Answering Marcus Rogers' Questions, 2 Thess. 2:15 and Jay Dyer

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00:36

Well, greetings. Welcome to the dividing line. Hopefully it's working. In fact, the red thing that was just up was like blown up.

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It was huge. So I don't know what that means. But hey, we're supposed to be live. And it's good to do it this way.

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Because I can tell you doing it the other way that we did it last week, really takes forever. I didn't have to do any of it. I just, you know,

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I still record the programs. And then it took, you know, hours and hours and hours and hours to get stuff posted.

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So this is the most efficient way to do it. We are live broadcasting, webcasting, whatever you call this kind of stuff, from the desert metropolis.

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How long has it been since we had that opening that's live? Webcasting live.

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Yeah. How is it? No, okay. Live in the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona. Live from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona.

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This is the dividing line. Yeah. That's about the same time we had, if you'd like to have more information about our books, cassettes, tracks.

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You know, you're, you know, you're dating yourself pretty, pretty well when you start talking about cassette tapes.

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But, and yeah, I'm not going to walk down that memory lane. I've already been sitting here for ages today.

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We did the second of the sweater vest dialogues today.

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And we got started about half an hour late. So went for about an hour.

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So I've already done an hour and a half. And it was a discussion between Doug Wilson and myself on the subject of, basically on the subject of the

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Trinity and eternal subordination of the Son, ESS, and patriarchy.

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And I didn't even know that that was a, another one of the many things running around out there.

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But, so we had a discussion about it and I, I brought up some, just some of the issues that I think are most important in that particular area, including

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Calvin and the emphasis upon, upon autotheos, that the

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Son is God of himself, not only in a immediate fashion. I think that's very important apologetically.

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Unfortunately, a lot of that Trinitarian discussion takes place outside of the purview of individuals who are involved in dealing with the

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Trinity. And interestingly enough, the first thing we're going to do today on the program is to deal with the

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Trinity. But from a different perspective,

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Doug and I got into all sorts of stuff about the opera ad intra and how you recognize

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Father, Son, and Spirit prior to creation, rather than, you know, recognizing that the distinctions between the

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Father, Son, and the Spirit in light of creation is easily done.

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And that's what we're gonna be talking about today is I'm gonna be responding to a video that was put out by Marcus Rogers, who is a oneness advocate.

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And so we're dealing with stuff that isn't even an issue amongst any type of Orthodox believers.

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This is already decided, already agreed upon by everybody, so this will be something new along those, you know, this will be a different area.

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But we were talking about a much more abstract and challenging area, and that is how you distinguish between Father, Son, and Spirit prior to creation, solely in their, what are called the opera ad intra.

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Generation, spiration, begettal, what is eternal, being eternally begotten mean, all that kind of stuff.

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And so, probably not as controversial as the last one,

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I would imagine, but I can just absolutely guarantee you, it wouldn't matter if we talked about the most mundane thing on the planet, somebody will find something to grouse about, because there are just some people who seemingly live on the internet to do nothing more than grouse about things.

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And that's just sort of how that works. Anyway, so I did want to, I forget when it was that Jeff let me know about this video.

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He posted it in our Apology of Leadership area. It's nice and short, thankfully.

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It's not long, and so you can run through it fairly quickly. So, that's what

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I'm going to do. I'm going to play it at 1 .2. I am not going to give long, lengthy responses because I've written entire books on the subject.

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So, we've done entire debates on aspects of this. We've done debates with Oneness Pentecostals, and with Greg Stafford, and lost track of how many debates on this particular subject with Muslims, and that kind of stuff.

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So, but quick, direct responses, because one of the reasons is when

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I do get a chance to go out and speak, we'll be at G3. Next week.

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And people sort of give me their background, their history. A lot of them say,

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I only discovered you all in the last two or three years. And so, we did a lot of stuff more than two or three years ago.

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And yeah, some people go, hey, and I've discovered the archives, and so I'm, you know, catching up with stuff.

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But still, there's a lot of folks that have not had the opportunity to listen to these things. So, we're going to hit it fairly quickly, but do want to respond to these particular assertions.

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They are very common, not only from people like Marcus Rogers, but from Muslims and others in their objections to the historic doctrine of the

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Trinity. So, grab your Bible. I'm not sure you have time to look up too much as the speed we're going to be going.

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But it is a video, but it's easier for me to do it on just audio.

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He's just sitting in a car looking at a phone. So, it's not really overly useful.

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Take a look at it. Marcus Rogers, he's in the military, and as I said, advocate of a form of oneness,

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Pentecostalism. I've responded to him in the past. It's been a couple of years.

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But by the way, this was addressed to Stephen Bankarts, James White, and Jeff Durbin.

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So, I'm one of them. So, I'm in the middle there.

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And Jeff is very, very, very, very busy right now with all sorts of things going on. And so,

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I'm going to respond to this. Let's get started. That some things are a heaven and hell issue, and there are other things that are just a revelation issue.

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So, even if we disagree, it doesn't mean that, oh, you're a false prophet, or you're going to hell. Peter and Paul, they disagreed on different things.

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If you believe that Jesus is God. Well, now, I'll back up here a second. Peter and Paul disagreed on different, such as,

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I'd like some specificities there. I mean, there's a lot of people that assert apostolic inconsistency between Peter and Paul.

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But I would like to know what specific is being referred to there. And certainly, they did not disagree on who

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God is, who we're worshiping, whether we're worshiping one person that acts like three persons, or whether we're worshiping one

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God as manifested himself in three persons. That is a heaven and hell issue in the sense that it defines not only the object of worship, but the gospel is a

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Trinitarian gospel. It is grounded in the Father's decree, is accomplished by the Son. It is applied by the

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Spirit. It can only be understood, for example, in regards to the intercessory work of the Son, if the

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Son is a distinct person from the Father. You can't intercede before yourself. So, these are extremely important issues and cannot be put into just an area, well,

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Peter and Paul disagreed with each other, so we can disagree too. I'd like to know what you think they disagreed about, A, and B, I mean, are you talking about Galatians?

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Because Peter agreed with that. Peter agreed with the rebuke. And Paul was the one who was right.

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And it was a gospel issue. That's why I didn't figure you were talking about that. You can't be, the Galatians thing is in Scripture, so that's not even,

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Peter was in hypocrisy. He was not orthopodeo -ing, he was not walking straight in accordance with the truth of the gospel, as Galatians tells us.

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So, it can't be that. So, it must be something else that is in reference there. If you believe that Jesus is

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God in the flesh, and you're born of the water and the Spirit, according to John 3, I feel like how Jesus said, they're not against us, they're for us, all right?

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Well, Mormons would believe all these things too, but Mormons are polytheists, and they believe in multiple gods, and Jehovah's Witnesses don't believe that, but they believe

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Jesus is a God, and there's all sorts of variations you can throw in there. You can minimize things all you want, but the fact of the matter is, if you are teaching that the

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Son, as a divine person, has not eternally existed, then that's a division issue, that has to be a division issue.

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I want to say to you, brothers, if you choose to answer these questions, I generally have a desire, you know,

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I love truth, I love studying the Word of God, and I would love— These questions have been answered for, well, in many instances, since the third and fourth centuries, and in Marcus' own life, he has been responded to repeatedly by numerous people that I know of, that have given clear, full, cogent responses.

