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 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, 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 freshmen 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 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 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 Mahler, if I recall correctly, Corey Mahler 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 even 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, but 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 the 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. You know, 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 a 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 they claim to be scripture in that sense. There's more to say about that, obviously. But yeah, you're going to be writing in 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 at 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 Hansen, 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 Hansen would deny that what 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 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 is 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 into 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 is 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. It 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 identify 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, 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? Who is he?

Who?

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. 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.

In Revelation, John sees an angel who comes to him and begins to speak to him, literally saying like, I am the alpha and the omega. And he falls down and starts worshiping him.

That's not.

Okay. So get the right camera going here. We talked about last time, that's not what happened in Revelation chapter 19. This is the standard Unitarian, Sheliak 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 name. 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 that he's using Yahweh is the standard LDS usage has been Jehovah from the start. That's what's in the temple 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 weeks ago, and we were looking at the King Fella, 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 you misremembered it. That's going on. John is in such awe of this.

That he's, he falls down to worship at the end and begins blaspheming by worshiping. And he makes a mistake. He makes a mistake. That's why the angel 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, 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 was 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, 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 NSV. 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 Chaldees 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 in 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.

Cause that's all we were doing at the time. And one of the Hebrew verses, um, specifically used this language. It wasn't Nehemiah 9, 6 from Isaiah, but it was the, you alone in the Greek sentence, 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 like 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.

Okay. 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, you know? And that's what was so interesting about the debate with Heshmeyer 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 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, you know, half of our weekly income, you know, 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, you know, 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 Doctrine in the LDS Temple Ceremonies.

Okay, you don't do that if you're doing the, you know, ecumenical thing that Jacob was sort of doing in that debate with Heshmeir, 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. 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.

No, that'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.

Well, that's because he's Yahweh. That's why.

No, but you know, 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, it'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. OK, if you have a king who's saying, can I stop you there? Yeah, go ahead.

OK,.

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 is 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 write 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 is the angel of the Lord Yahweh?

The angel of the Lord can bear the name Yahweh, because anyway. 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.

Yeah. 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. They were they claim to be the king. Would you claim to be the king? Yes. Yes. If they were. No, they were. If if they were in the way that they would speak, they would speak as though they were the king.