The Russian Collusion Dividing Line

And welcome to The Dividing Line. Yeah, not my normal background, is it? I'm coming to you from the city of Samara, Russia, the Russian Federation. I'm sure I'm not gonna be investigated by Robert Miller.

Yeah, this is a trip that has been planned for quite some time. I don't have a desk in my little hotel room here. It's a nice little hotel, but it doesn't have a desk, and so this is about the only place I can hold the computer in a relatively stable way, and only relatively stable.

And even in the background once in a while you hear a little bit of whistling. I'm gonna try to, I may not be able to because the formats may not match, but I'm gonna try to insert a video that I just took from my window, because as a desert rat, it's, yes, I realize every time I laugh I'm probably shaking the camera there, but for a desert rat it's been quite an experience here.

It was minus 13 Fahrenheit, which is minus 20 some-odd Celsius, I guess. This morning when we took a taxi to get to class, and I say we, I'm accompanied by my dear brother Mikhail Lelyavsky, or as we call him Nick.

If you have ever been to the Shepherds Conference and listened to the Russian translation, it's almost always Nick that is doing it. He's a tremendously talented translator, and when I've gone to Kiev and now here in Samara, he's been my translator.

So we got up this morning, and it wasn't snowing this morning. It is now, as you can see, snowing horizontally here in Samara, and it's warmed up. That's the weird part. The snow is actually warming it up.

It's above zero. Not much, but it's above zero. Of course, with the wind, the wind chill would be, who knows what it is, in the negative range. But anyway, the point is, I think, what did I see the temperature in Phoenix was going to be?

Yeah, Phoenix right now, the high in Phoenix, 70. Yeah, not here. So it's fun, you know, once in a while, for a little while, to get cold, and I actually brought fairly decent stuff. But man, I wouldn't want to be out there very long.

It really cuts right through you. So I came here directly from G3. I had a 36 hour trip, only 13 of which was actually flying. So 23 hours sitting around in either the Atlanta airport, or Heathrow, or Moscow, and actually sometime even here in Samara.

So yeah, I got used to sitting around in airports there on that particular trip. And come Monday, I head, don't head home, I'm going to be going to Munster, Germany, where I've got some research to do.

And it's also Munster. So I'm hoping for decent weather. So I can run around and get some good pictures of some of the historical sites to add to my telling of the incredible story of what happened in the 1530s there in Munster.

So that means I'm gonna be visiting airports in Samara, Moscow, Heathrow, Munich, Munster, Frankfurt, back to Heathrow, and then back home. So yeah, this is this is takeoffs and landings on just this one trip.

A lot of them. So here we are and had a great time and at G3. Really enjoyed getting to meet all of you who stood for long periods of time to get to greet me. Just one observation. Well, first of all, I'm not sure when Sovereign Nations will be putting out the video.

I know the poor fellow who has to do all that work and he probably isn't sleeping. But we appreciate you, Stuart. But they will be out fairly soon. And there's going to be a lot of push back. Because, you know, names were named and strong arguments put forward and as is necessary.

So I'm looking forward to having the information out. But also recognizing that I'm sure there's going to be a result to that as well. But in talking with people, just the G3 conference itself, and of course, I spoke at the pre conference, where Tom Askell spoke and Phil Johnson spoke and Josh Bice spoke and Vodie Baucom.

And then we all had a Q &A. And some of the Q &A is what's going to get most of the attention, I think. I sort of preached. Most of the other guys did some real good presentations on, you know, white privilege and things like that.

I just, I'm trying to keep sneezing here. I just went ahead and did some preaching before we did the audience, not the audience, but the Q &A section with Michael O 'Fallon. Anyway, then I spoke, my section, I spoke right after Phil Johnson on Friday morning.

And Phil and I did not, in any way, cooperate. As far as topics, we didn't talk to each other about what our topics were. I didn't know what he was speaking on. But a lot of people have noted that what he said on a sermon about Jonah, and then what I said about reaching out and love to Muslims ended up being very, very harmonious.

It just really sort of flowed together, which is always neat when something like that, something like that happens. And so anyways, what I was gonna say was, one of the things that really struck me in talking to people at our little booth there at G3, especially after I spoke on Friday morning, I had mentioned a few weeks ago when the NIFB movement was attacking Jeff Durbin and I, and, you know, just being ridiculously nasty and slanderous and everything else.

I had said that I think one of the reasons for this is there are just so many people that I have met, as I travel, who say, you know, I used to be involved in that kind of stuff. I was involved with King James Only-ism, I was involved with, you.