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Have the unity in the body of Christ. I don't hate anyone. I know when I was younger, I was a little bit zealous, and I apologize for that.

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I say, hey, let's come together, let's study, let's seek God. The Bible says, great is the mystery of godliness. So, I'm going to ask a couple of questions, and the reason why

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I wanted to do it this way is because I believe that when, you know, people debate, oftentimes what we see happening is if someone can't answer one of my questions, they avoid it, and they dance around it, and they say, well, what about this, and what about this verse?

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No, I want the answers to the questions, and I want to see it in the Bible. So, I love you, brothers. Well, of course, the other possibility is that you don't want to have to answer the responding questions, because your system is incoherent, it is inconsistent with itself, it can't answer numerous questions.

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I do not believe any exemplification of oneness theology can address

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John chapter 17 in any meaningful fashion. There's just too much there.

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There are too many clear distinctions between the Father and the Son. The Son is clearly identified as a divine person.

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There is communication between two persons, both in his prayer as well as in reference to his pre -existence in the presence of the

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Father before the world was, where he was glorious, not just as an idea, etc., etc.

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So, maybe that has something to do with it, too. I know some people call him, you know, a false prophet, he's a heretic, he believes in another

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Jesus, and things like that. I don't have that energy towards you, brothers. It's all love.

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I believe, like I said, I believe there's certain things that if you believe it, you know, we can walk together, because some things are heaven and hell issue, some things are revelation issue.

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So, my first question. Well, any issue that is a heaven and hell issue had better be a revelation issue, too.

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The Bible says that the Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary, and I want to say this. I already have—I'm not asking these questions like I don't know the answer.

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I already have explanations and answers for everything, but I want people to— Explanations and answers for everything. So, I'm going to ask you these questions, but my concern is you're going to listen to the answers, listen to the responses, you've already got the answers for everything.

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Study the Bibles for themselves. Study the Word of God for themselves, and know that the Bible cannot contradict itself.

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So, if you're reading the Bible and you find a contradiction between verses, it's your interpretation.

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It's not the Bible. The Word of God does not contradict itself because God does not lie. All right, so check this out. The Bible says the

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Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary. Would that not make the Holy Spirit the Father of Jesus?

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No, for many, many reasons that should be, I think, self -evident and obvious. Never does the

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Scriptures identify the Holy Spirit's activity as the means by which the

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Father is to be identified. The Holy Spirit is distinguished from the Father. The Father and the Son send the Spirit. So, there's a distinction that's made between them.

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The relationship of the Father and the Son is an eternal relationship. That's something that I believe your theology denies.

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I don't think you believe that the Son existed as the Son prior to the

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Incarnation, and never does the Scripture say that because of the virgin birth, that Jesus is the

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Son of God because of the virgin birth. He is not the son of Joseph, naturally, because of the virgin birth, but the identity of the

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Father is never connected. It's not said that Jesus is his Father, the

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Father is the Father of Jesus because the Father overshadowed Mary or anything else. The reason it's the

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Spirit that overshadows Mary is because that's just simply the mechanism by which God works in the world, and it was a supernatural conception.

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That's not what makes Jesus the Son of God. He has been the Son for eternity.

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That's the relationship that he bears to the Father, and that is not a relationship that came into existence in time.

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I suppose if you're an adoptionist or something like that, I mean, the problem is, with all one of these folks, you can't even tell exactly where they're coming from.

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But if you are an adoptionist or something like that, maybe you have some other way of defining these things.

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I don't know. But just answering the question, that's not what makes the Father the Father in the first place.

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Question number two, where in the Bible does it say, pray to the Holy Spirit? I know that it says pray in the

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Holy Spirit, pray with the Holy Spirit, to fellowship with the Holy Spirit, but where does it say, you know, pray to the

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Holy Spirit, like it's a separate individual? I understand that some people say they pray to the Father, sometimes they pray to the

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Son, sometimes they pray to the Holy Spirit. We see this, you know, I think in the Catholic religion, they pray to Mary sometimes, and I believe some of the other apostles.

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There is no explicit command or example of prayer to the Spirit, because prayer is normally done by the power of the

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Spirit. However, you do have not only references of prayer to the Father, but you also have references of prayer to the

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Son. Jesus said in John 14 that after His resurrection, you would ask Him anything in His name and He would do it.

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This had to be done by prayer. The early Church was known as those, according to 1 Corinthians, who epikaleoed, they called upon the name of the

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Lord, specifically in reference to the Son, that particular point. So, if you have prayer addressed to the

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Father and to the Son, then I certainly think it is appropriate or acceptable to address prayer to the

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Holy Spirit, though the normal object of prayer is the Father and also as well as the

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Son as well. But there is no, no one's claimed that there is a command to pray to the Holy Spirit.

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You might be able to garner some possible foundation from that, some of the visions in Revelation as far as the heavenly situation is concerned and the seven spirits, which just simply means the fullness of the

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Spirit of God possibility, but again, it's not, it's not a, it's not a command in the first place.

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So, where in the Bible does it say to pray to the Holy Spirit? We see in the

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Trinitarian doctrine, it says they're co -equal, right? There are three persons, personalities, some people say persons, some people say personalities, but they're—

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Now, Trinitarians say persons. Equal, right? That's— Equal in their participation in the being of God.

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They are not identical to one another. There are things that distinguish them, given

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Scripture, as we were tying earlier about the opera ad intra, and then there's the opera ad extra, the things that they do in regards to creation.

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And so, the economic trinity is revealed to us. So, the Father is clearly distinguished from the

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Son, the Son clearly distinguished from the Spirit, in a way that is much clearer to us than before creation, because we are part of creation and our knowledge of what took place before creation began is rather limited.

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But this idea of equality does not mean sameness, it does not mean the same offices, it does not mean functioning in the same way, it was not the

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Spirit who became incarnate, it was not the Father who became incarnate, it was the Son who became incarnate, and so they take different roles in the accomplishment of the one work of salvation, which is not focused upon mankind, it's focused upon God and a demonstration of His mercy,

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His grace, His love, His power, and His judgment. That's like a big strong point. They are all equal, they speak together in unity.

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Speak together in unity. What do you mean by that? It sounds like a strong man. They certainly are not saying contradictory things.

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It doesn't mean that they're all saying the same things or doing the same things. There is perfect harmony between the

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Father, the Son, and the Spirit, but harmony is not sameness. Harmony is not sameness.

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And so that's a big thing that I've seen a lot of people say, like, they're three, but they're all equal, you know, in power and authority.

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So why does, in John 14, Jesus say, the Father is greater than me? It amazes me that anyone—I mean,

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I fully understand when I encounter someone who was raised within one's Pentecostalism and maybe has not had a lot of encounters with people from outside their own very small cadre of individuals,

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I could get that. And when I encounter Jehovah's Witnesses who quote this and stuff, but it's very hard for me to understand how anyone could put themselves forward as any type of a teacher who is not already fully aware of what the responses—and

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I don't mean internet responses. If what you know about Trinitarianism is derived from comm boxes and YouTube, I'm sorry,

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I have a really hard time respecting that. When I studied

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Oneness Pentecostalism, I went to the best Oneness Pentecostal writers, and I bought their books, and I read their materials, and we've tried to set up some debates with some of the leading individuals, not the young guns that no one's ever heard of before, but the people who've actually published, have some type of an influence in their movement, and would still like to do that in the future.

