Pre-Debate Road Trip Dividing Line

Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. The microphone is on. I'm looking at it. Some of us are so dumb we have to do things like that.

Hey, welcome to the program. We are coming to you from our mobile command center that leaked on me last night.

We got some really good rain yesterday and it didn't leak from the roof. It actually leaked upwards.

Yeah, yeah, we're gonna... Hey, it's all under warranty. We'll be good. And it wasn't bad.

I caught it and had enough towels, actually found another towel just recently, to deal with things.

But I've got some good ideas what it might be. So, you know, it's a shakedown cruise. And we've got some

GFI issues. That's not unusual. We'll figure that one out. And it's nothing major.

It's been great. It really has. The one thing I have to say about this, and most of you are not going to care about what

I'm about to say, but when you buy an RV, buy a new one, we bought our first one, a

Grand Design. Every time I'd get into it after one of the legs of the trip, there would be sawdust.

There would be wood chips all over everything. The floor, tables, everything.

Because it's all caught up in stuff from the construction process. And shaking it, it's just like shaking a house.

Stuff's gonna fall out, you know? And I was like, well, okay,

I guess it's something you get used to. And it would diminish over time, obviously. And then we got the

Jayco, and it did the same thing. For as long as we had it, we didn't get to have that one very long.

It was not a bad design, either. It just, it was a COVID coach. It was made during COVID, and everything made during COVID stunk.

And then we got the Redwood, and it was already used, but it had only been pulled 80 miles.

So when we started pulling it, you'd have wood chips and sawdust and stuff like that.

Not a lot, but it happened. There has not been a single wood chip, a single piece of sawdust anywhere in this unit.

Now, we only pulled two days, but they were long days. Nothing. Zip, zero, nada.

Very impressive. And even when it leaked, everything in here is hydrophobic. So the water just sort of like,

I want out of here. It didn't soak into anything. So yeah,

I'm still very, very happy. Disappointed we're gonna have to take it in and have stuff like that, but that's how it works.

And so I should never, ever look at Twitter, X. I'll eventually give in.

I should never look at X right before the program. I did. And someone sent me a link.

Who was it? Corey Messerschmidt, you evil dude, you. Corey Messerschmidt sent me a link to an article from someone that, honestly,

I just don't even want to talk about them on the air. They're just poison.

They've poisoned a lot of other people too. I may have to, especially if this turns into what

I expected it to turn into. The people who are quietly saying, it's all about the

Jews. It's all about the Jews. The Jews are behind it all. There used to be these really weird, strange people that we had,

I remember very clearly about three years ago, maybe four now, a guy showed up at an apologia and I went out to talk to him.

And he was sort of looking around and, I really love what all you guys do with the

Mormons and abortion and all this kind of stuff. Just great, great, great. When's the other shoe gonna drop here?

And then it was like, but you need to understand what all this is about.

It's about the Jews. They're behind all of this. That's why there's abortion.

And that's why there's Mormonism. That's why there's cults. And that's why there's evil. And that's why there's pedophilia. And that's why there's homosexuality.

And all the evils in the world are just because of the Jews. And I'm just like, okay.

And so those folks have been around, but normally, they were muttering to themselves as they walked down the road, getting to the next bus.

So we didn't take them overly seriously. Well, now it's become all the rage.

If you want the clicks, if you want to get that, I don't know why they're chasing after this group. I don't understand.

I've tried to talk to one of them once about it. They're chasing after people who will never be satisfied with whatever they offer.

If you're out there trying to get clicks, if you're out there trying to build a platform, the folks you're going after who are into all this stuff, you're never going to satisfy them.

You have to get wilder, wilder, crazier, crazier, farther and farther out there to keep them clicking.

Because someone else can come along and get crazier than you. And then they're going to go over to them. And then your clicks go down.

So you've got to do something to get them to come back to you. We're watching this happen. It's a small group.

I saw one guy. We saw the folks show up at CPAC. These are supposed to be ministers.

We know what their priorities are. And we've got these people. They were so proud that people wanted to take pictures with them and they're so popular and all this stuff.

And I'm just like, oh my gosh, talk about self -destruction. Anyway, it's not that big a group.

And it is a very fickle group. And they will take you apart. They will pick the meat from your bones once you go down.

That's all there is to it. Anyways, the people running around going, it's all the Jews, all the

Jews, are going to find an odd, very, very odd ally in Eastern Orthodoxy.

What am I talking about? I'm just looking at an article. And like I said, I'm going to try to keep an eye on it and see if this becomes something that's worthwhile addressing.

We've addressed it somewhat in the past, but it's the

Septuagint only movement. And what it is, is people saying, hey, the

Old Testament shouldn't be in Hebrew. It should be in Greek. The early church used the

Greek New Testament as their Bible. Well, that's because the vast majority of people in the early church spoke

Greek, not Hebrew. But it was still recognized that the

Old Testament had been written in Hebrew. And so they glom on to, well, you know, the earliest full

Old Testament Hebrew is from a thousand years after Christ. We're listening in Old Testament introduction.