And then I ran into a video by Jeff Durbin, and I found out about you, or I ran into one of your videos and found out about Jeff Durbin. And this has been a regular experience. Well, I don't know how many people who came up and shook my hand and took pictures and stuff like that.

How many people? That was their, that was their story. That's the realm they had been in. And so it's obvious to me why these particular pastors, if we can use that term, they're not even using that term right now, of each other, as the split goes on, are going after Jeff and I.

Because they hear us being attacked. And that makes them go, wow, I wonder, I want to see more about these heretics. And they look us up and it's like, they're not really heretics. I'd never thought about that before.

And one thing leads to another. So that really did strike me, as we as we talked to people there at G3. But next year is on worship. And so I'm sure there's gonna be some real interesting aspects to that and already looking forward to G3 next year.

Textual Criticism of the New Testament and the Quran in Muslim Apologetics

I came over here, I'm teaching on textual criticism of the New Testament in comparison to the Quran as a part of apologetics to the Muslim people. There are lots of Muslims in Russia. There are people here from other nations, where there are even majority Muslim populations.

This morning, when we took that cab ride to the school, our cabbie was a Muslim from Tajikistan. And we got to briefly witness to him. And that was really interesting, because Nick mentioned to him, of course, I couldn't communicate with him.

But Nick mentioned to him that I had read Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim. And that is what opened the door to conversation. And he said, through Nick, he said, how can someone who has read all of Bukhari and Muslim not be a Muslim?

What is it that keeps you from embracing Islam? I'll talk about it. Well, let me tell you. And if you wonder, the short answer was, I said, the author of the Quran did not know the Jesus of the New Testament, who he was and what he did.

And if you know the Jesus of the New Testament, then you're not gonna be able to embrace Islam. And he had to admit he never read the Gospels. So he really couldn't, didn't have a leg to stand on to respond to what I said.

And so I've had a great class so far. And, you know, great guys, some of whom can speak some, some English, but most of them don't go that direction. And so, you know, it has to all be done through translation.

And we've got another class tomorrow morning. And then I'm doing more of a public thing on Islam at the church. And then preaching at the church on Sunday. And then Sunday afternoon, doing a shorter seminar just for the church people on Islam before I leave.

So the next, well, all these days have been long, long days with lots of, lots and lots of teaching. But so far, even with the frigid cold, other than a little bit of a runny nose, I'm doing just, doing just fine.

Haven't been able to work out for a while, unfortunately. Trust me, don't want to go running out there at all. I don't know how these people are so sure-footed. I just, I just feel like I'm going to fall over almost any, any second.

It's, it's, and you're driving that feeling. You can tell you're slipping and sliding, you know, and you're in traffic. And I mean, Russian traffic. If you've ever watched all those videos on YouTube of crashes and stuff, where they all come from?

Russia. Because everybody has a, has a camera in there, in their car. And yeah, and now there's mountains of snow, and you're sliding, and it's, it's quite the experience over here. No, no choice about it.

But been, been good so far. It's, it's also an 11-hour difference. And so, I feel like I'm on, on the moon. Because right as I, you know, am going to bed, that's when everybody back there is getting up.

So there's only a small number of hours when you can really communicate with, with folks home, back home. And so I got up this morning, and I'm, I'm seeing all the stuff that's going on back there. And it's sort of weird when you are away from home, to be observing this stuff somewhat from a distance.

And obviously, the passage of the kill-your-baby-up-until-it's-born bill in, in New York, which by the way, had been held off for years by a Republican majority that reflected the rest of the state.

It's, it's the city that is the, is where, the city should be a state into itself. Just let, let it go away. I feel sorry for the conservatives who aren't just communists that live in the rest of the state of New York.

They're, they're run by people like Cuomo and, and the ultra leftist socialist slash communists in the rest of the, in the rest of the state. And I couldn't help but think of how many of the social justice people I saw just recently saying, well, you know, abortion is just one issue.

There, there's good reason for us to vote for Democrats for other reasons, immigration, racism, et cetera, et cetera. Well, as you listened to that chamber erupt into applause and cheering at the passage of a bill that will allow you to murder fully formed, ready to be born babies, many of whom, the majority of whom probably in the city of New York will be black.

I hope you thought back over those mantras that you, your, your Trump hatred. I'm no fan of the Trump administration, but I hope you are happy that you're clapping along with those people because, because you are in the celebration of this barbarism.