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But you go to the original sources, and if Marcus Rogers would read almost any book, any meaningful work of scholarship on the subject of the

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Trinity, all these questions would be answered for him very, very clearly. And John chapter 14,

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Jehovah's Witnesses, Muslims, Mormons, Unitarians, Oneness Pentecostals, everybody quotes it, but they almost never quote it in context.

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The Father is greater than I am. What's the context of that? What's the rest of the verse talking about? What's the context of the verse?

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He, Jesus has just said that he's going back into the presence of the Father, and he says to the disciples, if you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because the

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Father is greater than I am. So, there's a clear context. The Father didn't become incarnate.

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The Father is not being followed around by Pharisees that are trying to catch him at every word. The Father is not being surrounded by sick people with every kind of disease, trying to, surrounding the house that he's in.

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The Father has not had dust fall down upon his head from people breaking through the roof to drop paralytics down toward him to be healed.

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The Son has entered into human experience. And so, the

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Father has not become incarnate. And so, the Father is in a greater position.

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He is on the throne of heaven surrounded by the seraphim and the cherubim. He is not walking the dusty roads of Galilee.

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And so, the Son is going to return back. If you just read a few chapters on,

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Jesus himself will say in that high priestly prayer in John 17 5,

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Father, glorify me with the glory which I had with you in your presence before the world was.

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He does not have that glory. He has laid that glory aside voluntarily to function as the

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Messiah, to function as the sacrifice for God's people. And so, he is going to return back to that glorious position that was once his.

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And so, this is not saying the Father is better than I am. But in a debate, my response back would be, then who is the

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Son? Because if you are saying that the

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Father is greater than the Son, do you believe that the Son has eternally existed? When did the

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Son come into existence? Is the Son going to be interceding for us? How is it that the

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Son is worshiped by all created things in Revelation chapter 5? So, that's why debates are what debates are, because they don't always, but should at least, place both sides in the position of having to answer as many questions as they themselves are asking.

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It doesn't always work out that way, but it sometimes does, and that's very, very useful.

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Right. If they're all equal, why does Jesus say the Father is greater? Okay. There's clear equivocation, clear error, category error on Mr.

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Rogers' part. Mr. Rogers' part. That sounds weird. All equal.

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That does not mean they're all the same. Anyone who can make that objection has not even the beginning of an understanding of what the doctrine of Trinity is.

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So, if you deny it, but you don't even understand what it is, that's not a good thing.

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That does not cause people to go, that's a meaningful objection. You're objecting to something you do not understand.

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We are not saying that the Father became incarnate. We are not saying that the Spirit became incarnate.

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So, if you say, well, they're all equal, then how can one be greater than the other? Because the Son voluntarily entered into human flesh to become the

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God -man. The Father did not and the Spirit did not. It's not even an objection. When you raise objections that are not even an objection, that helps the other side.

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It really does when people understand what the doctrine actually is. If they're all equal, this is a separate question.

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Why doesn't Jesus know the day or the hour? Mark 13, 32, he says, only my Father knows.

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So, are they keeping information from Him? Because, like, you don't have the right security clearance. So, we know this, but you don't need to know this?

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Of course, again, those who have listened to this program, we have addressed this subject as it's been raised by Muslims, by Mormons, by Jehovah's Witnesses, all for different purposes, which is interesting.

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But again, at this point, it would be helpful at this point to have a specific confession of faith to understand exactly how an advocate of some type of modalism would find this to be a meaningful objection.

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And maybe I've misunderstood where he's coming from. It's been a couple of years since I even had heard of the gentleman, and I know we've responded to his stuff in the past.

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My understanding is that he's some sort of modalist, and so a modalist would have to answer this question as well.

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And normally, the modalist would do it by dividing Jesus into multiple persons, to where the non -divine son doesn't know, but the other part of him, because he's sort of schizophrenic, so he has one side that praises the other side, and one side knows stuff the other side doesn't know.

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My response is that just as Jesus laid aside the exercise of a number of His divine prerogatives, including the display of His glory, which was briefly changed on the

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Mount of Transfiguration when He was transfigured before the disciples, and they saw His glory as He truly was, and yet when they come down from the mountain, that glory is no longer displayed.

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So there had to be a veiling, a laying aside, a voluntary laying aside.

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To point out the Philippians chapter 2, verse 7 says that He made Himself of no reputation.

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This is something Jesus did, and so the laying aside of certain aspects of divine knowledge, evidently, for what reasons

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I do not know, we're not told, was incompatible with Jesus' function as the

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Messiah, just as walking down the streets of Jerusalem glowing with the Shekinah glory of God would have precluded

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His being able to fulfill the position and function of the Messiah in the way that God intended for the

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Messiah to live and to die. That would have fit how the Jews would have liked it, but that's not what

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God's intention was. So there is a veiling. It is for the period of the

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Incarnation. I am quite certain that Jesus is well aware of the day and the hour today, but at that point in time, it's interesting, though, that even in those words in Mark 13 and Matthew as well, when

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Jesus says no one knows the day of the hour, in that same section,

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He identifies Himself as the Son and separates Himself both from men and angels. And so, again, that raises the question, what is

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Marcus Rogers' view of who Jesus is? Is He the

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God -man, and if so, who is the Son? Is the

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Son two persons, and how can the Son be ontologically above men and angels if He came into existence in Bethlehem?

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Again, these are questions that would need to have an answer and would have to be answered in a debate context.

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Okay, another straw man, if they always speak in unity, what does that mean?

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Where does the doctrine of the Trinity say that they can only say the same words when they're taking different functions?

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When Jesus says, let this cup pass from me, He is speaking as the sinless Son of God prior to taking on the sins of man.

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So, He is not fearing death. In fact, He's not fearing anything.

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It's the sinless One facing becoming sin for us, which, again, absolutely unique, never happened before, never happened again, completely cosmos -altering reality there, but that has nothing to do with the doctrine of the

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Trinity. Jesus as the God -man faced the reality.

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He said it is necessary that I go to Jerusalem. It is necessary I be betrayed and be killed and rise again the third day.

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But in speaking of that tremendous self -giving, it's not the death that's in view.

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It is that taking on the sin. And certainly, the

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Son would not go, this is going to be fun. No, it was, and, you know, some people say, well, if, but if He knew what the outcome was, then why?

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It doesn't matter. You're still talking about the One who is going to be made sin for us.

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It's hard for us to even begin to imagine what that actually would involve and what that would mean.

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But that's what he's referring to there. It's, again, this very shallow, straw -man -ish, well, if they're all equal, they all say the same thing, blah, blah, blah, blah.

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It just, it's a very, very simplistic objection to a doctrine that's much deeper than these objections even give ear to.

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Why did He pray to the Father and not the Holy Spirit? Why did

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He pray? That's like saying, why did He use these words and not other words? He did. There's not a why.

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Why should He? His regular practice is to pray to the

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Father. He is being assisted and aided by the Holy Spirit, but His prayer is to the

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Father. He says, glorify me with the glory which I had in your presence before the world was, addressed to the Father.

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This kind of objection, it has no substance.

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It's just, it's air moving, but it's like, why are you even asking that?

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What's the relevance of it? Where in the doctrine of the Trinity is there something that would demand that He pray to the

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Holy Spirit? There's nothing. So, it's just like, I'm going to throw some stuff out there and see what sticks. What's the reasoning for it?

