Jason Collin

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

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

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

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

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

James White. And welcome to the Dividing Line on a Tuesday morning, the only Dividing Line of this week, heading up to cold and snowy

Omaha. I was supposed to be having Tour de Apologia on Saturday up there.

People are invited to come ride a hundred kilometers with me. And so I started looking at the weather forecast.

Let me look at the weather forecaster real quick. Let me see. This one doesn't have it up.

Omaha, and I need to remember that's N -E, not N -B for some reason.

Okay, Omaha, Nebraska, Friday, a high of 48, low of 21, chance of rain 60%.

At least they took snow out. As of yesterday, they were calling for snow.

On Friday, possibility of accumulations up to one inch. Now that's gone.

That's good. And then Saturday, a balmy high of 59 with a 70 % chance of precipitation.

So I am gathering together all of my rain gear, cold weather gear, shoe covers, helmet covers, and everything else for Tour de

Apologia, which we're still going to try to get to happen come

Saturday up there in Omaha. But that's not why I'm going up there, by the way. I'm going to be speaking on apologetics and preaching at Omaha Bible Church and doing stuff like that.

But Saturday afternoon, we're going to try to do that. We'll see. I don't know. It looks like a really cool route too.

I don't know how they do this, but I was looking at it today and there's 1 ,700 feet of ascent on it. And I'm like, how do you do that in Omaha?

I mean, well, yeah, you do a lot of little whoop -de -doos, lots of rollers.

Yeah, that's what I figure. It's just up, down, up, down, up, down all the time. I figure that's what it is.

Not too many long sustained things. We've measured every bump in the road. I think so. But anyway, so if you're up in the

Omaha area, we will be looking forward to seeing you through the rain this coming weekend.

What an interesting few days it has been, of course. I started seeing the

Bussard story. Was that yesterday or the day before yesterday that hit? I think it was the day before yesterday.

And we're just becoming numb to this. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you know that, and I didn't queue it up.

I figured you've watched all this stuff anyways. Everybody knows that an

NBA player, one that I'll be perfectly honest with you, I had never heard of before, has come out and announced that he is a homosexual.

And of course, the expected response in our culture now, the only acceptable response in our culture, which talks about inclusivism and then denies inclusivism, which is exclusivistic to its core.

The only acceptable response is, well, isn't that wonderful? Let's celebrate this.

This is this is fantastic. This is great. That's what I think you can say now.

You cannot say, well, that's a shame. That's not good.

No, no, no. You're not allowed to say that. And so you have an

ESPN analyst who is asked his own viewpoint. And what becomes very, very clear is that if you are going to exist within the holy temple of the media, the holy temple of the media, this is part of this is the the inner core of the the religion of our society.

Is to be there in the media where you get to pontificate, you get to say whatever you want to say.

If you're going to be there, then you have to walk the line. You have to agree with all of the dogmas of the new

American secular religion. And so here is an

ESPN basketball analyst who is asked his personal opinion on the subject of homosexuality.

And the man dares to say, I am a Christian. And any sexual relationship outside of marriage between man and woman or man and man or woman woman is sinful and is a rebellion against God and against Christ.

Wow. Well, first of all, so refreshing to hear an

Orthodox person speaking and making their voice known. But immediately the denizens of inclusivism prove that they're anything but, that they are bald faced hypocrites, that they should stop using the word.

We all know you don't believe it. Stop calling yourself. We need to be inclusive.

Just be honest and say, no, we need to exclude all Christian morality and ethics from our society.

It's what you want. It's how you're acting. Just be honest about it. Just be straight up front and say, we are anti -Christian bigots.

We will not engage you in a meaningful debate on this subject. We will not allow your perspective to be spoken in our society.

But no, instead we get the, oh, it's so hard for people to be homosexual.

So you don't need this guy, Bussard, making it harder for people, and et cetera, et cetera.

Al Mohler was talking about this, I believe it was in this morning's briefing. And he noted that, who's the

Calvary Chapel guy? Oh man, the name just slipped my mind. The Calvary Chapel guy, real well known in the

Calvary Chapel movement, one of the big big head honchos, who is the head of the

National Day of Prayer thing this year. And there are already individuals who are, yeah, thank you,

Sandroid and Channel, Greg Laurie, who is this year's head of the

National Day of Prayer. And there are homosexual activists who are demanding that he not be allowed to do that because, from their perspective, there is no inclusivism.

You must celebrate our sexuality. And if you do not, you're a bigot, you're a hater, and you will be silenced.

We demand our Uber rights. You must be silenced. Get in the closet.

