1st Road Trip DL: the Biden Regime against Christianity, Francis & Fr. Martin, Gregory’s Confession

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So I am thrilled to be on my first day of a “test run” with the new A&O “mobile command center,” our 5th wheel unit that I will be using to do a major western loop at the end of July into mid August, and then across the nation to G3 at the end of September as well. The truck/trailer combination passed the big test of climbing Sunset Point, a major accomplishment! We had a great show today on the technical level anyway, for which I am thankful as well. We covered the IRS’s rejection of a Christian ministry’s application for non-profit status based upon (seriously) the fact that the Bible’s teachings line up with the Republican party. Then we thought about what it means that Pope Francis can write a congratulatory letter to Fr. James Martin, a Jesuit priest well known for his promotion of LGBTQ causes (see here). Then we finished up looking a little more deeply at Gregory’s confession of faith from around AD 265, digging into its biblical foundations. If we manage a program tomorrow, we will continue that study. Visit the store at https://doctrineandlife.co/

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Titus 2:13 and 2 Peter 1:1: Testimonies to the Deity of Jesus Christ

Titus 2:13 and 2 Peter 1:1: Testimonies to the Deity of Jesus Christ

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Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. Here we are, first time out of the Valley of the
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Sun. I am up in, I guess this is sort of northern Arizona. It's sort of middle
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Arizona, really, if you look at a map. But Arizonans divide Arizona along what's called the
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Mogollon Rim. And anything north of the Mogollon Rim is sort of the high country.
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And that's sort of northern Arizona, sort of, maybe. Arizona is a big state.
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I mean, you can find anything. Monument Valley, beautiful, beautiful place.
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Grand Canyon. Just, I love Arizona. You may, that's eastern
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Arizona. Oh, okay. Whatever you say. You are in northern
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Arizona. Okay. People in Flagstaff and a few other places might argue with that particular argumentation, but be that as it may.
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Anyways, here we are. It's rather windy up here right now, but it's also about 20 degrees cooler than Phoenix, maybe 25.
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I'm not sure what the temperature in Phoenix is today. It wasn't supposed to be as hot as yesterday. But we are on our test run, our sort of three -day, two -night test run.
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And I am very, very happy to announce that so far, so good. I will admit,
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I was a little nervous. Rich was too, I could tell. The issue was called
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Five Mile Hill. And it is a steep, difficult climb up out of the lower deserts, up the
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Mogollon Rim. And it really is the test for whether your tow vehicle is going to do what it needs to do, and how your trailer is going to follow, because you downhill afterwards.
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And I will admit that I woke up at 3am this morning.
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That's what my mind was on. And I couldn't go back to sleep. So I just got busy doing the things I needed to do.
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And I should be able to sleep much better tonight, because everything went perfectly.
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The truck did exactly what the truck was supposed to do. And the trailer did what the trailer is supposed to do.
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And everything's worked so far. The Lord kept me from ruining the trip out of my own stupidity.
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I mean, I've watched enough videos, I knew I shouldn't have put the slide out without checking things. Just missed hitting something with the slide.
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I know better than that, but I did miss it. So there you go. But anyway, so I'm very, very pleased, very, very happy to be up here and to be seeing pine trees swaying in the wind.
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I was sort of hoping for a thunderstorm. There's still a chance.
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I don't really see much of a chance right now. But I was hoping for a good thunderguster tonight.
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Maybe tomorrow. We'll see. That'd be great. Um, so anyway, so much going on.
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And on last program, we had to sort of bail out, even though by the way, not on Wi Fi, I'm on my phone again.
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The place that I've that I'm staying at here used to have Wi Fi. Their, their website says they have
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Wi Fi, but they don't. Um, but anyway, it's still a nice place. And people seem to be really nice.
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But so I'm on the phone. But there's this I know I saw the cell tower, just just down that direction.
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We've got four strong bars. So I think we're gonna be we're gonna be okay. So yesterday, we were just about to start talking about the pope, remember.
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And we will get to that because man, there's a lot to be discussing in that area right now.
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But I had in Evernote, I had in my note file, Rush used to call it his stack of stuff, if you recall correctly, um, a an article that we probably should start off with.
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Let me let me just, first of all, the people that support this ministry do so because they believe that what we do and how we do it needs to be done.