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We're not told. Did the Holy Spirit's opinion not matter? Because when He prayed, He said, first of all,

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His will was not lined up with the Father and the Holy Spirit. No, of course it was. Of course it was.

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Of course it was. He did it, didn't He? That doesn't mean that just because He knew it was going to happen, that He cannot express the reality of just the recoil.

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Can you imagine being eternally holy and then having the sins of all of God's people placed upon you and treated and experienced the wrath of God in their place?

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I guess you can't because you don't understand the gospel. You don't understand the Trinitarian nature of the gospel in the first place.

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I don't even understand in, again, if this is some type of oneness expression,

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I don't even understand how that works from your perspective. What was going on there? Intercession?

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The prayers in Gethsemane? Was this one part of Jesus praying to another part of Jesus or something?

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I've often said that not only are the prayers of Jesus impossible for this perspective to understand, but the

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Atonement doesn't make any sense. I mean, how is the wrath of the

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Father falling on the Father? I mean, it makes sense in a Trinitarian fashion because you have the

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Son voluntarily taking the place of those who unite with Him and so on and so forth, but how does that work within some type of oneness perspective, if that's what's being presented?

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I say they all speak as one, they're in unity, they share the same will, all that kind of stuff. So was

32:57

He in rebellion to the Father and the Holy Spirit because His will at the time did not line up?

33:03

He was saying, let this cup pass from me. I don't want to. And then not only that, in the prayer, He didn't even acknowledge the

33:08

Holy Spirit. He only prayed to the Father. Okay, lots of straw men, lots of misunderstanding of who

33:13

Jesus is, lots of misunderstanding of Dr. Trinity, very, very shallow, missing the point, but sadly, there are a lot of, you know, if you want to find a reason to not believe, it's not difficult to find a reason not to believe.

33:33

When I listen to many of my Muslim friends, one of the things they like to do is they like to isolate phrases from the

33:41

Athanasian Creed, knowing that anyone who reads the Athanasian Creed without a context to it can just make it sound crazy.

33:50

I mean, it's just crazy talk. When you read it in context, then it's addressing very important issues and it's perfectly logical.

33:59

But anybody who wants to come up with a way, I mean, you can do this with God's eternality, you can do this

34:07

God's creator, you can do this God's goodness, His knowledge of future events. Anybody who wants to find a reason to not believe will be able to do so, and you cannot stop that.

34:22

God will stop that someday. Justice will be done. But there is no, you know, people want the silver, you know, the quote -unquote silver bullet, the thing that this is the one argument that'll shut anybody down.

34:38

Nope, there is no such one argument. You guys say they all, you know, communicate together. In Matthew 28, why does it say name instead of names?

34:49

When the Bible said, when Jesus said to baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, it's one name, a singular name, okay?

34:57

Where in the Bible, different question, where in the Bible... Okay, different question going on to the standard Jesus -only stuff.

35:05

Baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. So I've recommended,

35:11

I would recommend for Marcus Rogers, but I'm not sure he'd bother to do it, but I've recommended many times the excellent work of Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield on the subject of the

35:26

Trinity, studies in the Trinity, an excellent work. He does Yeoman's work on Matthew chapter 28 and what it meant to be baptized into someone's name.

35:37

But the idea here is not to go into a

35:44

Hebrew understanding of name and how one divine name associates the

35:50

Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit in the same way that not only did the New Testament writers identify each of these divine persons as Yahweh, but that this unifies them in representing the one true

36:06

God, but distinguishes them from one another, which is what the doctrine of the Trinity does. But the objection here is that what you should understand in Matthew 28 is that instead of taking this as a formula, which is what

36:23

Christians have done now through the centuries, what you should have understood from their perspective is that when you come to the book of Acts, they're baptized in the name of Jesus.

36:32

And of course, our perspective is that is the formula, and what you have in Acts is just simply shorthand for Christian baptism.

36:40

In other words, what you have in Acts is not the specific words that says,

36:45

I baptize you in Jesus's name, which is the one name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which really wouldn't—even in oneist theology isn't the one name, because Jesus wasn't the

36:56

Spirit at the time he was incarnate, was he? Was God's name Jesus before the incarnation?

37:03

None of that makes any sense. But the argument is, well, you're baptized in Jesus's name only, even though the person who's identified as Jesus was the

37:13

Father in the Old Jesus and is now the

37:19

Spirit. And I don't know where the Son went in their theology, in this particular man's theology.

37:28

I don't know what ends up happening to him. Where in the Bible—different question—where in the Bible did anybody get baptized

37:34

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? The answer is not Matthew 28. That was Jesus telling them how to baptize, and nobody was baptized in Matthew 28.

37:42

So from that point on, every time somebody was baptized, they baptized them in the name of Jesus.

37:48

So the assertion being that in the book of Acts, when they receive Christian baptism in the name of Jesus, that's an actual quote.

37:55

So you have the actual quote from Jesus, baptized this way, but that's not really meant to be taken literally.

38:01

And then you get the general statements, they're baptized, Christian baptism in the name of Jesus, oh, but that's a direct quote.

38:08

So the direct quote becomes a non -quote, and the non -quotes become the quote. See how that works? It's zzzz.

38:14

That sounds right. So when he says, let us baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the apostles went and baptized in the name of Jesus.

38:23

Nobody got baptized Father, Son, Holy Spirit anywhere in the Bible. Some people have argued with me, they said, well, the apostles did it wrong.

38:30

Like I said, the Bible can't contradict itself. Who is speaking to Abraham and Jonah when the

38:37

Bible says the word of the Lord came to them, right? When the word of the came to Abraham and Jonah, Saul on the

38:43

Damascus Road, when Moses was talking to the burning bush, I know the angel was there, but then the voice said,

38:48

I am what I am. What was that voice? Do you believe that it was one voice?

38:54

Just like there was one name, there was one voice. It says, the word of the Lord. Who is the Lord? Well, actually, as Genesis 18 and 19 shows us, you have

39:03

Yahweh in human form walking with two angels, with Abram by the

39:08

Oak of Mamre, the two angels go down to Sodom and Gomorrah, and then the Yahweh who walked with Abram rains fire and brimstone from Yahweh in heaven.

39:18

So, the Yahweh on earth rains fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah from Yahweh in heaven. And so, that's why we have to let all the

39:26

Bible speak. So, John 1 18 tells us that no one has seen God at any time. Well, who was seen by Abraham? Who was seen by Isaiah in Isaiah chapter 6?

39:36

According to John 1 18, no one has seen God at any time. The unique God, the monogamous Theos, who is in the bosom of the

39:43

Father, he has made him known. This is the one who became flesh, the logos in John 1 1, who eternally existed in the presence of God in John 1 1.

39:51

And so, this is a refutation of any type of oneness, Jesus -only type teaching, because John 1 1 tells us that the word, the logos, is eternal, and that word is not merely an idea, that word is not merely a plan, that word was in fellowship with the

40:05

Father. That's what John 1 1 teaches. That word becomes flesh in John 1 14, it's described as a monogamous

40:11

Theos in John 1 18. That's pretty much the end of oneness theology, as far as that's concerned. Right.

