Way Too Many Topics Today to Put in the Title! Listen Anyway!

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:32

Greetings, welcome to the dividing line. Maybe, not sure, we'll see. I don't know. What? The tech folks will be flogged after the program's over until performance and morale improves.

00:48

We've got a tremendously large amount of stuff to get to today.

00:54

I have a bunch of stuff queued up here. I probably will not get to all of it, but we will try.

01:01

I guess I might as well start off with something sort of humorous. I don't know what the context of this was, but a guy named

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Rick Frazier put this together, and it was about K -Wrath.

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K -Wrath is a big hit. Listen to what these top theologians are saying, but I thought it was just the group of people that got thrown together here.

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Paul Washer, blasphemous. R .C. Sproul, what's wrong with you people? John Piper, it's a soul -sucking, wrath -inducing, justice -bearing, holiness -exalting hit.

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John MacArthur, unqualified. Votey Baucom, if you can't say amen, you ought to say ouch.

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Well, he's probably most famous, that line. Poor guy. Jeff Durbin, the

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DJs have beards, right? They have to have beards. Me, listening to songs about total depravity and God's wrath are perfect for those steep canyon cycling climbs.

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David Platt, if you have a radio, and I hope you do, turn with me to the new K -Wrath. Matt Chandler, you're not

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David. That one I didn't get. It's all in capitals. And then Joel Osteen, what's wrath? That one was probably good for Joel Osteen, but we got a bit of a chuckle out of that one when it came by this morning.

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There are nice things. There's a lot of crazy things on social media, but I promised on our last time together to address, and good grief, where did it go?

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There it is. So many of these things here. A little bit, this was posted on June 13th by K.

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Albert Little at Patheos. Patheos is Patheos, folks.

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He said, this is called a convert's guide to not becoming Catholic. As a non -denominational evangelical convert to Catholic faith,

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I've lived through what sociologists call a paradigm shift. I went from being an arm -raising, grape -juice -drinking,

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Bible -believing, unaffiliated evangelical, almost sounds sort of Calvary chapel -ish a little bit, to a rosary -praying, priest -confessing, saint -loving

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Catholic, but it didn't happen overnight. For me, there are certain lines I can trace, a certain narrative, through nearly a decades -long journey that led me home to Mother Church.

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In my own journey, I can check out certain boxes and say, yes, definitely, yes, that made me become a Catholic. So naturally,

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I wanted to help others to avoid a similar fate. So what were some of these things that he is going to say you shouldn't do?

03:42

Don't read Scott Hahn. Yes, Scott Hahn is still out there. Don't read Scott Hahn. I really wish, because it only plays in my mind, well, it probably plays in Jerry Madisek's mind too.

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You gotta go a lot of years back here, folks. I was just contemplating the fact that my wife and I, who just texted me there something, oh, that was actually funny.

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My wife and I will have our 37th wedding anniversary next week, and I was lamenting the fact that 37,

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I guess 37 is actually a prime number. So it's in a no -man's land between 35 and 40.

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It's just there. It's just sort of like, yeah, okay. It was like when

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I turned 37 many years ago, 20 years ago. It was just sort of like, it's just an awkward number when you think about it.

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Anyway, it hasn't been quite that long, but it was many, many years ago when

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Scott Hahn and Jerry Madisek were Laurel and Hardy of Catholic apologists.

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They were always together. When they gave their conversion stories, it was all, he came to this conclusion first, and he contacted me, and then we talked about that, and la, la, la, la, la.

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And it is interesting. Who could have predicted all those many years ago that Jerry, well, last time

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I saw Jerry, honestly, was on Jeopardy. Seriously, last time

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I saw Jerry Madisek, he was a contestant on Jeopardy, and he lost badly, but he was a contestant on Jeopardy.

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And I don't have any earthy idea what he is doing these days.