Get in the closet. That's what they're saying. And that's what they're doing. So, at the same time, you know what has happened with, well, the examples, if I started down the road,

I wouldn't have time for the rest of the program. It is absolutely the dogma of our society, and it cannot be questioned, and you cannot find a single person who can defend it.

When you challenge them, they stutter, they stammer, and start yelling and screaming at you. That's all they can do. Because they have no moral or ethical foundation.

It's just all emotion. And it's pretty easy to demonstrate that. Now one of the things

I've wanted to do, and I'm very, very, very busy right now. You should see...

Have you looked at my calendar recently? Have you seen how it's just filled with four -letter words?

KBRT, WW... They're all radio station names. And I finally got smart enough that I started putting the names in with the time at the beginning, so I didn't have to click on it to find out what time it was.

But I have got so many interviews that I'm doing right now. And that's great. That's wonderful. In fact, a week from this

Thursday, I'm going to have an insane day. I went ahead and accepted the invitations.

I went ahead and did this. But I'm going to be on from 11 to 12 on Line of Fire with Michael Brown.

He's on like 250 stations. And I'm going to be on Line of Fire talking about the new book on the

Quran. And by the way, when I say the new book, it's the new book that's out. I have mentioned that I have now started.

Shabir Ali and I have now started writing the next book. We have exchanged our first sections, and I'm excited about that.

And now we've got to jump on to the next one. And if we work well together, this won't take all that long, because actually each one of us is only writing half of a book, when you think about it, just lengthwise.

But anyway, so the new book is the one that's out, What Every Christian Needs to Know About the Quran. So lots of people want to talk about this right now.

There's lots of interest in this. And so next

Thursday, on with Michael Brown, 11 to 12. And then at 2 .55

to 3 .45, I'm on, I believe, a station in Minneapolis. I have 15 minutes before the dividing line.

We do the dividing line for an hour. And somehow we're going to have to figure out how to have the station on hold.

Because they're going to be calling as we're finishing up the program. Oh, you're going, this is going to be easy for you?

Just not a single, you realize that's the program, you're going to have to be spot on. Because if we have any oopses, that's going to sound really bad that you did that.

But Rich says he can handle this. And so anyway, as soon as the closing music goes off, switch me over.

And we will be on the Pilgrim Radio Network, I believe, for another hour after that.

So it's like four plus hours, just on Thursday. And really exciting.

I mean, it's great. That's exciting. I was just told that this week it was the number one

Baker publishing book on Amazon. So that's good.

Of course, it's just released, so it sort of has to be. If you don't get close, then it's not going to do very well afterwards. But anyway, so it's number one book with us too, isn't it?

Yes, it is. Right now, it's beating everything else up, isn't it? It's even doing better than The Potter's Freedom.

Isn't that amazing? So anyhow, I was just sitting there.

I just sat down really for the first time since it came out. And just sort of started reading through it. Reading endnotes, which is really hard because they're so small.

But just going, wow, man. I mean, there were times, honestly, I haven't mentioned this.

But there were times where I would spend an entire day on a single, what is now an endnote, footnote, whatever.

Just a single footnote. And you say, why are you so dull that it would take you that long? I wanted to make a point and I had to make sure of my sources.

I had to make sure that stuff was spelled right. Make sure that the references were correct. And sometimes stuff is really hard to track down.

As I've said many, many times before, if you read the book, read the endnotes.

Read my endnote books. Read my endnote book, yes. Read my book. But read the endnote book. Anyhow, all of that was about an eight -minute diversion from getting back to what

I was going to be saying. And that is that once I get back,

I don't have much time between this trip to Omaha and the trip to Montana, where I'm going to be debating

Justin Lee, the head of the Gay Christian Network. But it would be good for me, given that I need to be shifting my attention over to that area for a while.

Though I'll be doing all these interviews on Islam, I'll still be trying to prepare for a debate on homosexuality.

Should I give Justin a copy of my book during the debate? I suppose that would be sort of odd, but maybe

I'll give him The Same -Sex Controversy and that book together. That would be the way to do it. Anyway, I want to try to be disciplined enough to start responding to a letter that I only saw because Michael Brown responded to it, but Michael only responded to it very, very briefly.

And when I read it, in my heart, I said, I have to respond to this, and not in some long written form.

My initial thought was a lengthy video, and then I realized, this is a young person.

He calls himself a Christian, sort of, and I think

I need to break this up into short bits. And you say, oh, you're being mean. No, no. I just recognize what

I'm dealing with today. I mean, if I were to present a 45 -minute video, most young people wouldn't watch that.