40:17

Saul looked up and it was the Lord speaking to him. In all these occasions, the Lord was speaking. Who is the Lord? Is the

40:23

Lord, as you guys say, the voice of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit? Actually, scripture identifies Lord, of course,

40:29

Kurios in the Old Testament is the Hebrew term Yahweh. Well, not always, but in many of those instances, it is specific to the term

40:35

Yahweh used thousands of times in the Old Testament. And the Father is identified as Yahweh in, for example,

40:42

Isaiah 53. It's Yahweh that lays our sins upon the Messiah. The Son is identified as Yahweh in John 12 41,

40:50

Hebrews 1 10 through 12, 1 Peter 3 15, a number of places such as that.

40:57

And the Spirit is the Spirit of Yahweh, and hence speaks for Yahweh.

41:04

And so, one God, three divine persons. Sounds like the doctrine of the Trinity. That's why

41:09

Christians believe it. Is the Spirit speaking as one, in that one voice, or was it the Father speaking?

41:14

Some people say, oh, it was the Holy Spirit speaking through the burning bush, or was the Son speaking or the Father speaking? Oh, we are generally not told.

41:22

We're generally not told. I mean, there is the general statement that it's the Spirit speaking in the prophets.

41:30

David spoke by the Holy Spirit, so the one that engages in the act of inspiration.

41:38

But there is nothing in Scripture that says every single time in the Old Testament God speaks, we're going to identify with divine persons, because the doctrine of the

41:46

Trinity is primarily revealed in the incarnation of Jesus Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. So, it's primarily a

41:52

New Testament revelation. Let's see. What does it mean to be made in the image of God?

41:59

I was talking to a Trinitarian brother, and he said, well, it means, you know, fingers and toes and things.

42:05

And so, I asked him, I said... Again, it would really help, Mr. Rogers, if you would stop getting your knowledge of Trinitarian theology from people on the internet, and you would pick up some books and actually read them and seek to understand them and understand them accurately.

42:23

The imago Dei is not fingers and toes and things like that, and I don't...

42:29

I honestly can't even begin to conceive of why any Trinitarian would think along those lines.

42:36

There's no connection in any way. You know, maybe you think Mormons or Trinitarians, I don't know.

42:44

But the image of God is what separates us from the rest of the created order in our ability to have relationship with God, to recognize ourselves as the creatures of God, to give thanks to God, to enter into fellowship with Him, and to make us the objects of His redemptive work.

43:03

So, it is our ability to communicate with God, to worship God, and to recognize ourselves as distinct from the rest of creation, our duties before God, ability to have fellowship with Him and with one another in the worship of God as well.

43:20

Well, why did, in John 1, he says, God wrapped Himself in flesh, you know, and the Bible says that God...

43:26

That's an interesting translation, but... It's a spirit, right? So, if we're made in the image of God and God isn't sitting up there looking like this because He's a spirit, what does that mean?

43:35

And if we look at how we're actually made, I have a soul, I have a spirit, and I have a fleshly body, but I am one person.

43:41

Well, if you take a tripartite view of mankind, I do not.

43:47

I take a bipartite view. But again, we are created as one creation, which is why the separation of the spiritual from the physical has to be dealt with.

44:00

That's what the resurrection is about. It is unnatural for mankind to exist only in the spiritual realm.

44:06

That's why there will be a resurrection body, and resurrection is the raising of that which died, coming to life again.

44:13

It's the very meaning of resurrection itself. My soul is not over here. My spirit is not over here.

44:18

I'm made in the image of God, and all three are one. And when I die, my soul can leave my body the same way that the

44:26

Holy Spirit can come out from God, right? And we be filled with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit can come out from God.

44:34

I have no idea what any of that means, but we're not given any Bible verses that are even slightly relevant, so I'm not going to spend too much time on that.

44:42

What spirit moved across the earth in Genesis, in the beginning, when the spirit of God moved?

44:47

So the Bible says that— You just answered your own question. The spirit of God? God is a spirit, right?

44:54

And the spirit is moving across the earth, moving across the water. So you're confusing the category that God is spirit, he exists spiritually rather than physically, with the identification of the third person, the spirit of God.

45:07

Is that all this is, is just simply a simple category error? Does that mean that if God is a spirit and there's the

45:14

Holy Spirit, when you get to heaven, is there going to be the spirit of God, the Son, and the Holy Spirit?

45:20

Are there two spirits? Is it one spirit? Was the Holy Spirit moving across the earth? Not really sure where this is going, but there is the category of being spirit rather than flesh, being material, spiritual rather than material.

45:40

God is spirit, which means he's not limited to the material realm. And then we have the spirit of God who is distinguished from the

45:48

Father. The Father and the Son send the spirit to indwell God's people, and it was the spirit who was the primary instrument of revelation to the prophets and apostles.

46:02

That's what, again, I quoted earlier, Jesus said, David by the Holy Spirit said, well, yeah. And so there you have some indication of the spirit's role in that context.

46:13

But it does seem that for a lot of oneness folks, there's a real struggle with categories, being able to distinguish between ontological existence categories and function categories.

46:25

Those are distinctions that we have every day in life, but when it comes to reading the scriptures with an eye to recognizing these things, some people struggle in that area.

46:37

All right, that's just another question. Then here's a couple bonus questions if you guys feel like you just really want to answer these.

46:43

A lot of your beliefs are very similar to Catholics, right? So Catholics believe in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and they baptize

46:51

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You guys have a lot of similarities. Do you believe that Catholics are saved?

46:58

Well, we've never addressed that. Let's not worry about the books back here on that particular subject.

47:06

I'm sorry, but it just doesn't strike me that Mr. Rogers really wants answers to these questions.

47:12

They're, you know, if you're going to present objections, then just be up front. These are objections.

47:18

These are why I don't believe what you believe. But, you know, it seems like you're very similar. No, that is a way of thought that certain people have.

47:29

Obviously, I could draw parallels. Okay, you're very similar to Muslims, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Mormons.

47:34

That means you're a cultist, right? Are you going to accept that as a particular argument? Are you going to accept that those, but there's so many differences that are, yeah, that are categorically different.

47:45

I get it. But then you need to get it too. You need to be consistent.

47:52

Anyway, just very, very briefly, Roman Catholicism has a false gospel. It has a gospel that is focused upon an unfinished work of Christ.

48:03

There is no finished work. The Mass is a perpetuatory, unbloody sacrifice that perfects no one.

48:10

The sacramental system is a system based upon the autonomous acts of man, aided by prevenient grace.

48:17

None of those things are biblical teachings without a finished work to be applied in the first place.

48:23

And so it can never perfect anyone. It can never give anyone peace before God. And this is why Roman Catholicism must be evangelized.

48:31

How's that? Do you believe that because they agree with the revelation that you have about the

48:36

Father and Son, Holy Spirit, that they believe in the true God? And my final question, bonus question, is it a heaven or hell issue, and why is it?

48:46

Now, I know when I talked to Stephen, he said the reason why it's a heaven or hell issue and why, you know, these Oneness preachers are going to hell is because they deny the

48:54

Father. That was the verse that he gave me. And I said, we don't deny the Father, right? He kept using that verse. 05

49:00

I assume that what you're referring to is in 1 John 2, that is, if you do not confess the

49:06

Son, you do not have the Father also. And so, again, who is the

49:12

Son? From the objections that have been raised in this video, the only way

49:20

I can consistently understand them, and you may not be consistent, that may be something you find to be relevant, but if you're consistent, then you would have to believe that the

49:30

Son is a creature who came into existence in Bethlehem, was indwelt by God the Father, died and rose again.

49:38

What that creature was, was it truly a man?