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The breadth of topics, the willingness to address some topics that nobody else wants to touch the 10 foot pole, not because necessarily they're so controversial.
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But there aren't too many people trying to make CBGM understandable or dealing with some of the textual issues and things like that.
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And so the people who support this ministry do so because you believe that it's important that we continue doing what we're doing that you see that we are seeking to edify the body.
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Very few people support this ministry as primarily as a tax issue.
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I got too much money. And so I'm gonna give it to somebody else that there are people like that.
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And look, I'll just be perfectly honest with you. Alvin Omega is me and Rich.
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And I know for a fact that a lot of ministries have people who work for them, who are specifically targeting people like that, that they're working the lists and working the donors and making the phone calls.
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If you start giving Alvin Omega thinking that we're going to start giving you phone calls and and perks and like that, you're going to be sadly disappointed because that's that's not what we do.
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That's not why we're here. And that's not we don't we don't do that kind of thing. But those who do that, the days of your being able to support meaningful
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Christian ministries and get a tax deduction are coming to an end. Now, about five years ago,
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I said this type of stuff was coming to the tax exemption stuff's gonna go away for not only 501c3s or any other 50 whatever.
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Anybody who's getting a tax break for giving to anything other than progressive, socialist, communist stuff, stuff that promotes equity, which means we all get to suffer equally.
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That's what socialism is. Everybody is equally poor and fighting for survival.
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That's except for the elites who, as always, live in luxury.
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No one learns from history. No one. You know, when you abandon a biblical worldview, you just keep searching for utopia and it doesn't exist.
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So anyway, anybody who doesn't go with the regime is going to lose that little benefit.
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And if you wanted evidence of that, Exemption Organization Director Stephen A.
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Martin of the IRS sent a rejection letter to an organization that was seeking, called
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Christians Engaged, that was seeking to get its tax exempt status.
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Now, I remember 1983, somewhere around when we were working on this stuff, different world,
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Ronald Reagan, George Herbert Walker Bush, different world, different world.
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But now this organization, this was actually written on the
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IRS letterhead. This is what an official in the IRS actually wrote. Now, in 1983, this person would have been summarily dismissed.
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I have no question of this. Would have been summarily dismissed. Will probably be promoted instead.
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Here's what he wrote as part of the rejection letter. Specifically, you educate
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Christians on what the Bible says in areas where they can be instrumental, including the areas of sanctity of life, the definition of marriage, biblical justice, freedom of speech, defense and borders and immigration,
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U .S. and Israel relations. The Bible teachings are typically affiliated with the
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Republican Party and candidates. This disqualifies you from exemption under IRS Section 501C.
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Now, obviously, and when I first read this days ago,
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I threw it in here. At first, you look at it and you go, yeah, well, call that one.
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It's coming. I mean, obviously, there's going to be a lawsuit on this one.
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Maybe it might get overturned. But look, we are now under a lawless regime.
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And people need to understand, we used to, as the American people, and I'm speaking to Americans here.
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Sorry, you're outside the U .S., but you're probably having the same situation, just different names and different organizations.
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We emphasized that we needed to be a nation of laws, not a nation of men.
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This came from the Christian worldview. When you read the
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Mosaic Code, we are told that a judge is to judge justly and according to the law and is not to look to the social status or power of the people who are coming before him in a dispute in the law.
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So if a rich person and a poor person come before a judge, the issue is the law, not who the men are.
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The law in its intent, the law in its consistency, that is the only way that you can create consistency from one generation to the next.
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That's the only way you can create a consistent society. Of course, most people in the
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West today don't know what a consistent society is. The only consistency in Western society today is decay, change, crumbling at the very foundation, always being described as progress.
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But I was going to tell a really funny story thanks to something that a friend of mine and my wife did.
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Lucy and Desi, remember Lucy and Desi? They did a movie called The Long Long Trailer, and it was about a travel trailer that this couple buys for their honeymoon.
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It's hilarious. There's this one scene where they must have shot it in Arizona because they're on this single lane road going up like 25 % grades.
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And that's what they sent to me the night before I went on this trip. And I was really appreciative of them doing that.
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But the whole thing was back in those days,
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I was struck as I listened to the dialogue of the acceptance of the male -female relationship, so different than what you have today.
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There's been a radical change. And people today look back in that and it just, it strikes them that I'm old enough to remember when people thought like that and lived like that.
