Burning Qur'ans, Apostates, and Calls

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is the Dividing Line.

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The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602, or toll -free across the

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United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now, with today's topic, here is

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James White. And good morning. Welcome to the Dividing Line on a Tuesday morning, the only

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Dividing Line of the week. Though, on Friday, please remember that we will be having two live debates,

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Lord willing, live -streaming them with just as much success as we did in New York, hopefully, as long as I can get my microphones where I need to get them.

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Those debates will be in Santa Fe, at Calvary Santa Fe. I will be debating

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Robertson -Genis on Calvinism and on the bodily assumption of Mary, one at 3 o 'clock, one at 7 o 'clock, their time, which

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I think is an hour ahead of us. So check the website for that, just to double -check that.

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So still be getting plenty of Dividing Line -like stuff in this week, even though we won't have one on Thursday because I will need to be at the airport at that time for my flight over to Albuquerque and then the drive down to Santa Fe.

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So please be praying for those debates. I'm sure they will be spirited, as always, and they will be quite interesting.

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Now, before getting into any of our callers or anything else, I did want to address the controversy, the current controversy that is going on regarding Burn a

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Quran Day. I did make some brief mention of it when I posted the classic video by David Wood and Nabil Qureshi.

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I'm getting a lot of static. It sounds like there's something shorting somewhere. So if I disappear, don't worry about me, folks.

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Everything's just about to explode. But I thought they did a great job in turning the situation into an opportunity for education, which

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Nabil and David do quite well. Great guys. And be that as it may,

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I wanted to read a Barnabas -Ades statement on the proposal of burning of Quran, the proposed burning of Qurans in Florida.

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This is from Dr. Patrick Sucdeo, the international director of Barnabas -Ade. And I want to make some comments after that.

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He writes, a church in Gainesville, Florida, USA, the Dove World Outreach Center has announced it will burn copies of the

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Quran on Saturday, September 11th, to mark the ninth anniversary of the 9 -11 attacks. The stated purpose of this action is to raise awareness of the ideology and teaching of Islam and to warn against its dangers.

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Barnabas -Ade condemns the proposed action for the following reasons. Number one, Barnabas -Ade is fully committed to making known the aspects of Islam that result in injustice and oppression of non -Muslims, not the least the persecution of Christians.

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But we believe that the biblical and Christ -like way to do this is by speaking the truth and the power of God's love and by extending that love to Muslim people, even when they are hostile to us.

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In that context, it can never be justified to destroy a book that Muslims regard as sacred, however firmly and profoundly we may disagree with its contents.

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Number two, the effect of the proposed action on Christians and Muslim majority context is likely to be extremely serious.

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Already Muslim militants in Indonesia have promised to kill Indonesian Christians if Qurans are burned in Florida, and the history of anti -Christian violence in the country suggests that this is not an idle threat.

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Barnabas partners in Iraq have expressed concern at the probable Muslim backlash against an already beleaguered Iraqi church.

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And Christians in numerous other places who live in daily fear of potentially deadly attacks will at once be placed in much greater danger.

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It cannot be right to exercise our freedom to protest in a way that puts at risk the lives of our brothers and sisters for whom

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Christ died. Number three, there is a further risk that Christian minorities may be divided among themselves as churches with links to the

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West come to be unfairly associated with the action taken in Florida and its destructive consequences.

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It is important for Christians under pressure to be united as their division serves only to weaken the church and increase its vulnerability to Muslim attacks.

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It is therefore wholly inappropriate to undermine that unity for the sake of an unnecessary offensive and dangerous gesture.

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For these reasons, Barnabas Aid urges the Dove World Outreach Center and its supporters to refrain from burning

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Qurans on the anniversary of 9 -11. It invites all Christians instead to join us in prayer for our persecuted brothers and sisters throughout the world, and that the hatred and violence that endanger them may be overcome by the grace and love of Christ.

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Now, all of those things are quite true. I want to expand upon that. It is foolishness to the extreme for people who know nothing about the

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Quran, and the people at this church know nothing about the Quran. They have not studied the Quran. They are not capable of using the

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Quran to proclaim the Gospel to Muslims, to point out the errors in the

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Quran, the contradictions between the Quran and the Bible. It is foolishness for individuals who are thusly ignorant of the important issues to be engaging in such an inflammatory act.

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It's just foolishness. What should be done, and what I would like to suggest to people that you do, is instead of burn a

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Quran day, it should be buy a Quran day, and learn the

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Quran day, and learn where Surah 4, verse 157 is, so you can demonstrate that it is untrue.

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You can learn where Surah 5, verse 116 is. You can memorize these texts and be able to utilize them in witnessing to Muslims.

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That would be the best thing to do, is to obtain these sources and learn to use them to demonstrate their fundamental error.

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Demonstrate that what you believe is true, not by destroying Qurans, but by utilizing them to promote the truth.

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If there was any way to get through these folks, that's what we should be doing on September 11th.

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But, I also want to point out that while what this particular church is doing is foolish, what does it say about Islam that there will be people who will die as a result of this foolish action?

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Does this not demonstrate that Islam engenders a culture of immature, violent people?

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I know that there are Muslims out there. I do know that there are Muslims out there, in Western countries primarily, that would say this is foolishness, ignore this insult, and give dawah to these people instead.

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But they are not the ones who have the greatest influence upon the Islamic populace. And there will be people who will lose their life, and they will not be

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Muslims. But there will be people who will lose their lives because of the immaturity of a religion.