49:44

So was there a man Jesus who was not divine, and then a man Jesus who was?

49:50

So the prayers of Jesus are one half of Jesus praying, the other half of Jesus? What happened to the soul of the man

49:56

Jesus? Did he have a soul? Was he spiritual? Or was he just a carton, a box carrying

50:05

God around? Where is the Son today? What's the Son's role today?

50:11

Scripture says the Son intercedes for us, that's a divine function. Scripture says the

50:18

Son is being worshipped by all the creation today, but if he's just a creature, he shouldn't be being worshipped by anyone.

50:26

So, there's, I don't know what your particular conclusion to all those things might be, but what

50:36

John was saying is, is you are to honor the Son, even as you honor the

50:42

Father. You are, and if you deny the Son, then you don't have the

50:50

Father either. Now, the initial application of that was in the first century in regards to probably the early

50:57

Gnostic heretics, or Gnostics who were, had Jewish tendencies, some possibility of that in Colossians.

51:04

But the point is that within oneness Pentecostalism, because you do not confess the eternal nature of the second person, the

51:16

Son, then you don't have the Father either, because you're denying the

51:21

Father's testimony to the Son in that way. I'm assuming that. I did not see the conversation between Stephen Bankert and Marcus Rogers to comment upon it, but that would be my guess is what's being referred to.

51:38

I said, we just, you know, what we believe is you have the Spirit of God, and out of that Spirit, you see different ways that God has chosen to reveal himself, because the fullness of the

51:49

Godhead, right, is in Jesus Christ. He is God in the flesh. Okay, so that's your standard oneness

51:55

Pentecostalism, denial of the existence of three divine persons, fullness of Godhead does not mean that everything that is

52:05

God was dwelling in Jesus in the sense of the Father and the Spirit, as well as the

52:11

Son. But the point, again, is who was the Son? Was the

52:17

Son, did the Son exist prior to his birth in Bethlehem? That's always how you can identify oneness

52:24

Pentecostalism. You go to John 1 .1, the Logos existed as a divine person.

52:31

You go to John 17 .5, the Logos as a divine person was glorious in the presence of the

52:37

Father. Philippians chapter 2, the second person of the Trinity, the Son, did not give consideration to holding onto the equality he had with the

52:48

Father, but made himself of no reputation by taking on the physical form. That's the Son that did that.

52:54

Now, if the Son does not come into existence until his birth in Bethlehem, then all those verses are wrong. All those verses are in error.

53:00

But if those verses are true, then united Pentecostalism is false, and hence becomes a heaven and hell issue.

53:09

It is certainly a fellowship issue. We worship a completely different God, and the gospel itself is deeply impacted by this because of what the very purposes of God are and the mechanism by which redemption has taken place, and that's why it is, indeed, a heaven and hell issue.

53:29

So, I tried to be as quick as possible I could with that, and I wasn't. It still took me 53 minutes, and I apologize for that.

53:37

Just a few minutes, then, to continue on. There were a number of people who were disappointed that we did not, in the very next program, continue our response to J.

53:48

Dyer. We'll get a few minutes in here and spread that out. Again, these are important issues.

53:54

On the last—was it the last program? The program before the last one of the two. When we responded to Mr.

54:06

Chan, I am reminded once again of the fact that it is absolutely necessary to reiterate over and over again some basic foundational truths regarding scriptural sufficiency over against the many people who would seek to enslave the scriptures to external authorities.

54:32

For example, there was a blog article, michaelloftonsite .wordpress

54:38

.com, and notice some of the—when it comes to the issue of the canon, for example.

54:53

Moreover, in the video, Dr. White repeated his claim that the canon is something God determines, not man. It is odd Dr. White continues to make this point, since nobody disagrees that God determines the canon in an ontological way.

55:01

Notice the addition, in an ontological way. No, it is very, very common, and I'm probably—I don't know, but I'm probably older than this gentleman.

55:12

I remember very, very clearly in debating geriatrics on this subject at Boston College almost 30 years ago now.

55:23

That was 1993, so coming up on 30 years. Hey, August of this year,

55:29

I just realized. We never remember—we never, ever, ever remember to do celebrations and to do, hey, this happened so long ago, especially the founding of Alpha Omega Ministries.

55:43

I mean, the next big date for us will be 40 years, and only once—I think at 30, we had people send in emails or something else sort of neat.

55:55

We put up—we made a specific email address. But we just stink at this, because,

56:03

I mean, most people would be just raising money right, left, and center, and we just forget.

56:08

We just keep bumbling along. So, August, I wonder if we could find an old newsletter someplace.

56:19

I'd like to know—no, do we still have the cassette tapes? We still have them in a box.

56:27

I think we do. Do you think that the—I don't remember if we even have the cassette tape for this.

56:35

I want to know the date of the debate with Jerry Matitox in Long Beach. That was,

56:40

I think, August of 1990. I think it was like August—no, no, pretty sure it was

56:49

August. Destroyed? Well, we've got to find out when that was.

56:59

There's got to be something, some way, somewhere, of being able to find out what that was, maybe in the—some of the

57:04

This Rock archives in a box someplace. But I just realized that'll be 30 years this summer.

57:12

I've been debating for 30 years, and I can assure you that the argument that was being made by the

57:22

Roman Catholics at that time was that the Church in Rome, because of the presence of the

57:28

Bishop of Rome, has the authority to authoritatively determine the canon of Scripture.

57:34

And there was no distinction whatsoever being made between the epistemological recognition of the ontological canon and the ontological canon itself.

57:46

We pushed that. We, in the modern period, pushed that. Obviously, the

57:52

Reformers had done the same thing in the past, but it is vitally important to distinguish between the ontological canon, which is canon one, that is, canon that is the artifact of revelation.

58:09

God inspires some books. He does not inspire all books. Therefore, since God's inspirational activity is specific and limited, then the canon exists because of the limitation of that activity.

58:24

He doesn't inspire all books. He inspired some. Therefore, by choosing only to inspire these books, that creates the canon of necessity as an act of revelation.

58:38

How many times I had Roman Catholics saying, the canon has to be a part of revelation and it's not, and therefore, that vitiates sola scriptura, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

58:51

No, it doesn't. And so, what we emphasized and what accurately represents what generations before us have emphasized is the fact that canon one is infallibly known to God, whether God wants anybody else to know it or not.

59:12

So, the question is, does God want us to know the contents of that canon? The answer is yes. So, for example, what's the constant argument that fallible men created an infallible list?

59:26

Well, wait a minute. Ontologically, they didn't because they didn't create the list in the first place, did they?

59:32

So, there is confusion. The distinction has to be made and we're making that distinction.

59:39

So, the question, he says, is not who determines the canon ontologically. Yes, it is. But how do we ascertain what

59:45

God has already determined is canonical, which is an epistemological issue? Yeah, but it's a secondary issue because epistemologically, if you're talking about a theological reality, that's totally different than a historical reality.

01:00:00

So, you can spend all day long talking about the history of this early church father believed this and this early church father believed that and we can't even tell what that early church father believed.

01:00:09

And that's what most books on canon are, are historical surveys of that process over time, which could have been done if there was more literature available in the intertestamental period as well.

01:00:20

That's one of the things that's so valuable about Beckwith's book, the Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church, is that that's what he's focusing upon is the various sources that we can look at in regards to the canon of scripture in the intertestamental period and when that canon begins to function and how long before Jesus, because we know it's in place before Jesus.