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But people today, they don't know what to do if things aren't changing immediately.
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Anyway, the point is, to be a nation of law allows consistency from generation to generation.
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You can pass on your values. You can pass on what makes your nation great.
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Because when you make a nation, isn't that what you're going for, is to make a great nation?
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Not a mediocre nation, not a bad nation, but a nation that is great.
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And hence you want to pass on the values that you have in that nation.
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That's not the younger generation now. We have all -volunteer military.
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Why would anyone volunteer for the military? I mean, outside of getting free college or something you get done or something.
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Once college is made free for everybody, which isn't free for anybody then, why would anyone even bother?
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I don't understand. The current and soon to be fully understood and recognized military collapse in the
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United States is going to completely change the world order and not for the good, not for the good.
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Liberty, freedom. Wow. Hope you enjoyed it.
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Only one way to get it back, but we can talk about that later. Anyway, the point is, listen to this
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IRS person speaking and recognize no church, no
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Christian organization of any kind could ever be a non -profit under this man's thinking.
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And you know that any organization that promotes anti -biblical concepts, promotes abortion.
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Can you imagine this guy saying, well, you're going to be promoting abortion. And those are values primarily associated with the
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Democratic Party. And so you can't have 501c3. That ain't happening. And we all know that's not happening.
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The hypocrisy, the injustice, all this talk about justice is creating a whole lot of injustice, real injustice, injustice in the real world where words have meaning and can communicate meaning past just between here and here.
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So I could hope that because of the public exposure that this story is getting that this organization will be able to get what by the constitution and by law it should get.
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But what you have here is an example of the transition from a nation of law to a nation of men.
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Because here's a man, this particular IRS individual, and he has decided to take things into his own hands.
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And the obvious meaning of law, it may well be. It may well be that in his worldview, he's already accepted the idea that words don't really have established meaning.
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And so he's free to interpret the statutes so as to promote equity, whatever that means.
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So as to get rid of whiteness and white supremacy, whatever that means.
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You've become a nation of men, no longer a nation of law. And obviously, bad law was never what you wanted.
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But it's pure anarchy when you abandon a nation of law and become a nation of men.
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And what happens is the strongest men rise to the top and then dominate over all others.
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And you have totalitarianism and everything we've seen in history.
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It's right there in front of us, if we will but notice these things. So will they get their 501c3?
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I don't know. I don't know. But like I said, in some times in the past,
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I always said, oh yeah, sure, this could be overturned. I don't know. The Biden regime is just lawless.
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They care nothing about the Constitution. They care nothing about law, except to destroy as much of it as possible, to break it down.
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That's what all of this emphasis upon critical theory and intersectionality and everything else is all about, is the destruction of Western society, the destruction of consistency over time.
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So as to make room for the new, which as you may be aware, will include such things as the destruction of private property, destruction.
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I can really see in a relatively short period of time, the regime.
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And again, I think the regime is establishing itself into resolving things into a one party system.
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So it doesn't matter what people vote, what people actually vote, they know how to run the system now.
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I can easily see a time when private homes are taken by the regime.
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And in the name of equity, in the name of equity, whatever in the world that means, there is no meaningful definition of it, not that's so rational, but in the name of equity, you will see homes that some of us spent 30 years paying for and repairing and maintaining, being taken from us, we being put into a minimally survivable public housing and those homes being given to those who are part of the movement.
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And how would you know who's part of the movement? Well, what you celebrate, what you will say is good and how quickly you will submit to the regime.
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So right now, one key indicator of all this, vaccines, vaccines.
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Will you be vaccinated? We already see it. If you will not be vaccinated, there are already people calling for you to basically be removed from the majority of societal interaction.
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Basically, just locked away in your house because you are a plague carrier.
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But that's not really, I mean, that's the outward excuse. But the reality is you will not submit, you will not go along.
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Therefore, that becomes the symbol, that becomes the essence of it.
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Am I shocked at how quickly that has happened? Yeah. But then you look back over time and you go, yeah, okay.
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In hindsight, you see how things are being built up over time. And I don't, you know, there were a few eagle -eyed people that saw it accurately and a lot of other people that didn't see it accurately.
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And then most of the rest of us just wanted to live our lives, hoping that things would pretty much stay the same and we could just get along.