Good. We're talking basic stuff here. We're talking stuff that back in the older days when you did education, this was freshman stuff in Bible college, and people all of a sudden discovered, let alone in seminary.

And so they're basically going, well, they were

Christ haters. Well, yeah, by 1000 AD, there was a strong polemic reaction.

There was Jew hatred on the Christian side and Christ hatred on the

Jewish side. Yeah, that's true. And there's plenty of really negative things to be said about both.

That's church history, if you would take it and study it. And so now the idea is, well, we shouldn't have a

Hebrew Old Testament. I mean, there were Christians, I mean, Justin Martyr in his dialogues with Trifo the

Jew said that the Jews were changing the scriptures. Again, basic church history 101.

We've always known that. It's just like they're discovering stuff because they never went to Bible college or seminary themselves or forgot all of it.

Anyway, and so, yes, they're glomming on this stuff and they're basically saying, do you really want a

Bible translated from a text from people who hated Jesus? Not realizing that when the scrolls were handed to Jesus in the synagogue and he read from them and said, these scriptures are fulfilled in your hearing, that's what he was reading.

He wasn't reading the Greek Septuagint. Oh, but, but, but, but, but, but nothing. They did not have

Septuagint scrolls that they were handing out there in Galilee. Now outside of Galilee, sure.

But there isn't any question. I mean, I've literally seen, doesn't Corey Muller, if I recall correctly,

Corey Muller does the Septuagint was original and the Hebrew is a translation of that.

Isn't that him? I mean, he's gone so far off into outer space that I don't follow him.

I don't read anything. It's just such soul rotting filth every day that it's just leave it alone.

Anyway, but there are people and they're saying, hey, the original was the

Greek Septuagint. No, it's not. The Greek Septuagint is clearly a translation. Anybody who can read the languages themselves, which most of these people cannot, never took the time to actually learn, recognizes the difference between an original and translation.

It is so painfully clear, so obviously clear that the

Septuagint is, and I can say Septuagint, yes

I can, but my Greek professor made it easier. And so it just comes out that way.

You can read the Greek translation of the Old Testament and you can clearly tell the vast difference between, for example, the

Minor Prophets and Pentateuch. The Septuagint wasn't translated at any one particular point in time.

It came together over a period of decades, but it was not translated by the same people.

The whole story about the 70 scholars, the 72 scholars, depending on what version you're reading, going into their caves and translating, coming out, it was all the same.

It's pure rot. It's not historical. Did Christians believe that?

Yes, Christians have believed a lot of silly stuff in the past, and that was one of the silly stories they believed.

But it's self -evident to anyone who can actually read this stuff that that's a much higher quality in the

Pentateuch than it is in other parts of the Old Testament. And so, yeah,

I need to, sorry, forgot to do something. It's a little thing called mute.

Mute, there it goes. All right, you will not hear any more dings for the next hour anyways.

And so people who have done meaningful study in this field knew all this allegedly new information all along, and we've taught it.

We've taught it to our own classes. It's just a regular part of scholarship. But none of this in any way, shape, or form changes the fact that the original language text of the

Laws of Moses is Hebrew. Those were written long before Koine Greek ever developed.

And the Greek Septuagint translation of the Mosaic Code is a secondary translation.

It is evident if you understand how to recognize which direction the translation went.

And so anyway, what you're going to have is these, it's the

Jews, people. I mentioned Eastern Orthodoxy. Eastern Orthodoxy prefers the

Greek Septuagint. The more scholarly of them try to be somewhat nuanced about it, but Eastern Orthodoxy has always held to Septuagintial priority,

I guess you might say. And so they will find an ally in the writings of the

Eastern Orthodox and things like that to try to make this presentation. But the fact of the matter is that the

Tanakh, the Torah, Nevim, and Ketuvim was written in Hebrew. One of the reasons to reject the apocryphal books as canonical is that they weren't.

They were probably written in Greek. And that's one of the reasons to reject them. They are later, they are secondary, aside from the fact that we claim to be

Scripture in that sense. There's more to say about that, obviously. But yeah, you're going to be running into more of this stuff.

And these Christian Nationalists, it's the Jews, guys, they have no foundation.

They have no theological foundation. We're already seeing them just throwing theology in the wind, changing perspectives overnight, because that's how you get clicks.

That's how you get the audience. And the audience is all. And you know, 30 years from now, no one's going to care what the audience was.

It was the people who stuck to their guns and were consistent that will be the ones remembered by history.

And the ones who were chasing the clicks, nobody's going to know anything about them other than, wow, they were embarrassing.

Okay, so back to what we started last time.

And I've already burned 15 minutes. There you go. This is helpful to me because I have a debate tomorrow night with Jacob Hanson, the person debating

Avery Austin here. And this is helpful to me.

This was helpful to listen to this. And so it might be helpful to talk through some of this stuff too, because fundamentally,

I don't know where he's going to go. I don't think anybody knows where he's going to go. And the fact of the matter is, as far as I can tell,

I'm not sure Jacob Hanson would deny that he believes today is not what he believed four years ago, that he has developed.

