Trinity and Transgenderism, The Classical Ponderer, and My Thoughts on the G3 Situation

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Well, greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line.

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It is Tuesday, the 13th of May. Happy birthday to my son, who is, you ready for this?

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Rich 39 today. That means next year, the black balloons and then the whole nine yards, you know.

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Yeah, the happy birthday dirge. Yeah. Everything starts going downhill.

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Honestly, things didn't start going downhill for me till about mid 50s. We didn't close the door all the way.

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Till about 50, after 54. So, you know, maybe he's got a little while left to go.

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I don't know. But yeah, when you're oldest is 39 and your oldest granddaughter will be 16 in December.

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Yeah, it just, mm -hmm, it makes you one of the old guys.

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But that's okay. I'm still on track.

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I'll tell you now, my goal, and I, look, at this age, goals are more wishful thinking than anything else, but at least they give you something to do.

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My goal is, this is what I want to do. I'm doing, I shouldn't say what ride it is, just because there are nasty people in this audience, but I'm doing a ride in Colorado.

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I had almost given up on doing them, but I thought, you know, I've done this one a couple of times. It's going to be a super, super hard effort for me because, you know, last times

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I did it, I was in a lot better shape. I was a lot lighter than I am now. But I'm still going to try to go for it.

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And I've got friends up there that go to support me in the ride. That'll help a little bit to have someone meeting you a couple times along the route so you don't have to carry as much stuff.

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But my goal is to hit lifetime logged miles of 175 ,000 on that ride.

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And I've got to do about 20 miles a day between now and then, basically without any days off, to do that.

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And then I started thinking about it. I was like, you know, let's try to get to 200 ,000 miles before we croak.

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It would only take, you know, 5 ,000 miles a year. And I'm still on track for about 7 ,000 this year to get there.

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And so why not? You know, I've seen some old geezers out there that I was always really impressed by.

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And so, yeah, we're going to keep pressing on.

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But yeah, when your kids start getting up there, especially since he's the one that called you

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Rich the Tingle. That wasn't all that long ago, though.

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That was about 36 years ago. Sorry. You got to admit.

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Yeah, that's true. That's very true. I've got a couple things in my bookmarks that if I don't get to them, they get so old, they'll get run over and get lost.

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We have an Episcopalian priestess named

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Reverend Elizabeth Riley. It's a short little thing, but I saved it because I've had a similar experience.

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The thing I appreciate is she's not ugly. Honestly, I think some of these women try to make themselves as repulsive as possible.

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She's got a little nose ring, but it's nothing major. It looks like her natural hair color. She's cute.

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She really is. So she hasn't done all the stuff to make it look like she's in a

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Dracula movie or something. Purple hair, blue, purple, pink, whatever. But she's way out there.

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Don't think about that. Ask yourself the question, how would you respond to this?

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Because I actually had responded to this in the same context. Remember the

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Dr. Drew show? One of Dr. Drew's co -people, whatever you call them, raised this issue.

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And one of the things that trips Christians up, if you've never been asked a question before, is sometimes you sound very hesitant in your response because you've not actually thought that argument through before.

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So here you go. Here's Reverend Elizabeth Riley. This was from 10 days ago, but here's what she had to say.

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Christians, if you are okay with God being three people in one, but you're not okay with people being transgender,

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I really think you need to examine those two things together. Okay, let's start with three people in one.

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I don't expect Episcopalians in general. Three people in one?

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I do wonder what kind of a definition of the Trinity you'd get from Reverend Riley.

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But the lack of accuracy in language aside, the idea is, and this was, again, this was thrown at me in 2016, how can you have a problem with transgenderism in light of the

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Trinity? And now that I think about it, the guy who raised that question on the program obviously didn't understand the

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Trinity either. So part of the response is going to require you to understand the difference between being in person, one being of God, not one person of God being three persons, difference between those terms and what's being referred to there.

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But evidently, the idea is, well, if you could have this kind of sharing in the divine being, then why can't you have this kind of sharing of genders in the creature?

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Which again, if you just had an understanding of the Trinity to begin with, if you understood monotheism, you understand the uniqueness of the being of God, and then you understand the fact that you don't have one person who decides to be another person the next day.

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You don't have God the Father who the next day decides they're God the Mother. The divine persons are not choices.

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It's not like you have one person that's split into three or something like this. All of that is completely out there.

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And then, of course, mankind's a creature. We're limited, and we're defined by one who is outside of ourselves.

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We do not define ourselves. We're defined by another. Well, that's untrue of God.

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There's not another to define God by. So God is self -defined by his self -existence, which is revealed to us as involving the existence of the

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Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as co -equal divine persons in communication and communion with one another.

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And that has eternally been. God wasn't a Unitarian God one day sitting around going, uh, let's do an

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MPD thing. Okay, let's split into three or something like that.