I need to keep it to each section, maybe below six, seven minutes or so. Even that might be pushing it because the fact of the matter is, this generation does not have a long attention span because of the way they've been raised.

They've been raised watching things on TV, on computer screens, and when it doesn't change after a while, they start getting fidgety and they want to swipe it or press it or do something and move on to something else.

So, anyway, on April 7th of this year, a letter was posted titled,

An Open Letter to the Church from My Generation. And I really, really, it's not long.

In fact, it's short enough to go ahead and read it to you. I think it will. I think it will. In the middle is a video.

I will not play that, but it's by people I've never heard of before. Sorry. I do not know who

Macklemore is. I don't know who Ryan Lewis is. But it is a video of a song celebrating homosexuality and gay marriage called

Same Love. I will have to respond to the video, but I'm going to have to just quote the video because I can guarantee you, it would not matter if under any legal ruling in the world, it was fair use of me to replay it and criticize it.

Because of the subject, I will never, ever, ever get treated fairly. It won't happen.

I'll be kicked off YouTube in a second. That's just the way it is. There is bigotry and anti -Christian bigotry.

There's anti -Christian bigotry in Google, in YouTube. It's just the reality. That's what it is. There's no question about it.

No question about it. But I'll have to respond to it because of what it says. The whole theory of it.

Same love. Same love. No, it's not. No, it is not.

And if you can't, for even a moment, set your bigotry aside to consider why the self -sacrificial love of a husband for his wife who bears his children is different than the feelings and emotions that exist between two men.

If you can't set your bigotry aside long enough to consider that, well, then you really, really are a bigot.

I mean, since that seems to be a term that we're throwing around, let's use it correctly, shall we? It is not the same love.

It is not self -sacrificing. It is not love for one who is different than yourself. It's love for a mirror, a representation of yourself.

When you change the direct object of the verb, you change the meaning of the verb. And for a man to marry a woman is not the same thing as for a man to marry a man.

It is not the same love. And no one whose worldview is determined by the

Holy Scriptures could ever, ever make that statement. So, the first thought across my mind, an open letter to the church from my generation, is this person inside or outside?

Is this a person who bows the knee to Jesus Christ, or is this a person saying that you need to bow the knee to culture? That the church needs to bow to my desires and to my wants and to my predilections?

Now, of course, given that there have been so many who have presented the church as just that for so long, can we be overly surprised when people adopt that attitude as this writer does?

An open letter to the church from my generation. Church. It doesn't say dear church. It just says church.

I got to go to the Macklemore concert on Friday night. If you want to hear about how that went, ask me seriously. I want to talk about it until I die.

The whole thing was great, but the best part was when Macklemore sang, Same Love. Augustana's gym was filled to the ceiling with 5 ,000 people, mostly aged 18 to 25, and decked out in thrift store gear.

American flag, bro tanks, neon Nikes, MC Hammer pants. People actually wear those?

That's not in there. That was a comment from my part. My cowboy boyfriend wore cowboy boots.

Not ironically. The arena was brimming... Now, see, there was a day when that would tell me this was written by a woman, but now

I don't know. Can't tell anymore. The arena was brimming with excitement and adrenaline during every song, but when he started to play

Same Love, the place about collapsed. Why? Well, the song is popular everywhere. Sorry, I'd never heard it.

No one, maybe not even Macklemore, feels its true tension like we do in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

If you're not familiar, here's the song. Stop. Did you watch it? Watch it. Well, we're not going to be playing it on the program.

Before the song, Macklemore spoke really simple words along the lines of, Hey, you can all have your own opinions on how we treat gay people in this country, but this is mine.

And I held my breath in anticipation of some kind of uproar or walkout, but the crowd cheered louder than they had yet.

In our red state, in our conservative little city, the 5 ,000 young people in that arena wanted to hear about marriage equality.

Hear the buzzwords already? Marriage equality. There was nobody, nobody in that arena that wanted to hear about marriage equality.

Not a one. They wanted to hear about marriage redefinition. They didn't want to hear about marriage equality. Don't use words that mean something other than what you intend.

It's dishonest. It's the sign of shallow thinking. They don't want marriage equality.

They don't want people to have the freedom to marry their own children or their grandparents.

They're not even talking about marriage equality for bisexuals, because they're not talking about the ability to marry both a man and a woman, though that's the next logical step, obviously.

During the song, almost every person at the concert had their hands up and their eyes closed. It reminded me of church.

Really? It sounds like an emotional experience, not the proclamation of God's truth and worship and things like that, but the whole crowd spoke every word with Macklemore.