Which means that four years from now, he may have developed to the point where there are fundamental and foundational differences in his theological perspectives, similar to Joseph Smith.

I mean, if that's your paradigm, that's your paradigm. And so this is a debate that I'm doing, where I'm like, you know what, the thesis statement is self -evident.

It assumes something that a theological system without a transcendent

God cannot provide in the first place. So, okay, we'll let the

Bible speak, and we will then demonstrate the incoherence of any system that tries to deny those biblical truths, because that system cannot provide a foundation for so doing.

But I don't know what position he's going to take on any number of issues. And what was fascinating is, the man debating

Avery Austin in this debate would not have been recognized as a

Mormon by almost by any Mormon that I knew before the year 2005.

And I'm just pulling that number out. Just the point is, the first 20 years of ministry amongst

Mormons. And so that tells you something about what's happening within Mormonism, the new

Mormonism, the Oslerites. We might call it Oslerism, because Oslerism is not

Joseph Smithism, which is not Brigham Youngism, which is not Bruce R. McConkieism. And the funny thing is, only

Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and Bruce R. McConkie, according to Mormonism, were actually authoritative leaders with priesthood authority, apostolic authority, and prophet authority.

At least, well, prophet and apostle, they argue about stuff like that.

Anyway, so Blake Osler is not an apostle, and Jacob Hansen's not an apostle.

And yet, they seem to feel free to dismiss what apostles say.

And that's one of the, again, a major separation. It's always been a major separation between Christianity and Mormonism.

The major separation between Christianity and Mormonism is real simple. I've said it many, many times. King Paul, if you're in this course,

Joseph Smith said, we have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity. I will refute that idea and take away the veil so that you may see.

There it is. There's the dividing line. When Joseph Smith said,

I will refute the idea that God has eternally been God, he separated himself and his followers forever from the

Christian faith. No matter what else they do, no matter how many other terms they use that are similar sounding, you're starting with a different God.

You're starting with a God who is not the transcendent ground of all things. You're starting with a

God who comes forth from the created order. And now you might say, well, you know, that you've got intelligences and stuff like that.

Doesn't matter. He's not the creator. And so there's where the division is.

But it seems to me that there are a number of people who call themselves Mormons today that are fundamentally denying what

Mormonism has officially taught. And so I'm going to replay the first part that we played, and I'm going to stop it.

I'm going to repeat what I rushed through on the last program in regards to the 1916 document on the identification of the father and the son, where the father is identified as Elohim, the sons identified as Jehovah.

This became fundamental to the presentations in the LDS temple ceremonies.

In the LDS temple ceremonies, Elohim, God the father, sends Jehovah, Jesus, in company with Michael, down to earth to organize the earth, down to organize the earth.

Clear distinction of function, power, priority, everything between Elohim and Jehovah.

But you will hear Jacob Hansen saying, Father, Son, and Spirit all share the one divine name.

Now he's getting that from Christian theology. That did not come from Joseph Smith. That did not come from the First Presidency of the

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints. And he may like that and want to try to cobble this stuff together, but when you start pulling from Mormonism and this part of Christianity and that part of Christianity and this thing over here, and you try to put this thing together, it's called mutation.

And most mutations don't live long. But you might say Joseph Smith pulled it off.

Well, there you go. That's possible. Okay. All right. Let's listen to this.

And like I said, I'll stop real quick and mention that, and then we'll go from there.

Let me ask you this question, man. Who do you believe Yahweh is?

You're talking about a who? You're talking about a what? Who is he? Who? Yeah. Out of the persons, is the father

Yahweh? Each one of them can hold the divine name. So in Exodus, for example, it talks about my name is in him.

The angel of the Lord? Yep. To the angel of the Lord. So any one of the three persons can hold the title or name of Yahweh as they...

So in the ancient world, there was a concept of the king sending a messenger that would bear his name and who would actually speak as if he were the king.

Then in Revelation, John sees an angel who comes to him and begins to speak to him, literally saying,

I am the Alpha and the Omega. And he falls down and starts worshipping him. Okay.

So get the right camera going here. We talked about last time, that's not what in Revelation chapter 19.

This is the standard Unitarian Sheliac type of argument of a representative.

And Avery's going to do a good job in pushing on that and demonstrating where the problem is.

But the point is, again, what he says there, each of the divine persons can hold that That is not what

Mormonism... He did not get that from Mormonism. He did not get that from official teachings, the LDS church. That did not come from the 1916 statement.

The very fact he's using Yahweh is the standard

LDS usage has been Jehovah from the start. That's what's in the ceremonies and in the official documents and all that kind of stuff.

So there you go. That's why I'm going into a debate tomorrow night where I really don't know where my opponent is going to come from.

And in fact, he could come from almost any direction he wants to, which he may.

Maybe not an angel. Well, the thing is, is he goes, no, no, no. He says, get, he's like, what are you doing?

Get up. I'm a fellow servant. Yeah. But you said the angel says that I'm the Alpha and Omega. That's Jesus speaking.