01:00:44

There's no debating between Jesus and the Jews as to, well, is Isaiah canonical, is Isaiah not canonical?

01:00:51

We don't know. And so, that takes us back to the white question, and I never named it that, the

01:00:57

Roman Catholics did, but the question that I asked Jerry Matitick sitting on the side of a bed at George Bonneau's home in 1993 in Massachusetts on a

01:01:09

WEZE radio, I've posted the picture, when I asked him,

01:01:15

Jerry, how did the believing Jewish man know that Isaiah and 2

01:01:22

Chronicles were scripture 50 years before Christ? I had not, I had not used that question during our debate.

01:01:30

I hadn't, I had not written it down. I was just simply trying to illustrate something, and he was dumbfounded.

01:01:39

He just, dead air. And so, the host of the program went to a commercial, and we still didn't get an answer, and I came back.

01:01:48

And I remember in years, years after that, back when I was still listening to cassette tapes, people would send me stuff, and I remember probably three or four years after that happened, so getting toward the end of the 90s,

01:02:05

I was listening to a Roman Catholic call -in show, and someone called in and talked about the white question, and that's what they were talking about.

01:02:11

How did the believing Jewish person know? So, I agree it's an epistemological issue in its secondary application, but if you don't start with the recognition that it exists because of the nature of scripture, and hence is a theological truth, rather than a survey of patristic sources and confusing and contradictory conciliar statements, because that's what they are.

01:02:36

They're confusing and contradictory conciliar statements, even from Rome's perspective, and from Rome's perspective, there is no final dogmatic statement on the doctrine of the trinity until April of 1546.

01:02:48

I can't tell you how many people I had arguing, geromantics, Catholic answers, were arguing that you have to have an infallibly defined canon of scripture for scripture to function.

01:03:00

So, that means scripture could not function until 1546, and anyone who wants to pretend that that's how the church was, that's what they were teaching until 1546 is, scripture is cool, but we don't really know what it is, so it's all just the

01:03:14

Pope. That's such a hilariously perverted view of church history that it would never survive.

01:03:22

It can be demonstrated to be untrue by tens of thousands of quotes. So, on the one hand,

01:03:31

Catholics believe the Holy Spirit guides non -inspired yet authoritative men to assert, to ascertain what

01:03:37

God has determined to be canonical. That's interesting, non -inspired yet authoritative. So, they're not inspired, but they have sufficient authority to define the actual extent of scripture.

01:03:49

So, you have a non -inspired canon of inspired books, right?

01:03:55

Is that where we're going now? Because that's not what was said before, and again, you get all sorts of different, you know, it's the

01:04:02

Roman Catholic view, it's the Eastern Orthodox view, then there's 47 ,000 different Roman Catholic perspectives and takes and so on and so forth.

01:04:10

So, when you say, I don't know why you're arguing this, because I've had lots and lots of published

01:04:15

Roman Catholic authors arguing that before, and of course, I did point out what they were saying is not the official position of Rome, it's their own understanding, but evidently, they're allowed to do that, but if we say something, then we're allowed to do it.

01:04:31

Anyway, I just wanted to mention that, and I now, and I do need to at least play, you know, 30 seconds of this or, you know, we're not gonna get anywhere.

01:04:40

But, all right, let's see if, hey, we haven't tried this yet. This is the part that went on the computer last week.

01:04:49

Yeah, so, did you say J. Dyer broke it? Okay, we're gonna blame J. J.

01:04:55

broke the computer last time. So, I think it's the hat, because the hat does not go. Look, J.,

01:05:01

dude, can I be honest with you? It honestly looks like you have a flashlight in a dark room.

01:05:10

I mean, you need, yeah, yeah, it's almost like the flashlight. Dude, get some lighting, man.

01:05:19

You've got some nice books back there, but they're like back in the dark, and you're not centered.

01:05:27

You're down at the bottom of the picture, and you're wearing a funky hat. Dude, come on, pick up your game.

01:05:34

For a New Testament canon, if he's talking about the Old Testament, of course not. So, when the text of the

01:05:42

New Testament themselves include references to extra canonical traditions, as Paul does, he says to the

01:05:50

Thessalonians, in 2 Thessalonians, he says, keep the traditions that you heard from me, whether oral or written, when he tells

01:05:55

Timothy. Okay, this is a really good one to talk about, and so, let's see, that was 22 seconds.

01:06:06

22 seconds. Very, very good, but I'm gonna have to take him down so I can bring the scriptures up here.

01:06:14

So, this is a text that is so well known, and I will take the rest of our time to do this quickly.

01:06:23

If you are a Reformed believer, and you are going to engage in anything regarding Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, or anything else,

01:06:35

I remember, I've told this story before, but we're reviewing stuff that we've said over coming up in 30 years now.

01:06:41

I remember the first time anyone ever asked me about this, it was, and I remember which direction I was facing.

01:06:47

I was facing west. How do I know this? Because I was in the fellowship center at the

01:06:52

North Phoenix Baptist Church prior to going out on outreach, Monday night outreach, Monday night outreach meal.

01:06:58

Remember that? You remember that, Rich? Did you ever do that? You did, okay. And someone sat down across from me, and they said they had run into a

01:07:09

Roman Catholic the week before on outreach, and they needed to know about this text. Now, I doubt that I gave them nearly as clear an explanation as I can now, because I hadn't been debating

01:07:21

Roman Catholics for decades at that point in time. Second Thessalonians chapter 2, verse 15, so then, brethren, stand firm, sticate, kai kratita, stand firm and hold fast to the paradasais, the traditions which you were taught, whether dia lagu, through word, or de epistales, through epistle, written form, of us, from us.

01:07:52

So, there is no, you know, beforehand, well, let's not go beforehand, because that actually answers the question, but here is the standard

01:08:03

Roman Catholic, or in this case, Eastern Orthodox interpretation. Here you have extra canonical tradition that is to be authoritative in the life of Christians.

01:08:14

Now, nowhere in Thessalonians are we told the content of this.

01:08:20

All we're told is that the entire church of Thessalonica had received what is interpreted here as oral tradition, and so,

01:08:30

Jerry Matitix, what he would like to do, he liked to bring this text out, and he would say to the

01:08:35

Protestants, you Protestants are only believing half of this command. This is a command, you are to hold firm, you're to stand fast, but you're to hold to two different kinds of traditions, and you're only holding to one.

01:08:51

You're not holding to that which was taught by word of mouth, you're only holding to that which was in the written form.

01:08:59

So, is that what Paul is doing here? The answer is no. No, by a long shot, let's look at the context of the verse.

01:09:09

Thessalonians 2 .13, but we should always give thanks to God for you, brethren, and be loved by the Lord, because God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the

01:09:18

Spirit and faith in the truth. It was for this he called you through our gospel that you may gain the glory of our

01:09:26

Lord Jesus Christ. So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught, whether by word of mouth or by letter from us.

01:09:33

So, what are you to hold firm to? Well, if you look at those verbs, stegate and kratita, in other passages in Paul, he's talking about the gospel message itself, which is what he's talking about here as well.

01:09:47

They're to hold to the gospel which had been delivered to the church at Thessalonica in two ways.

