James White Reveals the 3 Secrets to Winning Any Debate (Live Interview)

Opening Banter and Guest Introduction

And we are live at the Apologetic Dog. Thank you so much for tuning in. I cannot wait because we have a very special guest this evening. Before we hop in, we will, I just wanna remind you that if you haven't liked and subscribed to the Apologetic Dog, please do that and hit the notification bell when you get these random live streams on a Saturday evening.

Our special guest this evening is none other than Dr. James White. We will be delving into his debates that he's done, specifically the last three. Dr. White has been such a blessing to my Christian walk and me just learning more about how to contend for the faith.

And I wanna get into what are specific debate strategies? How does he study for these things, prepare for them? And I want us to talk about how does one really win a debate? What does that look like? And just to get his perspective on that.

And so please watch all the way to the very end because I want him to share with us more in depth what he was thinking about in preparing for these debates and what he could have to encourage us with.

With that being said, Dr. White, how are you, sir?

Well, I'm at my last stop on a 28-day road tour here. I get home tomorrow. So I'm actually in Arizona. I could have pushed through, but we try to make the last legs a little bit shorter just for safety reasons.

You get tired and I have fallen asleep once driving. Thankfully, the rumble strips alongside the road woke me up. But that was a year and a half ago. So I'm driving alone and that's sort of how it works.

On this trip, I was driving somewhere in Southern, yeah, I was driving from Dolores, Colorado to Santa Fe, listening to you and Jason Lyle. Jason was responding to a common critic who has come after me in years past.

I'm sure you're aware, well, maybe you're not. I don't know, but yeah, we had some interesting exchanges.

In the past.

But anyways, yeah, so I was listening to that and it's always great to listen to Jason. Of course, I was a few days later out in the dark with Jason stargazing. And so he's found this place out near a cemetery outside of Colorado Springs that's pretty much completely dark.

And he has a 14-inch telescope, of course, and he knows the night sky like nobody. I mean, the man's amazing. And he has these super cool night vision goggles. I have night vision goggles too, but his are better than mine.

And he's even designed a way and built a way to attach his night vision goggles to his telescope. So we're looking at nebula up in the, through his 14-inch telescope with this white phosphorus night vision.

It just makes everything glow. It was incredible. And he was telling me about the article he just put out that challenges the standard cosmology and it's great. And then he came to my debate. He came to one of the debates, the first debate we're gonna be talking about.

He was in the audience. So Jason's a dear friend and undoubtedly the smartest man out of everyone. There's no question that when it comes to IQ, I've never met anybody that comes close.

Well, it was such an honor to be able to have him on the Apologetic Dog and talk about his book, The Ultimate Proof of Creation. And I asked him, I said, Dr. Lyle, are you gonna be doing any more debates in the near future?

And he said, those are hard to come by. He says, if someone would set it up for me, I definitely would. And I said, you gave me a task. And so Mr. Denise, his assistant said, Jeremiah, let's set it up in Arkansas.

And I said, I'll get it together. So we just gotta find somebody. So be on the lookout for that, hopefully.

I was talking to him about too, because what I wanna do is I wanna do a tag team. He and I versus...

That should be debate. 200 for you, is a tag team two on two.

That'd be fun, yeah. But that'd be a lot of fun, yeah.

Well, if I find two PhD contenders, then we might can host that at 12 .5 Church in Jonesboro.

Well, the thing that, the topic that we suggested, that we talked about out there in the graveyard was probably apologetic methodology. Take on some evidentialists. And I could think of some evidentialists to take on at a certain school populated by primarily anti-reformed evidentialists.

So that would be interesting.

Okay, I'll look more into that and see if I can't have a helping hand there. But Dr. White, thank you so much for coming on this evening after your dividing line, I caught the tail end of it. So I'm glad that went well.

And I just wanna encourage our audience that if they have any questions for you along the way as we're reviewing your past three debates, please send that in the side chat. And please, once again, like, subscribe and share.

That just helps this apologetics ministry kind of go out into the ether, into the internet world. And ultimately, we wanna push the truth. We wanna push the gospel of grace. And so Dr. White, you've been so helpful in that.

I was hoping we could go in reverse order with your three debates because your last debate is still really fresh on your mind. And I wanna start out by asking you, was there a defining moment in this debate with Jared Longshore, which I've had the pleasure of meeting him in person.

Brilliant man. Really, really enjoy listening to him to explain a number of things. But yeah, tell me some highlights in this debate that you had with Jared.