Well, I might be misquoting, but my point is, is I might be messing that part up, but he is, what he is doing is the angel is speaking as if he is

Yahweh. No, he's not. What gives you, why is, why did John fall down? Well, John falls down and worships him and he says, get up.

Yeah. So what happens in the context, John is in awe of the vision that he's seeing. And so it just says that at being in awe of this, he then falls down before the angel's feet to worship the angel.

And then the angel picks them up and says, Hey, don't do that. Why was he, why would, I mean, I can't ask you this questions, but the reason that he is asking or that he's falling at his feet is because the messenger is coming as if he is

God. No, there's nothing in the context that says anything like that. So like I said, he's showing him the visions and the heavenly places and the, um,

Avery's correct here. And Jacob just has misread the text or, you know, he,

I don't think that he would necessarily pull the Joseph Smith thing that Joseph Smith did revelation one, six.

Um, but he could, I suppose. Um, we've looked at, we looked, remember we looked at revelation one, six thing a couple of weeks ago, and we were looking at the

Kingfellow, serving the groves, stuff like that, where Smith literally takes his misunderstanding of the

English rendering of the King James rather than what the original language says and builds an entire theology.

It's just, it's one of the many examples of where Smith, while claiming original language competency demonstrated that he completely lacked all original language competency.

Um, so could he be doing that? I suppose, but I just think he misremembered it.

That's going on. John is in such awe of this that he's, he falls down to worship at the end.

He begins blaspheming by worshiping. And he makes a mistake. He makes a mistake. That's why the angels said, Hey, back to your question.

All three members can bear the title of Yahweh as the messenger of Yahweh. They can bear the divine name.

Are they Yahweh though? Is the messenger Yahweh? What do you mean by Yahweh? The one water? So again, when you're saying that they can bear the name

Yahweh, you're saying they can bear the name. Like it's a title that they walk into or carry out their duties. Are they

Yahweh though? Well, are you, are, is Yahweh a who, or is Yahweh a what?

You're asking me a question, right? Oh, I'm sorry. I need, no, I'm trying to understand the question because when you say Yahweh, no, no, no, he's asking the question.

I know, but I don't understand what he's asking. Okay. Would you agree that Yahweh? I'm, I'm hoping this won't be tomorrow night.

I, I have a feeling it might be. Um, but you know, it's, it's amazing.

You know, we, we can talk about categories such as being in person.

Um, we, that is a, a valid area of discussion. But when it comes to Yahweh, um, what is the what?

Well, the what would be that which makes God, God. Thyatatos. And if he doesn't know what

Thyatatos means, he probably shouldn't be using these categorical terms because it's pretty straightforward.

Um, that which makes God, God, the very being of God. Um, and so since there are three divine persons who are identified as Yahweh, the spirit of Yahweh, the spirit, father and son are identified as Yahweh.

Um, this speaks to the essence of monotheism. There is only one being of God.

Um, and yet Yahweh reveals himself as the covenant

God of Israel. That's the normative meaning of the divine name. And by the way, the, it's the

Jews people, um, go after this stuff too. I've seen them trying to say,

Yahweh is the name of a demon and all this stuff. Just run from these people. They are morons.

They have no idea what they're babbling about. They really don't. It's sad.

I feel sorry for them, but there's no reason to waste any time, um, even trying to talk to them.

Anyway, um, so Yahweh is the covenant God of Israel. And so there's only one

Yahweh. I had a reference up and I'm not sure if it's still there.

Um, oh good. Yeah. And it's, uh, um, Avery's going to bring it up.

He's going to bring up this text. Um, it's Nehemiah 9, 6, and it's, it's one of many texts similar to this

Deuteronomy 4, 35, stuff like that. But this is, this is a good expanded one. Um, you alone are

Yahweh. And why does this keep going back? I rather it's the, there you go, uh, legacy standard

Bible. For some reason it just wants to go back to the LSB. Um, you alone are

Yahweh. One of my, um, likes of the LSB is that it uses the divine name.

Um, you alone are Yahweh. You have made the heavens, the heaven of heavens with all their hosts, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all is in them.

You give life to all of them and the heavenly host bows down to you. You are Yahweh God who chose Abram and brought him out of from Ur of the

Chaldeans and gave him the name Abraham, et cetera, et cetera, and cut a covenant with him. So it's the covenant God.

Um, you alone, and I remember, um,

I wonder if, I haven't heard of Tony DeLute in a long time. I wonder what ever happened to him.

I remember I had to get up at like two o 'clock in the morning once we were staying at the Motel 6 somewhere nearby where we actually are right here.

I'm not sure if that Motel 6 still exists. Um, and I had to go pick him up. He was flying up Salt Lake City for the general conference.

I had to pick him up at like two o 'clock in the morning and I wore, we had these, we need to remake these things, which we really do.

We, remember the witnessing with the word t -shirts? Those were good. They really were fun and they got a lot of conversations going.

I, why have we not remade them? I've talked about this like a board meeting once and we just, it just went and never happened.

