Mormonism and the LGBTQ Movement, China’s Totalitarianism, Polight’s Confusion, Open Phones

What happened? No intro. Well, that's nice. Nothing like you know, just throwing it throwing it out there. You know. So did we forget to do something or.

There's this device on the computer that It sometimes likes me and sometimes it doesn't and it's what plays the music and today it doesn't like me.

That's that that's the way it is, I don't know I don't think Rush Limbaugh put up with this personally. I think they'd be looking for a new producer or something. Because I don't think it's a matter of of being liked by electronic pieces of Equipment, but hey, welcome to the dividing line.

I Realize that you know for some folks. It's gonna be a little hard to get into it without the music. But there there you go. Welcome to the program of that threw me off completely now. I don't know what in the world.

I'm supposed to be talking about but Hey, but it gets it gets things going it gets things going. I would imagine hopefully most of you have been noting. Well, by the way before I jump into that Just Reposted or however, it is you a do a Facebook thing.

I just shared it on our on my timeline about the I guess I didn't know we were doing it this way, but the dialogue with Kwaku L Of the three Mormons will be on Apologia TV radio. Whatever it is Live tomorrow morning starting at 1130, which means I really need to be there on time and so I Last time I went over there.

My my GPS was sending me to all the wrong places. It was a little bit weird anyway. So that will be 1130 Phoenix time which I guess would be what? 230 Eastern Time something along those lines. So that will be will be live.

I thought we were just recording and then it would be you know put together and and go from there but from what I'm seeing it will be It will be live. So Keep that in mind tomorrow for those of you who have a special interest in Mormonism and especially sort of the the new Mormonism.

I Saw a video posted just yesterday or day before yesterday on three Mormons with one of the Ostler guys Who had who? If you look him up now on on Google almost everything is LGBTQ ally. He's one of the big guys pushing Homosexuality acceptance of homosexuality within Mormonism and You know for me I On One hand I look at Mormonism and I go you cannot have a more patriarchal religion in its historical Manifestation.

I mean when the woman does not hold the priesthood. When the woman is resurrected by the power of her husband's priesthood. When you have polygamy Um, that's about as Man-centered patriarchal kind of a setup as you can have and obviously what's even more amazing is In Mormonism the power of God is the power of the priesthood and the power of procreation so if one of the very defining powers of deity is Is procreation then the idea of male and female is You can't the idea of male and female you could argue is more foundational Than the idea of God in Christianity because You can't you can't have procreation without a man and a woman.

The whole concept of celestial marriage. I mean is Mormonism could Mormonism someday Have same-sex temple marriages. Well, what would stop that? Well What what would stop that? Would be a commitment to believing as The founders believed Joseph Smith Brigham Young no one can possibly argue That any LDS leader up to up up through Brigham Young up through Bruce R. McConkie.

Up through Bruce R. McConkie. I mean we're talking we're talking somebody I passed a track to many years ago. Nobody could make an argument that any of those leaders David O. McKay Spencer W. Kim You you name them go all the way back James Talmadge, you know go back to the preceding century.

That any of them would have for a moment Contemplated the concept of same-sex ceilings same-sex marriages. Because there just isn't any room for this within the context of Mormon theology, I mean at least historic Orthodox Mormon theology and that's that's the whole point.

But so if people were really, you know committed to Believing Exactly What the earliest individuals believed then. Okay, but the but the problem is Given the concept of latter-day revelation and given the fact that Mormonism has already begun to embrace the ramifications of That in the sense of its own evolution.

I can't see it there actually is a meaningful foundation for Mormonism to resist the Survival instinct. Survival instinct in the sense of we need to have people coming in we need to grow we need to. You know, it's not like there is a once-for-all delivered to the Saints faith.

Mormonism at its heart says there isn't a once-for-all delivered to the Saints faith. It's still being delivered and what's delivered today might look a whole lot different than it looked last time.

You know, I I go back to the very first thing That I said at the end of my first Discussion with The two missionaries in 1982. Someday gentlemen elders Reed and Reese you are going to need to know the God who does not change and When that time comes, I hope that you'll contact me or more likely that you'll know of other Christians in your life that you would be able to To communicate with and so When when you think about it that there is no It it's like a jellyfish there is no internal skeleton As far as a meaningful unchanging worldview that can keep Mormonism from morphing into whatever and Is that what we're seeing?