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That's not what's going to take place. But anyway, so in the future,
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I see once they stop giving non -profit status to organizations like Alpha Omega Ministries, then they're going to start going back and rescinding the status of organizations that got the status in the past.
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But we didn't know anything back then. We didn't know about whiteness.
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We didn't know about equity. We didn't know about intersectionality. We thought boys were boys and girls were girls.
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Good grief, we had G .I. Joe back then. I mean, seriously, it was the dark ages.
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And so we've got to go back and fix these things. We were a horrible nation.
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And we let people think that marriage between a man and a woman was the only way you could be married.
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So we are so embarrassed about how we were back then that now we need to fix these things.
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Can you hear that? Two years ago, I wouldn't have said what
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I just said because that's just nuts. Come on. Now you hear it almost every night on TV.
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That's how these people think. That's how they behave. That's the result of their worldview.
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And folks, it is a religious worldview. Have you been watching the promotional ads for the vaccines?
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I mean, it's like they took the playbook from Billy Graham crusades.
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You know, I mean, it's absolutely religious. It is belonging and it is freedom and it's redemption.
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It's a sacrament of belonging to the greater group. And oh my goodness, it's disgusting.
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And you're paying for it. You know, I used to say that. Right now, nobody's paying for it because it's all funny money.
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The trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars, it's never get paid off. No one's ever get paid for it.
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But it's publicly funded, whatever that means these days.
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These incredible advertisements that are so religious that it shocks me people don't even recognize it.
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But they are. They are. That's what we are. That's what we're looking at. OK, so let's switch gears here.
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It is dry up here. That's not so good.
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All right. Pope Francis, Pope Francis, that this ministry started during the very lengthy and stable pontificate of John Paul II.
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Or at least the majority of. He was the first pope that I really read material by and things like.
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And he was he was a smart guy and he certainly wasn't as conservative as any pope in the century before him, but he was a real
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Roman Catholic. Influenced by liberalism, yes. And one of the things that was obvious was the the juggling that he had to do.
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To try to keep an ever widening gap that exists in Roman Catholicism between the left and the right.
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Going somewhat the same direction, or at least not exploding. And so, you know, one year there would be a sort of liberal.
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Pastoral letter or apostolic statement or something like that.
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And then the next year, a real conservative one. So he'd throw a bone liberals, he'd throw a bone in the conservatives, and you could just see it was a balancing act all the time.
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And he did it pretty well. Like I said, brilliant guy. And Francis just almost seems like he's just given up on even trying to do that, but he still finds himself in a very, very difficult position.
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And so he tries to avoid using, quote unquote, apostolic authority.
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Because I don't think he really honestly feels like he really possesses it in any, not in the way that Bishop Jerome used to think that they had authority from on high.
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His liberalism is so deep that it reminds me of when
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I was in seminary at Fuller, listening to professors who, on the one hand, would say things that sounded very much like what
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I believed, and then five minutes later, it would become very clear to me that they didn't really believe what
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I believe. And I had to come to understand that incoherence within the left, within liberalism, that they continue to want to use the language of the great tradition of the past, but without the worldview that gave definition to the words.
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And so that's where Francis is. He's a liberation theologian.
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He's a Marxist. And yet he's in Rome. And so he says things like, about homosexuals, who am
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I to judge? And all of a sudden, you're going, all of your predecessors thought that they were the very ones who had to do that, at least for a thousand years or so.
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So what do you mean, who are you to judge? Ain't that your job?
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I mean, you claim it. We don't think you actually have that authority, but you claim it. And when he talked to that young boy whose dad was an atheist and ushered his dad into heaven for having baptized his kids, that's
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Francis. That's his real theology. That's far more representational of Francis than the
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Kens and the Priests and the Council of Trent could ever be. No question about it.
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But what was it? Two months ago, three months ago at most, you have, well, maybe, okay, maybe five months.
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You have the Vatican, not so much. Francis did this one officially because it doesn't represent his heart.
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You had Francis saying to the
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German bishops in particular, we cannot bless same -sex unions because the dogmatic teachings of the church, the universal
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Catholic catechism continues to say that homosexual desire is disordered.
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It is against nature. Now, it's obvious that there are all sorts of people in the hierarchy of the
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Roman Catholic Church that turn a blind eye to the issue of homosexuality because there are so many homosexuals in the leadership of the
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Roman Catholic Church. That's not even, that's like questionable, the pink mafia, scarlet mafia, whatever you want to call it.