We've got to make those witnessing with the word t -shirts again. I think they'd be wildly popular, but we, if we could remember which verses we used, um, we might have a picture of somebody wearing one someplace.

Anyway, uh, it was this color fade thing. This is when they really started first doing the color screening stuff and stuff like that.

And I was taking Greek and Hebrew in seminary. And so it was this shirt that had these verses that you could use in witnessing to Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, because that's all we were doing at the time.

And one of the Hebrew verses, um, specifically used this language.

It wasn't Nehemiah 96, it was from Isaiah, but it was the you alone in the

Greek Septuagint, it's monos, you alone are Yahweh. And it was right there.

And I was waiting for Tony to get off the plane. And this guy walks up to me and he's all friendly.

Hey, and he starts babbling something. I'm like, I don't know, you know, it's two o 'clock in the morning.

I'm not even awake. And he keeps looking at my shirt. And then he gets down to where it's quoting from the

New Testament in Greek. And that's when he realizes I'm a Christian. He was Jewish. And he was extremely offended that I had the

Hebrew text on my shirt. He just walked away, wouldn't say anything to me. Took me a few seconds to even figure out what was going on.

But I remember that we need to do those witnessing of the word shirts again. But you alone are

Yahweh. You have made the heavens. This is the issue. This is

Jeremiah chapter 10. This is Isaiah 42, 48. This is not Dan McClellan basketball analogy foolishness.

This is the central apologetic of the scriptures demonstrating who the true

God is. The true God is the creator of all things. And in Mormonism, you don't have a

God like that. Now in new Mormonism, maybe they'll come up with something like that.

I don't know, but that means it won't be Mormonism. It will be something else. Something else no one's ever believed in the past either.

But you don't have a creator God. You don't have an eternal God. And so there's where the fundamental difference is.

And you give life to all of them. And the heavenly host bows down to you.

So this is the one true God, creator of all things. El Elyon, the highest

God. Yes, that's Yahweh. If you allow, and this is, again, I've explained this in the past, but if you allow the scriptures to be read harmoniously, then the highest

God, El Elyon, is Yahweh. He's identified as that. But when you cut the scriptures apart and set them in contrast and contradictions on it, that's when you can make them say different things and make them self -contradictory.

So yeah, there you go. I mean, Yahweh can refer to a who, or it can refer to a what.

Okay, so when you say somebody can go out in the name of Yahweh, how are you using

Yahweh in that way? In that way? Yeah. When someone can go out in the name of Yahweh?

Yes. I would say that they're using it in the sense that they're going out in the name of the Father. Okay, why? Because the

Father is within the Godhead. Relationally, He is the most high. I got you.

So to you, the person who is Yahweh, by reference, and by who

Yahweh actually is, is the Father. The Son isn't really Yahweh. He's just an agent that can carry the name of Yahweh.

Incorrect. No. Yahweh can refer to a who, or it can refer to a what.

If it's talking, and it does refer to a who is the Father, and the Father's name can be born by the other two members as well.

Is the Son referred to as Yahweh? Is the Son referred to as Yahweh? Yes. Okay. So if the

Son is referred to as Yahweh, can the Son also send someone in the name of Yahweh? That's a good question.

Thank you. See, honestly, this is what happens when you're making it up as you go along.

As far as I can tell, no one's ever believed what he believes. And so somebody will ask a real interesting question.

It's like, I haven't thought about that before. That's why it might be good to go, you know, what

I believe should have some connection with what has come before me. And that's what was so interesting about the debate with Heschmeier is basically what

Jacob was saying was there wasn't a great apostasy as far as a fellowship or community was concerned, but there was as far as a specific organization.

That's not what the great apostasy was taught. Go read the

Journal of Discourses. Look it up. It's online now. You don't have to go to the earliest bookstore and spend $69 .95.

That's what I remember. I remember the day I bought my paperback edition of the Journal of Discourses in 1982 or 83, strapped on the back of a

Yamaha 750, dragged it to our little apartment. And my wife thought I'd lost my mind because $69 .95

was like, half of our weekly income for buying food and everything. And we were really glad we did it, though, by the way, because that was valuable for years after that because it went out of print for a while.

So anyway, you can find the Journal of Discourses online. Read it for yourself. Look up the early

Mormon books on apostasy and see how very strong they are in the denunciations of Christian dominations.

I mean, in the temple ceremonies themselves, the

Christian minister was represented for decades as the hireling of Satan.

In fact, I want to double -check this, but my recollection is that the Christian minister was specifically shown taking money from Satan to preach the

Trinity doctrine in the LDS temple ceremonies. Okay, you don't do that if you're doing the ecumenical thing that Jacob was sort of doing in that debate with Heshmeyer.

Not fully, but was sort of playing that game a little bit. So yeah, this is why tomorrow night's going to be really interesting.

I'm going to try to keep it on a biblical foundation.

I just realized something. If the specific topic is the

God of Calvinism is morally reprehensible, if that's the thesis statement, he has to go first because he's actually supporting that.