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No, the relationship between the divine persons is eternal. So this is the way

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God has always existed. In the same way, that one

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God created man male and female from the beginning.

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That was his purpose. That's Jesus' own teaching in Matthew chapter 19.

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And so you have a uncontrolled, unconditioned divine reality.

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Nothing outside of God determines what God is. And then you have

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God creating a creature that exists for a relatively short period of time to function within the parameters of that creature being a created being made male or female.

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There's obviously a massive chasm between those two categories, and that's why this entire argument doesn't make any sense.

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But the first thing you'll discover when someone raises this, because I experienced it. There it is.

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I've seen it in other contexts. You're probably going to see it. I'll bet you somebody's throwing it at Charlie Kirk on a university campus someplace.

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You're going to find fundamental misunderstanding. And you have a choice to make.

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Let's say you were at a Charlie Kirk type thing. Jeff Durbin's done it at ASU and stuff like that.

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Let's say you were at a Charlie Kirk type thing. And someone threw that at you.

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You have a decision to make, and it's a tactical decision. If it's obvious, and it probably will be, that they don't understand the doctrine of the trinity, in that situation, are you going to have the time to be able to explain it to them?

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Because it seems to me that the only way you can hold a group there, especially of young people, to listen for any meaningful length of time, is to keep your responses fairly short and concise.

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Keep the conversation moving. So it might just not be the place to have that kind of a conversation.

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You might say, you know, I detect some serious misunderstandings of the doctrine of the trinity.

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And certainly we detect that upon part of Reverend Elizabeth Riley. Given the kind of education that they're given in the seminaries, you can almost forgive her for that.

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But I detect some errors in the doctrine of the trinity. I'd be happy to talk to you about that maybe when we're done here.

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But your focus, if the conversation's on transgenderism, you don't have 10 minutes to do

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Trinitarian theology. And if you want to keep your focus there and keep the audience, maybe you've got something going.

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You can see people are hearing, they're understanding. Sort of making a side, we'll talk about that a little bit later.

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You're wrong to think that these are parallel concepts, but that very creator

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God, according to Jesus, in Matthew chapter 19, said this. And you go back to your original topic.

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That's sort of a very practical decision type thing that I've seen a lot of Christians struggle with in conversations on street corners, whether it's with Mormons or whatever else it might be.

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There are certain people that, there is a Christian personality that when doing witnessing, as soon as you hear an error, you have to correct it.

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And if that means being there till 11 o 'clock at night, I'm going to do it.

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And sometimes the greater good is accomplished by letting that error pass for another time and staying focused upon the real issue and the real topic that you might actually be able to do some good at in this particular context you're in.

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Which if it was something where there's TV cameras and you've set up a mic and you're taking questions, yeah, that would be one where you...

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And this is true of all witnessing situations. And I've been preaching this to everybody going out to the temple or whatever for a long, long time.

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You've got to have your goal. If you set up a microphone out there and you've got nothing you want to...

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I want to focus on this day. I want to communicate this day. You're going to be everywhere. You're going to cover everything under the sun.

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Some people enjoy that. I think you need to have a focused goal or it's just going to be a food fight.

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Some people really like food fights. But like I said, there is a... And I can almost see certain people down through the years that have gone out to Mesa.

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And that was their way of thinking. It was, I have heard an error.

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I must correct. And you could go, look, look, leave it for another time.

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I can't. They're wrong about it. Those are the people who should not own a computer because they will be on Facebook until three o 'clock in the morning every morning.

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And that'll be the end of that. So anyways, you might want to think about that.

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On April 28th, a fellow called the

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Classic Ponderer wrote a wonderfully kind, encouraging...

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We think about how blessed it is when brothers dwell in unity and the oil of Aaron flowing down the beard and all that stuff where we're just so thankful for all those brothers out there that encourage us.

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Here's the Classic Ponderer. He says, James White is nothing short of a coward. He rages against any positive understanding of Christianity in the function of the civil government, but won't debate anyone intelligent enough to do so.

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Now, that's not an overly good sentence, but won't debate anyone intelligent enough to do so.

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I think what he was trying to say is, I won't debate anyone intelligent enough to engage that topic, maybe.

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But the whole sentence shouldn't have had a return hit after it.

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Because I don't rage against any positive understanding of Christianity in the function of the civil government.

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I really think a lot of these guys, they read secondary sources.

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They don't listen to the program. They don't read anything I've written. It's just, you get this meme going in these groups and it just sort of accelerates and it's...

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I'm sure people have written some interesting books about how fiction becomes fact in social media.

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I'm sure if they haven't yet, they will eventually. Probably some AI bot will do it pretty quickly.

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But I don't rage against any positive understanding of Christianity in the function of the civil government. I believe that a civil government that desires the blessing of God and wants to long endure should ask the question, has

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God revealed the basis upon which we could ask for his blessing?