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I, last I, the last we heard of Jerry Madisek, he was still meeting with three or four conspiracy theorist,

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Illuminati conspiratorialist type people in the back room at Holiday Inns and, and, and getting just enough money to be able to eat and, well, at least get

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Diet Coke. I'm not sure what he was getting, but, you know, Jerry's just, for those of you who don't know his history, go look up James White, Jerry Madisek.

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I think, I think I counted once, I think we debated 13 times. But Jerry Madisek was the first person

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I debated, formally, at a large Roman Catholic church. He was with Catholic Answers at the time. He was the

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Catholic Answers convert celeb of that time. He and Scott Hahn together, they sort of competed with one another.

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And he was the first ordained PCA minister to convert Roman Catholicism.

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Not the last, but the first. Gordon Conwell, he was all but dissertation at Westminster at that particular point in time, never did finish that.

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He is the single most disorganized man ever met in my life. Rich is laughing because he immediately started thinking about the same thing

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I did. And, and that was that, that, that was after the, the, the multi -hour debate on the papacy.

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We did, we did two debates on the papacy in 1993 in Denver. And the second night was at a Presbyterian church, same

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Presbyterian church that held John Denver's funeral a couple years later. Anyway, and everybody had left.

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And all my stuff was in a, it's a silver book bag. It's underneath my desk in the other room, actually, still got it.

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All my stuff was packed away. And I had two book bags sitting on my eight foot long table, six foot long table.

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I'm not sure how long it was, probably a six foot long table. And Rich and I were talking, we're getting ready to leave.

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We've been talking to folks, but the back and the front and so on and so forth. And Jerry been in the back. Well, he comes walking out and I had looked over at Jerry's table.

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And honestly, this entire six foot long table, you cannot see a single spot of open wood on the top.

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It is covered with books and yellow pads of paper.

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And then underneath, underneath the only place where you could see the carpet underneath his table is where his feet had been.

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It was covered underneath too. And it still was. And this was hours, this was, you know, an hour and a half after the debate, probably.

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We're getting ready to leave. And so Rich and I were sitting there talking and Jerry comes walking up and he sort of sees us and he, he looks over, looks over at my table, looks over at his table.

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And what was it he said? Yeah, you win the clean debate or the organization debate or something along those, something along those lines.

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Well, the reality is he has talked about writing books and stuff like this for decades, never organized enough to get it done.

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Never, never, never, never. And that that's how I was able to predict to Chris Arnzen years ago before the

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Marion debate on Long Island, which is one of the more memorable debates we've had. It's just a shame the sound quality on it stinks.

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But that's why I was able to predict to Chris Arnzen before it happened. I said, well, if Jerry's true to form, he's going to come in and say that all his books are still in boxes and, and he only had time to scribble some notes on a yellow pad while he was driving there.

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He's going to come in late. And he's going to say, all he's been able to do is drink a Diet Coke today or something along those lines.

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And he was the first one to start speaking. It was pretty much exactly.

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I was rushing to get here and all my books are in boxes because we're moving my library and you know,

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I've been able to do and I'm up against, you know, Steve versus Goliath here. And, and, you know, I've been able to drink today as a

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Diet Coke. And it was just, it was right down the alley. Exactly. Chris is sitting in the back looking at me like it's a profit.

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You know, it's just, it was just, it was just freaked out that, that I've been able to, I knew exactly where he'd end up going.

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That didn't work a few debates in, but it, you know, he tried it that for that first night. It didn't, it didn't really go over too well.

10:33

Anyway. So I know Gerrymatitics and we did that first debate in Long Beach and they were like,

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Oh, someone who can actually debate. Hmm. All right. And so we arranged two debates.

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I think they were on the, they were two consecutive nights, if I recall correctly.

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I don't think there was any, there was no time in between. Yeah. The first night was at Northwest Community Church on internal security.

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And the second was a place called City of the Lord, which again, I don't even know if it still exists. I've not, it's in Tempe.