I mean, I I would just have to imagine that there are a lot of Mormons around Manti That would just go no way ain't going there. Is that what will lead to the split or many splits and splinterings, I don't know but the The willingness of the Mormon leadership to play footsie with the LGBTQ movement when it is fundamentally contradictory to any meaningful explication of LDS theology Temple ceremonies the whole concept of who God is as a I mean in Mormonism God is a gendered being Transgender what what I don't know.

Anyways, this just appeared on the three Mormons thing I guess yesterday, I guess the date was 28. So maybe the day before yesterday and I was just I Was just left going you've got to be kidding me Why do you waving at me in there at that bloodless attract as nothing?

This is exactly what I thought of when I watched it because I think this is what Joseph Smith and Brigham Young would do. With those three guys. Oh blood atonement. Yes.

Well, there's there is absolutely no question. And don't blame. Well three guys that include included Osler. And man I listening to Osler sitting there, you know, he's about my age and You know It's the you know, I've lived my whole life without knowing this View of liberalism and now I'm so excited to have become a liberal and been You know freed from the chains of my bigotry of my youth and all the rest this kind of stuff.

That's not what you're saying. But that's that that's the mindset that you were you were getting we've all seen people doing that and of course I sit back and go so. You got all the way into your mid -50s not having any idea of the foundations upon which your your beliefs were built.

You hadn't thought these things through beforehand. Okay, I was just I was I was pretty I was pretty surprised I'm not sure that's gonna come up it might because Honestly The primary area of discussion has to be who God is and This is what illustrates.

How could Mormonism go from? Brigham Young's 48 wives. And His views on the priesthood in the blacks to what you see today. If he was the primary channel through which priesthood authority comes to everybody today.

Well, this is what illustrates the need to have an objective revelation that does not change over time and I I don't have it in here with me, but there's a I'm not sure how popular a book it is anymore.

But back when I was studying Mormonism almost every missionary They used to have these little Missionary packs that you when when somebody was called to go on a mission when these young guys 18 years old preparing to go on Their mission you could go the LDS bookstore and you could buy a case you know, I'd be in a little slipcase and stuff and and it would have like articles of faith by James Talmadge and one of the books that it had was called a marvelous work and wonder by LeGrand Richards and Richards, I remember When I first bought the book That dear Mary The lady at the at the LDS book and supply Explained to me that elder Richards had published this book in such a way That it would always have to be able to be made available to anybody who wanted a copy.

It wasn't supposed to be charged for unless you wanted to pay for it type of a thing and you know. Okay, fine. Wonderful so is widely read and Influential and of course, he was a general authority. It was impossible and Over and over and over again in a marvelous work and wonder.

What did he say? He said Joseph Smith did not learn this from the Bible. We did not get this from preceding scripture. It was just a constant theme constant theme constant theme. We got to understand that's That's going to impact Your Religion in the long run and when your religion runs out of Charismatic leadership and Mormonism has By a long shot.

I mean I'd say about the last really I mean the last Authoritative Guy that sort of sound like an apostle Was Bruce R. McConkie. He's willing to say this is right, this is wrong. We're right. You're wrong.

You know and and once Mormonism fell into the Gordon Hinkley public relations Let's make everybody love us stuff. You know, they're becoming as someone said to me spineless liberal Episcopalians and I'm sorry, but the Episcopalians are not doing well.

You may have noticed that most those churches are all boarded up or become nightclubs and there there is a reason for that so. Is that where Mormonism is headed? I I don't know. I don't know but it was um, it was fascinating to see you might want to look it up three Mormons on YouTube and and see the last one that they did and So so there you go.

Anyways, I wasn't gonna go there. But I spent 15 minutes on anyways, isn't that interesting what I was going to mention was the continued, you know, we we Invest a lot of our time here in the United States on Issues that are primarily focused upon us upon Americans.

We have been rightly criticized for having a non global view. And there's no question about that and I think we've gotten a little bit better. But I basically had to be kicked out into the globe To really start to see and and to realize and put a face on Global Christianity.

And the fact that I have brothers and sisters all around the world the thing that has always Been so very Encouraging to me is to recognize That what holds us together what unifies us is our common faith.

It's not how we dress or how we Sing or any of these things it is it is the common faith that is ours no matter where we are in in the world and so we have for a very very long time been praying for the Saints in China and Though the Chinese government has done what it could to try and Co-opt Christian evangelicals to their side.

They they've pretty much failed to do so and If you listen to the briefing you remember, I don't know six months ago a year ago, I forget when it was You had the Chinese Communist government Talking about Establishing basically the religion of their their current premier or whatever they call him party chairman and Recognizing that what this meant was there is going to be a coming crackdown on Religion as a whole in China, and I know it's a whole lot easier for us since.