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And this is an immaturity of a religion. My religion is insulted every day.

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But I don't go out and kill people about it. And yet, this is what happens primarily in what countries, folks?

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In Western countries? No. In countries that are predominated by Sharia, that are predominantly

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Islamic. That's where the violence takes place. That says something about what happens when

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Islam gains the majority. And what it says is, when Islam gains the majority, the moderate

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Islam that we hear in the West disappears. It's gone. And instead, you have this kind of violence, this kind of taking of life.

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Now, you need to understand that for Muslims, there is a...

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In their mind, everyone in the West is responsible for what this one little group does.

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It won't matter that we speak out against it. It doesn't matter. Because they see us as a quote -unquote Christian nation.

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The amazing illogic of the vast majority of practicing

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Muslims in the world, the lack of meaningful thought processes taking place on a fundamentally logical level, is frightening.

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The idea is that, well, if you don't go over there and shoot those people, then you're agreeing with what they're doing. They just don't understand the concept of freedom.

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Many of them simply are not mature enough to practice freedom. They can't let it happen.

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It's amazing. But they really do believe... You see, this is what Christians do.

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They don't even allow for the idea that these people may be extremely immature Christians, that they may have other motivations involved.

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They really believe... They look at this nation, soaked as it is in its God -hatred, and say, well, there's a

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Christian nation. And it's not. It's amazing. But remember, when

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I debated Sheikh Jalal al -Balrub, he said that Christianity invaded Iraq.

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And that's how they think. That is how they think. And that's why there are protests in the streets about a small little church in Florida that somehow managed to get press coverage of what it's doing.

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It is an amazing thing. It is foolish what they are doing.

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But it is even more foolish how the Islamic world is responding to it. There's immaturity in both places.

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But one is on the part of a 50 -member church, and one is on the part of a billion people.

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There's a little bit of a difference there. So there you go. It's foolish to be burning

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Korans. Our suggestion, buy a Koran. Read the Koran.

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Discover that most of it will make no sense to you whatsoever. But even at that point, you will discover, quite honestly, as we have discussed so many times, that the author of the

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Koran simply did not understand many of the things that he was addressing. And we need to start dialogues, but we need to know what it is we're talking about.

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It sounds to me like one of those old 33 LPs. Today on The Dividing Line, a special effect, the 33

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LP effect, where every once in a while you hit a little piece of dust, and you've got a little pop, a little crack. It makes me long for the olden days.

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Rich has got the broom. He's getting ready to do some technical adjusting in the other room. When I walked through the door in here,

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Rich, weren't you telling me that the audio difficulties just cleared up when you did a reset on the thing?

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I think that's what you said when I was coming in. He's gone now, and he may not be coming back, which is going to be difficult if we're going to be taking phone calls.

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A hand reaches into the window. Hey, it stopped. It stopped. Really, it honestly did.

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I do not hear it anymore. So either the threat of the adjustment or reaching over there and adjusting that one little connection did it.

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Okay, it's not as bad as it was. Let's put it that way. Oh, well. Held together with chewing gum and bailing wire.

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That's what we're up to these days. 877 -753 -34…

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Yeah, nobody move. It's sort of like those rabbit ears. You'd get it just right as long as everyone stood still in the room.

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You know, I have a feeling most of the people that are listening have no idea what rabbit ears are.

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Well, I don't know. We still have rabbit ears. We had to get one of those converter boxes. Oh, it's terrible.

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I mean, we just don't pick up signals well at our house at all. Every once in a while, everything just freezes and turns green and all sorts of wild stuff.

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It's supposed to be so really great and wonderful, but it's not. Anyhow, 877 -753 -3341 or Skype at dividing .line

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is the phone number. I do have stuff queued up, but we have a caller all the way from London, and it's probably getting…

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Well, it's not too late there. But let's go ahead and talk to… I believe the name is

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Shaleem. Hello. Yeah. Hi. Good evening, and it's good morning in America.

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Yes. How are you? Good. Okay, cool. I just had one question to ask you.

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It's a bit off the topic. It's regarding one of the Pentecostals. I had a conversation with one of the

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Pentecostals on Sunday, and he raised a question. He said that John 14, 9 says that Jesus is the

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Father, and he said, well, this is 100 % proof that Jesus is the Father. I just wanted to know, what do you think about this?

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Well, obviously, John 14 distinguishes between the Father and the Son over and over and over again.

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So it is a presupposition on the part of the one that's Pentecostal that if Jesus is in any way, shape, or form connected with the

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Father, then they somehow are together. Notice what it says. Jesus said to him, have I been with you so long, and you still not know me,

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Father? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, show us the Father? He didn't say,

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I am the Father. He says he's the revelation of the Father. Notice he says, do you not believe that I am in the

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Father and the Father is in me? The words I say to you, I do not speak on my own authority. Well, if he's the

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Father, what do you mean he doesn't speak on his own authority? There's only one authority to speak on.

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The words I say to you, I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. He identifies himself as the one sent by the

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Father. Now, for the one that's Pentecostal, the way they understand that is that Jesus, the Son, is a mere human being who came into existence in Bethlehem.

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So they turn Jesus into two persons, where he is a human person, and then the

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Father dwells in this human person, but the human person only came into existence in Bethlehem. The problem is, even at the end of this chapter in John 14, when he says,

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I and the Father are one, he uses a plural verb. I and the Father, we are one.