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The fundamental denial of biblical teaching regarding sexuality and marriage and the goodness of marriage in the tradition that developed over time within Roman Catholicism of a celibate priesthood, which itself is a completely unbiblical office, has destroyed
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Rome's ability to really address homosexuality in a meaningful fashion.
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But Francis clearly, on a personal theological level, has stated over and over again, he's talked about how
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God makes people in a certain way and God loves you as you are and who am
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I to judge? There is a vast chasm between what had been the worldview foundation within Roman Catholicism that allowed a meaningful statement to be made about homosexuality that allowed, even from a natural law perspective, for there to be something in regards to an understanding of the created order.
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Enough biblical truth fighting its way through the incrustation of tradition to say what needed to be said.
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But that's breaking down. It's breaking down not just because of the centuries and centuries of denial of soul -spiritura, but because since the 1940s there has been such an influx of what is now called progressive leftist liberalism in the hierarchy of Roman Catholic Church that the foundation for even understanding
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Rome's claims of authority have been fundamentally changed. And I think a number of my
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Roman Catholic friends might not want to admit this, but you understand exactly what
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I'm saying, and you've seen it, and it bothers you. Francis has filled the
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College of Cardinals with like -minded individuals. So if he resigns, if he dies, whatever the situation might be, his successor, in all probability, will continue this trajectory away from any meaningful expression of the historical claims of Rome at least back to the 1200s in regards to the primacy of the
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Roman bishop and the idea of an infallible authority.
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All of this brought to our attention by the fact that the
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Vatican told those German bishops, no, you can't bless same -sex marriages, and those
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German bishops were saying, we're going to do it anyways. There is, in effect, a schism taking place.
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And some people wondered, well, why didn't Francis just go with what Francis has indicated his beliefs are?
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Well, that leads us to two days ago, three days ago,
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I was just heading to bed when I saw a newsflash, news alert thing, and it was about the
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Pope and Father Martin. I don't know how many years ago
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I first ran into the Jesuit writings of Father Martin, but he is a strong advocate of LGBTQ causes within Roman Catholicism, which, you know, the
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Jesuits, it's funny when you look at their history, how they started, why they came into existence as a counter -Reformation movement, and now how they have been turned into this absolutely leftist organization just so far out there that it's hard to even begin to conceive of where they're coming from.
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But anyway, everybody knows where Martin stands, and everybody knows that he wants to see a change in the
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Church's teachings in regards to the nature of homosexuality.
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That would require a repudiation of previous infallible statements, and hence a fundamental reorganization of Rome's claims of authority.
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But a couple days ago, he releases, my understanding is, a handwritten letter in Spanish from Pope Francis to Martin, and, you know, it's not long, this is not a theological tome, this is not an infallible statement.
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And so all the folks who just love papal infallibility, okay,
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I said it, it's not an infallible statement. We all get that, he's not saying
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I define and propose and announce the faithful to believe the black.
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I get it, okay, he's probably not going to do that about anything. But what it does demonstrate very clearly is that Pope Francis does not believe that a rejection of the
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Church's teachings on this central subject constitutes any kind of unfaithfulness toward the
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Roman Catholic Church. He commends Martin and his ministry to the
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LGBTQ community. This is someone who really,
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I can't see how Francis doesn't see, has rejected
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Rome's authority to teach on these issues. He really has.
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But for Francis, not necessarily a big deal. Now, you put together everything that he has said in real life, the actions that he's taken, and it seems inarguable that Francis does not believe what the
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Apostle Paul taught in Romans chapter 1. He does not believe what he taught in 1
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Corinthians chapter 6. He does not believe what he taught when he wrote to Timothy. He just doesn't believe these things.
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Now, I'm sure he has a way of explaining all of that and doctrinal developments. There's always some way around it.
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But it just strikes me that for any person who seriously believes that there is the necessity to have the office of the papacy, the
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Bishop of Rome as the final authority, you have to look at this and you just have to go, this doesn't work.
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This man does not believe what those who came before him believe. And to run off to the, yeah, but he won't teach it.
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God will keep him from teaching it. Some of you remember back in the late 90s, early 2000s, might have been 2000 itself, don't remember which one it was.