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I mean, think about it. I'm old enough to remember the fat lady singing. The fat lady was

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Kate Smith and she could belt out, God bless

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America. I mean, God bless Kate Smith. She could sing God bless America. And if you've never heard it, it just means you're probably a millennial or younger.

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But us boomers remember it very, very well. And nobody...

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You look at World War II and you look at how people, how the government provided New Testaments to all of our soldiers that had a forward in it from President Roosevelt recommending to them the reading of the

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New Testament. That could never happen today. I have one of those New Testaments and you can actually find them on eBay if you want to look one up yourself.

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My fellow elder at PRBC had his dad's from the war. And so, there was a time when it was understood that if we want

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God's blessing, then there needs to be national repentance. In the century before, during the

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Civil War, both sides called for prayer and fasting and believed that this horrible conflagration was the result of God's judgment.

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Obviously, for different reasons, depending on whether you're in the North or South. But God's judgment upon sin, there was discussion of this during the

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Revolutionary War. So, it's been a part of the nation from the beginning to believe that we need

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God's blessing upon this land. As the nation has secularized, that has diminished.

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And the result is Episcopalian priestesses thinking that the

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Trinity is relevant to transgenderism. That's where it's coming from.

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And so, I don't rage against any positive understanding of Christianity and the government.

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I do believe, and I made this very, very clear at ReformCon. And by the way, I haven't linked to them yet, but my presentation is on YouTube.

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Well, yeah, it's on YouTube. If you go to ReformCon .org, maybe

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ReformCon 2025. I don't know. I'd have a look. But it's up. Okay. I made this very clear, specifically, that without the move of the

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Spirit of God, changing the hearts and minds of people. I mean, every day I'm reminded when

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I go online, there are two completely different nations living within one set of borders.

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Rich is a little bit out of it right now. Okay. Rich has been pulling cable.

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Now, I did not realize you could have this much cable. Our offices are not huge.

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They're not small. We rent offices from a church and started converting this, which had been the offices of a school, and a classroom, one classroom.

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In fact, my office is a classroom my daughter went to sixth grade in. And so, as we've had various incarnations of computer stuff in here, you run cable, network cables and stuff like that.

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Well, we've been here almost 20 years. And evidently, network technology advances in 20 years, which is astonishing.

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I didn't know that. And I guess cabling advances in speed and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

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So, being the rich, massive mega ministry that we are, we just had people come in and do it.

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No, Rich is doing it. So, we have... What do you just...

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I guess they're ceiling tiles. Drop ceiling. We have drop ceiling. And we put that in ourselves, didn't we?

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You did. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. He wants to make sure... They don't let me do any of that stuff. Okay.

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Because they want it to actually to be straight and functional and stuff like that. So, we have drop ceilings with those things that I don't care what you do, stuff falls off of them.

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I mean, even they're brand new. The floor is going to get nuked by moving any one of them.

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You leave them up there for 20 years and you live in a desert with dust storms, you move it and yeah, you're going to look really good for a long time.

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So, for days now, Rich has been down here spending hours on ladders, going up and down ladders, sticking his head in here and pulling cables and doing all the rest of this kind of fun stuff, which he's constantly talking to himself while doing it.

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And it is a continuous monologue with Tim, the tool man, Taylor. It really is.

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It's fun to watch, but not to be involved with. Anyway, what did any of that have to do with what

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I was about to tell you? Oh, you have no idea where I was going.

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Even if you did, you wouldn't tell me now anyways, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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The debate in terms of civil government had something to do with ReformCon and all the rest of that stuff.

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Anyways, that rabbit done jumped the track. We're going to get back on the road now and I'll continue reading here.

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So, anyways, what I am saying is my presentation on this subject should be up if you go looking for it.

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And I made it very, very plain that if you do not have a people who from the heart desire to do what's right for God, then the only way that you can quote -unquote

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Christianize somebody is to have a quote -unquote Christian prince, to go back to sacralism, to go back to nominalism, to go back to forced theology, to go back to executions of heretics.

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And there are people who go, yeah, cool, do it. And I'm just sitting here going, have you looked at the government?

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Even look, have you looked at the people that Trump thinks are faith leaders? Okay, do you want

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Paula White involved in determining Christian orthodoxy? Who gets to preach and what gets to be preached?

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Seriously? Yeah, I don't think so. My mind is going back and what

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I was going to do is I was going to ask you something, but then I realized you probably don't know anything about it because something was going on recently with Trump, but now

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I can't remember what it was. There was something on Twitter. I could probably find it if I moved away from this, but that's what

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I was going to say. You don't know anything about this because your head's been stuck in the ceiling for three days. It'll probably come back to me right as soon as the program's over.

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But anyways, so I do not rage. What I would rage against would be a

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Trump -determined Bible translation or the

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Trump administration determining what we can teach or preach about transgenderism.

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You say, well, but they're against men competing. Yeah, but let's be honest.