We were thirsty, italics, for those words. We want to hear about equality and love in a gentle way.

We're sick of the harsh words of both sides. Really? Say what you want about my generation, but we can smell fake from a mile away.

Really? That's why you're following the political leaders you're following? Because you can smell fake from a mile away?

I'm sorry, young man or woman, that just isn't the case.

And unfortunately, you'll probably have to wait until you're 35 or 40 to find out about that. But then it'll be too late, because they will have used you all the way up to that point in time.

This rapper from Seattle had brought us truth in song form, and we all knew it.

I live in such a conservative bubble that I couldn't believe the crowd's positive, thankful reaction. But I shouldn't have been surprised.

No one knows the tension of that song like my generation in South Dakota does. So many of us were brought up in churches and Christian homes.

And even if we weren't, we've experienced the traditional Christian culture that just resonates from South Dakota's prairie land.

We know conservatism. We know tradition. But we also have

Twitter. We watch SNL. We listen to Macklemore, and we read Tina Fey.

We're more in touch with the rest of the country than the Midwest has ever been. Some of us love the church, and some of us hate it.

There aren't too many people for whom it's irrelevant. So when Macklemore takes on that tension with his poetry, his

South Dakota audience listened. We practically yelled with him when he spoke the lyrics, quote, When I was at church, they taught me something else.

If you preach hate at the service, those words aren't anointed. That holy water that you soak in has been poisoned, end quote.

We yelled because we knew that holy water too well. We knew that hateful preaching too well.

We had all been hurt by it in one way or another. My point in writing this isn't to protect gay people.

Things are changing. The world is becoming a safer place for my gay friends. They're going to get equal rights.

I'm writing this because I'm worried about the safety of the church. The church keeps scratching its head, wondering why 70 % of 23 - to 30 -year -olds who are brought up in church leave.

I'm going to offer a pretty candid answer, and it's going to make some people upset, but I care about the church too much to be quiet.

We're scared of change. We always have been. When scientists proposed that the earth could be moving through space, church bishops condemned the teaching, citing

Psalm 104 .5 to say that God set the earth on its foundations. It can never be moved.

But the scientific theory continued, and the church still exists. I'm saying this. We cannot keep pitting the church against humanity or progress.

Don't hear me saying that we can't fight culture on anything. Lots of things in culture are absolutely contradictory to love and equality, and we should be battling those things.

The way culture treats women or pornography. Get at that, church. I'll be right there with you.

But my generation, the generation that can smell bleep, just think of Rob Bell, especially holy bleep, think of Rob Bell, from a mile away will not stick around to see the church fight gay marriage against our better judgment.

Do you hear that? But my generation, the generation that can smell bleep, especially holy bleep, from a mile away, will not stick around to see the church fighting gay marriage against our better judgment.

It's my generation who is overwhelmingly supporting marriage equality, and church, as a young person and as a theologian, it is not in your best interest to give them that ultimatum.

So we have a young theologian here who has just identified the historic

Christian teaching on marriage, the relationship of Christ and his church, all of human sexuality as holy bleep, hasn't given us any reasoning, and I can guarantee you couldn't.

But you see, it's all the emotion of a song. That's the real thing.

My whole life I've been told again and again that Christianity is not conducive with homosexuality. What does that even mean?

You've been told again and again that Christianity has positive teaching as to what sexuality is, what gender is, what a husband is, what a wife is, what a marriage is, what a family is, what a father is, what a mother is.

Yeah, positive teachings. And homosexuality violates every single element of that.

All of it, completely, redefinition. That's what you've been taught. My whole life

I've been told again and again that Christianity is not conducive with homosexuality. It just doesn't work out.

I was forced to choose between the love I had for my gay friends and so -called biblical authority.

I chose gay people. And I'm willing to wager I'm not the only one. No, you're not.

Because if you don't hear the voice of Christ in his word, what did

Jesus say? You're not one of his sheep. And when your feelings, when your personal hubris is enough to cause you to go,

Ha! I don't need that Bible stuff. Well, you're just showing your true nature.

I said, quote, If the Bible really says this about gay people, I'm not too keen on trusting what it says about God.

End quote. And I left my church. It has only been lately that I have seen evidence that the

Bible could be saying something completely different about love and equality. Oh yeah, there you go.

Maybe it's not really condemning homosexuality at all. You think?

You wonder why we have dealt with these issues over and over and over and over again?

Because this is the way you get around it, obviously. Only two more paragraphs.