01:09:53

Paul had preached there by word, and Paul had written to them, 1 Thessalonians. So, they have the one gospel which has been delivered to them, paradosis, that's what the tradition is, in two different ways, through written word and through the preaching they had received from the

01:10:12

Apostle Paul. This does not contain anything that is not in the written word.

01:10:19

This is the smuggled -in belief that J. Dyer is presenting and that Roman Catholics try to believe.

01:10:27

And so, what they're saying is, there is revelation, there is something which is, now this is where they'll stop, but this is what they have to say.

01:10:34

If this is going to be relevant, they have to say, it's not just the scriptures that are theanustas, they have to say that the traditions are theanustas, because they're saying the traditions which are taught, so it's the traditions, one body, taught in two different ways.

01:10:50

The Thessalonians, living in the Apostolic Age, had heard it taught to them by Paul, and they had received it in 1

01:10:57

Thessalonians. Many other churches that only receive the preached word, or many other churches, would never have it preached to them by a living

01:11:06

Apostle, but would only receive it in the written word. But it's one body.

01:11:12

What Rome has to do, and what anyone denying Sola Scriptura has to do, is to say there's stuff in here that is not in here, okay?

01:11:29

That's the assertion. That's what they can't prove. That's what they can't prove. So, now you understand why

01:11:35

I asked Mitch Pacwa, in 1999, has

01:11:42

Rome defined a single word that Jesus ever spoke that's not in Scripture, infallibly?

01:11:51

No. Anything the Apostles ever did? No. The problem is, when

01:11:58

Rome says, well, we have the tradition of the Church, and the tradition of the Church is that which we draw from to define papal infallibility, and the bodily assumption of Mary, and the immaculate conception of Mary, and perpetual virginity of Mary.

01:12:11

So, what you're saying is the Apostles taught all that stuff to the Church at Thessalonica, and it was passed down orally.

01:12:20

Where's your evidence? There is none. And they know it. They know it.

01:12:26

These are things that developed, in the case of the last dogmas defined by Rome, a thousand, more than a thousand years after the days of Jesus.

01:12:37

There is no evidence that anyone ever believed that at all. It's just, it's not the teaching of the

01:12:46

Church. So, make, so the idea, give me an example.

01:12:53

Show me a single bishop at Nicaea that believed in the infallibility of the bishop of Rome. There was none, including the people that represented

01:12:59

Bishop Rome. Show me anyone there that believed that as a part of the gospel, you had to believe in the bodily assumption of Mary.

01:13:08

Nothing. Zip, zero, nada. So, you smuggle this little thing in, and then it can explode in this huge acorn of all the

01:13:19

Mariology, and all the stuff about the papacy, and the massive expansion of the sacramental system of Rome, and all the rest of this stuff.

01:13:27

And it's all this little thing that you just smuggle through here and say, oh, there were these unwritten oral traditions, and yet all of them had been delivered to the

01:13:38

Church at Thessalonica. All of them had been. That's what this says. So, if you're going to go there, what the passage is saying is that the

01:13:49

Thessalonians knew the gospel, and they were to hold fast to it. That's all it's saying. And they had received it by apostolic preaching and by the written word.

01:13:58

So, hold firm to it. That's it. That's what the text is about. That's obviously what it's about.

01:14:04

So, when you expand that out and say, well, there's all this unwritten stuff that, yeah, we can't prove it for hundreds of years and stuff, and, you know, we don't have any evidence of it in that time period, but, you know, someone started teaching it centuries later, so, and we believe it now, so it must have been taught by the apostles.

01:14:25

That's why you believe in solo scriptura. And that's also why a lot of these guys are extremely hesitant to identify their quote -unquote oral traditions as theanustas.

01:14:38

But if they're going to quote this text, they have to, because it's one body. And if this part of that, okay, let's say it's the one body.

01:14:46

If this part's theanustas, what's this? Okay? So, one body of divine revelation, it does not mean there's some secondary thing we can play with and we can define traditions out of a thousand years later or 1 ,500 years later or wherever else it might be, whatever else it might be.

01:15:08

That's why I emphasize recognizing that that one term, theanustas, is what defines a meaningful doctrine of solo scriptura.

01:15:25

How, what do we possess today that we know came from the apostles of Jesus Christ?

01:15:32

This is it. This is it. Nothing more. Nothing more.

01:15:39

That does not then result in me and this under a tree, because this book tells me that it's

01:15:51

God's purpose to build his church. So, it's not over there, it's not over there in the middle, and it is a balanced, a balanced perspective.

01:16:06

So, so yeah, I, did I say I got 20, 22 seconds there?

01:16:13

That was good. That was, that was, that was a lot. But actually, it was a very important aspect.

01:16:18

You need to know 2 Thessalonians 2 .15. You need to be prepared to give answer to it. You will hear it over and over again.

01:16:24

Hold their feet to the fire. If they're going to claim that there are inspired oral traditions, then remind them the first time that anyone in the early church claimed that they had a tradition from the apostles.

01:16:41

First time. Irenaeus of Lyon. Irenaeus of Lyon, end of the second century, and it was his claim that Jesus lived to be more than 50 years of age.

01:16:51

And I don't know any of the churches that deny solo scriptura that believe Jesus was more than 50 years old when he

01:16:58

Isn't that interesting? If they don't believe that, then they must mean, they must believe that quote -unquote apostolic tradition that was not found in written form is not necessarily reliable, which of course would be very, very true.

01:17:17

All right. Well, I am very thankful that the, that the streaming material seemed to work.

01:17:25

Of course we may hit end and it all blows up and it's out there, but I'm glad that is working.

01:17:36

And we are sort of back to a relative, relative form of functionality. So we will be back on Tuesday because on Wednesday, Rich and I will be heading for G3.

01:17:49

And so we'll see you folks there on Thursday. There's a concert Thursday night.

01:17:54

I think I'm doing cross politic on Thursday night as well. I speak

01:17:59

Friday morning, but I leave Friday afternoon. So I'm not going to be there all that much.

01:18:04

Rich is going to be around. He's promised to wear a Coogee, so it'll be easy to find. And so, and see you next time.

01:18:13

We got to go now. Bye. We will not, we will not be putting that rumor out.

01:18:22

No, sir. There will be no Coogees going on here. Actually, folks, hey, anybody, you know, those of you

01:18:28

I've given Coogees to and stuff like that, I know deep down his heart, Rich would love if you'd bring them and offer them to him to wear for pictures and stuff like that.

01:18:38

I think, I think he would just, it would just, just warm the cockles of his heart. So you go to the grocery store and you fill your cart with your eggs and your mustard and your ketchup and your milk.

01:18:54

And as you're going out, you got all your groceries and your shopping cart gets hit by a car and then the car backs up and runs over it two or three times.

01:19:05

And the result is a Coogee. Thank you. That was just, folks, can you hear the voice crying out from inside?

01:19:15

I want one, but I can't. I just, I just, I'm not, I'm not, yeah. Anyway, so I will be going up to Doug McMaster's church on Long Island.

01:19:27

Do we, did we ever get any graphic or anything like that on that? I don't think so. But Saturday and Sunday, I will...

01:19:38

There it is. It's working now. I realized my transition wasn't working right. Yeah, Saturday and Sunday, I will be speaking up there.

01:19:45

We'll see if we can throw something up on the, on the blog or social media or something on the reliability of scripture. And then we'll be, we'll be back the week after that.

01:19:54

So thanks for watching the program today. Hope it was useful. We'll see you next time.