It's, it's what it is. It's utter barbarism. We have never lived in a day where we have had nearly the evidence, the clear unequivocal scientific proof of the humanity of the unborn child. We know that these children can hear their mother's voices and can respond to their mother's voices and can, and actually begin the learning process in the womb.

But for our sexual license, you can, as one meme pointed out, and quite true, New York will not execute criminals. There's no death penalty. So the only people who can receive lethal injections in New York are babies in the womb.

Not murderers. No, no, no, no, no, not them. This, and of course, Cuomo then had the replacement for the Twin Towers, I guess called the Freedom Tower, lit up in pink to celebrate the murder of unborn children.

And as somebody pointed out, there are 11 unborn children's names or identities noted on the plaque on the building that died in the attacks on the World Trade Centers in 9 -11. As I said, the worship of Mullick makes you stupid and self-contradictory.

And Governor Cuomo, all those socialist leftists, stupid worshipers of Mullick. Evil, evil worshipers of Mullick. Let's call it what it is. Let's call it what it is. It's unbelievable. But it's interesting that a lot of people did not see that that, you know, this is only January.

Why is this all happening now? Because of the results of the elections. And whether we like it or not, folks, the Millennials, the iGens are coming, and they are communists. That's just all there is to it.

We're watching this young woman who's been elected to the House of Representatives, you know, with her, we're gonna die from global warming in 12 years, and let's adopt just complete communist forms of medical care.

And, you know, all this radical, insane, it's been tried before and failed, but she's not smart enough to even know that. She doesn't know anything about history whatsoever. But is a media darling, of course.

You have, you know, why is this happening? Because elections have allowed, you know, they have results, and some of these things have been held back. And the, in New York, you not only have the abortion, you know, this is what the left wants.

They love the culture of death. Just, just, oh, it's just everything they want. These things are all connected together. And prior to the abortion law, the gender law was passed. Most people didn't catch that, unless you were in New York.

The gender law has now added everything that the sexual revolutionists have wanted to the law in New York. All the transgender stuff, all the bathroom stuff, all the self-expression stuff. Any employer in New York, you are now living in a state that says men aren't men, and women aren't women, and there's 150 billion genders, and all the insanity is now a part of the law in the state of New York.

And you just gotta understand, that means that can now kick in the hate crime stuff. This is the foundation for shutting down churches, and ministries, and any criticism of these things, any disagreement with these things.

The totalitarians are marching, and the elections are what put them in the position to be able to do these things. It's a train, the cars are connected together, they come together. The sexual revolution, and the culture of death, these aren't separate issues.

They are intimately linked. And as soon as you open the door and said, ah, now we have a socialist governor, and a socialist house, and a socialist senate, and the assembly, now we're just gonna shove this down people's throats.

And that's exactly what they're doing. That's exactly what's happening. And folks, you just gotta understand, minimally by 2024, probably by 2020, but minimally by 2024, this is gonna be happening on the national level.

On the national level. And we're sitting here, enjoying the opportunity of communicating via YouTube, and everything else. Man, if we don't right now start setting up alternate mechanisms, we are going to be silenced, and we're gonna disappear.

Because these people have no interest in fair play, debate, liberty, free speech, nothing. They are totalitarians. Orwell was a prophet. You know, the thing that happened with the Covington Catholic boys, and the Native American guy who made up all sorts of stories, and of course, the black racists, yes, there is black racism.

You can't say anything about that. But the black racist, black Hebrew Israelites, who, if the media had a shred of integrity, would have been focused upon. But of course, they don't. And it doesn't fit the purpose of why they're doing things.

And so, let's not say anything about them. All of that thing, all of that total mess, was just such an incredible example of identity politics, and intersectionality, and all the stupidity that flows from this stuff.

Which is why I'm sorry, for those of you who are brothers and sisters in Christ, and you have gotten sucked into this, you know, your heart just, you want to be compassionate, you want to be loving. And so, you have bought into this idea that, well, you know, intersectionality, it doesn't sound all that bad.

It is absolutely absurd. It is so totally opposed to any meaningful biblical worldview. That it cannot help but produce this kind of social chaos. It's intended to produce social chaos. That's why it exists.

No matter what we do. That particular situation with the Covenant people, the fake news, the jump, the shaming, the thing with poor Mike Pence's wife. Oh, the horror that she would work at a Christian elementary school that has Christian standards.

You listen, and listen carefully, to the media elites and the social elites. They're using all the exact same terminology. All the exact same language that you're hearing from the social justice warriors in the church.