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I debated both Tim Staples and Robert St. Genes on papal infallibility, and they were two completely different debates because St.
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Genes basically said, that was in the year 2000, okay. St. Genes basically said that popes can be heretics.
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And so popes can believe heretical things, but they won't teach heretical things.
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Now, I find that excuse to be completely worthless as having explanatory power.
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And certainly you must realize how worthless it is, as far as having any meaning in grounding your faith.
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And I'm talking to believing Roman Catholics, how empty is it for you to say, well, yeah,
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Francis could be a heretic, but God's just not going to let him teach his heresy to the whole church.
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So God has the sovereign power to keep someone from preaching heresy to the church, but he doesn't have the sovereign power to keep that guy from being elected pope, the vicar of Christ on earth, the holy father.
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How does that work? I don't know. Papal infallibility is the most empty, worthless thing that I can even think of, because no matter how you slice it, what it comes down to is the pope is always infallible, except when he's not.
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That's what it means. Because if the pope teaches something that later centuries determined was an error, like Honorius did, if the pope teaches something in error, then he wasn't teaching infallibly.
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But the point is, during the lifetime of that pope, no one knows one way or the other.
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Nobody knows. Francis might be identified as an anti -pope 500 years from now, but you can't know that right now, can you?
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You can't. So what good is this system of yours?
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Because when I first started dealing with Roman Catholics, man, all the time, hey, we've got the pope, we've got the pope, because you had a stable, relatively consistent pope.
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Now you don't. And all of a sudden, Catholic apologists are now talking about the great tradition and the sense of the faithful and all these other things, because you've got your foundations shifting sand.
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Your foundation is shifting sand. That's all there is to it. So Francis is shining a light on all of this.
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He's shining a light on it as well he needs to, as well he should.
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That's why, again, when I hear about people thinking about converting to Roman Catholicism, I just go, okay,
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I understood it years ago, but have you given any thought at all to what
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Francis is demonstrating as far as the claims of Roman Catholicism? I don't know what people are converting to, but there you go.
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Francis just keeps giving more and more and more examples to us of how far out in the ozone layer he is.
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Let me see if I can find something here real quick. I apologize that I didn't have this.
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There it is. Oh, is that it? Yeah, let's see if it is. Yeah, all right, we found it pretty quick.
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It's not bad. Got to get this blank video screen out of the way so I can read what's on the screen here.
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Last week, I read to you a statement that, now, there's different ways of identifying people.
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I'm scrolling through it here at the same time. You have
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Gregory of Neo -Caesarea, which is an interesting way of referring to this individual.
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He put together what, let me just read to you from a article here.
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This is Franema, Volume 31, 2016.
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Before Gregory was willing to accept his ordination, he demanded that he be allowed to consider the form of a statement of faith to be adopted by the apostolic
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Christians in Neo -Caesarea. One can see that he had in mind developing a statement he could use to unite all
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Christians in his region. Phidemos agreed. According to Gregory of Nyssa, being inspired by a waking vision,
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Gregory developed a statement of faith that has come down to us under Gregory's name. Now, here is what, in essence, the statement says.
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One God, father of a living Logos, who is subsistent wisdom and power, and his eternal impression, perfect begetter of a perfect one, father of an only begotten son.
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Now, this is a, I would identify it as a literalistic translation.
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So, it is, I think, appropriate to point out it begins,
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Heis Theos, one God. And then the next paragraph begins,
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Heis Kurios, Heis Theos, Heis Kurios.
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Now, I ask that portion of my audience that focuses upon these things, and I would encourage all portions of the audience to focus upon this.
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Tony Costa wrote an excellent book about, how long ago was that,
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Tony? Three or four years ago, that went through creedal statements in the text of Scripture.
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And, man, this
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Zoom window. There we go.
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Okay, don't mute me just because I'm moving the window. Sorry, I'm talking to my computer. I shouldn't do that.
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Texts in the New Testament that may represent an early creedal statement are extremely important.
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They're normally in a poetic form, and hence they may not have been a creed. They may have been a hymn.
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Yeah, I know. They may have been, you know, part of the liturgy of the church, things like that, but they're extremely important.