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Yeah. Let's see if it's still around. A Catholic church. And Gerry was accompanied by, flown and flown in with, it's still there.

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Yeah. Okay. Flown in with Gerry was

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Scott Hahn. I mean, so they were just like this. They were, they were, they were buddies and didn't have much interaction with Hahn, uh, the first night.

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But if I recall correctly, he moderated. Yes. He moderated the second night at the

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Catholic place. Well, did one of the, one of the pastors at Northwest do the moderation? Do you remember who it was?

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I can't, I can't remember. Yeah. Anyway, so Hahn moderated the second night's debate on the papacy.

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Well, evidently these guys, one thing that was exposed that night is that in their reading all this

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Catholic material to become Roman Catholics, they had not actually ever read any of the meaningful argumentation of the

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Protestant side. Um, and so they were not prepared for a historical response to the claims of the papacy.

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And the second night went so well on our side that there were

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Catholics getting up and walking out of the debate and slamming the doors.

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Yeah, they weren't, they were not happy. They were not happy with how the second night went. So here's what happened at the end of the debate.

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Um, you know, the, the final things have been said, people are standing up, people are starting to come forward.

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There's a long line of people forming to talk to Gerry Matitix and they are

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Protestants. They smelled blood in the water. And, but before they can get to us, a very angry

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Scott Hahn brings the two of us together and in front, well, first he says to me, and I forget whether who,

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I think he said to me, and he says to me, you blew it because you brought up infallibility and that wasn't the subject tonight.

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Well, I don't know that I did, but anyway, and then he turns to his good buddy right in front of me and says, and you blew it because you used scripture as your only source of argumentation and you can't do that.

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And then with this line forming of Protestants who are getting ready to go after Gerry, instead of standing with his buddy and defending him and taking people on,

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Hahn just stalks out and leaves him alone. That was the first time

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I saw, was not the last time I saw, but the first time I saw that Dr.

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Scott Hahn has quite a temper. And I saw that the next month, because that was

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December of 90. And in January 91, because Desert Storm was going on, we went over San Diego, George Bonneau, Mauline, Mel, we went over San Diego.

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And we had two debates with Mitch Pacwa. And Hahn was at one of those.

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And I publicly challenged him. And he almost got into a fistfight with Mel while he was there.

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Man has temper. Man has temper. But it was from that point forward that I saw the split taking place between Gerry and Catholic Answers.

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And by 93, that's only two years later, Gerry's gone.

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And when we challenged Catholic Answers to debate the papacy in Denver during the papal visit, they're like, oh, we're not gonna be doing stuff like that.

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Contact Gerry Matytix. And then, of course, once we had that scheduled, they scheduled debates with other people up there in Denver.

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They just didn't want to take us on on that particular subject. So both of those debates from December of 1990 are in the sermon audio.

15:47

Oh yeah, sure. Yeah, but only in audio because they weren't videotaped. Right. They're actually here in the second debate.

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You can actually hear the door slamming. They had the like the old -fashioned auditorium doors, schoolhouse doors in that place from the 60s.

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And you can hear these people get up and they'd beeline for that door and they slam it.

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And you can actually hear it in the in the audio recording. Yeah, I wish I think the first...

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Well, didn't Scott Butler even videotape the first debate on Sola Scriptura, but we never saw that one?

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Because I know he videotaped the ones with Pacwa and never saw those either.

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So we only have the audios of all of those. But yeah, the video, you know, this is this was early 90s, folks.

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This is well, well before internet. This is this is a while back. So anyway, that rather lengthy divergence of discussion is to say that he, for example, says

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Dr. Hahn is a renowned

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Bible scholar and Catholic convert. In the 80s, Scott and his wife, Kimberly, were part of a wave of famous Catholic converts from Protestantism, including

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Jerry Matitick, who they won't mention anymore. Dr. Hahn, an evangelical pastor and staunch anti -Catholic.