So my advice to you, the church, this from a person who has yet to see 30 years of age, my advice to you, church, if you're looking for some intelligent, biblical, liberal opinions on the subject, have a little coffee chat with your local

Methodist or Episcopal pastor. In other words, stop believing that Bible stuff.

Get wise like I have. Christians can be all about gay people.

It's possible. People do it every day with a clear biblical conscience. Don't call that a biblical conscience.

Find out if you think there's truth in that view before you sweep us under the rug. Well, I have.

You can have a conservative view on gay marriage or gay ordination. You can. But I want you to have some serious conversations with God, your friends that disagree with you, and maybe even some gay people,

Christians or not, before you decide that this one view is worth marginalizing my generation.

Weigh those politics against what you're giving up. Us. Catch that?

Weigh those politics against what you're giving up. Us. Do you think this young theologian has the slightest idea what the

Bible actually teaches about the church, what the Bible teaches about the authority of God, God's law, the cross, atonement, any of this?

No. This is not a Christian. This is a young person raised in some kind of a church but has never been regenerated, has never been changed, has never been broken, repented of sin, bowed at the foot of the cross, and that's why this person has the hubris, the gall, the amazing gall to pretend to tell the church what to do and to tell the church, you, as the church, must change or you will lose me because you need me.

Any person, any person who thinks the church needs you doesn't know what the church is.

You need the church. You serve the church.

You don't command the church. Amazing.

Absolutely amazing. We want to stay in your churches.

We want to hear about your Jesus. No you don't. No you don't.

My Jesus taught Matthew chapter 19. My Jesus taught what marriage is.

You don't believe in that Jesus. You want a different Jesus and a different message. You are in rebellion.

That's what happens when unregenerate people are in churches. They eventually leave.

That's how it works. If they don't, then you're not preaching the gospel. And there's so many people running around just absolutely beside themselves.

We've got to do something about this. Don't get me wrong. I often address the young people of our congregation.

But I don't address them in such a way that says we will roll over and change everything we believe just to make you feel good.

No. That is not a message that any meaningful person would ever want to embrace in the first place.

We want to stay in your churches. We want to hear about your Jesus. But it's hard to hear about love from a God who doesn't love our gay friends.

And we all have gay friends. Oh, well. So God can't talk about homosexuality, huh?

Can't call homosexuals repentants, huh? Hmm. How about a thief?

How about an adulterer? How about a fornicator? How about any type of sin?

Oh, no, no, no, we can't talk about sin because we all have friends who do those sins, huh?

Yeah, okay. Help us find love in the church before we look for it outside.

Oh, my friend, the Christian message is before you can understand the love of God, you need to understand the holiness of God.

And that's what you won't accept. You want the love of God without the holiness of God.

And Christianity doesn't offer you that. Oh, there's all sorts of fake Christianity. But you know it's fake. You know that.

That's why you're writing to the church. And yet you just said, well, you know, the Methodists and Episcopalians.

So you realize that's not the church. You can smell that fake. That's easy, isn't it?

Help us find love in the church before we look for it outside. These are the words of an unbroken individual, an individual who has not come to understand his own need for repentance and salvation.

And folks, if you are in the church and you have bowed the knee in repentance and faith before Jesus Christ, you must hear these words for what they are.

These are words calling you to dishonor the gospel of Jesus Christ.

These are words calling you to give in to emotional thought rather than biblical revelation.

And on the basis of emotional thought, to blaspheme the work of Christ upon the cross.

Because I've said it before, I'm going to say it now again. If the Bible is not clear enough to tell us about human sexuality, about marriage, about the relationship of man and woman, and about homosexuality, then it cannot tell us anything about how we should live.

It cannot tell us what sin is. And if we don't know what sin is, then we don't need one to bear our sins.

And therefore, we don't need a cross. We don't need a Savior. We don't need the resurrection. It's all a fraud.

So when you have people that pull the emotion card, then please, we are made in the image of God.

Those who are made in the image of God are not ruled by their emotions. There is a

Greek term. Learn it. Sophronismos. Discipline. Discipline.

Sober -mindedness. We have to be able to look through the emotions, identify the errors, and while controlling our own emotions, put up with the emotional explosion that you always get.

When you challenge someone like this and say, Do you realize what you are saying? Do you realize what will happen to this world and to your children if you create a society that functions in this way?

You see why I want to do some videos. But I will have to be disciplined in my responses.

I'll have to keep them short. I'll have to be very, very careful. Very, very careful in how

I say what I say. If I want them to even remain available, because you know, you know, that it would not take much for all 580 -some -odd videos on my channel to disappear.