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One of the most important proto -creedal or early creedal statements that we know of is 1
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Corinthians chapter 8, verse 6. If you haven't memorized it, may
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I challenge you to do so. And not just because this is a text, 1
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Corinthians 8, 4 through 6, that you have to deal with Mormons about, because Joseph Smith was confused, very confused, about the background of this text and what it was saying and things like that.
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But beyond that, 1 Corinthians 8, 6.
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1 Corinthians 8, 5 says, for even if there are legaminoi theoi, those that are called or named gods, whether in heaven or whether upon earth, just as there are theoi poloi and kurioi poloi, just as there are gods many and lords many.
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On this earth, polytheism, idolatry, it's everywhere.
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So for even if there are so -called gods, all they mean but to us, so this is what's called the adversative use of Allah, but to us, heis theos hapater, heis, one, theos, god, hapater, the father, from whom are all things and we for him, we unto him, kai heis kurios,
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Jesus Christos, and one, Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and we through him.
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Now in the modern printed editions of the Greek New Testament, that's set aside as poetry.
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So again, fragment of a hymn, creedal statement, whatever it might be.
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But notice, heis theos hapater, one God, the Father, heis kurios,
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Jesus Christos, one Lord, Jesus Christ. So what do you have at the very beginning of Gregory's statement of faith from around 265?
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heis theos hapater lagu zontos. So he's purposefully paralleling the primitive scriptural creedal formula because his next sentence starts heis kurios, one
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Lord. So a lot of folks not having the
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Old Testament background of the Greek Septuagint miss the significance of this. What do
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I mean? When you look back at what is called the
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Shema, Shema, hear,
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O Israel, Yahweh is our God, Yahweh is one. You shall love
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Yahweh your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might. In the
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Greek Septuagint, the Bible of the early church, akue
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Israel, hear Israel, kurios hatheos haimon, kurios heis esten.
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Now, kurios there is representing the Tetragrammaton. And I'm going to wait till the next program to talk more about this, but there is a movement that's now starting to make inroads into the
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Reformed community. And ironically, it seems to be coming through the received text
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TR people that's actually telling people that Yahweh is not only how you should never pronounce the
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Tetragrammaton, it should be Jehovah, Jehovah, but that Yahweh is a foreign
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God, another name for Jupiter. This is linguistically on the same level as flat earthism.
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And I would not personally be surprised if some of these people pushing this are not flat earthers.
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I mean that. It is astonishing for me to be seeing these things.
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I saw a Presbyterian pastor, I tried to interact a little bit on Facebook, promoting this stuff.
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It's like, yeah, this is how we're taught in seminary, but now I understand that if you're believing to preserve text, and it's just like, and I found out that Nick Sayers, the
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TR guy, is promoting the same thing. And I'm just like, oh, okay, all right.
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And just briefly, this person was actually saying, and then
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I looked and I discovered no manuscripts have the vowel pointing for Yahweh, all manuscripts have the vowel pointing for Jehovah.
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And I'm like, vowel pointing? Vowel pointing comes long after the days of Jesus, long after the days of the apostles.
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It's a Masoretic innovation. But these TR guys, some of these TR guys go, nope, nope, nope, vowel points are inspired.
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And I'm just like, and so I'm posting pictures of the Dead Sea Scrolls, no vowel points.
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Doesn't matter, doesn't matter. Because see, really, once you accept some of the presuppositional argumentation of the
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TR guys, you sort of, it's like, well, all right, I guess I'll believe that too.
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The point is that Yahweh did not have vowel points when it was written.
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When Jesus read from the scroll of Isaiah, that scroll had no vowel points. And so it's a two -syllable word, not a three -syllable word.
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Oh, and by the way, I know, I know, Dr. Boyce directed me over to a video from Nick Sayers about this.
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And in a matter of minutes, I came up and he said, James White, for example, denies that the
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Tetragrammaton has anything to do with the Hebrew verb form to be. And I'm like, where did
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I say this? I'm well aware that it is probably related to the verb form, ayahe, ayahe, ayahe, ayahe, ayahe, probably.
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In some fashion, I don't, it's like, man, I live rent -free.
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These guys can't make a video without making reference to me. And I'm like, I haven't thought about this guy in four months.
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And the only time I ever think about it is if someone mentions it to me, it's like, okay, whatever. So the point is, sorry to have been distracted there, but the
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Greek term representing the divine name, Yahweh, the covenant God of Israel, is kurios, kurios.