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I remember I've been asking for decades. I started asking then and I continue to ask now.

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Show me anything these men wrote or recorded, any debates they did against Roman Catholicism when they were

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Protestants. Crickets for nearly three decades now. Crickets for nearly three decades.

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So this staunch anti -Catholic, well, his attitude. Okay, right. Okay. Had a radical conversion to Catholicism.

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He began to speak about his experience and one of his talks was recorded, passed around on cassette tape. His incredible story began to draw others toward the ancient faith.

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The popularity of Scott and Kimberly's stories touched off a massive wave of Catholic conversions and encouraged the pair to write a based on their experience called

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Rome Sweet Home. Do not read Rome Sweet Home, he says. I think it's one of the worst convert stories ever read.

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It is, as someone once said, if you have diabetes, do not read Jonathan Edwards, who constantly uses the term sweetness because it'll put you into a coma.

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Well, I would call Rome Sweet Home bubblegummy. It's bubblegummy.

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For someone who is serious in their faith, it's not. And you can go back in the archives, again,

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Sermon Audio. We've reviewed a number of Han books over the years, especially that one on Mary, which was just horrific.

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Not only its argumentation and research, but in the names that it used for chapters. Just terrible.

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So notice one of the things he said is, I had no idea this kind of thing even happened. Well, that's one of the problems.

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Modern evangelicals do not know why they are not

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Roman Catholics, and most of them, on their soteriology, have already capitulated to Roman Catholicism on the basic issues.

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And so they're swimming around the middle of the tide where they just don't know it.

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The only reason they're not Roman Catholics is a matter of taste. They don't know what the issues are.

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They've never read any history. They don't know where they stand in history. They haven't studied the issues of the

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Reformation or anything like that. So obviously, this guy is someone who did not have any grounding as a

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Protestant. That's what he's telling us here is, I didn't know why I was what

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I was. I just was. And when I found out there was something else, it's all a matter of taste anyways, so why not?

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There you go. And that is then proven by the next point he makes, don't read church history.

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And he mentions a book that he did choose to read, Dear Maid McCulloch's Reformation.

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And again, because he doesn't have any background, he says,

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McCulloch describes the history of the Reformation with sometimes mind -numbingly minute detail. It's truly a thick slog and you could begin thesis work based on any of the small subsections

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McCulloch includes. It was a decidedly academic text, but as a result, gives you an intensive overview of why the

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Protestant Reformers split from the Catholic Church in the 16th century and what was happening in culture and society, which underpinned it all.

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But reading church history is dangerous, and he starts talking about the political aspects and all the rest of it.

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Again, sounds like that was the first book you ever read on the subject. So here you're talking about somebody never committed, never grounded.

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How many times have you heard us say that if you are a

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Protestant and you do not know why you reject Roman Catholicism, you need to find out why.

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Because right now you're a Protestant of taste and convenience, not of conviction.

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I can tell you one thing. Everybody who went with us on the Reformation tour in 2017 would read this section and just go, not even close, buddy.

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Because there are lots of us over here on this side of the Tiber that well know why we're here, well know all about the warts of the

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Reformation, but I wonder how much, was this book clear on the reality of the

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Roman system at that time? It seems like, he talks about the Counter -Reformation, they really got things cleaned up.

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Yeah, they do an excellent job of cleaning things up. Have you read

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Out of the Vatican Closet? Came out just a couple months ago. I mean, the name by name by name, witness by witness by witness hierarchy in the

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Vatican homosexuality book? All about the

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Lavender Mafia and everything else which is, it's not even being argued anymore, that's the reality.

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You might want to read that. Then he says, don't read the early Church Fathers.

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Well, Thursday night for the

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Thursday night Renew class for Apology of Church this week, we will be reading portions from Clement's letter to the

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Romans, the Didache, Ignatius's genuine epistles, and there was one other, at least four different sections we're going to be reading directly from the early

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Church Fathers. And again, all this tells me is this fellow had never, had never been grounded where he was, was a surface -level, convenience non -Catholic who's now a

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Catholic. That ain't much of a conversion. Sorry, that isn't much of a conversion.