I think before I start posting them, we better make sure we've got copies of every single one. 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number.

And let's go to the callers and let's talk with Phillip in Pennsylvania.

Hi, Phillip. Yes, how are you doing? Hi. I just discovered your website.

I'm so happy that you're taking my call. Please forgive my accent.

I have a simple question regarding the...

Actually, I went to St. Peter's Cathedral this summer and I saw written in gold on top of the church.

Yep. The words, you know... I've been there, I saw it. You saw it?

Yeah. And I think that is a very distorted interpretation of Matthew 16.

Yep. I do believe that the rock that is mentioned there,

Jesus was talking about himself, not Peter. Do you agree that with me?

Yeah. Let me just mention to folks what we're talking about. We're talking about the fact that in St. Peter's Cathedral in the

Vatican in Rome, around the inside of the dome in gold, and I'm assuming it ain't fake gold, is encrusted the words in Latin of Matthew 16, 18.

I also say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church. The gates of Hades will not overpower it. And for years, in my encounters with Roman Catholic apologists,

I have pointed out the fact that Jesus says, you are

Peter, and I do not follow the Petras -Petra distinction issue.

It's just a simple matter of language. You are Peter, and upon Cai Epi Tau Tei, Tei Petra, upon this rock.

Now, if I'm speaking to someone in the first person, I'm not going to say, you are

Peter, and upon this. I'm going to say, and upon you. But he doesn't say, upon you.

No matter what, Tau Tei has to be, in the Greek, has to be explained as to what it is.

And the Petrine interpretation that Rome has adopted is by far, by any honest count, by any honest count, of any

Patristic scholar, is by far the minority. The majority interpretation in the

Patristic period is either that you're talking about the faith that Peter has confessed, or upon the essence of that faith, which is the confession that Jesus Christ is the

Son of God. So in other words, this rock is you are the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One. The rock, of course, is therefore

Christ. That's by far more popular than the later Roman interpretation, despite the fact that you will hear

Roman Catholic apologists like Tim Staples. I have heard him say this. I haven't heard him say this recently, but this was years ago when he was first getting started.

Maybe he has realized he was wrong about that without ever mentioning it, but I heard him say that every single church father in all of history interpreted

Matthew 16 -18 the way Rome does, and that is so ridiculously laughable. And yet there it was.

So yes, I remember standing there looking up at that and going, oh, for but a little bit of meaningful interpretation.

I have a little problem here with the U in verse 19.

It says, I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Can you clarify that a little better?

Yeah, actually there's a discussion of this in my books on Roman Catholicism. The only one currently in print is the

Roman Catholic Controversy. It does address this. The first line of Matthew 16 -19 is, which is,

I will give you. Doso is future. Now, soy is singular, and so he is addressing

Peter, but he's addressing Peter not about something he's doing at that point in time, but something he will do in the future.

It's doso. And so I always ask Roman Catholic apologists, since this is not when this happens, and most of them interpret as if this is the giving to Peter of the keys, since this is future, where does

Matthew record for us the fulfillment of this promise? Now, the answers generally fall into two camps.

Some will say that it happens in Matthew 18. But if it happens in Matthew 18, all of the disciples receive the same authority without Peter receiving any special authority there.

Which would fit, again, with the best patristic interpretation of the keys to where all the disciples receive the power of the keys, not just Peter.

Peter does not receive them in some special way, which is the dogmatic Roman interpretation of the concept, at least, of the

Petrine authority and power. Others will say, no,

Matthew just doesn't record it. And so you have the idea that this is this tremendous promise upon which the entire church itself is going to be built.

And Matthew goes, I don't think we need to worry about when that was fulfilled. I'm not going to mention that to you.

Which I think makes zero sense as well. So, it seems that Matthew does give us the fulfillment.

It is in Matthew 18. All the disciples together receive it. So Peter himself is not set apart in some special way and given authority that is above the other disciples in that instance.

And the rest of the New Testament and Peter's own epistles bear out the fact that he recognizes himself in that way.

That he does not claim some kind of superior authority at that point in time.

Well, thank you very much. Okay. I appreciate the phone call, Peter. And I hope that's helpful to you.

Thank you very much. All right. We press forward here. What? Okay. And we talk to Murray.

Hi, Murray. Hey, Dr. White. How are you? I'm doing all right.

And my question is actually about what you talked about today and how it relates to Mark 12, verse 30.

Okay. Just go ahead and read that. I'm reading from the New International Version. To love the

Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.

And Jesus said this was the most important commandment. And my thing, like, you're talking about the guy who wrote that article.