Hebrews 7–10 and the New Covenant in the Jared Longshore Debate

It went as I and others had predicted because it pretty much followed, if anyone had listened to our back and forth starting in November of last year, when he dropped an article on Reformation Day about his conversion to paedo-baptism.

And I started responding and then he'd respond.

Back and forth.

And if anyone listened to that, I did most of that in our studio, mobile studio in the previous version of this that we had, we had to trade in because it was defective. But anyway, I did most of it on the road and it followed that very same line.

And so, I think I even bothered some of my Reformed Baptist friends. Actually, I bother a lot of my Reformed Baptist friends these days, who would rather that I didn't identify myself that way and given how they behave sometimes, I'm ready not to, to be honest with you.

But I bothered them because I'm a biblicist when it comes to Thomas Aquinas, I'm a biblicist when it comes to Trinity and I'm a biblicist when it comes to baptism, the new covenant, the nature of the new covenant.

And that's what that debate was, was I was very much focused upon arguing that we as Reformed men, when we debate Roman Catholics, and I even said to Jared at one point, I said, you know, I think if you guys would engage more Roman Catholics, I think you might change some of your views on some of these things because when I engage Roman Catholics on justification, I will argue that Romans 2, 3, 4, 5 are the key section because you have a extended long discussion of what faith is, what works is, what grace is, what justification is, the righteousness, that is the text.

There is no place else in the New Testament where you have that kind of concentrated analysis of something. And so you go to the main and plain section and then you interpret passage of the scripture that may mention something in passing in light of those main and plain texts.

And so I said, if we did that, where do you go to find out about the atoning work of Christ is intercession, what the new covenant is, what the results of the new covenant are, what the relationship of these things are, how the elect, it's Hebrews 7, 8, 9, and 10, which is what I presented.

And you'll remember that Jared said, well, yeah, Hebrews is your strong section. And I'm like, yeah, there you go, that's why. So if you start with the non-plain texts and then force your conclusions on the plain texts, that's not being consistent with how we defend the Trinity, justification, so on and so forth.

And so that to me was the real issue. I did, I got to say almost everything I needed to say, I'll be honest, even though it wasn't all that long of a debate, toward the end, I did get to say, hey, there's a historical context here.

And the reality is that infant baptism, as is presented by reformed Pado-Baptist advocates today, is a theological novum. That that particular understanding of baptism did not exist before the 16th century.

So the infant baptism that you see in history, which developed out of emergency baptisms and developed within a milieu of some really bad ideas about what baptism actually does, which we as reformed people wouldn't agree with, that's a really different form of Pado-Baptism than you have in reformed covenantal theology.

And so what's our ultimate authority? If we can look back and go, this is why Calvin believed what Calvin did, isn't it our job to continue the reformation? I'm concerned because I've even had reformed Baptists dispute the importance of the phrase semper reformanda.

They say, well, that's not a reformation phrase. Okay, in the sense of specifically finding those words, I think the concept most certainly is, but I've had leading reformed Baptist figures say to me, semper reformanda was made up by Karl Barth to be able to change any theology he wanted.

And I'm like, oh goodness, no. And the only way that I could ever defend sola scriptura against Roman Catholicism is if it's joined with semper reformanda. Once you abandon that and you make the even reformed theology and reformed traditions, your standard, we are in the same boat with Roman Catholics.

And so we're gonna be sitting there in the rowboat smacking at each other with the oars, but I didn't get it.

Well, I really appreciate this debate because one of the major differences with reformed Baptists and Presbyterians are how we view the covenants. And I wanted to just kind of bring this up on screen to show you what was really defining for me.

And we've studied this, you've emphasized this, and obviously Hebrews 7, 8, 9, and 10 are crucial for this debate. And we have the hermeneutic of the redemptive historical methods. So the New Testament, when we go interpret the Old Testament passages, we're taking Christ with us in the clear teachings of the New Testament.

And so here in Hebrews chapter eight, I believe, talking about the members of the new covenant where God says, I will be their God. I know all, they all know me from the least of them to the greatest.

I will be merciful towards their iniquity and I will remember their sins no more. You know, Jared made a comment, maybe you can help me. He said, you know, this isn't really exhaustive in the new covenant.

This is just language that means maybe the majority, but it's not exhaustive. And that to me is a, it's hard to harmonize what the writer of Hebrews, quoting the Old Testament is saying, because when it says the least of them to the greatest, I will be their God.