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He doesn't say, I and the Father, I are one. And he constantly says, I've been sent by the

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Father. And then he praised the Father in John 17 and says, glorify me with the glory which

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I had with you in your presence before the world was. So if you can talk to someone using personal pronouns, and you can refer to things that have taken place between yourself and this other person in the eternity past, you're clearly not this other person.

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And so the Gospel of John is extremely difficult for one that's Pentecostal, because the prayer life of Jesus and the communion between the

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Father and the Son, and the Son constantly referring to the Father as another person, they have to turn

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Jesus into two people, so he's schizophrenic. In his prayer life, half of him is praying to the other half of him, or something like that, which makes absolutely no sense.

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So how would you advise me, how should I speak to him?

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Because he said he's quite open to understanding. Okay, well, a couple things. There is a video on YouTube, on my

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YouTube channel, and you can get to my YouTube channel from aomin .org, there's a link on the front page. DrOakley1689 is the

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YouTube channel. There is a debate there, at least the first half of the debate, that's all we've got of it, unfortunately, between myself and Robert Sabin, one of the leading

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Oneness Pentecostals of the past number of decades. And my opening presentation there takes you through the three key texts that I would use in talking with a

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Oneness Pentecostalist. It's John 1, 1, John 17, 5, and Philippians chapter 2. And I go through and demonstrate how in each one of these texts, a divine person who preexists his birth in Bethlehem, but is differentiated from the

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Father, is clearly presented to us. And so you can either utilize that presentation from YouTube, obviously there's an entire chapter on the subject in my book,

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The Forgotten Trinity, but it would require a firm understanding on your part on how to answer their philosophical objections and keep bringing them back to the

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Scriptures, because it's the Scriptures that demonstrate clearly what the Son is about the Father. I've actually read your book, The Forgotten Trinity.

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I just wanted to know what more you could add to what I've read, because I read the section that says most misunderstood passages, and I read about John 14, 9.

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But I just wanted to know what else you could tell me. That's really kind of you. I just wanted to ask one more thing.

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I'm actually in college, so I'm 17 years old. So I come across a lot of Muslims, because most of my schools, maybe 80 % are

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Muslims. So what I've noticed with Muslims is they'll ask you a question, but most of them wouldn't want to reply.

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They would just want to answer the question and just make fun of you, or just make fun of what you believe. Like, how can Jesus be

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God? I said, okay, let me try to explain to you why we believe Jesus is God. But no, that's impossible. Well, you know what

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I would do? I would stop them. I would stop them. I'd look them in the eye and say, look, one of the 99 names of Allah is

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Al Haqq, the truth. And I'd simply have to ask you, do you really want to know the truth, or do you just want to argue?

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If you're really a Muslim, and you really believe that Allah is Al Haqq, then you won't just simply throw out objections.

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You will actually seek the truth with me. And if what you believe is true, then it will be shown to be true. But if you won't even allow me to say a word, then you clearly don't really believe that what you believe is true.

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Now, some of them will hear that. Some of them won't. It's one way of trying to get... But there's nothing that you can do if someone is not willing to even engage in meaningful conversation.

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I mean, there are certain objections you can raise. Some way you can try to start the thinking process.

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But the fact of the matter is, there are so many in the Islamic world that are just so influenced by a radical form of Islam, really an ancient

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Quranic form of Islam, actually, that they have no ears to hear.

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And we cannot give people ears to hear. We can only speak to those who want to hear. Exactly.

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Okay. Thanks so much for accepting my call. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. Okay, bye. 877 -753 -3341.

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I guess we've got lots of phone calls here. I'm going to have to hold on to them for a second because I promised in the last program that I was going to get back to this, and I do need to get back to this.

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I just wanted to take the phone call from London. But let me try to get to Joe and to Colin as soon as I can.

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But in the last program, I was playing segments from an interview with Mark Ayers, who is a convert to Roman Catholicism from, as I recall, the

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PCA denomination, and he calls himself a former presuppositionalist. He was the one that was arguing that presuppositionalism would lead you to Rome, which, of course, the sound that you hear in the background is the spinning of Cornelius Van Til and Greg Bonson in their graves at such an assertion.

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But we were listening to some of the things he was saying, and I wanted to get to the second part of what

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I wanted to play. I promised to do so, so we sort of need to do so. And then

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I've got some other stuff, too, so we'll see how we can work it all in here as much as we can. Wow, the lines are quite busy with other subjects, but we'll try to get to them as best we can.

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Let's go back and listen to Mark Ayers, a convert to Roman Catholicism, talking about the road that he took in getting to the

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Tiber River. It took me a little bit longer to kind of get it through my thick head, because I still had all the kind of what you would call the standard objections, all the so -called weird things, the

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Marian doctrines, what is purgatory, I don't really understand the nature of the papacy, so forth and so on.

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Some things that were very, very helpful in that regard were, well,

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I'll mention one thing right off the bat. This actually occurred well before I got down this line, was a debate with, again, my hero,

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Dr. Bonson, with a Catholic speaker, who used to work at Catholic Answers, now has kind of gone a different way, named

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Gerry Matiticks. It's Gerry Matiticks, of course, and a very fascinating debate.

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I wonder why Mr. Ayers doesn't mention that there was a priest involved who was absolutely worthless. And isn't it interesting that Gerry Matiticks would love to debate people like Jimmy Akin and Patrick Madrid or Robert St.

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Genes? None of them will debate him. I thought following Rome brought unity, and yet Gerry Matiticks, utilizing the very same argumentation he used when he was at Catholic Answers, would say, to be consistent, you can't follow the current pope.