Well, that will be interesting. We will see.

We will see, because I have no notes right now. I mean, obviously I've been thinking about it.

I've been thinking about which texts I'm going to focus upon, but mine is a biblical presentation, and if I get to go second and he's already made his presentation, then

I will make that biblical presentation a little more concise and then craft a response to what has specifically been presented as best

I can, sort of on the fly, in essence. So it's going to be very different than most debates because most of the time

I really want to know where the other person is going to be coming from. I want to be able to read their books, their teachings, the videos they've presented.

There isn't anything there. There's a good question. Because he bears the divine authority, yes, he can.

He can send people out in the name of Yahweh. Jesus does that. He sends people out in the name of God. That's because he's

Yahweh, that's why. No, but here's the thing that's just not to understand the notion of divine agency in the

Bible. The idea is that the Angel of the Lord is the Angel of the Lord Yahweh. No, He's not.

I'm asking this rhetorically. The Angel of the Lord is not Yahweh. He's the Angel of Yahweh. He's the

Messenger of Yahweh, but He's treated as if He's Yahweh. Okay, if you have a king. Wait, wait, can

I stop you there? Yeah, go ahead. Okay, so the Angel of the Lord, you agree that the Angel of the Lord appeared to Jacob in Genesis 31, right?

Yeah. In the dream, remember? And he saw the stairway? Yeah. Who in the Scripture does it say he saw at the top of the stairway?

Yahweh. Very good. So, and then in Genesis 35 we get that the

Angel comes back to Jacob in another dream, right? Remember they're doing the cattle thing, the spotted thing or whatever?

And he says, I am the God of Bethel, the one who you made a vow to, right?

In Genesis 31, it was Yahweh that he made a vow to. The Angel of the Lord comes to him and says, that was me, right?

So with this being said, is the Angel of the Lord Yahweh? The Angel of the

Lord can bear the name Yahweh because... Not bear the name, is He? No, no, no. You have to remember, when a divine messenger would go forth for the king, in their context, remember you guys are reading this through a modern lens.

In the ancient world, the king would send someone out who would bear his name and speak as though they were the king in order to let people know what was going on.

And they would bear the royal name. They would speak literally as if the king was there. Would they claim to be the king?

Would they claim to be the king? Yes. If they were in the way that they would speak, they would speak as though they were the king.

No, that's different. I know they can speak as though they were the king. They come in the name of the king. They make it clear, hey,

I'm a representative of the king, right? Can they claim to be the king himself? But you're operating with the word

Yahweh exclusively... That's not an answer to my question. No, no, but the word Yahweh has... Now, this is where, again, time gets wasted because Jacob just keeps going back to Yahweh, back to Yahweh, back to Yahweh.

And the question from Avery is, can he claim to be

Yahweh? Can he introduce a confusion of identity?

And all this Sheliak stuff, all this representative stuff, again,

Unitarians use it all the time. Now here's a sort of Mormon using it and creating a whole new theology.

It ignores what we were just looking at in Nehemiah 9, 6, because it makes that kind of a text impossible.

You are Yahweh. What does that mean? Is that a what or a who? Can you see in the context of Nehemiah them going, what?

It would have stoned you. They knew who Yahweh was. They knew that's the covenant God of Israel. And that's the creator of all things.

And that's the one who made the covenant with Abraham. And so there wasn't any of this who, what stuff.

We're talking about the object of the worship of the people of God.

Who do they worship? And when you introduce all this other stuff, the complexities become confusing.

You said yourself that the word Yahweh and the word God is not univocal. That's fine, that's not an answer to my question.

No, but that's the problem is that you're asking a question without defining the term that you're asking. You're conflating the term

Yahweh as a who or the term Yahweh as a what? Let me tell you, my handsome friend, this is what just happened.

What I did was I went by your terminology just now. Okay, let me promise something right now.

I am not going to refer to Jacob as my handsome friend, and I would appreciate it if he doesn't do that either.

I asked you, when you say that Yahweh sends a messenger out and they go in the name of Yahweh, how are you using that?

And ever since then, I've been going about how you're operating using the word Yahweh. Okay, so with this being said,

I'm asking, can the messenger or agent of the king claim to be the king?

He can, if he's using the name Yahweh, he can claim to be part of that divine council.

I don't care about the council. See, we're doing it again. No, no, and I'm not referring to the divine council. I'm returning to the Godhead. Any member of the

Godhead, he can say that I am Yahweh because Yahweh is a term that can refer to the Godhead. That's not what I'm asking.

Here it is again. Can the agent of the king who he sends out, hey, go to nation

Numbria and go talk to the people, whatever. Can that agent that the king sent say, hey y 'all,

I'm the king, and I say, can he claim to be the king? He can, but you're referring to the name

Yahweh in this case. No, brother, the king. Can he claim to be the king? I'm talking, but this is all in reference to the Yahweh.

No, Yahweh is a word that can refer. He said he's Yahweh, right?

Jacob, the king. No, no, no. He said he's Yahweh. No, I'm using your example. You're seeing this is what happens.

