the transitive narrative.
No, you didn't quote him correctly. Yes, I did. No. The idea of the bodily assumption of Mary is first expressed in certain transitive narratives of the fifth and sixth centuries. Even though these are apocryphal, they bear witness to the faith of generation, which they're written despite their liturgy.
Ott is referring to the writings. I'm saying that certain truths are celebrated by the church in many ways other than...
And how do you know that outside of written documentation? How do you know they were being celebrated outside of written documentation?
By the tradition of the way that...
Well, I don't talk quite as fast normally on the radio program as I do in the middle of a debate, but of course you can get up to high speed when you're dealing with issues like that. Give and take, direct debate, that is something unusual in our society today where you actually debate an issue and don't just simply dance around it.
That's something that we are involved with. And in fact, we just recently did a debate on Long Island in April against Dr. Mitchell Pacwa, a Jesuit priest and scholar, on the subject of the papacy. And I need to mention, because the president of the ministry will never forgive me if I don't, that everything you hear today, all these debates and things that we're going to play sections from, are available from Alpha and Omega Ministries.
And the normal statement is operators are standing by, but in our case it's the operator is standing by at 9730318, 9730318, if you'd like to have information as to how you could, for example, get the entire debate you were just listening to a section to, or any of the other programs that we're going to give just a little bit of a snippet of to give you a taste of what we're going to be doing here on the Dividing Line program.
Now, another opportunity I've had, as time is fleeting, is to do radio programs in Salt Lake City, where I have been live on the air taking calls on Salt Lake City radio stations about the subject of Mormonism.
And you can imagine that some of the calls are rather interesting. Another aspect of that is that frequently I'm somewhat outnumbered. I have, for example, done one program where I had two Brigham Young University professors and a Mormon attorney in studio with me.
It was just the four of us. That doesn't sound overly fair, but that's okay. We had an opportunity of proclaiming the gospel. And this next section that we're going to play for you is from a discussion that I had with that Mormon attorney on the air in regards to the nature of God.
I think this is probably, in my mind, Martin, this person sitting here, maybe not the person calling the phone line, but this person sitting here feels that the most grave difference between us is in regards to the nature of God.
And when I said what I said in regards to God, I think that really strikes at the heart of where we do differ from one another, is I had said to you, I had made a statement you said was a misrepresentation of the LDS position.
And that is that what I was attempting to communicate is that in Mormonism, God is of the same kind of being that we are. In other words, he's not simply a man. He is an exalted man, as Joseph Smith taught.
Yet we also, according to LDS doctrine, and please correct me if you don't accept this, because I've met a lot of Mormons recently that have a lot of different views on very.
Central issues in regards to God. As I have met many Baptists who are different from me.
But we are, in Mormonism, have the capacity of exaltation to the same status as God the Father has. If you feel that's a misreading of the King Follett field discourse or teaching of the Church, please let me know.
Well, when you say, I guess I'd have to clarify there. Certainly, statements have been made to the effect that we can become like God. Exactly what that means, I'm not sure that anyone in the LDS faith would venture to guess.
Nobody claims that we would be on an even par with God, or that he would cease to be God to us, or that we would no longer revere and worship him. I think that, in that sense, there's a misrepresentation or misunderstanding there.
May I ask you, Martin, if you believe that God was once a man?
I think that he, being of the same species, has come along the same path that we have, yes.
And you had just said, you don't feel that there might be a, you just indicated that you don't feel that there would be a time where we did not honor and worship him as God. So, would that follow through in saying that you believe that God the Father is still honoring and worshiping the God that was his when he was a man?
There are people who would take that position. I have not found that to be a part of the specific doctrine of Latter-day Saint faith. That may be the case, but I don't know.
That would be the logical outcome of what you had just indicated, though. That's possible, yes, yes. Well, it is the logical outcome, and in point of fact, that is what the general authorities of the Church have taught very clearly.
In fact, I had the opportunity last year of writing a book, again for Bethany House, called Is the Mormon My Brother?, which specifically documents with over 100 pages of documentation what the Mormon leaders, not in unofficial sources, but in their official capacity as the leaders of the LDS Church, have taught on that particular subject.