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Isn't that interesting? I thought that solved all things. But anyways, Dr. Bonson did a fine job.

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I can understand how people, again, if you're ignorant of Roman Catholicism, you're ignorant of church history, you're ignorant of the circular argumentations of Rome, and you listen to a

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Gerry Matiticks, and, oh, he sounds so confident, he speaks so quickly. I can understand how someone might be impressed by that, but I'm not impressed when someone can listen to that debate and not do their homework and realize how many times

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Gerry Matiticks was just completely off -base in what he said there. But, again, we're in that honeymoon stage of convertism here, and that's what happens.

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But it was a fascinating debate, and every other debate that I'd heard

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Dr. Bonson in with various atheists or so -called progressive religious folks and all the rest were just fantastic.

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It was complete annihilation. This one... I have to ask a question. How could he do that without the authority of the infallible church?

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Functioning only on the basis of Scripture, how could he annihilate these people? And Mr.

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Ayers, why is there no Roman Catholic Greg Bonson? I wonder if they think about these things before they go swimming across there to the smells and bells.

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I really wonder if they think about these things. I just was kind of stunned, although I never admitted it. But there were a lot of questions that there really wasn't a good answer for, and it just bothered me.

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Such as? And, you know, it'd be fun to go through. A lot of people haven't heard that debate.

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It wasn't even a debate. That's the other problem. Why do people keep calling these debates radio programs?

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I was talking about the Catholic Answers thread. I wrote something last night about the Catholic Answers thread, where they're lying about me yet again, accusing me of packing the audiences, salting the audiences.

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It's just, well, our side loses just because you put too many of your guys in the audience.

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But when Tim Staples has his students in the audience yelling, Eucharist, and everybody's, whoo, yeah, oh, that's, yay,

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Rome, you know. It's just amazing, the circular reasoning that these folks are willing to engage in.

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Anyways, I mentioned that right up there at the top of the thread is White vs.

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Aiken debate. And what is it? It's the Bible Answer Man radio program from, like, what, 1993? Like 17 years ago or something like that, which was not a debate.

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We've gone through it point by point, even measured out the times and demonstrated that Mr.

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Aiken has to get, what was it, 63, 62, 63 % of the time just to be able to call it a debate,

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I guess. Oh, it's just the standards on that far side of the Tiber are truly amazing.

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Anything in defense of Mother Rome. We kind of floated around in there, and then once we started to get down this line, and in that debate they talked about Mary, they talked about these things, and I thought, gosh, those answers were really at least reasonable.

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They were reasonable. That made sense. That didn't seem so weird. But then I just quickly dismissed that.

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All that came back once I got to the point of, okay, we can't stay where we're at. We need to be at a place where it has the apostolic authority and the succession.

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We need to be at a place where the sacraments are administered. I understand now the sacramental nature of life, which was now very beautiful for me.

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I understood the history of the faith. You know, never mind the fact that the sacraments developed over time and that there's no evidence of the apostolic nature of five out of the seven.

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Let's only go with the most surface -level view of history we can possibly find here. I wanted to be in with that.

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I wanted to be linked to my great brothers and sisters who had gone before me. Who did not believe dogmatically the things that Rome has defined now that you have to believe those same people.

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The Roman Catholic Church had all these weird things. I remembered a lot of those things I had heard from that debate, and then

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I started to read a lot of... Catholic Answers was particularly helpful there.

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They have a great website that kind of walks through the list and gives a lot of good explanations of that, what it actually is, as opposed to what people think the church teaches, which was what

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I found overall very stunning. Every single thing that I thought I knew about the Catholic Church was just dead -on wrong.

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Well, that means that this man was incredibly ignorant as a Protestant. I mean, that's all there is to it.

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Evidently, he had not read any of the primary works where the Reformers had responded to Roman Catholicism, evidently.

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Unless he's saying they got it all wrong, but our debates, well over... probably around 40 of the more than 100...

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And by the way, rah -rah, let's have a little... We've passed 100 debates, 100 moderated public debates.

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At least 40 % of those, I'd say, have been with Roman Catholics, given the last debate with Christopher Farrar. We've demonstrated that you can accurately, contextually, historically quote

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Roman Catholic dogmatic teachings, councils, etc., etc., and there's all sorts of solid information like that out there, and evidently,

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Mark Ayers just did nothing about it. Now, there's a lot of people like that, but isn't it funny, once they start going that direction, they don't come to the people in their communion that have also studied those things and know where those resources are.

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Not uncommon at all, been there, done that, got the t -shirt. I know converts pretty well.

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When I really understood what the Catholic Church taught, I thought, gosh, that's beautiful. And here again, it's beautiful.

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Why is it beautiful? Why is a never -ending, ceaseless treadmill of penances and priestly absolution beautiful in comparison to the finished work of Christ, imputed righteousness which is seamless, in Him, having

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His life, how is that beautiful? That's why I wanted to talk about this, is I don't understand apostates.

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Because that's what Mark Ayers is, he's an apostate. He has fallen away from the profession that he made in alleged belief in the absolute necessity of only one way of peace with God, and that is the perfect, seamless robe of the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

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Now he's willing to embrace an imperfect work of Christ that is meted out to him over his life in Eucharistic, perpetuatory sacrifices that will never perfect anyone.

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He might end up undergoing sado -spasio in Purgatory. I bet you, dollars, donuts, before long you'll hear him talking about fictional imputation, all the rest of that stuff.