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Trump has never been super strong on the homosexual issue. He's a New Yorker. That's just not a part of his

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DNA. So that's what I would rage against.

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I would rage against sacralism. I would rage against a violation of a recognition of the sphere sovereignty of individual, family, church, and state.

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I will rage against that. We do not need a Christian Franco. I'll rage against that.

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If you want to talk about raging, whatever in the world that means, sure, we'll go there.

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That's cool. But I do have a positive understanding of Christianity and the function of the civil government because I believe the promise of Isaiah 42 that the coastlands will come seeking

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God's Torah. But what does that require? That requires a change of heart.

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That requires regeneration. That requires the work of the Spirit. A person not seeking

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God's law will find ways to either look like they're keeping

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God's law while violating it or just simply violating it openly. The only way to fundamentally end the transgender nightmare in Colorado is for a change of hearts of the people in Colorado so they're not electing the nut burgers in the legislature and the governor who have a rebellious anti -Christian worldview, which means they have a worldview which causes them to be constantly fighting against the world in which they live.

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We live in God's world. They don't get to change that. And when you choose to live in that fashion, you're not going to have happiness.

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You're not going to have peace. You're going to have rebellion and destruction. I can't see the there, so evidently

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I can see your hand, so I guess that means you want to comment. Pete Well, your comment there makes me think of Rush Limbaugh, because Rush Limbaugh's agenda, every show, was about changing the hearts and minds of the

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American people in mass, and then that is how you change government.

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Well, put that into a Christian context, and who does that changing?

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A Christian prince ain't going to do that changing. That's just going to be a bunch of posers walking around afraid of the government for whatever reason, reason

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A or reason B, both is tyranny, all right? But when the nation is changed from the heart, when the hearts and minds of the

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American people have been changed to think in a certain way, as he wrote the book, The Way Things Ought to Be, you suddenly have an entire change in the whole function of the society, but you can't force that.

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Joe No, you can't force it, and it would come from the grace of God, and I remembered now where I jumped the track. I was going to ask you if you had seen, but then that's when

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I stopped and said, well, of course you haven't seen it, because there aren't any TVs in the ceiling. There is a

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Democrat who has filed impeachment charges in the House of Representatives.

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Pete Only one? Joe Well, others have been talking about it, but - Pete It's like they talk about this every day.

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Joe Well, and the point is, we need to understand that will be the case forever.

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I don't think we will, without a fundamental change in the population, we will never go back to a situation where that was considered something serious.

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The left will do this, and if the left takes the

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House of Representatives in a very short period of time, and it is a very short period of time, the only thing that will be happening in the government are impeachment trials.

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That's all there is to it. I don't think we have a functional governmental system right now.

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It is a, whichever side wins, does whatever they want, doesn't matter what the

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Constitution says, doesn't matter what the law says, the legislative branch is deadlocked and dead.

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That's all there is to it. Pete As you know, I have a fairly lengthy commute. Pete And when

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I come in during rush hour, and I'm sitting in a parking lot on the freeway, going nowhere,

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I'm often reminded of the fact that look at all these people, the thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people that are sitting in this parking lot with me, and all these hearts and minds.

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What do these people think? How do these people think? You realize how many of these people that are on the freeway sitting here with me will never darken the door of a church?

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Their entire worldview is subjective, their entire way of thinking is subjective.

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It's all about me right now, how much money I make, and wanting to make more money, on and on and on.

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And yet those same people go to the voting booth. Pete It's true. It's very true.

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So anyways, back to the classic wanderer here, ponderer, I'm sorry. Come on,

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White, I thought you were the debater of our age. But no, he won't debate Wolfe as he runs the risk of more people being convinced of Wolfe's propositions.

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So he reserves himself to chip shots in comment sections. He's a coward and a vulture. This guy is really kind, loving, so fair, especially because I've never said

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I won't debate Wolfe. The issue has always been on what? And he says at the end, he will say,

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I'll even give you a debate topic. Is sacralism antithetical to Christianity? How about is sacralism compatible to Christianity?

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That makes it significantly more usable. But then that will also require the definition of sacralism.

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That's why I've said, look, if we're going to do something like that, how about we do something along the lines of the execution of Michael Servaitis, Fritz Erba, something that has concrete historical stuff.

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He may not want to do that because, well, I don't know. I don't know. Again, there are a number of topics come up.

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I had mentioned, for example, at one point, theonomy with Jeff Durbin.

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Jeff would very much like to do that. I had mentioned presuppositionals and A .D. Robles comes on. I wouldn't even want to listen to that.

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I don't care what you think, to be honest with you. But he's made comments on it. And I would feel horrible if someone wrote to Stephen Wolfe and reversed this on the subject of presuppositionalism and could be just this nasty.

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I would hope this guy would be maybe a little bit more mature adult in person.

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I'd like to think that maybe it's just the anonymity. In fact,

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I mean, look here. Yeah, it's a non -account.