I don't know if it's a guy or a gal. I'll be honest with you. Yeah, neither do I. In fact, he probably doesn't even believe in gender, so it doesn't make a difference anyway.

I don't know. But the thing you said is there's a lot of emotion pulling in his quote -unquote exegesis.

And in this verse here, verse 30, it talks about the heart and the soul and the mind.

And a heart I've always tied in with emotion. Yeah, I wouldn't do that.

But wait, wait. And then it talks about soul and mind. Like the heart, because we do love

God emotionally, right? Yes. But we also love him spiritually, which I would tie in with the soul. And we also love him with the mind, which

I would call an intellectual love, like doing exegesis, etc. And do you think people in our generation have kept the emotional one and they've thrown out the spiritual and intellectual love?

And it's not there to keep the emotion in check? Well, let me just mention the background of the text and then try to make application for you.

This is in answer to the question, what commandment is foremost of all in verse 28?

And the term there, prote, the first, the most important, which one gives form to all the rest?

And Jesus' response would have been well -known to any Jewish person because what he does is he quotes first and foremost from the

Shema. Shema Yisrael, Yahweh Eloheinu, Yahweh Echad. Akueh Yisrael, Kurias Hathaias Haimon, Kurias Hais Esten, which is very, very important because that becomes the language that Paul uses over in 1

Corinthians 8 as part of the creedal definition of the Father and the Son and so on and so forth.

Very, very important stuff. And then he adds in the command to love the

Lord your God, who he has now identified. So in other words, the reason I mention that is we are talking about a specific

God here. Mere God love isn't the issue. There are all sorts of gods around the people of Israel and loving them would not fulfill this commandment.

There is a specific God who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ that is the object of our love and he is the one who is the creator of all things.

He's the only God. We are absolute monotheists. So when it says you shall love the

Lord your God, he says with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength.

And so when you look at that, when you look at what is described there, some would try to come up with an anthropology, a description of man based upon this and I suppose on one level you could do so.

But the point is that there is no aspect of man's creation in the image of God that is excluded from the command to love

God. So when I said I would disagree with you that the heart is specifically the emotions, yes,

I'm not for a second saying that the emotions are not involved. However, the command to love is a commandment that is valid whether we feel it or not.

I mean, love God. The emotion of love cannot be commanded in that way.

And so the fact that it is your heart, the heart, we are to, Peter says that we are to treat the

Messiah as kurios, we are to sanctify, hagiadzo is a term there, we are to sanctify the

Messiah as kurios in our hearts. What that means is in the very center and soul of our being.

And that's where this kind of love, which is based upon knowing who he is and what he has done and who we are in his sight and therefore to love him with all the heart and with all the soul, with all the mind, so the lordship of Christ and this love is to have preeminence over every aspect of our being, including our intellectual aspect, and with all our strength, which means it is a command that requires effort and continual fulfillment, which is why none of us has ever done it perfectly, which is why we need the righteousness of another, a positive righteousness of another, and that's why the imputed righteousness of Christ is so important.

Because if this is the first commandment and we can't even fill the first commandment, then that shoots down any possibility of works righteousness, and we need to see that.

So in answer to your question, the reason our society has replaced this full being commandment with what you described as merely emotional argumentation and feelings is because our society no longer has a view of man that is big enough to embrace the entirety of this command.

I mean, you cannot make this command to the random result of random forces from naturalistic perspectives.

It doesn't work. Mankind, as secularism envisions him, is not envisioned in this commandment.

And so you would be right, but the reason you're right is because their view of man is so diminished that they have to get rid of the rest of the positive portions of the command.

Oh, okay. I'm curious, is it possible you could give me a verse in Peter?

Which one, the 1 Peter 3 .15 one? Well, no, to set aside,

I think, if I'm not mistaken, that comes right before it, right? 1 Peter 3 .15

is the text that I was referring to there, if you're looking for that one, where we are to, are you talking about the text where you are to, literally it is hagiadzo, to treat as holy the

Messiah as Lord in your hearts, 1 Peter 3 .15, which actually is a paraphrase, a quotation from the

Greek Septuagint from the Book of Isaiah, which happens to be one of the places where Jesus is identified as Yahweh as well.

So, 1 Peter 3 .15. 3 .15,

so Christa hagiadzo, okay. I got it. Okay.

All right. All right, thanks Dr. White, and God bless. Okay, thank you very much, very much

Murray, thank you, God bless. Bye -bye. What? Okay.