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That doesn't, that's not surprising. If you weren't already committed to the gospel of justification, imputed righteousness, if you didn't understand those things,

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I'm not surprised. Now, it's in that context then that just for the program started,

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I ran across some stuff, could get into trouble for this, but I'm, I'm gonna, this is, this is, this is relevant.

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I ran across some stuff. Chris Williams, who's another troublemaker from Texas, Chris Williams has been, now, you know,

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I'm wondering if Chris is listening, because if he is, I'm trying to remember, Chris, did you go to the flowers debate on Romans 9 in Dallas?

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I'm getting the feeling you did, because I know Emilio was there, but I'm just, well, it was my ride. Let me know if you're on Twitter or something like that.

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Let me know if you, if you did, because I'd be interested. But he linked to a

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Roman Catholic, who actually I have blocked, which is why I wouldn't have seen this, but a

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Roman Catholic talking about latent flowers, and he says, quote, speaking of flowers, he's theologically aligned with Catholics, yet not sacramentally aligned.

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He gets a lot of it, but clearly not all of it. This is a Roman Catholic speaking, and he's absolutely, positively right.

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And so another fellow had mentioned,

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I'm rolling back to it here, another fellow had mentioned that he had, yeah, here, a fellow by the name of Drake, this is 42 minutes ago,

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Dr. Flowers arguments were actually pretty influential in pulling me towards crossing the Tiber River at one point in my life.

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Praise be to God that that didn't happen. And so I was like,

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I'd like to know more about this, because I understand on the central issue of what made the

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Reformation the Reformation, latent flowers is on the other side from the

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Reformers. And he is joined by pretty much every other synergist on that side of that divide.

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It shouldn't shock anyone that I have said for a long time that I believe, and I think we have documented down through the years, that the only consistent response to Roman Catholicism is the

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Reformed response. That was one of the, that was one of the things that really rooted me in the

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Reformed faith was, you know, the first, we were surprised by this, we expected

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Mormonism to be the focus, but the first two books I did, and then for a long time, the large majority of the debates we did were on the subject of Roman Catholicism.

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And we were taking, we weren't taking on some local little apologist, we were taking on Catholic Answers and Mitch Pacwa and people like that, so we were taking on the best the other side had to offer.

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And it was just clear that the reason that we could take them on and do so successfully is because we did so as Reformed people and not as Arminians.

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I mean, just listen to the debates we had in Denver during the papal visit with the debate the

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Catholic Answers did in Denver during the papal visit, which was a face -planting disaster.

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And it was so because they took on Arminian synergists, fundamentalists, no knowledge of church history, no willingness to engage church history, it was bad.

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And again, I'm going to talk about later, but this guy's put this video out about how I do all these insults, and in his mind, anything

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I just said was an insult. Because in the postmodern way of thought, and that's where he is.

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He doesn't know that, but that's where he is. Any type of direct statement that specifically says one person is in error and another person is not in error is an insult in this person's mind.

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It's amazing. We'll point that out. But there are going to be people who are going to say,

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I just can't believe how arrogant you are. I'm not being arrogant. To state that there is a consistent argumentation against Roman Catholicism and then there is inconsistent argumentation against Roman Catholicism is not a matter of pride, arrogance, insult, or anything else.

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It's a fact. Some arguments are more consistent than other arguments. There are arguments that by their very nature are incoherently inconsistent.

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And so we've said for a long time, especially when you talk about the Mass, especially as Scott Hahn presents the

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Mass, I don't believe a synergistic universe proponent of universalistic atonement has a chance to take on Scott Hahn's position.

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There's no way to do it. So with that in mind, turn up the volume here.