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There's no link to who anybody is, no names, nothing like that. It's a non.

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So yeah, you'd think we've learned about a nons by now. So anyway,

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I go back to this here if I can find it. There it is. So again, this is how fiction begins in these groups, evidently.

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The whole idea is he won't debate, he won't debate, and that's not the issue. The issue is what are we going to debate about, when, where, how, what's going to be most useful.

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And most of the stuff I've responded to Wolfe about has been on worldview, presuppositionalism, theonomy, and stuff like that.

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But he won't touch those 10 -foot poles. So why aren't you talking to him about what he won't debate about? He doesn't claim to be a debater, so I'm not really sure what y 'all are all excited about.

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He's only debating Mahler on a subject that, walking in, 90 % of people would agree with White.

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He didn't debate him on anything else, he just stacked all the odds in his favor before he proceeded in anything.

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What? Well, I was saying... Can I just take over? No, that's okay. But you know, the topic, you know how many different martyrs you could plug into that?

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Tyndale, you could plug in Jan Hus. So many different ones you could plug into that topic.

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Yes, Anchoralism was very successful, yeah. Yeah, I don't know that they would want to defend those, but the reason

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I mentioned Erba and Serratus is because it was Protestants. This was the

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Protestant -Franco situation. But back to what you just said, he's only debating

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Mahler on a subject that, walking in, 90 % of people would agree with White. No, I'm debating him on a subject that had just been, within a few days of my being in contact about this, had just been enunciated by Corey Mahler in his conversation with Samuel Say.

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So it had just come up. It is, I think, one of the clearest illustrations, demonstrations of the non -gospel -centric understanding of the

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Stone Choir cult that you could possibly have. Yeah, it's a given that I think anybody who reads the

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New Testament goes, huh, everything I've read about the work of the Holy Spirit amongst God's people has nothing to do with ethnicity at all.

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It's just, how can anybody come up with that? Well, he's gonna have to come up with it in a very short period of time, and I don't think he's gonna be able to do it.

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So he didn't debate him on anything else. Well, if you watch the previous two dialogues and discussions, he kept going to the same stuff.

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He just stacked all the odds in his favor before he proceeded in anything. I'm not the one that forced

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Corey Mahler to say, no, God cannot sanctify blacks as much as whites in his conversation with Samuel Say.

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I had nothing to do with that. You call yourself a ponderer? You ain't pondering very well.

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Now, although white could be 100 % correct in what he says in this debate, maybe, possibly, he will be rhetorically obliterated, okay?

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He's going to fall into the trap he himself built. Oh, I am now shaking in my boots.

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Well, those are actually ultra running shoes, but I'm shaking in them. He doesn't explain why this is.

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And have you listened to the last two things that Mahler did?

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Yeah, he's calm, cool, and collected, but he's got the passion of an insurance salesman.

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It's true. I mean, come on. People go, yeah, she's very self -controlled.

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Yeah, he's boring. What are you talking about? I'm sorry. You said that, and I'm thinking the Kirby vacuum salesman, the guy who comes into your house and you can never get him to leave.

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He will just sit there and keep talking until you buy. No, I'm not really thinking about that. I'm thinking more, yeah, not a whole lot of passion.

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Anyway, so finally he says, I feel the utmost pity for white.

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I think you mean utmost U -T, not U -P, is

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P? No, P and T are really far apart on them. I think you just don't know what the word is. I feel the utmost pity for white.

38:30

Yes, we can tell your kindness and compassion is just flowing out of your keyboard.

38:37

But if Christian nationalism is as bad as you say it is, well, it depends on which

38:43

Christian nationalism we're talking about. But the stuff that's producing the kick out all the

38:52

Blacks, Chinese, and Latinos, and make America white again, yeah, that's pretty bad.

39:02

If Christian nationalism is, oh, and the Jews too. The Jews, oh, got to get rid of, yeah, you bet. Okay. But if Christian nationalism is as bad as you say it is, stop being a dishonest coward and debate

39:13

Wolf already. Well, how about you do enough reading to find out what in the world you're talking about?

39:19

Because right now it's pretty obvious you don't have a clue what you're talking about. You've got a really small audience, so you just figured no one's going to notice it.

39:27

I'll even give you a debate topic, is sacralism antithetical to Christianity? We just talked about that. So yes, dishonest coward.

39:34

It's so easy for people to do that kind of thing when they don't figure you're ever going to see it.

39:40

But I did. I did. And so there you go. So again, if any of you know this brilliant fellow here, again, it's called the

39:51

Classic Ponderer. He's got 1 ,259 followers.

39:59

That's better than 500, I suppose. But another

40:04

Anon account out there doing its damage, doing its thing. So there you go.

40:11

All right. Well, it's 13th of May. We got about 20 minutes left in the program.