And it's unfortunate that I had to write that book, but the simple fact of the matter is the Mormon Church is engaged in a tremendous effort right now to make it look like Mormonism is just simply another Christian faith, another Christian denomination, maybe with some peculiarities, but certainly not outside the pale of orthodoxy.
In reality, Mormonism is a doctrine that teaches a plurality of gods. Christianity is monotheistic. Therefore, the two are utterly incompatible with one another. Well, we go up to Salt Lake City, we do debates, and in the midst of all of that, we have been drawn into yet another controversy.
I have the opportunity of teaching for the Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, where I teach Greek and Hebrew. I'm a critical consultant on the New American Standard Bible update, and as a result of that and dealing with apologetic issues, I have encountered the King James Only controversy.
In fact, in 1995, I wrote a book called The King James Only Controversy, which resulted in one of my first visits with Hank Hanegraaff on the Bible Answer Man show. And during the second hour of that program, we had an opportunity of talking with a King James Only advocate, and the resultant conversation, I think, well illustrates some of the work that we've done in that particular area.
I'd like to ask Mr. White a question, and I'd like to ask you this. If I'm searching for absolute, inerrant, infallible...
Well, there are a number of Bibles you can go to. That's the whole issue. We need to be very careful that we do not sacrifice truth for certainty. You see, up until there was a printed edition of the Bible, whenever Christians gathered for over 1400 years in a church, if you had a manuscript and the person next to you had a manuscript, those two manuscripts were not identical to one another.
Does that mean they didn't have God's truth? Sure it does. No, it doesn't. In point of fact, when individuals, for example, would use the Greek Septuagint, there were many differences... Septuagint? The Septuagint, yes, the Greek Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament.
I didn't know there was one in existence. There certainly was. In fact, the New Testament writers quote from it the vast majority of the time.
Okay, get away from all those $5 words. Where's absolute truth at?
Absolute truth is in the Word of God, sir. Which one? It's not a matter of which one, sir. Sir, we're not talking about multiple Bibles.
The Bible was written... And there's over 250 different translations out there.
The Bible was written in Greek and Hebrew, sir. That is what God revealed His Word in. We have translations thereof. And as the King James translators themselves said, even the meanest translation, as long as it is faithful to the original, is worthy of the phrase, the Word of God.
And I agree with them. Okay, let me ask you this.
By the way, let me ask you a question before you ask a question. Do you think that there are any two Greek manuscripts that agree perfectly? Sir?
Do I think there are any two Greek manuscripts that agree perfectly? Which one, sir? There are over 100 of them. Well, which original do you hold to? No, we're asking you, which one do you hold to? Just so you can be specific.
See how it goes around, sir? See, the problem is, when we ask which manuscript, which one are you wanting to invest this absolute perfection in, as I explained before, when God preserved His Word for us, He did so in such a way that it could not be altered in any fundamental way.
But He did so in such a way that it allowed for textual variation. And so I don't believe that there is any one Greek manuscript that's perfect. So you can't ask me that question. You're the one who said that you do believe that the Textus Receptus is perfect.
Is that the 1516 edition of Erasmus, one of the other four that came after him? Was it Stephanus' text? Was it Baize's text? Is it Scribner 1894?
Just be specific. Which one of those alternatives do you choose?
I choose the A .V. 1611. I got my hand right now on the one that God saved me with.
Okay, so actually the T .R. is irrelevant if you're saying that you're actually holding to the King James. The T .R. doesn't really matter.
I'm not a T .R. man. I'm a King James man. Okay, you're not a T .R. man. So the T .R. doesn't matter then, right? Huh? Which T .R. doesn't matter? What matters to me is that God said He's not the author of confusion and you've got these people in these churches and the preacher stands up and he can't no longer say let's turn in reference and leave the other person.
But the problem is if God is not the author of confusion how come you are so confused about what you're saying right now? I'm not confused, brother. I know God said... You don't even know what you've got to hold to right now.
...the furnace of the earth tried seven times, thou shalt keep the whole Lord...
Jeff, have you ever even noticed that Psalm 1267, which you were just citing there, is not in reference to God's words?
It's in reference to His people? Yeah, that's the same thing that suits... It's not what anybody holds to, it's just a plain reading of the text.