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So when you hear someone say haise kurios, any
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Greek -speaking Jew who knew the Shema knew it was kurios hatheas haimon, kurios haise esten.
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So you've got haise, kurios, and hatheas. And so what
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Paul has done in 1 Corinthians 8, 6, is he's taken the Shema and he has expanded it in light of the incarnation.
01:00:01
So many people automatically and erroneously identify
01:00:09
Lord as a lower office. There's one God, that's the highest one, one
01:00:17
Lord, that's not in the Shema, and that wouldn't come from knowing the Greek Septuagint. So what does all this mean?
01:00:27
You go back to what Gregory is doing here, and Gregory is continuing an appropriate means of expressing divine truth that goes all the way back, not only in the
01:00:41
New Testament, but all the way back to Moses. And so I'm going to keep this up.
01:00:48
I want to spend some more time looking very carefully at this statement of faith, because it forms a connecting point between 1
01:01:07
Corinthians 8 and the
01:01:12
Nicene symbol, because it's very clear that Nicaea is following the very same pattern that you have in this statement of faith.
01:01:27
And so doing some church history stuff, but also bringing out some important things for us to recognize in regards to why we believe what we believe.
01:01:36
There are many, many years behind, many generations behind the language that we have adopted, that we use, and that doesn't make it infallible, but it often means there's wisdom there that we need to be very well aware of before we flippantly and easily dismiss it too.
01:01:59
So there's a balance that always has to be had there. All right, there you go.
01:02:05
Yeah, no thunderstorms. I'm bummed, but maybe tomorrow.
01:02:14
I'm going for a ride tomorrow, so it'll probably wait till I'm coming down the mountain and then rain all over me.
01:02:21
That's sort of normally how it works. But I don't know. I think unless Rich is going to tell me afterwards that you only heard half of what
01:02:29
I said, which I think he would have told me about, I think this worked pretty well. And the only thing to keep in mind is our times may be somewhat variable and may change.
01:02:50
I was trying for 4 .30, had to push it back to 5, my time anyways, because sometimes
01:02:56
I've got to do stuff. So my understanding is, and correct me if I'm wrong here, but my understanding is that if you get our new app, that may be a super duper way, because when you install it, when it asks for permission to give you notifications, this would be a great way for us to keep in touch with you.
01:03:29
And I certainly apologize. I have been less than disciplined.
01:03:38
That first thing there is theology matters. I really need to be doing that more often. I do a lot of that on the program, but I need to be doing that more often.
01:03:49
Quick snippet things that I want to get out there. And if you install this, and I don't, my assumption is that you will not only get a notification regarding when the dividing line is going to be on, but hopefully you would also get a notification when a new theology matters is posted.
01:04:15
If that's not the way it is right now, hopefully we can make it that way. But got the app.
01:04:22
We know that not everyone has a smartphone. I actually ran into a guy recently had a flip phone and I was just sort of like, and he goes,
01:04:31
I know, I know, I know. But yeah, grab the app.
01:04:37
And that way, while I'm on the road like this, there are times it would be best to start at 515 or 445 or whatever, just simply to be able to fit things in between stops and stuff like that is how we do it.
01:04:57
So, so far so good. Very thankful once again for everyone who makes this possible.
01:05:06
This thing didn't just materialize out of thin air. Continue to pray for traveling mercies because there are lots of big trucks out there.
01:05:18
I mean, I feel pretty big when I'm pulling this baby down the road. I really, really do.
01:05:24
But still some of those trucks go by. It's like, Whoa, the world's moving. But praying for traveling mercies and that I will remember everything
01:05:35
I'm supposed to remember because there's lots of things you have to remember, but I'm getting it. I'm getting it.
01:05:40
I'm getting there. A year from now, I will be making videos like all other
01:05:47
RVers do about how to do it the easy way, I suppose. But anyway, thanks for watching the program today.
01:05:54
I'm, I'm not, I'm not announcing the next program. I'm going to try to continue this study tomorrow.
01:06:02
If we can work it out. Sometimes Rich just has to rein me in and say that that worked for me.
01:06:08
But the way we're doing this, actually, when
01:06:14
I'm doing it on the road, it's sort of easier for him too, as far as where he can be to make this all work.
01:06:19
So we will see, but thanks for watching the program today. Lord willing, we'll see you next time.