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What causes a person who at one point in time truly understood the glory of the

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Gospel to trade it in for something like this? Well, I don't think that, you know, maybe, possible, that person never really understood.

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I'm planning, I really, in light of some recent events, want to look at 1

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John 2. I may do a sermon or a couple sermons, even step out of the

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Hebrews series for one month or something like that, and look at 1 John 2, 19.

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They went out from us so that it might be shown they were not truly of us. If they had been of us, they would have remained with us.

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But they went out from us. There's a reason why apostasy takes place. And there's a reason why people walk away from what they professed.

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And we need to be reminded over and over and over again that this has happened from the days of the apostles.

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And it had better bother us. It had better bother any one of you who are in the

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Church to see people walk away from their profession of faith. I was just informed yesterday about someone that we had known for years who's just completely walked away from the faith.

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And here we're listening to someone who's walked away into error, into heresy, into falsehood, into embracing a gospel that cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be said to be the same gospel that he was professing before.

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It had better bother you, but it had better bother you not because it's like, oh,

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I can't believe this would happen. No, the Scriptures tell us it is going to happen. Every single generation of the

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Church experiences this. It should bother you because of the judgment, the light that a person has, and the sinning against that light.

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Jesus, what did he say to those cities? Grazen and Bethsaida. That it had so much light in comparison to Sodom and Gomorrah.

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Great judgment. But the fact of the matter is that when you preach the gospel, eventually it is going to have an effect, even upon those people who have not been given ears to hear.

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They have been in the congregation, but they're driftwood. Eventually, the preaching of the gospel should drive them out.

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It should offend them. We should not be surprised at the existence of apostasy.

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There have been many people who have said, well, I don't think you should do these debates because, you know, I know people have become Roman Catholics because of that. Well, duh!

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What do you expect to have happen? The proclamation of God's truth is going to have an impact, and in fact, if it's done consistently enough, eventually it causes hypocrites to become offended.

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And they either go off into unbelief, simple paganism, into the lust of the world, or into that huge, broad expanse of false religion, which is just one aspect of man's rebellion against God.

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And so we have to keep that in mind. It clearly should bother us when we see people who have made a profession, said,

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I hold to these beautiful truths. This is my only hope. My only hope.

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The righteousness of Jesus Christ, He who knew no sin was made sin in my behalf, that I might become the righteousness of God in Him, not through things

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I do, not through the authority of some sacramental church, but in Him.

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That's my only hope. And yet to see someone trade that off for the trinkets of the empty religion of Romanism, I hope the day never comes that my heart doesn't break to see that, no matter how many times

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I have seen it. But what makes my heart break even more are people who don't cross the

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Tiber River, but who don't realize the precious nature of what they already say they possess, and are willing to say, it doesn't matter.

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The gospel doesn't define the Christian faith. That's even more troubling.

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And very rich. There was just a weight to it. There was an authoritative weight to it.

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But then the big whammy is when you see people like our great heroes, like Augustine. Now, in the

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PCA world, as you know, everyone loves Augustine. We're going to quote Augustine all the time, just like Calvin did.

34:24

He's great. Why? Did Mark Ayers ever understand why both sides in the

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Reformation could quote Augustine? Both sides in the Reformation could properly quote

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Augustine, because Augustine's doctrine of the church was fundamentally in contradiction with Augustine's doctrine of grace, because they developed out of different controversies.

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His doctrine of the church developed out of the Donatist controversy, his doctrine of grace out of the Pelagian controversy. And the fact of the matter is, the two don't mix.

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And as B .B. Warfield, who certainly Mark Ayers should have known, put it quite well, the

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Reformation inwardly considered was nothing more than the victory of Augustine's doctrine of grace over Augustine's doctrine of the church.

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Very insightful. Very true. And if he was so naive that he did not know that Augustine held to many beliefs that we would not hold to, while holding to others that we would, then once again, that tells you a lot about the people that swim the

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Tiber. Except I never understood that A. He was a staunch Catholic, B. What do you mean by a staunch

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Catholic? He certainly wasn't a follower of the Bishop of Rome in the sense of investing with him, in him, the ultimate authority of all things.

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The situation with Zosimus and the Pelagian controversy proved that beyond all question. Beyond all question.

35:45

In fact, I was listening. In fact, I want to get to it here eventually, but I don't know if we're going to get to it with the phone calls. But I wanted to get to the cross -examination period

35:53

I had with Robert St. Genes on this. If you want to hear, I don't believe, I could be wrong about this, but I don't believe

35:59

I've ever listened to my debate with Robert St. Genes on papal infallibility from Clearwater, Florida until this morning.

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And I'm actually not done with it because I only did a short ride this morning, only 22 and a half miles. But I was listening to it this morning and it was a good debate.

36:18

It was a good debate. It's available. I think it's $4 .94, $4 .93,

36:24

something like that, $4 .93. It's in the store on the website. And if you haven't listened to it, I would highly recommend that you get it.

36:31

We have it. Is it available on MP4? I don't know if it's available on MP4. That's right.

36:37

We never got videos on that, did we? Oh, that's a bummer. That's right. Well, we got videos, but remember they duplicated it and then duplicated it and then turned around and somebody reused the master and what they sent us and what they sent

36:49

St. Genes was just horrible when it came to the video. I had no recollection of it. It was back in the

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VHS days. Oh, well. That's a shame.

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But the audio's fine, though. The audio's quite clear. So grab the

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MP3 of that. It is really, really interesting. I don't know that I'm going to be able to get to that maybe next week, because we have phone calls.