So we're praying for to focus primarily upon Christians, but it should be recognized That China is functioning as an equal opportunity persecutor. It is not just Christian buildings that have been dynamited and crosses taken down and and now The the House churches that had been somewhat just sort of overlooked.

They're going after them. They're forcing Christians. If you want your children to be able to go to school. You're gonna have to sign this document that says that you renounce all all claims to Christian faith.

This kind of stuff. They're doing the same things to Muslims they this is a and it makes sense because both Islam and Christianity would involve a Acknowledgement of an authority above the state and Communist totalitarianism.

Can't allow that now in Western totalitarianism. You still you you have in the mind of Western totalitarians. The coalescence of state and science when it comes to epistemology and authority. So, you know the state is always the state gets to define what science actually says so Let's not worry about intelligent design and all that evidence and and things like that.

We you know, the state says this is how you interpret that. So that is the orthodox way of doing so if you interpret it differently you are a cultural heritage well in in China, then they are going after the The Muslims.

There was a I did not hear what happened on this. But I saw a picture I do follow some some Muslims on Facebook and things like that and I saw a picture of a very large mosque That had just been completed.

I mean you can tell it's quite new and quite extensive and There are all these people standing in a circle around it protecting it from the authorities who have been ordered to dynamite it because It was built without the proper paperwork.

Well, we all know how that works. You know that they had all the paperwork that the local people demanded of them. But when you are a totalitarian government, you just come up with new paperwork requirements.

After it's all over say you didn't do it. So we get to blow it up. I Mean we know what's going on here. It's I don't know if it's still standing. I would assume that I would have heard had it been dynamited.

But the the point is the Chinese communists totalitarians can not. You know, there is nothing. There's nothing in state religion in Making the real the the religion of the people the state. There's nothing in that that can actually really attract people.

I Decided to give into it and so therefore you You might get something out of it. You might get more money or position or power over other people, but in the sense of actually having inherent worth and value.

Something you'd actually be willing to give your life for. States are shallow substitutes for a faith in God and So there are numerous Articles showing up if you're just keeping an eye open for them. Talking about what's going on in the persecution of Christian churches persecution of Muslims and others in China and There are supposed to be a 60 million Protestant Chinese Christians, it's really hard to say obviously there is a compromised official church in in China, but it's it's very obvious what China is really all all about and So we definitely need to be praying for our brothers and sisters there.

You know, I I had a lot of just wide-eyed naive people on Twitter. I I made a statement, you know, I'm looking at The People who are winning in the primaries in the United States and Everyone is commenting on the reality that one of the two political parties is Taking a very hard Left the not liberal leftist swing Toward socialism.

There are open socialists, you know, you had Bernie Sanders. But hey, come on uncle Bernie with the uncle Bernie who's never met a comb. He liked I mean, come on how he How can how can Bernie be scary because he just looks like a Muppet, you know I mean, you can't you can't how can you be scared of a Muppet, you know?

I mean, honestly if you put Bernie up in the balcony with the other two guys, you wouldn't be able to tell which one was which. They'd all looked and sound the same. So, you know, you just don't you don't get all Evil evil about about the Muppets.

But the fact is that Historically socialism is a vicious enemy of the Christian faith and The kind of socialism that produced the Stasi prison in East Germany, you know, I've mentioned it many times because I've walked through it.

The vast majority of people just have no idea and These naive people on Twitter and Facebook. Oh, we just live in the best country in the world that does never happen here. And you're just like you have no earthy idea how fast That kind of Repressive totalitarian Murderous regime can take over in places where where Liberty once once existed.

There's just a lot of really naive people very very naive people in In this world you say well, you're sure a downer. I said look God will always have his people but there have been times when God's people have been under severe persecution and That time may come again.

And as I listen To the public discourse and see how people are identifying Are acting in such a way that that is very plain. They wish to end all Meaningful Disputation debate anything in the public sphere anything that does not agree with their narrow socialist viewpoint must be Finished just shut it up.

You can't say it's all hate. We are the only people who are not hateful and we hate you. When I listen to that I just go I'm not sure where this is going, but I can I can I know where it went in the past and Since we don't teach history anymore.

We teach what is taught for history in public schools anymore. It's not history. It's mine. It's mine. It's brainwashing. It's not actual history. The next two generations filled with people have No idea what the Stasi prison was of no idea what what this nation has fought in the past and and what the root and source of our liberties have been.