They're talking privilege, and they're talking oppression, and they're talking intersectionality. And all of it is aimed at shaming Christians for believing a biblical worldview. Because there's nothing biblical about intersectionality, and privilege, and all the rest of this stuff.

That's not where it came from. It came from another worldview. You may want to try to slather it onto a Christian worldview. It doesn't work. It simply doesn't work. And the next generation, oh, I know, I know, I know there's, I know there are good young people who study history, and they know what's going on.

I know, I know, I get it. But they are in the small minority. My friends, this next generation knows nothing about history, and is simply going to repeat, except now on our shores, and with much greater damage to the world as a whole, what had happened only 60, 70 years ago.

And so maybe in 2020, maybe in 2024, one thing's for certain, whoever the socialists run in 2020 for the presidency of the United States will make Hillary Clinton look like a conservative choir girl when it comes to worldview, and politics, and policies, all that kind of stuff.

It will be amazing. And whether it's in 2020, look, we might hope for another Supreme Court position. That's purely stopgap. That's just sticking a finger in the hole in the dam. That's all it is. There is such a fundamental cultural degradation that comes with secularism, that the only thing that can stop this slide is a massive change in the people of this country called regeneration, renewal, revival.

That's the only thing. Nothing else can change. And in the vast majority of instances, that kind of stuff comes from national judgment and national tragedy. Sorry, I know my kids call me Debbie Downer, but it's a reality.

And folks, 2020, 2024, you're eventually going to have a socialist in the White House. And the basic collapse of our constitutional form of government, because that's what's happened. The legislature no longer legislates.

It's not functional anymore. Look at it right now. The government's shut down. The government's shut down. The people that are screening your baggage are working without pay. They're not going to be working without pay for much longer.

Our transportation system is going to fall apart. I've got trips to take. I may be driving halfway across the United States or just not being able to travel at all. The responsibilities of the Congress, because the left has united and said, look, we've got to, no longer is the good of the country relevant to the left.

It is the destruction of the country, the fundamental reorientation. You know, what that means is destruction of the country. They are united in wanting to bring that about. And once that happens, constitutional form of government can't survive.

And it won't survive. And it's not surviving. The powers that are supposed to be distributed amongst the three branches, and I guess there's a Democratic, it was Elizabeth Warren, thinks there's only two branches.

Love how deeply thinking these folks are that are senators. Anyway, the powers are supposed to be distributed. All of that stuff has basically fallen apart, let's just be honest. And so something's got to change.

And the worldview that is going to be at the foundation of bringing about that change is now a secular worldview. And what's that going to result in? I don't know. All I know is, it's going to be a time of purification for the church, big time, big time.

So it is ironic to me to be observing this from a socialist country. A socialist country, I was having a conversation with one of my friends over here, who mentioned to me that life expectancy here in Russia is not what it is in the United States.

It's 12 years less. 12 years. Now it's declining in the United States too. Have you heard about that? I think I mentioned on the DL at one point in the past. It's declining in the United States as well.

It declined a full year for men recently because of suicide. Folks, that's secularism. We weren't made to be secular creatures. But that's not why here. I mean, that's obviously, it's a very secular society.

It's primarily socialized medicine. For all of you pushing that, you just don't know what you are babbling about. The medical system is so bad that you don't have almost any kind of preventative medical care at all.

You don't go to the doctor to get things checked out because it's going to take you six months to a year, if you can even get the scans that I in the United States right now still can just go and get done very quickly.

You can't do that. 12 year life expectancy difference. And what's that? That's led to an economic issue. So what the government does is they take a huge portion of your pay towards your retirement, your forced governmental retirement, but then they move the retirement point out to the current life expectancy point.

That means you're never gonna get back what you put in, right? Yeah, that's how it works. We're doing similar things in the United States. Socialists are socialists wherever they are. So yeah, it's ironic to be sitting in, you know, I mean, for someone of my age who grew up during the Cold War to be, they're building a KFC in the Moscow airport.

There's KFC all over the place. I had McDonald's this evening on the way back to the hotel. It is weird to think of that and to see that type of a mixture, but I'm in a socialist country and I'm watching socialism on the march in my own country.

And it's a weird thing. One last thing, because I can only do so much here because I've got to upload this file and Rich is going to make it available and stuff. And very appreciative for all that Rich did there at G3 as well.

I mean, he sat at that booth a whole lot longer than I did and pressed the flash and talked with people. And then when I showed up and we got this mob at the thing, he started being the traffic control guy.