The problem is that the king, the king's name in the case of Yahweh can refer in the case of Yahweh.

It can refer, it's referring to Yahweh. The word Yahweh is a word that you yourself has said can refer to a what.

And if he goes and says, yes, I am that, like I am, I'm in the divine council. I bear that name.

They can do that. Okay. So let's pause here for a second on Yahweh, the king. For your example, the king, can the agent of the king claim to be the king?

Can the agent of the king claim to be the king? No, he cannot. Thank you. I just want to make sure we realize that was an example apart from Yahweh.

And then we're talking about Yahweh. No, we're talking about Yahweh and Yahweh is a word that can be used in two different senses.

Let me show you. Jacob, let me show you again what the problem is. Just like you did it with the court, with the court example, and you even recognize it doesn't work with the

Trinity. Your example here doesn't work for Yahweh because your example is showing that people can go as agents of the king.

They can't declare to be the king themselves. The same way Yahweh can send agents, but the agents cannot claim to be

Yahweh or else they're going to drop dead. Ok, so with Yahweh, so for example you say that Yahweh is the

Father. You also said that the Son is also identified as Yahweh. This means that either the

Scripture is committing blasphemy, or Jesus truly is Yahweh the same way the Father is.

How do you reconcile that? When you say that how do you reconcile?

Go one more time with the question. So, if you say that just like we just demonstrated, an agent of the king cannot claim to be the king.

You cannot point to an agent of the king and say that's the king right there. Right? In the same way you can't point to any agent of Yahweh and say that's

Yahweh, or that agent claimed to be Yahweh themselves. Ok, so if you're acknowledging, you acknowledge that the

Father is Yahweh, you also acknowledge that the Son is also identified as Yahweh. Either the

Bible is committing blasphemy, or Jesus is truly Yahweh in the same way the

Father is. How do you reconcile that? It's that they both are ontologically Yahweh. They both ontologically are of the same, no that is not.

I believe, you're to say, no, to have the same nature, to have the same nature,

I believe that they're ontologically equal. You have to show that those three persons actually are the same being.

Would you agree that, you see why you have to start with monotheism? You see why

McClellan plays games with the different kinds of monotheism and all that kind of stuff?

When you don't know who the creator is, you're going to make hash out of the

Bible, all of it, Old and New Testament, if you don't start where you're supposed to start.

And that, by the way, is why some people say, well, you have to start with the Nicene Creed or the

Apostolic Creed. In reality, you know, when Irenaeus talked about apostolic tradition, when you actually allow him to define what it was he was talking about, he defines it as the belief that there is one

God, creator of heaven and earth. Now, that happens to be sub -apostolic. That's derived from biblical revelation, but his point is, if you don't start there with that revealed truth, you'll never understand the

Bible, which he was right about, obviously. But you can see that right here, the utter incapacity to understand who

God is, because you're not starting at the starting point.

Not just that they're all ontologically equal. I believe they're all ontologically equals. You don't understand what the Trinity is because the

Trinity actually is to say, as you said, it's not just that they share the same nature, it's that they are the same being.

So you have to establish from the scriptures that they actually are the same being. What's the only thing we do, Jacob? Read. That's right.

So let's do this really quick. Let's get the Bible. We're going to get the verse.

We're going to go to prophet Nehemiah. You got four minutes. I know. Okay. Okay. So this is

Nehemiah chapter nine, verse six. It says, you alone are

Yahweh. You have made the heavens and the earth and with all their hosts, the earth and all that is on it, the season, all that is in them.

You give them a life and the heavenly host bows down to you. Who is that?

Who? Yahweh in this case is a who? That's what I'm asking. There's only one who that people bow to?

Is it a who? Is it a who? No, Yahweh in this case is a what? Because it's referring to the one what? So notice what he said.

Is there only one who that people bow to? And then what does the verse say?

You alone are Yahweh. You are the creator. You give life. So life is given by a what?

Not a who. To give life is the expression of personhood. I mean, he hasn't thought this stuff through.

And when you're basically creating theology on the fly, that's in essence what happens.

The one what. And what does this one what consist of? Three persons. Okay. So just so you guys know, apparently, apparently

God logic forgot about that a court is a one what composed of three separate persons.

So he hasn't actually dealt with it and he's just putting on a show for you guys. It's a great show.

Okay. I got, I got a few more minutes. He needs to show that the three persons in the one court, the one what actually are the same being.

Being is the what? That's what, that's what being is.

Being in person. Those are the categories. Again, theatetos, that which makes

God, God, the definitional essence of deity is one.

And there are three persons that in scripture are said to share and possess that one.

And so that is the Trinity. And if you start with God's not eternal and there were guys before God or whatever else you end up wanting to believe, you're never going to come to that conclusion because you're not really dealing with scripture and what it says.

That's the Trinity. You guys, he's just describing the Godhead model and then be like, Oh, I won. That's the Trinity.

No, it's not. The Trinity is the three persons who are the same being.