37:12

But just a few more moments of this. He said things like the perpetual virginity of Mary, the

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Immaculate Conception. The Immaculate Conception? I don't think so. And anyone who's been reading the blog recently knows the

37:29

Turretin fan has been providing abundant original citations demonstrating, no,

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Augustine did not believe in the Immaculate Conception. He did believe in perpetual virginity. That's very early on, but not in the

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Immaculate Conception. All of that. All of that. I don't think so.

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How about the bodily assumption of Mary? Didn't believe in the Immaculate Conception. Doesn't believe in the

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Bible. Doesn't believe in papal infallibility. His any concept of purgation is significantly less developed than what is dogmatically bound by Rome today.

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Be honest. Don't take the anachronism of saying, well, I can see a seed in him.

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Just let Augustine be Augustine for crying out loud. But Roman Catholics can't let

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Augustine be Augustine. See of Peter, how that is the defense of the papacy, on and on and on and on.

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And so when I start seeing quotes like that, not just from him, but from every one of the church fathers. Every one of the church fathers.

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I love convert syndrome. I remember Tim Staples back in his early days on St.

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Joseph Catholic Radio telling us, every church father believe what

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I believe about Matthew chapter 16. And it's just so bogus.

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I mean, it's just so easy to demonstrate that the early church is not the friend of these folks on this level at all.

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It's just so completely bogus. But it's the wide -eyed convert.

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Oh, everything Roman thing. And thankfully, thankfully, sometimes they wake up.

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They see the divisions and realize, wow, I was sold a bill of goods. But you know what? Some folks just keep going.

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They just stay in this wide -eyed, naive.

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I'm not going to listen to what anybody else. And look, the thread on the Catholic Answers web forums proves this.

39:29

Every time James Swan points me to one of these threads, what

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I'm reminded of is these people want to stay in this little cocoon and they don't want anything to rock their boat.

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And they want to believe the worst possible things about anybody like myself or Pastor David King or Bill Webster.

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They're willing to believe the most outrageous, scandalous lies.

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Because they have, they're so scared. They have to stay in that little cocoon.

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Because Rome has to be what Rome says it is. Oh, it's frightening.

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It's sad. And hey, we've got people in Protestant churches that are in the same way. I understand that.

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Nobody in my church I let stay in that situation. Because I expose them to all sorts of stuff.

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But it's sad. It's sad to observe. Well, anyways, enough of that one. Let's try to take our

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Skype calls. And maybe if we've got room at the end, which I doubt we will, we can go back to the cross -examination between myself and Robert St.

40:39

Janis. So I'm assuming we're going to be talking with Colin first. Alright, let's talk with Colin on Skype.

40:45

Hi, Colin. Hey, can you hear me? Yes, sir. Okay, thanks for taking my call.

40:50

Real quick, I've been talking with a Jehovah's Witness once or twice a week for a while now. And I'm just wondering, one of the subjects that has become one that gives me the most trouble is, how are the spirit and the soul and the body related?

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And more specifically, as it says in Genesis, they always point to and say, look, God took the dust, he added the life, and Adam became a soul.

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He didn't receive a soul, but he became a soul. And so I'm wondering, how do we explain these things?

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Well, a couple things. Why are you meeting with Jehovah's Witnesses? I just want to learn everything they have to teach, so I'm not going off of stereotypes and stuff like that.

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Well, okay. I don't recommend that, personally. Certainly, studying their material,

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I've studied their material in depth and met with them many, many, many times. But my suggestion would be that that's something your elders should be involved with you and making sure that you're grounded at that point.

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I think that's very, very important. Secondly, they will always go to the Old Testament. They'll never go to the New Testament, because the nature of man is a part of the unfolding revelation of God.

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And we so clearly see the spiritual nature of man in the New Testament.

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They have to keep going back to the Old Testament to try to hide that revelation. Secondly, I'm not a tripartite,

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I'm a bipartite. So there is a spiritual aspect of man called the soul or spirit. I don't divide them up.

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But very clearly, man has that spiritual nature. As the Apostle Paul said, his desire was to depart and to be with the

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Lord, which is better, while awaiting the resurrection. Well, the resurrection is still yet future, and yet he's certainly not saying,

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I'm going to cease to exist. I want to cease existing until the resurrection and then be recreated, which is the

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Jehovah's Witness perspective on how that takes place. You cease to exist because man does not have a spiritual nature, and then you actually are recreated at the resurrection.

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It's not even resurrection, because resurrection is that which died, coming to life again. And that's why the

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Greeks mocked Paul's message in Acts chapter 17, because he was talking about that which died, coming to life again.

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The Jehovah's Witnesses don't have resurrection. They have recreation, where your being is recreated based upon God's memory of what you were.

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But you cease to exist when you die. Now, Paul would never desire his intimate communion with Christ to end, or to be interrupted in any way.

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So for him to say, for me to live as Christ, die as Gain, and that he wants to depart and to be with the

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Lord, clearly, Paul believes that he is going to have a spiritual existence in the presence of Christ prior to the day when his physical body is resurrected.

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Now, whatever you want to call that body, whatever you want to call that spiritual existence, spirit, soul, whatever, he believes in a spiritual existence.

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It's right there in the text. And so, that's where I would go to, is the

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New Testament's fuller revelation of the nature of man, and the fact that we as believers, prior to our receiving our resurrection body, are in the presence of Christ and have communion with Him.

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The reason Jehovah's Witnesses don't go there, aside from the fact that their theology doesn't go with that, is because they don't have a concept of being united with Christ and being in Christ.