You cannot expect a people like that to maintain their Liberty. You just can't you can't. So anyway, oh We're being called Statler and Waldorf in channel. Do you know that I guess those were the two Muppets up in the up in the Balcony, so I guess that's you and me.

So What? Yes. Yes. Well, I I was thinking about that I was thinking about doing that but well, we'll not do that for the moment. Okay. Let me I hadn't planned on doing this. Most the time I'm sent this kind of stuff I don't do it but this morning on on Twitter Someone sent me a link to brother Polite I have no earthly idea who brother polite is.

I'm sorry. But I'm having to wonder a little bit if he has something to do with black Hebrew Israelites or whatever. Because he makes some strange comments here and the whole conversation going back and forth is about Uh Jesus being a white man and Jesus couldn't have been a white man, and I don't know any Semi-trained evangelical anywhere That thinks Jesus was a white man.

But same time Jesus wasn't black man. It's gone. It may have I put it in the charger because I didn't know you had taken it out. So I figured he'd been left there is dead. So So The some of the stuff that says here is a little bit on the weird side, but what I wanted you to catch was the Technical.

Okay, so I'm I just this is sort of weird my watch just vibrated and I'm wearing a watch big enough today to read the messages. And so my son's telling me this man is a black Hebrew Israelite. Okay. There you go.

You know, I I remember I've told the story before but I remember the Christmas that we gave my dad his first else LED not the red ones, but I think it was I think it was LCD. No, no, no, they were blue.

Yeah, okay, but they were it was blue and they glowed in the dark Alarm clock thing back in the Late 70s somewhere around there and just how Amazed he was and and you know, and we were so like Oh technology and Now I'm sitting here Through something that didn't exist back then called the web talking to people all around the world and my son can just Use whatsapp and it shows up on my watch.

This is you know you know, I I'm old enough to remember Dick Tracy with the with the Television watch and how that was just completely Sci-fi man, that was just like no stinking way. No, I will say whatever I want to say Josh he now he thinks he can he can correct what I'm what I'm what I'm Saying via the watch to no don't think so.

Because they ain't the second part, but they are the first part. So there you go anyway so somebody sends this to me and It's it's incredibly bad argumentation, but most of the stuff you get from these folks is incredibly bad argumentation.

But It's the Illustration of What we saw remember how long ago did I do that thing with elder a car? I mean that was like two and a half years ago and about two and a half years ago and one of the things that got repeated over and over again was You know the guys going well, that's but that's Strong's number blah blah blah blah blah and I'm like sir I don't care about the Strong's number I actually teach Hebrew and the word is this that it means this and that became sort of viral.

They just it just it just went went all over the place and the thug life thing and all that. Well, I didn't get half of that stuff. Anyway well, that's sort of what you got here is you've got the well you just look up that Strong's number and it and it's like no, and So let's let's take a listen here to to what is said and then we're gonna go back over it and go Not not quite.

So Here we here we go.

You feel me? If I go to Matthew chapter 1 verse 23 and I see the word virgin there and they talking about Emmanuel and Jesus being born and then I see the word virgin there and then I go into a Greek Concordance and I look up the word virgin and then I see in the Greek that the word that the user for virgin just means And aren't married to woman then the virgin Mary isn't necessarily it changes the represents a Conception.

Yeah, it means a woman who's not married who had this child. But you know, I will get cursed at and I'll be disrespected but I will also say it's not me. In any one of the Bibles you choose to read if you get one that has a Corresponding concordance you can look up the concordance number and you can see what the words Actually translate to be and thus no matter what if they say not in my Bible, that's okay.

But in everyone's concordance, it's gonna have the same definitions. So Yeah.

Okay a Couple things. I don't know if you caught it because the whoever the interviewer was was talking some Vlad or something. But did you catch you know, we're gonna look at the Parthenos Alma Bethulah, we'll take all that apart in a moment.

But did you catch a really common? Misunderstanding on the part of this fellow. He talked about the Immaculate Conception. He talked about it's not the Immaculate Conception. What do you think the Immaculate Conception is?

Now this is a common mistake. I mean lots of Roman Catholics make the same mistake. It's just the virgin birth of Jesus has Nothing to do with Immaculate Conception. Immaculate Conception is about Mary's conception in Roman Catholic theology, it is a Concept that developed much later in church history.

It was defined as a dogma Only a few hundred years ago and it is the idea that Mary was conceived without the stain of original sin by the preemptive application of the merits of Christ to her. That's what the Immaculate Conception is about, it has nothing to do with Parthenos Alma anything.