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Oh man, as soon as I come to this page, it automatically starts playing. It's really weird, but that's because it's something on Facebook.

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Or is it Twitter? I don't know. It is Twitter. I was also linked to this clip from Leighton Flowers.

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He is attempting to respond to R .C. Sproul, a much younger

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R .C. Sproul video here where he's got his chalkboard up there. So it's 44 seconds long, so that ain't much.

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But just listen to what's said here. Just listen. This is a clip.

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This was posted by Matt Estes. This is a 44 second clip from Leighton Flowers.

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Listen to what he says here. When we ask about election, we're talking about, namely,

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God having favor on somebody. Him choosing somebody over someone else. Matter of fact, whenever we use the word choice, a lot of times we're thinking of kind of the verb form of it, like I made a choice between these options.

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But if you go into the grocery store later— Hold on a second. That's because in the original language,

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God elects, and it's a verb. And it is making a choice.

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Oh, calling. But then the called ones, the very substantive itself has as its root the action of calling.

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It's something God does. It is an action on the part of God. So how many times have

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I said that in the place of exegesis, what Leighton Flowers does is story

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Jesus. Instead of dealing with lexical forms and grammatical things, he comes up with analogies that you're supposed to accept and find valid or compelling or something along those lines.

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So instead of dealing with, you know, if I want to talk about what election meant, choice meant, you know what

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I'm going to do? I'm going to fire up Accordance, and I'm going to go to Ephesians 1 and go to Romans 8 and 9.

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I'm going to look at the terms, and we're going to see how it's fleshed out by the authors of Scripture. That's not

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Leighton Flowers' thing. Instead, he's going to give us an analogy. And here's the analogy.

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But if you go into the grocery store later today, and you go to the choice meat section, the word choice there is used more as an adjective.

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It's describing the type of meat. It's the type of meat that is favorable over the other lesser favorable meat.

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And so when you talk about something that is choice, you're not always talking about necessarily God choosing something for no apparent reason, but you're choosing that meat because it's a favorable meat.

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There's a reason to have the choice of that meat. Do you hear what he's saying?

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Do you understand what that analogy was meant to communicate? He's saying that people were chosen because they're choice, because they're obedient, faithful.

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It is the exact opposite of unconditional election. It is conditional election.

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You're chosen because of who you are. There is no way around the obvious conclusion that comes from that statement, and that is you get to heaven because you were better than somebody else.

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That's just all there is to it. The difference between the elect and non -elect is found in the elect themselves, not in God's gracious choice.

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It's not what grace did. It's what we did.

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If you want to talk about unbiblical concepts like prevenient grace and all that stuff, play with that stuff all you want.

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The reality is that grace is made available to everybody. We're the ones that use it. We're better. We go to heaven.

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You're the choice meats. You get chosen because you're the choice meats. That's why for years now, we've sat over here, and even when

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I've said that we need to listen carefully, and no matter how hard we try to look at it this way, then look at it that way, and then look at it this way, no matter what kind of perspective

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I take, eventually you just go, that's Pelagianism, son.

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I mean, semi -Pelagianism on your better days, but just full -on

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Pelagianism on your worst days. And we're not sure whether it's the worst day or the best day, which day is it?

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I don't know. But choice meats? So, there's an incredible example of where the analogy takes the place of the meaning of the text of Scripture itself, because the meaning of God's election is a divine action.

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And here it becomes divine action in response to human priority, that is, he chooses the choice meats.

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So much for ground of boasting. Is that not?

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Do you see what connects all this together? I mean, the

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Roman Catholics are going, yeah, he's getting part of it. He doesn't have the sacraments yet, but you know, the foundational stuff about our ability to, you know, grace and being choice meats and stuff, he's got that.

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And then another person, yeah, his arguments almost caused me to swim the Tiber River.

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Ah, okay. And then at the very same time, this comes across and choice meats, choice meats.