I will write my law on their heart. It seems pretty exhaustive to me, Dr. White. So I don't know if you wanted to maybe touch on that a little bit more.

Well, yeah, and in the debate, I disputed that. He gave two references from Jeremiah, but they weren't in regards to the new covenant. They were in regards to other uses of from the least to the greatest of them.

And my response was, we need to let the writer of the Hebrews interpret his use of that. And in the section right before what you quoted there, previous to that is I will write my law upon their hearts.

This is the very fulfillment of the promise that you have. Yeah, there you go. I'll put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. And I will be their God and they should be my people. So this is exactly why Israel kept falling into apostasy and why the name of Yahweh was blasphemed amongst the people is because so many of those who bore the covenant sign, they were circumcised Jews, and yet they were not circumcised of heart.

And the law was not writ upon their heart. Or another example that's used, and again, reformed people would seem to understand, is I will take out the heart of stone, give them a heart of flesh. Well, that's what's going on here.

And so it does strike me as very strange that reformed people would try, and they do. There's been a number of ways of getting around Hebrews 8 presented by different reformed writers and their books.

Some say the new covenant will only be established fully in the future. Jared's saying, well, there's great advantages to the new covenant, but it's not really different from the old covenant and being a mixed covenant and things like that.

And I'm just sitting here going, look, once you take Hebrews 8, and you realize Hebrews 7, 24 through 25 has specifically said that Christ is able to save to the uttermost a specific people because he ever lives to make intercession for them.

Hebrews 8 is the biblical evidence that he then provides for that. And then Hebrews 9 and 10 is then the application, which includes the perfection by that will, by that Thelema, that will perfects those for whom the sacrifice is made.

This is the central argument of Hebrews. This is why there's nothing to go back to. And this is where we have to go. So to try to say, well, from the least, the greatest of them just means a larger portion than there was under the old covenant, leaves you going, so whose sins were forgiven?

Whose iniquities were covered over? And how did that happen? Again, as long as you allow 7, 24, 25 to be connected to Hebrews 8, and see if the writer is quoting that to substantiate his assertion in Hebrews 7 that he's then going to expand upon in Hebrews 9, 10.

I just don't see any way around it. And Jared didn't offer us one. What Jared offered us is, well, yeah, but we have to go to other places. And I'm like, no, we don't. The other places he's suggesting will get us off into the weeds of talking about Abrahamic and Noahic and Adamic and all the rest of that kind of stuff, but they're not gonna answer our questions here.

And so I really do see a parallel to when I'm exegeting Romans 3, 4, and 5, and my Roman Catholic opponents go, yeah, but wisdom is justified by our children. Well, that's not the same thing. And that's not how we do our exegesis.

That's how we do our apologetics, whatever else it might be. So I think Hebrews, I think one of the reasons that sometimes people feel like they're on the outside of this particular debate is Hebrews is just not that well-known a book amongst even our own Reformed people.

And that reflects the fact that it requires such a familiarity with the Old Testament. And so many people are, you know, have a, I've said a lot of evangelicals have a sub-canonical view. They sort of view the Old Testament as secondarily canonical to the New Testament.

And that's why I think Hebrews is not loved the way that it should be.

I don't know if you have read the book, The Fatal Flaw, by our good friend, Dr. Jeffrey Johnson. I recently read it, and it gets all into the continuity and discontinuity between Old and New Covenants.

We just wanna do a shameless book plug there because it's so incredible because we can look at these covenants in the Old Testament and we see conditions, right? How was Abraham justified as you beautifully laid out in the God Who Justifies book?

It's always been by faith. That is the covenant that saves Pontellus, right, Dr. Wyne? To the uttermost. All the elect have been saved by God through faith, him transforming that heart of stone and putting in that heart of faith.

And so that's the continuity that we see the saints of old, the saints in the New Covenant, it's always by faith. And then that's the fatal flaw is you don't have an unregenerate mixed covenant when we read through the book of Hebrews.

Right, and that's what you end up with. And that's what I was saying is it's strange to me because what Jared was presenting is the idea that we start with a particular view of apostasy and then we modify and interpret our view of soteriology based upon a particular view of apostasy.

And I said, I'd like to suggest that we should start with our soteriology and modify and interpret our understanding of apostasy in light of our soteriology. The other is more important than the other.