Okay, you're next, you're next, you move over there, you come around this way. That's just exactly what we needed to have done. Anyway, I am, this morning I started getting all the notifications that Stephen Anderson is, for the 25th anniversary of my writing of the King James only controversy, finally get around to reviewing it.

Yeah, I wrote that starting like March, April of 1994 is when I started writing that book. And so it came out in the next year. It was delayed because Gail Ripplinger threatened to sue Bethany House because I talked about her in the book.

But yeah, coming up on the 25th anniversary, at least of the writing of the King James only controversy. And so I've already downloaded the first three, which I guess is what he's posted so far. And I'm looking at that, it's probably an hour and 40 minutes worth of stuff right there.

Don't have any timeframe as to responding to these things. And of course, given what we've had going on with Anderson recently, the slander that the man just engages in constantly. And of course, his own wild behavior in his church, kicking people out and yelling at people.

And there's a video of him firing some guy from his staff, it's just abusive. I mean, the man is just a cult leader, it's horrible. But anyway, it might make you just go, let's not even worry about it.

But just like when Sam Gibb did his series. Look, King James only-ism is an irrational, incoherent system. It cannot provide any kind of meaningful self-defense. And so every time someone tries to do this kind of thing, all it does is give me more opportunities to go, there's an illustration of that, and there's an illustration of that.

And see the circular reasoning there? And all it results in is more people leaving it. That's been the consistent result. I mean, you would think they'd finally figure out, the best way to handle this is not to even mention that that book's out there and not even try to respond to it and just hope our people never read it.

That's how most people have done it. So I'm like, oh, 10 part series? Okay, I guarantee you something. I, over the next 10 years, will meet 100 people that will leave that movement. Because I will, over time, fairly and accurately, take the time to simply take this stuff apart.

Because you can't make a meaningful argument for the other side. You just can't do it. You can flap your jaw a lot. You can say a lot of words. You can argue in circles and everything else. It's not going to change anything.

So there you go. That's what we'll do. But like I said, I'm in no hurry. I'll just make it a part that we'll add in every few programs. And let's take another look at some more errors of Stephen Anderson in trying to respond to the King James only controversy.

And just put that together over time and make it available to folks. So yeah, I know it's out there. We'll get to it. But I'm really excited about my trip to Munster next week, because it's going to help me with the dissertation.

Important issues to be dealt with there. Really help clarifying issues and stuff like that. So please, if you're a praying person, pray that I'll minimally be in good mind when I get to Munster. So that I can interact with the people that I can be talking to in a meaningful fashion and really help advance the study that I'm doing on that subject.

So looking forward to that. So with that, I'm going to leave it at that. A very shortened version, obviously. But again, I'm going to have to shoot this at a lower resolution. And then I'm using hotel Wi-Fi to upload it and stuff like that.

So I have to be a little bit disciplined in getting the stuff out there. So those of you back in the Phoenix area, enjoying sunny 70 degree weather, go ahead and chuckle at me. As this morning, I trudged out into the snow at 13 degrees below zero.

And now as I look out the window and the snow is traveling horizontally, they had just shoveled the stairs to the hotel. And by tomorrow morning, there won't be any stairs to the hotel. And that's just sort of how it works in places like this.

So it's fun for a little while, but man, to March or April? No, no, not. No, thank you. I now feel much more empathy toward those of you who live in the Northern Climes as you go through this particular time of the year.

So anyway, maybe, maybe have the opportunity to record something in Munster. I can't guarantee it. But something tells me I'll have some really cool pictures. I hope, you know, the weather could get in the way.

But I don't care. I'll get an umbrella and drapes through the water if I have to. Although that would impact the quality of the pictures and stuff. But still, if I'm going to be there, I've at least got to see the stuff.

And if I'm going to see the stuff, I'm going to try to get pictures of things. And eventually, I just want to put together a video presentation on what happened in Munster, because it's still fascinating to me, and it has so much application and stuff that we'll love to.

And if you can't wait till I do that, in my Church History series, Sermon Audio, Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church, I did a little over two weeks on Munster. So if you haven't heard that, listen, and you'll go, oh, okay, I get it.

So looking forward to that. Thanks for watching this abbreviated edition of The Dividing Line today. We appreciate it, and Lord willing, might see you from Munster. If not, I get back the 1st to 2nd of February.

So that next week, we'd be looking at catching up on the programs there. So thanks for watching. God bless.