40:18

I hope by now everyone is well aware of the fact that there will not be a distinct dividing line program on Thursday because at five o 'clock our time, which is currently

40:34

Pacific Daylight Time, which for us is always Mountain Standard Time, but who cares? Anyway, five o 'clock on Thursday, which is eight o 'clock

40:42

Eastern Time. We will have that debate. The debate will last about two hours.

40:51

And the debate topic is, can the Holy Spirit of God sanctify a black person as much as a white person?

40:58

His argument is going to be no, simply because of starting place that blacks are inherently more evil. I would assume he will probably try to wander off into Genesis 9 and 925 -27 and do that kind of stuff.

41:12

Either that or he'll just stick with population genetics issues or crime statistics or something.

41:18

I don't know. We will find out. We will be ready for it. I obviously will be presenting a New Testament presentation of the simple fact that everything in all of Scripture that talks about the

41:30

Holy Spirit sanctifying anyone has nothing to do at all with ethnicity.

41:37

God's Spirit is not limited by ethnicity. God's Spirit sanctifies all the elect.

41:45

By the way, that's what the Lutheran confessions say, too. Just might throw that in there for the fun of it.

41:51

We'll see if we have enough time to. The contrast could not possibly be any more strong than it will be in what happens on Thursday.

42:07

So be watching for that as far as that's the replacement for the dividing line type of situation.

42:18

They've asked me to do an after -party type thing. I don't know if I'm going to have interest in that.

42:23

We'll see. You can ruin a clear debate by making it go so long that you can throw enough dust and dirt in the air to obscure what had actually taken place.

42:39

So I'm not sure that's really worth it. So yesterday morning,

42:45

I get up and I feed the herd.

42:51

We currently have a herd of cats. We found a home, by the way, for the little twins.

43:01

I mentioned that a feral kitty... Yes, yes, that's the nice part.

43:06

I've told you before, we had a little feral kitty sneak into our house. We have a cat door. I'm replacing the cat door. The guy's coming tomorrow.

43:12

I hope we can get it done tomorrow. I don't think we will get it done tomorrow, but I sure wish we could get it done tomorrow because I need that cat door because the feral kitties have figured out the cat door and I can't keep them out.

43:23

So my kitty's got to be able to go outside and they're coming inside. Anyway, this little feral mama came in and had her kittens under the chest of drawers.

43:34

One of them died early on. That's not unusual. We helped her as much as we could.

43:40

I'd be down there on my hands and knees and putting moist food in for mama to eat.

43:48

She's still coming in. She's been a great... She's a funny looking little thing. She really is.

43:53

She's not pretty, but she's been a great mom. She keeps an eye on those things.

43:59

They're eight and a half weeks or almost nine weeks now. Normally, they just wander off and do their thing by now. So two of them are twinsies.

44:07

They literally are the... We know exactly who their dad is too. There's a big tom that's like, hey, that's dad.

44:15

There's the kids. There's no question about that. That's real obvious. So a lady's going to be taking the two twins and keeping them together, which

44:23

I think is really neat because they're twins. But the little runt...

44:32

Kelly sent me a picture when I was down in Tucson. We were there when I was on the last trip. I forget which one it was.

44:39

And she named her Yoda because she looks like Yoda. Her ears and her port...

44:49

Some places she's almost bald and not thick hair. She's just not pretty, but she's so not pretty that she's really cute.

45:00

And so we're keeping Yoda. Yoda's got her forever home.

45:09

So anyway, we've got it... This morning,

45:15

I'd gotten the... Or yesterday morning, I'd gotten the herd fed and all happy and playing around and stuff like that.

45:23

And I sit down and I see Tom Buck saying something on Twitter about what a heartbreaking week this has been.

45:37

And I think he said he had spent like 50 hours. This was

45:42

Monday. Yeah. So he'd spent 50 hours last week on this heartbreaking situation.

45:49

And I looked at the thing. It's a statement from G3 Ministries about Josh Weiss.

45:56

And I'm like, do I even want to... I don't have a choice.

46:04

Because we've already made commitments to the worldview conference in Franklin on the way to G3 with Eli Ayala and Jason Lyle.

46:22

I'm really looking forward to that. And then the week after G3, I'm to be up in Pennsylvania with Chris Arnzen doing his pastor's luncheon and speaking at his church that following Sunday.

46:38

So it's a long trip distance -wise, because Pennsylvania is a long way from here, and time -wise.

46:48

And so I open it up. I read the statement you've all read. I called

46:55

Tom, talked with Tom for about 20 minutes. He had like 20 other phone calls to return, so I couldn't...

47:01

I didn't want to keep him forever. And I just didn't have words, because what

47:13

I was reading about just didn't seem like it was possible. The Josh Weiss I've always known, just that never crossed my mind, the stuff with anonymous accounts and stuff like that.

47:28

And look, having anonymous accounts, and let me say right now, I have two ex -accounts.

47:35

The one that I have with 126 ,000...