And I think, and it did come out because Jared spent part of his opening statement talking about second Peter and literally saying that there's a sense in which the false prophets had been purchased. And I was like, I've defended particular redemption against all comers.

And Agaradzo without a purchase price is never soteriological. And he said it wasn't soteriological, but he was trying to say it had some relevance here. And I'm like, no, it has no relevance at all. You're just trying to make sure that the new covenant's a mixed covenant.

So you're taking your doctrine of apostasy and you're modifying the doctrine of soteriology on the basis of that. It's backwards. That's why we come to different conclusions.

That's right.

Well, we have a really good question here in the side chat from Really wants to get your answer to this, Dr. Watt. How would you respond to the claim water baptismal regeneration has always been taught by the church?

I would say that anyone who would say that is grossly ignorant of church history. And I say that because a couple of things. We don't have a large majority of what was written in say the first 200 years.

So you can guess, you can surmise, but to say that it's always been taught when so many of the writings were lost. We know this from Eusebius who quotes portions of stuff that we've got none of it left.

We have no way of knowing what it was. So that's the first, it's just a historiographical issue. And that is people who say, oh, all of church history, obviously know nothing about church history, point A.

Point B, when we do have material from people, many of them are not even addressing the subject. They're not even talking about the topic. And so how do you know what they believed about it? Well, I'm going to assume without any counter evidence, you can assume all you want, but that's not how you do history.

And thirdly, just read Tertullian. Tertullian, is he completely on our side on things? No, but what his work on baptism demonstrates is that there were a lot of different views represented in his day.

And so in his day, you had people who were baptized to conversion. You had people who delayed baptism. He spoke against that, but it was very common. Look at what Constantine did. Constantine's not baptized until right before his death and that by an Arian, which has all sorts of interesting ramifications and things about it too.

But so there were people who were baptized to conversion. There were people baptized later in life. There'd be people baptized, put off to the death. And then you had people who were baptizing babies who were sick.

And this is coming from an unbiblical. And again, this is a period of time where the canon is still being recognized. So you have people in the middle of the second century that don't even have Paul's writings.

And if you don't have Paul's writings, your theology is probably gonna be not all that hot. And so you had people doing baptisms of children because they're afraid that they're not gonna live long enough to be baptized later on.

And so the point is there were lots of different understandings of baptism, even in Tertullian's day in the late second century into the beginning of the third century, even if you ignore is becoming a monsonist all the rest of it.

So yeah, people who make those kinds of claims, I just sort of look at them and go, I would suggest you not take a church history class because you're gonna fail. So.

Hey, I like that sauce. Got another question for you real quick. And I think this kind of gets to the heart of the debate between Presbyterians and Reformed Baptists. You've talked about this so much.

This comes from particularly particular, says. If the atonement of the work of Christ is only mediated through the new covenant, would that disrupt Presbyterian covenant theology?

Well, that sounds like a question in regards to 1689 federalism. And look, my son-in-law is 1689 federalist. I don't have any problem with that. I thought he did a great job in the debate that he had on that.

I'm sure you've seen it. But here, look, this is the only reason that I don't use that moniker and use that kind of language. And that is, I am not ready to say that the biblical position is that Abraham was in the new covenant.

He's in the covenant of grace, but there is something specific and special about the new covenant from the least to the greatest of them that is inaugurated and initiated specifically in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

So if you try to go that direction, part of my concern is that I have seen, for example, if you're familiar with quote-unquote new covenant theology that was the Ernie Riesinger stuff from the 1980s, especially 80s and 90s, it was sort of popular there.

I knew and sort of got into association with some people that were really into that new covenant theology stuff. And I came to the conclusion eventually that it was an overreaction to Presbyterian argumentation on paedo-baptism.

And I have seen Baptists overreact to the other side. And hey, they were living in a period of time, they're being persecuted. Okay, would I have overreacted? Maybe I would have. I'm in a situation where I don't have to worry too much about getting my third baptism from my Presbyterian friends.

So that sort of changes the context and stuff. But it does seem to me that there is a danger of Reformed Baptists becoming imbalanced and finding every kind of argument possible to differentiate themselves as much as possible.

For me, again, it's what is biblically consistently defensible. And I would struggle to defend the assertion that Abraham was in the new covenant for one simple reason. I cannot even begin to imagine the writer to the Hebrews not mentioning that.

That would be central to his argumentation, but he never mentions it. So I'm like, well, okay, if you wanna use, if you wanna do the speculative theological route, I'm not gonna argue with you about that, but I'm not necessarily gonna go with you either.