All righty, let's talk with Russ, who's been waiting for a long time. Hi, Russ. Yes, happy to speak to you,

Dr. White. Yes, sir. Where we live in Illinois, the Kingdom Hall comes around once a year, they try to cover the territory and do a good job of it, and I always invite them in,

I've gone through all of your literature, and about the third week, they put an

X on their card, I haven't found one on the house, so I think it's just on their address card. It is, yes.

I don't use them for another year. And this last time, I have this fellow that we get into some pretty good discussions, and for a long time, he would bring a partner with him, and then for a while, he was showing up by himself, because I think the others told him to put the

X on my card. And now he is coming with his wife. And for a number of times, we spend a couple of hours every

Saturday morning in a very good Bible discussion. Hmm. Every time I think I'm making any progress the next

Saturday, I want to bang my head on the table after they're gone. Yeah, yeah. But in their book on Revelation, they're very proud of the fact that in 1905, their songbook had twice as many songs praising

Jesus as Jehovah. Then in 1928, about the same number.

1984, four times as many for Jehovah as Christ. And now they gave me their new songbook that came out in 2009 out of 135 songs.

I pointed out to them, I see five songs for Jesus, which means you're rapidly dumping

Jesus completely out of your religion. Right. Which kind of—and then I hit them with, well, politely hit them with John 5, 23, all men should honor the

Son, even as they honor the father. He did honor, if not the Son, honor, if not the father, which is sent to him.

And they were kind of— made them think a little bit. And I wondered, what can

I follow up on this Saturday morning to answer this conundrum for them?

Well, first of all, Russ, congratulations on being aware of the evolution of the

Jehovah's Witness songbook. I personally think that that should cause them to think, wow, if this was

Jehovah's organization all along, how come it could have been so imbalanced back then in the first place? But, you know, have you had the opportunity of presenting to them the texts in John 12, 41, and Hebrews 1, 10 through 12?

Yes, I've gone over your arguments very carefully. I've listened to them, written them down, everything else.

What did they say? Not a whole lot. That's the days.

Sometimes they're— I have quoted from others. I've got a fairly good library of their books from the used bookstore.

And they have told me that— he finally told me those books are garbage. He'd been told those books were garbage.

And I asked him what year that changes. And I said, well, Calvin's books are 400 years old, and they're still terrific.

So, you know. But I've been studying the Bible many years, and every once in a while during this

Bible study, they will say, oh, that's interesting, you know. I'll hit them with some fact that they don't get in their kingdom hall because they're so shallow.

So I keep coming back, and I keep trying to reach them. I figure it's a marvelous mission field. Yeah, yeah, it is.

Well, Russ, I guess I would just give you a suggestion here because we're running out of time. But, you know,

I was talking to a Jehovah's Witness years ago. He'd call me up on the phone, and he was well known for being able to argue against the

Trinity and stuff like that. And one day, just out of the blue— I had never done it before—

I said to him, are you in Christ? And he's like, what?

I said, are you in Christ? And he was completely befuddled. And I went to Ephesians 1. I said, you know, in the first 13, 14 verses of Ephesians, ten times the phrase in Christ, in Him, in the

Beloved One is used. And I, as a believer, I am in Christ. That's why

I have eternal life. That's why I have peace with God. It's not anything about me. It's all because I am in Him.

Are you in Christ? Or is Christ just one of the anointed class, and you have a semi -justified state by looking to the anointed class?

Press on him the fact that you have something he does not. And it was not something this guy was prepared for at all.

He was prepared to argue everything else. But he basically said, well, that's not important. Let's get back to something important. Maybe that's something you could try.

I don't know. It's just a suggestion. All righty? I appreciate your help.

You're familiar with Roger C. Young and his chronology? Name's not ringing a bell right now,

Russ. And the music is coming up behind me. Thank you so much for your phone call today. And sorry to Alan, didn't get to you.

Maybe we can get together on a future program. As I said, I'm traveling on Thursday. Going to be in Omaha over the course this coming weekend.

Look forward to meeting all of you in that area. And then don't forget Montana, Reformation Montana, coming up two weeks after, well, just, well, ten days after that.

Well, you know what I mean, the week after that. Not the very week, but the other week. Look it up on the website. We'll see you then next week.

God bless. Bye. I believe we're standing at the crossroads

Let this momentous flow away We must contend for the faith our fathers fought for We need a new

Reformation day It's a sign of the times

The truth is being trampled in and doing paradigms Won't you lift up your voice

Are you tired of plain religion It's time to make some noise Pounding on Wittenberg's door

Pounding on Wittenberg's door I stand up for the truth Won't you lift up the

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