Total disconnection there. So there's a there's a basic Fundamental error. And so now I'm being told on on Twitter that that he's not Hebrew Israelite, so There you go Twitter fight. Yeah. Okay. Now you got everybody all upset.

So That is a is an error, but let's let's consider because this this comes up and we've covered it especially Around the holidays because Starting Sometime late October in the November and certainly in December.

We all know that at that time year and then February March April around time the resurrection. The media just drags out Stuff that they put into a folder a long long time ago. And just recycle it about all the errors of Christianity and everything else.

And so you hear all about How Isaiah 714 doesn't say virgin and blah blah blah blah. But where this guy is confused. He's confused on a more basic level. The argument that is normally used. Is that when you go back into Isaiah 714 in the Hebrew text?

The the term that is used is ha Alma Ha Alma He may ha Alma ha Ha Alma ha Ha Alma ha Ben his son and the Virgin or the young child the young woman will give birth Yeled is the is the root there To a son and you will call his name Immanuel, with us, is God.

And historically, this had a fulfillment in the past, that was its minor fulfillment. It has a greater fulfillment when you follow Immanuel all the way from here through chapter 11. You'll see that it's a repetitive phrase and it's associated with messianic prophecies, and we don't have time to go back through that right now.

I've presented that a number of times on the program, you can look it up. Anyway, the point is, Alma, in Hebrew, not in Greek, he's talking about a Greek concordance. First of all, it's not a concordance, it's a lexicon.

What you need is a lexicon where you actually look up roots, meanings, you've got halo, and you've got older ones, you've got Kohler-Baumgartner, there's all sorts of Hebrew, Aramaic lexicons. And then when you're talking about a Greek lexicon, you're not talking about a concordance with numbers.

No serious scholarly lexicon has numbers, so you can just sort of do the numbers thing. It sort of assumes that if you're going to be doing this kind of stuff, you might want to know the language, might be able to read it, or something like that, at least to a certain level.

And so, if you're looking at Greek lexicons, you know, the standard Bauer, Donker, Art, and Gingrich, 3rd edition, but there are numerous others that are available, and so many of them now are available relatively easily, not overly inexpensive, but relatively easily obtainable in the various Bible programs, which are now available for your phone and your iPad and everything else.

I use Accordance, they're available in Logos, there used to be BibleWorks, it's gone out of business now. You've got Olive Tree, and you can get these resources in all of these programs and look these things up for yourself, and there you go.

Anyway, so these are lexicons that you're going to be utilizing, and the area of confusion other than the language that the gentleman has is that there is no question about the meaning of the Greek. He mentioned the Greek, he didn't mention Hebrew.

He mentioned Matthew 1 -23, and in Matthew 1 -23, it's a Parthenos. Now Parthenos, you have the Parthenon in Greece, there is no question about its meaning, there's none. A Parthenon, the whole point of these temples were the Vestal Virgins that were there, and the term has very specific meaning of a virgin.

What he has heard and has strangely transmuted into something else is that Alma in the Hebrew can simply mean a young woman of marriable age, and it could. But Matthew's not quoting the Hebrew, he's quoting the Greek Septuagint, and the Greek Septuagint uses Parthenos.

So before Jesus is born, 200 years before Jesus is born, the Jewish translators of Isaiah translated Alma as a Parthenos, and that's what Matthew quotes in Matthew 1 -23. So if you look up Parthenos, it's going to say virgin.

If you look up Alma, it's going to say young woman of marriageable age, or a virgin. It can refer to a virgin. There is a specific term, Bethula, for a virgin, but in Isaiah 7, the emphasis is upon time frame, in the initial fulfillment of the prophecy.

Because what's it about? If you remember, it's about the kings that have come against Israel, but by the time that this woman gives birth, those two kings will have gone away, and so it's a time frame issue.

When it becomes cited in the New Testament, it's no longer the time frame issue, the emphasis is upon the nature of the sign itself, connected to Emmanuel, and that's when you then look at Emmanuel as it's used in Isaiah 7, and you follow all of the prophetic material from Isaiah 6 through Isaiah 11, and in each chapter, you end up with messianic texts that are cited in the New Testament.

So New Testament writers see this concentrated area of messianic prophecy, and they're drawing from it in bits and pieces in the New Testament. And so all the stuff about immaculate conception, all the stuff about, you know, that's just completely out of relevance, that has nothing to do with what we're talking about.