47:42

No, hold on a second. 162.

47:49

I've got dyslexia. 162 .1 thousand followers. And believe me, with how many people

47:57

I've blocked and removed as followers, I could have a whole lot more if I just wanted a big number I don't...

48:03

I'm not looking for that. So Hosts El Utheroy is my main account.

48:09

But when I switched my ID over to this from Dr. Oakley 1689, people had mentioned to me, and I thought about it too.

48:19

As soon as I did that, I then went back and grabbed Dr. Oakley 1689, because the worst thing that could happen is someone grabs that and starts pretending they're me.

48:32

So I still have my Dr. Oakley 1689 account. I don't use it for much.

48:37

Well, the only reason I ever use it is sometimes when I'll click on something in a browser, it'll for some reason open that account rather than my other account.

48:46

So I do have two accounts, but they both have my name on them. Everybody knows who I am. I have no anonymous accounts.

48:52

I have a Facebook account, which I didn't. I hate it. But almost all of Apologia communicates via Facebook.

49:01

But guess what? My name's right on it. My picture's right on it.

49:07

It's me. I don't do Instagram. Don't have it. I don't do TikTok. What else is out there?

49:15

I don't know. I don't know. So yeah, don't do any of that stuff.

49:22

Well, yeah. So yeah, it's super strange that someone heading up G3 would have anonymous accounts where he's arguing with himself as the anonymous account.

49:43

Because that happened. There were places where the anonymous accounts and Josh were interacting.

49:49

So it was him interacting with himself. So it's clearly meant to try to allow him to bring accusations against people or post stuff that he couldn't get away with under his real name.

50:06

Use this other thing to do it, but make it look like it's somebody else. Well, okay.

50:13

That's weird. I get it. It's not like having a six -year -long relationship with a woman when you're married who's 40 years younger than you or 50 years younger than you or whatever.

50:30

So it doesn't rise to that level. What the real problem from my perspective is that when the elders at the church started getting suspicious, there were how many months of direct, straightforward lying, denials.

50:58

Nope, it's not me. Maybe it's this person over here. Even instances of trying to cast blame on somebody else.

51:05

Probably that person over there. Probably that person over there. That's where the real problem is. Doing weird stuff on social media, social media is weird to begin with.

51:18

And so you can say that there's a simple matter of honesty at that point. All right.

51:25

But it was the dishonesty with the elders. That's the issue. That's why everything's coming apart, to be perfectly honest with you.

51:34

Is that, not the weirdness that went on from there. Now, it was pointed out to me that these anonymous accounts had criticized or gone after 10 out of the 17 plenary speakers at the

51:53

September conference. And that's what makes everybody go, what's going on here?

52:04

I don't know. And my wife came home from teaching aerobics yesterday morning.

52:10

I'm just sitting there and she goes, what's going on? I'm like, I don't have words. I can't explain it.

52:19

It does not make a lick of sense to me. Honestly, it was harder for me to enunciate it and to understand it than the

52:33

Lawson situation. We've seen all sorts of people fall for sexual sin.

52:42

Church history is full of that one. No toys about it. But this just doesn't make any sense to build up this massive ministry, which, yeah, it was doing stuff with these pastors things and the exegetical stuff.

53:01

That's great. But those are relatively small in comparison to the either regional conferences or the big, huge, massive national conference, which for years had been every year.

53:20

And I started speaking there when it was still at Praise Mill. And the place could only seat like 700.

53:27

They'd have an overflow seating and stuff. But and that was years and years and years and years ago.

53:34

And to build that up to being one of, well, one of the three largest conferences in the world, really.

53:47

And the only one really that Reformed Baptists would feel perfectly at home at, basically.

53:57

I have no comprehension of it.

54:05

I don't understand how it could happen. The only thing that I've thought of, because I've seen this for a lot of folks, is once something gets really big, it can become an idol in your life.

54:29

You know, I need to be careful here, but I had a pastor once, and that church got so big.

54:42

And it changed him. It really, really, really changed him a lot.

54:53

And that's why I'm really, really glad that Rich is pulling cable to the ceiling.

55:05

Because most of the real big ministries, the president ain't pulling cables to the ceiling.

55:13

Nope, ain't going to do it. And the director and the primary speaking individual isn't going to be traveling in an

55:24

RV and hooking up a sewer hose at RV parks and speaking in little churches to 40 people.

55:33

You know, not going to happen. They're beneath me. And look,

55:38

I get it. If you're in big, big, big demand, you can go, hey, I can't come to any place that can't seat at least 1 ,000 people.

55:46

All right. I get that. I get it.

55:53

And there may be a few people where that's the situation. But it just seems like it can get so massively big that it takes on a life of its own.

56:07

So if you start thinking, well, someone was criticizing my baby.

56:14

And so I can't respond as me, but maybe I can respond as somebody else.

56:21

Is that what happened? I don't know. I don't know. It seems probable that that's what went down.