He hasn't shown that it's difficult for me to recognize that Jacob doesn't understand what he's saying here.

Maybe he doesn't, I don't know, but he doesn't seem to understand that being and what are the same thing.

So he's equivocating and creating a contradiction based upon his own equivocation. Well, that's not much of an argument.

In fact, he hasn't dealt with all these contradictions in the scriptures that contradict that notion that they're the same being.

He just got up and walked away because he's like, he thinks that the father, son, and Holy Spirit are all fully divine.

That's not the Trinity. If that was the case, by the way, guys, then Mormons would be

Trinitarians because that's what we believe. I'm really hoping that kind of stuff's not going to happen.

Avery walked off. It is a generational thing.

Evidently, a lot of people are encouraging me. You need to get into what the young people find exciting, and it's the feeding off the energy, and it's the returning it to the audience, and getting into it with them, and stuff like that.

I'm not saying that there's necessarily something wrong with that. I'm simply saying that anybody can do it, and it doesn't have any impact on what's true.

In fact, it can diminish one's ability to recognize what is true because it creates an emotional content that can override rational thought.

Sorry to be Debbie Downer, but isn't it obvious we live in a day where the vast majority of younger people confuse emotion with thought, with truth, with logic?

We used to teach logic as a basic element of all education.

99 .9 % of the younger generation has never taken a class on logic and wouldn't want to, wouldn't know what a modus ponens or tollens was if it walked up and hit them in the face.

I hear everybody saying, just get into it and do the emotional thing.

I want what I say to actually have validity once the emotions have passed.

Long lasting, something that'll last past the next technological crash.

Yeah, that's an issue. Hey, if we tonight resolve it, and now

Latter -day Saints are Trinitarians and now can be considered Christians, thanks guys. We're glad to be part of the family.

You'd have to dump the Joseph God. No, you'd have to, no, no, the issue. He said you have to dump the

Joseph God. Exactly. But here's the thing, has Jacob already done that?

I, in some ways it seems like he has, but what's he replaced it with?

You got to dump the Joseph God and embrace the true God. That's what conversion from Mormonism really actually involves.

Okay, okay, okay. You know, it's not often that I just let someone take over my cross like that, but when you're working for me, man, when we on the same team like this, you can talk all you want.

Hey, by the way, you guys think Catholics are Christians and they don't have to abandon the

Pope, right? Joseph ain't no Pope. No, he didn't kill that many people.

But in all honesty, that is, you have to understand what the Trinity is. Yeah, and he's exactly right.

Jacob has taken over a situation where he is supposed to be answering questions, and so I know this is going to happen tomorrow night, and the problem is if I keep him from doing that, if I stop him, then

I'm the big meanie, because especially if he does it and he's being very expressive and, you know, stuff like this.

Yeah, that's what I'm faced with, you know, because emotive people interpret someone who insists upon logic and rational categories as being mean -spirited, biased, prejudiced, unloving, and it is a constant issue.

How do you handle that? And a lot of guys are deciding to roll with it.

I find that to be a compromise. I can't do it. I'm not saying that's what he's doing. He feeds off that.

He's younger. That's how he rolls. Okay, fine. My only question is, how many more questions could have been asked if control had been maintained without doing the emotional feeding?

See what I mean? And, you know, we may have different reasons for why we debate. I want debates to have value long after I'm gone, and when you get closer to being gone, you think more about that.

But yeah, these are all things to be thinking about, and of course

I'm thinking about this because we're less than 24 hours away from this encounter, and from what

I'm hearing, there's really a lot of interest up here on this. And I'm also hearing that where we're having it is very small, and that there's no way everybody who wants to see it is going to be able to see it, and I don't believe it's going to be live streamed.

I could be wrong, but I doubt that it will be live streamed.

So we'll see who shows up. I mean, I drove through a blizzard up here this morning. Well, yeah, this morning

I had lunch with some of the pastors and leadership at Apologia Utah, and when

I pulled, we went to a Chili's. It was a blizzard. I mean, visibility was low, snowing all over the place.

It was like, hello. So who knows what tomorrow's going to be like. Hey, we've run out of time.

Let me see here. And we've only got just a couple of minutes left in this thing anyways, so it's no big deal.

But that was useful. That was useful for me anyways. We'll see how useful it is next week when we review the debate and see how that went.

But yeah, thanks for watching the program today, and be praying for that debate tomorrow night, and then

I will start heading home on Monday after I preach twice while I do

Sunday school and preach twice on Sunday, both in Magna and then down in Provo, and then head home on Monday, get home

Tuesday, probably do a program Wednesday, Thursday, somewhere around there, too, or maybe even

Monday when I get to the park down in Southern Utah. I split it up better going back.

I might have time to do the program Monday, do the review, something like that. We'll see. It's hard to pull in, get set up, and try to do a program on the same day, so we'll see how that goes.

But anyways, thanks for watching the program today. Looks like from what

I'm seeing, since I heard nothing from Rich, that it actually worked without having too many issues.

So that's fantastic. We fixed our problem. We'll see you next time.