We have Eric Yeager in the side chat, and he basically says, hey.

I've seen that picture somewhere before. He's lucky that it's so small I can't read it.

Well, hey, thank you so much for weighing in.

Well, wait a minute, I didn't get a chance to finish reading that. It's so small on my screen, I'm sorry.

Let me see if I can pull it up.

If one does not get this right, I strike, so come on, brother, at the very heart of our peace with God, if that intercession doesn't actually provide justification, can the new covenant member have the assurance?

Yeah, there you go. Look, that guy is so super smart that he married my daughter, so. Which some days I'm sure he wonders whether that was all that super smart at all, but no, no, I love Eric, and I'm looking forward to seeing him again, and I have a lot of people comment upon the debate that he did, and I'd like to see him get the opportunity to do more of that kind of stuff, because I think he has the gifts and talents to do that, so.

And I'm getting old, so he's the next generation.

There you go.

Well, I just want you to know, Dr. Wyatt, I'm about to step into the debate dojo with some Presbyterians on these similar topics, so your work has been super helpful, and also, Dr. Jeffrey Johnson, I've been reading the Kingdom of God, understanding the covenants and biblical theology, so those are the things.

I know too, Jeffrey Johnson, are you talking about the president of the seminary?

Mm-hmm, yep.

Okay, okay, good, all right, because I know two of them, and I've actually mistakenly called the one rather than the other, because they're both in my contact list, and it's like, oh, sorry, forgive me.

So I just need to make sure we're talking about the same folks, yes.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, hey, I just want to direct everyone watching, go check out this debate if you haven't. I thought Jared, he's brilliant, I thought he did a great job, just very articulate, very respectful, and I want to shift gears, though, because I want to go in reverse order to the last three debates that you've done.

This one with Jared was very respectful, very likable, learned a lot. Now, Dr. White, tell me a little bit about the afterthoughts of this debate with the gentleman Tim Barker, who is an open theist.

Open Theism, Divine Sovereignty, and the Tim Barber Debate

Tim Barber.

Tim Barber, thank you.

Right, I've debated a few Barkers, too, so, no, literally, their last name is Barker, so it does get confusing after a while. I wanted to debate Will Duffy because I debated up in Denver in 2014 on open theism, and that was a very fascinating debate, and I had watched Will Duffy's debate with Matt Slick, and I appreciated his demeanor in that debate, and that he was willing to defend some of the statements that his own church leaders had made and things like that, and so I thought it would be a good match.

He's in the area, so he doesn't have to travel, something like that. He just kept saying that he wasn't available or he didn't want to do it or something, and so there are, of course, a number of open theists that I just find reprehensible in their behavior, their attitude.

If you, for example, listen to the debate that Matt Slick did with a particular open theist recently, and then they did this after show thing where they were bringing up personal attacks on Matt.

And stuff like that.

Just vile, just vile, vile, vile, and so I will not lend my platform to these people. They have completely put themselves outside of any list of individuals that I would engage by their behavior, and I'm just gonna let them sit out there and have their little communities, but I'm not gonna help them get their name out because they're beneath my minimum level of behavior and maturity level to do so.

So I had hoped to get together with Will Duffy. Maybe something will work out in the future. I had never heard of Tim Barbee before when he was suggested to the church there, the New City Church. Aaron Carlson's the pastor there.

I'm really excited. That's sort of becoming my new home base in Denver when I'm there, and it's a lot like Apologia. So we are so much on the same pages. Our worship is very similar, and it's great to have that kind of positive unity with a church that's hundreds of miles away, but same Bible, same spirit, same gospel.

It's great. So he had been mentioned, referred to them, and this was being done fairly quickly. We struggled in both of these debate in Colorado Springs and debate in Denver to get this stuff put together on short notice, and so I read Tim Barber's book, and he has a small number of videos out, and so I watched his video on John 6.

It was lighten flowers, and it was Ken Wilson, and it was Manichaeanism, and he clearly doesn't have a clue what Manichaeanism was actually about. Then again, it was Ken Wilson or lighten flowers, but so it was that same kind of stuff, and he had a video on how Calvinism makes God evil, and it's the standard, standard stuff that's been refuted over and over again.

He clearly hasn't done any reading in Calvin onwards, Edwards, Spurgeon, anybody. It's all secondary stuff, but his book, The Overlap Life, and he mentioned this. It's strange because it's basic. It's sort of a post-millennial in a sense of living in light of eternity and the kingdom of God, and there was a lot.