It's just a matter of looking at the text. The point is, sir, I recognize your desire to have absolute certainty, but what I'm suggesting to you is that you may have sacrificed truth to have absolute certainty.
Are you aware of the fact, for example, that the reading of your King James Version of the Bible, Revelation Chapter 16, Verse 5, did not exist prior to the end of the 16th century anywhere in the world?
I don't believe that. Well, let me explain what I'm saying. You're trying to destroy my faith. No, I'm not. No, sir. Let me ask you something. If your faith is placed in falsehood, then that's a faith I do want to destroy and have it replace the faith in truth.
Because God's truth can examine... Hey, Jeff, you know what you need to try to do.
For just a few moments? Yes, sir. Is listen. Just open your heart in your ears and just listen. Even if you disagree, just listen. In that way, you can argue with what is said on the basis of what is said rather than what you think he's going to say or what he didn't say.
Just listen for a moment. Revelation Chapter 16, Verse 5 in the King James Version of the Bible. I mean, we all know it. It's been turned into hymns and everything. It says, And I heard the angel of the waters say, Thou art righteous, O Lord, which art and wast and shalt be because thou hast judged thus.
The reading, And shalt be, did not come into existence until Theodore Beza, John Calvin's successor in Geneva, when working on the Greek New Testament, looked at it and said, That doesn't make any sense.
And I could go into the forms of the words, but he made what's called a conjectural emendation. In other words, he didn't have any manuscripts to back him up, but he changed it anyways. And he changed the word, and if you look at all the translations, you look at all the manuscripts that existed for 1500 years of church history, all of them say, which art and was, O Holy One.
Now, he changed that. He didn't have any warrant to do it, but it ended up in the King James Version of the Bible. I would suggest to you that if you are unwilling to recognize that the King James Version is what its translators themselves said it was, a translation done by human beings that is liable to revision, that the faith you're talking about has been misplaced.
And I'd like to suggest to you, God saved you by His grace, not by a translation. Don't put your faith in a human translation. Place it in the Savior, whose blood avails for your sins. That's all. I like what you said.
Well, I'm glad he liked what I said at that particular point. I don't think he liked what I said in general, but at least at that particular point. Well, it's an interesting subject, and we will be addressing King James-only-ism.
We'll be addressing issues of Bible translation. We'll be taking your phone calls in weeks ahead in regards to differences between translations and issues such as that. We'll look into church history.
We'll look into Roman Catholicism. We'll look into the doctrine of the Trinity, the deity of Christ, presenting and defending that, answering the critics who would attack the Christian faith. That's what we're going to be doing here on The Dividing Line.
Now, I'd like to make sure that everyone understands we're a local ministry. We are individuals who are part of local churches. This ministry is being brought to you not only by Alpha and Omega Ministries, but also by Bethany House Publishers, my publishing house, which is located up in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where it's much cooler than it is here today, and also by the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church where I am very thankful to be an elder in the congregation there and, in fact, would like to invite you if you have access to a computer to visit both the ministry's website and the church's website.
You can listen, actually, to debates that we have done. You can look at the books that are available on the Alpha and Omega Ministries website at www .aomin .org, that's A-O-M-I-N dot org, and you can visit the Phoenix Reformed website at www .p-r-b-c dot org, and some of the tapes that are available there on the church's website are sermons and Bible studies that I have done there in my capacity in teaching there at the church.
You are certainly more than welcome to visit with us at Phoenix Reformed. We're located at 3805 North 12th Street here in Phoenix, Arizona, and Bible study begins at 930 on Sunday mornings, worship service at 1045.
The evening worship is at 630, and the midweek prayer service at 7 p .m. on Wednesday evenings. I have the privilege of teaching the adult Bible study class there at Phoenix Reformed, and as we discuss certain biblical issues, you will discover that we come from a very Reformed perspective, and that'll be one of the subjects that we will be addressing.
If you'd like to contact Alpha and Omega Ministries, please do so. Give us a call at 973 -0318. Let us know what subjects are most pressing in your mind as we plan future programs and future issues we'll be addressing.
973 -0318 is the number. That's where you can get the tapes of the programs we've listened to briefly today, and where you can also get more information about tracts and things like that. 973 -0318 or www .aomin .org.
We hope you'll be with us again next week as we present another edition of The Dividing Line.