56:32

But you might go, well, what are you going to do with your trip? Because I've already made commitments book ending what was supposed to be

56:39

G3 and now G3's been canceled. And honestly, as I just sit here,

56:48

I don't know numbers and stuff like that, but I can't see how G3 continues at all.

56:54

I really can't. I don't see financially how that's even a possibility.

57:02

So I've always enjoyed the mall. I've always enjoyed meeting people.

57:08

I was looking forward to having Kelly there. Everybody loved having Kelly there the last time she took charge and everybody's loved meeting

57:15

Rich. And I don't know why he wore that cowboy hat, but he did. And there you go.

57:22

Y 'all found out that we are just who we are. And believe you me, we ain't doing nothing like that.

57:31

We did one conference in Los Angeles once, and that was enough. It was like, yeah, we'll leave this to people who actually enjoy doing this kind of stuff.

57:39

And that ain't us. No, no, no, no, no. That's a lot of work, man. You better believe it's a lot of work.

57:46

So the idea right now is, and this is what we've talked to, I've contacted Jeffrey Rice.

57:52

I'm going to be in Franklin. Tullahoma is only like, I don't know, 30 miles from Franklin, something like that.

58:01

So actually, I need to ask Chris. There is a, one of Chris's advertisers on Iron Sharpens Iron is in Franklin.

58:13

And I've got that Sunday I was going to preach in Tullahoma. Well, we should contact that church, see if they'd be interested in having me speak for them that Sunday after the conference.

58:26

Or talk to the conference organizers and see if there's a place they want me to go. The next weekend is supposed to be

58:32

G3. I'm going to go to Tullahoma. Actually, the RV parks in Manchester, but I'm going to go to Tullahoma.

58:39

And we want to do something big at Jeffrey Rice's new church. They got a new building. And right as they're finishing up all the renovations, the new building is when

58:49

Jeffrey gets hit by a truck. I think it was an unlicensed driver, no insurance, it was somebody else's vehicle, and left with all these medical bills, as well as trying to keep afloat financially.

59:07

So we're like, look, here's a faithful local church. It's a small local church. I've spoken there a number of times.

59:15

So the plan right now is, you know, maybe we can arrange a debate, but to do something big.

59:25

And we'll need you to get us there. So we're not asking anything from the church.

59:31

We're not asking anything from the church in Tullahoma. We just want to be a blessing to them, to Jeffrey Rice and his family and the church body there.

59:40

You all are the ones that make that possible for us to do that kind of thing. And so I'll replace the time that I would have been standing for hours on end, shaking hands and meeting folks and signing books, which

59:53

I was very much looking forward to doing. But we'll do it in a local church and hopefully be able to arrange a debate type thing along those lines at the same time to fill that time.

01:00:11

The next weekend, I'm up in Pennsylvania with Chris at his church and for his pastor.

01:00:20

So that's what September is looking like right now in the Alpha Omega Mobile Command Center, which we still need to...

01:00:31

What? It ain't no private jet. No. But it's a very nice RV.

01:00:39

Let me tell you something. It's good stuff. All right.

01:00:44

So we pray for Praise Me, Old Baptist Church. We pray for Josh Bice and his family.

01:00:50

Josh has always been very kind to me. Like I said, that's why I'm just sitting here going,

01:00:57

I don't know who was doing this because I don't know that man. It doesn't make any sense to me at all.

01:01:04

But that whole situation... And by the way, real quickly, I'm seeing other folks...

01:01:10

Look, there are certain people that I would expect. There are certain people I could predict beforehand would just be jumping for joy and having so much fun and,

01:01:20

I told you, I told you, I told you, and stuff like... Oh, it's just disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.

01:01:25

It really is. The outlook of social media, quote -unquote

01:01:32

Christian social media, it's just... But there have been some ministries too. I'll be honest with you.

01:01:37

Even if you were on the receiving end of some of that stuff, man, check your heart as to how you respond to this stuff.

01:01:45

Really, it's... Anyway. All right.

01:01:50

So Lord willing, next dividing line that I can think of will be next, will be a week from today, unless there is fallout from the debate that we want to discuss or something like that that would result in a

01:02:08

Friday and Monday type thing. But I sort of doubt that. So the next regularly scheduled program will probably be a week from today.

01:02:14

But don't forget the debate, Thursday, 8 p .m. Eastern time. The link's already on YouTube.

01:02:21

Just put in James White, Cory Mahler, it'll automatically come up. And I think a lot of people are going to be watching that.

01:02:30

The Bible Dingers. It's on the Bible Dingers YouTube page. And they're not just hosting it, they're moderating it.

01:02:38

And it will need to be moderated. I don't know about that. I'm not sure if there's going to be much need for moderation.

01:02:48

Just keeping the time. Yeah. But we'll see. We'll see how it goes. So anyways, pray for the debate.