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And so, that spiritual union that is ours with Him, together with their ignorance, not ignorance, their denial of the nature of the

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Holy Spirit, that the Holy Spirit is a person, the Holy Spirit gives the gifts, as He wills, 1

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Corinthians chapter 12 says, impersonal active forces do not have wills, and they do not give gifts as they decide to give gifts.

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But since they deny that the Holy Spirit is a person, they don't have any foundation to even start taking in the fullness of the

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New Testament revelation concerning the spiritual nature of man. That's why they're stuck with going back to Old Testament texts and not seeing the fulfillment of those things in the

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New Testament. Alright, that's great. Thank you very much. Okay, you're most welcome. Thanks, Colin. Have a good day.

45:09

Bye. Bye -bye. And let me just mention, again, engaging in apologetic interaction with people is a spiritual activity.

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And I warn people, and I exhort people, if you are not right with the

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Lord, or if you are not in a good, solid church where you have good, solid foundation, that needs to be your first priority.

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And I don't know about... I'm not trying to say that Colin is doing something wrong. I'm just simply saying, you need to make appropriate preparation and realize that it's a spiritual battle, because I've seen people go off the deep end.

45:53

Are we supposed to be taking this call? It just sort of disappeared. I don't know what the topic is, but we'll just go ahead and talk with Jonathan.

45:59

Hi, Jonathan. Yes, hello? Yes, sir. Hi, this is my first time using Skype. Hopefully it's coming through okay.

46:06

It's sounding fine, other than on our end, we sound like we're a 33 LP record, and it's popping, but other than that, you sound fine.

46:13

And yeah, the last time I called, I was using a phone, and I missed your joke. Oh, okay. I had a question about regeneration, specifically in the

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Old Testament. I've heard regeneration used a lot as kind of a distinctive of the

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New Covenant, and I was wondering if I could get your take on just what was going on before, the indwelling of the

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Holy Spirit, and then maybe some Scripture verses I could go to to study a bit more to find out about it. Well, I certainly wouldn't say that Old Testament saints were not indwelt by the

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Holy Spirit, and I certainly wouldn't say that they were not regenerate. The only difference that I can see between the

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Old Covenant and the New Covenant, according to Hebrews chapter 8, is that every single person who is in the

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New Covenant is regenerate. There were, because of the physical signs, non -regenerate members of the

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Old Covenant, such as a Saul. And hence, you could have the

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Holy Spirit temporarily coming upon an unregenerate person for particular purposes in God's economy under the

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Old Covenant, as you could, I suppose, under the New Covenant. But what's different is the universal nature that everyone in the

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New Covenant is regenerate. What binds all Christians together? The indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.

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The Holy Spirit is the Arabon, Ephesians 1 .14 says, the down payment of God's specific promise to fulfill

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His redemptive purpose in that person's life.

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And so, I would say that Old Testament saints, who truly were saints, were regenerate and indwelt by the

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Holy Spirit. The difference being that the Covenant was wider, the

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Old Covenant was wider, and did include non -regenerate people. What makes a

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New Covenant better is that you don't have that element of unbelief. You don't have those individuals within it that are unbelievers.

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The New Covenant, in His blood, is commensurate with and identical with the extent of the atoning work of Christ as well.

48:23

Alright. Yeah, and I may have used the wrong term, by indwelling I meant, what is it, when Jesus makes the distinction to His disciples, where He says, the

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Holy Spirit, He says, He is with you, but He will be in you. Yeah, well, obviously, during the ministry of Christ, there was, when

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Christ was with the disciples, there was a, He was the one who kept them. And then, the

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Day of Pentecost is a very important demonstration on God's part that the

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Spirit of God is going to come and indwell His body, and that He has not left

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His people as orphans. And so, there is something very important in that.

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But, the Spirit came upon, I mean, clearly, in the giving of Scripture and so on and so forth, the

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Old Testament saints, and I believe dwelled in the Old Testament saints and brought about their regeneration as well.

49:17

Right. Okay. Okay? So, yeah, I was just thinking of, like, say, with Abraham, yeah, so he was regenerated and then received faith.

49:25

Okay, so, yeah. All right. Okay. That's pretty much it. All right, thanks, Jonathan. Thanks for your call. All right, thank you. All right, God bless. Bye -bye.

49:30

All right, we do have time to get to the cross -examination. I just wanted to play, we've got about 10, 8, 9 minutes here.

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Listen to, I don't know if we'll get through all of it, but listen to the cross -examination here between myself and Robert St.

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Janis. Listen to the questions and the answers. I'll stop, I'll jump in every once in a while, myself, and make some comments.

49:54

But let's listen to this cross -examination from the debate on papal infallibility. Okay, I forgot to skip it forward here.

50:14

Let's try it right here. All right. Remember, I had to self -moderate this debate.

50:21

Are you ready, sir? Yeah. Mr. Janis, is it your assertion that Honorius is to be excused this error as far as a papal error because he was not, in point of fact, speaking ex cathedra?

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Yes. On the issue of the two wills, yes. Okay. Could you please list for us, sir, all the teachings that Honorius taught ex cathedra using the exact formula that you have indicated he would have to have followed to teach something ex cathedra?

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Now, why do I ask that question? Real simple. What Rome does to allow

51:06

Honorius to get around the fact that, and I suppose I should have just played my whole presentation on this.

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Maybe I will next time. But Honorius, Bishop of Rome, in response to Sergius, wrote to Sergius a letter in which he said, we confess one will.