Even he said, I think you'll see a lot of overlap to what I'm saying and what you all say at Apologia, and it's true, but as I said in my opening statement, what really confuses me is the foundation of our hope that that is all gonna take place is the sovereign decree of God, and so this weird denial of this embracing of open theism and this rejection of God's sovereign decree and stuff like that, it just doesn't fit with all the rest of his position.

Well, we didn't get to really get into most of that because of the way that Mr. Barber chose to address the particular subject, and he has since the debate said, no, I didn't have all that stuff written out.

I was sitting there and I was looking. He said he was typing all of that. Well, either he's the fastest typist in the world or he's dishonest, and the reason I have to say this is I objected immediately after the debate, the next time I was on the air, because it did seem to me that he read his opening statement which, okay, fine, read your opening statement, read the rebuttals and read the closing, and if he's saying that he typed all that during the debate itself, that doesn't explain how in his rebuttal he spent a great deal of time arguing about and rebutting me on anthropomorphisms and analogy because I never used either word.

That was not a part of my presentation, and the funny thing is he said, when he responded to that during the debate, he said, well, that just shows that I knew where you were going, so which is it gonna be?

During the debate, he's not saying, oh, no, no, no, I didn't have that pre-written, but during the debate, he's like, yes, I did, so which is it gonna be? I don't know, and then in his closing statement, he literally had the temerity to say that he had refuted all the biblical texts I presented, and he didn't even come close.

He didn't even try to deal with Daniel 4. He didn't try to deal with Psalm 33. Didn't even touch them. It's like I never even read them, so it was really, it was like debating a less aggressive form of Leighton Flowers, and I'm getting to the point where, after the last debate with Leighton, I told a dear friend of mine who sort of helps me out when I'm in Houston.

He and his family, do you need anything? Do you need any groceries? They used to be members at Phoenix Forum Baptist Church when they lived in Phoenix, and Rudy Jaboris is his name, and I was walking over to Greek people after the last debate with Flowers in Houston, and we're walking, and we were alone in this corridor walking toward the greeting area, and I said, Rudy, if you ever hear me ever again talking about debating Leighton Flowers, punch me in the face, and I told Rich the exact same thing.

Just punch me in the face, so it's not an enjoyable thing to do, and eventually you just gotta come to the point where, oh, please, that's enough. There's no reason to keep going, and I don't think I'd enjoy debating Mr. Barber again either.

We had had a nice lunch, but I had done most of the talking during that too, so yeah, I mean, I think a person who's interested in opiate-ism will find it to be useful on that level just simply due to the fact that the texts that I presented weren't touched.

I mean, in the cross-examination, I tried to get into his N .T. Wright Romans 828 thing, and once I get home, I wanna, once we're back in the regular Dividing Line studio, I wanna go through his suggested translation, Romans 828, and deal with that, but I realized when I started with that in the cross-examination that he didn't know enough of the language to be able to answer the questions, and so no one was gonna understand what I was saying, so I bailed out of that, went into the Isaiah texts, and he, when I went to Isaiah 4310, I have to trust that the audience is going to see what's really going on, because his fundamental way around the Isaiah texts and the clear statement, how do you know who the true God is?

He knows the future. It's just, and he knows the past and why it happened, and how do you fit that with opiate-ism? You can't, so his argument was, well, God knew what he was going to do in that historical situation with Israel and Cyrus and the captivity, so he tried to limit it and say, he's not talking about all of time.

He's not talking about an eternal decree. He's just talking about this one point in history, and so I take him to the texts where the scripture, where in that very same, the trial of false gods, Isaiah 40 to 48, where God says, I am the only true God, and he admitted, yeah, that's universal.

That's applicable all over the place, and I said, well, in the same sentence, they're saying, I'm gonna tell you before it comes to pass that you can believe and understand that I am he, which Jesus quotes from himself in John 13, 19.

We never got a chance to really get into that. He was anticipating that, because I brought that up in the debate in 2014. I think it's absolutely devastating to open theism, but we ended up sidetracked on all sorts of other things, but in one text, you have, I know the future, and because I know the future, you can know that I'm the one true God, and I'm the only God there is.

Yeah, that's universal, but that isn't. That was really the end of the debate, because you're gonna make the text say whatever you want it to say at that point, and I don't know if he really realized that.