The Greek was in error. It was talking about a dispute over the semantic domain of Alma in the Hebrew, and even then, the question then becomes, well, you know, I don't know what his thing is. Maybe he doesn't believe Matthew's inspired, or I don't know.

I have no earthly idea. If he does, then Matthew is utilizing the Greek septuagint, and hence, the meaning must be determined in that way. So there you go. The problem is that kind of a statement carries a lot of weight with people for some reason, and the vast majority of people are not prepared to explain where the error is to be found, and it's a very clear error and one that we should be aware of.

So how about we go ahead, if you want to, and open the phones. We'll see if we can squeeze a few people in on the phone line today. Just grab a few phone calls if there would be some people who'd like to comment on these things or on other things at 877 -753 -3341.

877 -753 -3341. That is a toll-free number. So Parthenos has a small semantic domain. Oh yeah, it's a pretty technical term. It has a much narrower semantic domain than Alma does. That's for certain.

877 -753 -3341 is the phone number if you would like to call into the program. We've only got about 17 minutes left on the program, so we won't be able to take too many calls, but the lines are open for you right now if you would like to call in.

Well, one line is open. Three are already filled. 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number there, and now the last one is taken. So we have one ready to go, and at least I think we're ready to go. There we go.

Preservation of Scripture and the Bible’s Purpose

All right, let's talk with Alex. Hi, Alex. Hey, Dr. White, thanks for having me. Huge fan. Yes, well, hey, I said to Rich for the program,.

So I hope we can get Alex on today. Yeah, yeah. So a question for you. Usually when we discuss the topic of the Bible's preservation, we talk about the manuscript evidence and what have you. Just wondering if you would be able to provide a theological basis for the Bible's preservation.

In other words, do you believe that the Bible says itself that it will be preserved, and if so, how would you go about doing that? Yeah, I address that in the book.

Scripture Alone. In the chapter on the canon, I make the argument that the inspiration of Scripture is related to the preservation of Scripture in that God says that He has a purpose in inspiring Scripture and therefore a purpose in making sure that the Church knows what its Scripture is and how to access that.

And so if we, on the one hand, will say that God will exercise tremendous divine power to work the miracle of bringing us Scripture, and that is men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

We don't know all the mechanics of that, but it is the statement of Scripture itself, then it would make sense in light of the fact that the Scriptures say these things were written for our benefit. When the New Testament apostles will quote from the Old Testament, Paul, for example, in Romans 15 will say, you know, these things were written for our benefit so that we might understand this side of the other thing.

We learn from that that Scripture has a purpose and that God intends us to be able to possess it in the same way Jesus held men accountable for the Scriptures. And so the only way to understand the apostolic witness and Jesus' own teaching is that there has been a preservation of those texts.

I don't go to the passages a lot of people go to. For example, I don't think Psalm 12 has anything to do with this, to be perfectly honest with you. The Isaiah passage about my words is primarily about prophetic utterance as a whole, not necessarily just the written Scriptures.

It is actually more of a presupposition of the arguments of the New Testament writers that there has been that preservation, and then that presupposition from the Old Testament I think is just as valid for anything that is in the New.

And so it's related to issues of canon, and it's certainly related to the fact that if you don't think God has a divine decree that he is working out in this world, I think that probably frequently ends up leading to some problems.

I think that Arminianism as a whole, because of its rejection of a divine decree, has shown itself more readily willing to abandon the high view of Scripture. If you have a divine decree, then the preservation of Scripture is sort of axiomatic at that point, because God is working out all things in accordance with the will.

And obviously one of those things would be having the Scripture exist in such a way that the church can access it and hence have the guidance that God intended us to have so that we could have those examples and so on and so forth, and Jesus could teach from the Scriptures during his ministry and all that kind of stuff.

But like I said, Scripture alone, my book on that subject will go into a little bit more detail on that, looks at some of the texts that announce those.

Purposes and things like that. Okay? Great, thank you so much. I just wanted to make one last comment here. My church and I were involved in a lot of outreach to Muslims here in our community, and I just really, really respect a lot of the work you do.

You have had some opportunities that we could only dream of. Yeah, that's true. Being able to preach the gospel openly in a mosque here is just not something that happens regularly. No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't.

Thank you again for your work. All right, thank you, Alex. All right, thank you. God bless. Take care of that little one there, who was very nice and quiet. Let's talk to—no, seriously, it was.

You could tell. Thomas. Hello, Thomas. Hi, Dr. White. Doing good. I had a question on a teaching about final salvation. It's primarily from John Piper, and he is quoted saying, we don't get into heaven by faith alone, but we are justified by faith alone.