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He was a monothelite in Christ. And he was answering, as the Bishop of Rome, to another bishop, a theological question.

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And for about 40 years, that was the answer of Rome to that question until Honorius was condemned as a heretic by the

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Sixth Ecumenical Council. And for hundreds of years, when you became Bishop of Rome, you had to anathematize Honorius as a heretic.

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So one of the only ways to get around this is to say, well, yeah, he wrote a letter, but we have these standards, see, as to what an infallible statement has to be.

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And the point is, folks, nobody back then had a clue what those standards were. Not a clue.

52:03

So I'm asking the question, okay, well, if you're going to excuse

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Honorius on that basis, then demonstrate that they were functioning on that basis.

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What were the ex cathedra infallible teachings of Honorius? And once you start using that kind of standard, most popes have never done anything that would be relevant to papal infallibility.

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I'm not saying. In fact, there are almost no infallible papal statements.

52:34

So what good is it? I mean, the way that it's defined by some people, it's absolutely positively impossible to demonstrate a papal error because the popes haven't done anything.

52:49

And yet you know, and I know, that Roman Catholics speak often of the wonder of having the infallible leadership of the magisterium.

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But if you can never even begin to answer the question as to what it's taught, who cares?

53:06

That's the question. I don't have to produce that because it's not necessary to show that he wasn't speaking ex cathedra when he gave the statement on the two wills.

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Are you aware of any ex cathedra teachings by Honorius at all? No, I'm not.

53:21

Has the Roman Catholic magisterium ever infallibly proclaimed that Honorius was not speaking ex cathedra in this instance by name?

53:32

Not by name, no. Okay. Has it ever proclaimed, well, you said you weren't aware of any ex cathedra teachings.

53:39

There wouldn't be any reason to ask that. Now, if Honorius did not teach anything ex cathedra, that is, as the pastor of all

53:45

Christians, did he fail in his duty as a shepherd of the flock?

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Was there no pressing matter upon which he needed to teach in his day? He failed on this issue of the two wills.

53:57

That's very obvious. And if he could fail on that issue, he could fail on some other issues. There are no issues that we know of that he failed in, but it's a theoretical possibility.

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Did the popes who reigned after Honorius but before the council of Constantinople correct Honorius' error?

54:12

Yes, they did. And how did they do that? They stated that Christ had two wills.

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Did they say that Honorius was in error prior to the council saying so? Yes.

54:24

And you would say that Agathos' letter did that? Yes. And the sixth council did that. As the seventh and the eighth council did.

54:31

Now notice, I said before the council, and then he can only cite stuff after that. The fact of the matter is, the popes after him before the council did not correct him.

54:39

They did not say, oh, our predecessor was wrong. Ignore what he wrote. This didn't do it.

54:46

Did they know about it? Were they ignorant of it? Who knows? But that's the fact of the matter.

54:52

Is there, in light of your assertion that Honorius' statements do not violate the doctrine of papal infallibility, does it follow them?

55:03

Well, let me change that. Is there a list of infallible pronouncements from the popes that you could provide to us that we could go to a book and read?

55:15

No, there's not a list. The church could do that if it wanted to. Now listen to what

55:21

Bob St. Genes says the church could do, but evidently is too busy to get around to doing.

55:28

Listen to this. The church could do a lot of things if it wanted to. For example, the church could determine every single variant of the biblical record.

55:38

There's, you know, 5 ,000 Greek manuscripts and many of them say different things. Did you hear that?

55:46

Is he aware that Sixtus did that with the 16

55:51

Vulgate? That ain't going to happen anytime soon, folks.

55:57

Rome tried that once, tried to produce an infallible biblical text and messed it up royally. And it's one of the most embarrassing parts of papal history.

56:07

But there Bob St. Genes is saying, hey, you know what? Even though Cardinal Martini was on the committee that created the

56:20

UBS text, which is used by Protestants and Catholics. Even though he was on that, that's not obviously infallible.

56:29

He's just a cardinal anyways. But all those textual variants that Bart Ehrman uses, we could get rid of all of them.

56:38

The church could tell you the exact text. We could get rid of all of them.

56:44

There you go. I have the exact same question you all do too.

56:50

Then why not do it? You well know. On some occasions the church has said that one variant should be in the scripture, but it hasn't made a judgment on most of the variants in scripture.

57:01

But it could theoretically do that. And it could also give us a list of all the ex cathedra statements the popes have made.

57:09

It could list all the errors some popes have made in encyclicals or letters. Now think about that.

57:14

We're going to run out of time here. But think about that. You must be bound to whatever the pope says ex cathedra.

57:25

But we won't tell you when he's speaking that way. You are infallibly bound to follow the bishop of Rome when he speaks ex cathedra.

57:36

Just don't ask us for the ex cathedra statements. We leave you in the dark at that point.

57:45

This is the glory of Rome. Oh my. I don't understand it.

57:51

I confess. Maybe I've just read too much about this stuff. But I don't understand the attraction.

58:01

Once you get past the surface level stuff and you really start digging into it, it's like going to those sound stages over in Southern California.

58:11

Just a bunch of facades. There's nothing behind it. Nothing behind it. Well anyway, like I said, no dividing line on Thursday.

58:19

I'll be traveling. But please watch the blog and the link, same link you're listening to right now, for the live streaming of the debates on Friday.

58:28

Pray for them. We'll see you then. God bless. God bless.

59:37

God bless. God bless. God bless.