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Yeah, there you go. All going back to the guy who says, this is how you don't convert to Rome, who clearly not only never had my convictions about the gospel, but seemingly had more latent flowers convictions about what he called the gospel.

36:54

And I say, here we go, latent flowers again. He represents a particularly uncorrectable form of traditional synergism that fundamentally compromises the grace of God.

37:10

If you can't see how dangerous it is to think that you were the choice meats, and that's why God chose you, because you're in the choice meat section.

37:18

You weren't in the, over in the 80, 20, 80 % meat, 20 % fat section.

37:25

No, you were in the choice meat section. That's why you're getting to go to heaven. That doesn't tell you what we're talking about here.

37:37

Yeah. So there you go. Choice meats, choice meats.

37:43

I thanks Matt for messing up my day with that. That was just yeah, there you go.

37:52

Like I said, since I mentioned it, let's go ahead with this here since we got the volume up anyways. I guess

38:00

I was over in, well, I'm just posted June 13th. Yeah, I was over in California.

38:06

We did a bunch of recording last week.

38:13

As you saw, I did the last dividing line from the studios at Living Waters and Easy and Mark Spence and Easy did the morning sessions,

38:28

Mark Spence did the afternoon sessions. We did just a ton of stuff, a ton of stuff.

38:35

We'll be able to link you to it eventually. Anyway, while I was over there, a fellow whose

38:45

YouTube channel says Kevlar Kevin, and we're assuming this is the guy that you were going back and forth with on Twitter, it was, it definitely was.

38:58

Okay, because I never got a response from or if I did, I missed it, but I was traveling so that happens.

39:04

Anyway, I expected a few weeks ago, video posted,

39:12

I went through, pulled out a bunch of material, about 12 minutes worth of material, put that out there, and I made the statement,

39:21

I tweeted to somebody else, you simply cannot put something like this together.

39:30

For me, this is not how I treat people, and I knew that what was going to happen. There are many people today who have not been taught to think critically.

39:41

They think emotionally. They do not make category distinctions in thought.

39:47

They do not, cannot analyze the spoken word, analyze an argument, recognize what its presuppositions are, that type of thing.

39:57

That's pretty much our entire society. If you watch any of these videos that are rampant these days, PragerU does it all the time, was that Will Witt guy or something, we'll go out and we'll talk to people on the streets, and when you try to engage them critically, their reasoning capacity is almost non -existent, and it's primarily the public schools that are responsible for that in these days anyways.

40:18

I was taught to think critically, and I graduated in 81, but after things started, the decline was pretty fast.

40:29

Anyway, and so there are lots of people who think that any strong statement of error on the part of somebody else is automatically an insult.

40:43

Everything in this guy's video, 16 minutes long, which I noticed is primarily about David Allen and Leighton Flowers, so you can sort of tell where this guy's probably coming from.

41:00

Well, yeah, but that was to introduce this whole thing, which

41:06

I didn't. I had no idea who he was. But anyway, so you can watch it for yourself, but let me just play a couple examples just to show you what we're talking about here.

41:25

Plato, yeah, but it was both sides. Both sides acted reprehensibly in this debate.

41:33

I mean, just, well, okay. Okay, no, let me stop right there. So there is a clip, and it goes from one to the next.

41:41

These are all isolated. You don't know what their context is. It never shows where I've done, where I've provided the exegesis of a text, played the other side, demonstrated the errors, but what it does is it shows the conclusion of the statement.

41:55

So I've treated them fairly, with respect, accurately represented them, refuted them, and then when you make the concluding statement that they're in error by this, ah, you're insulting people.

42:05

The man clearly cannot understand the distinction between simple insults where none of that was done.

42:12

There was no playing of my exegesis and refutation of the exegesis. There was no fair representation. It was just personal ad hominem.

42:19

He doesn't see a difference between that and what we do on this program all the time, and he'll probably take everything.

42:26

He'll probably take the fact that I said that he demonstrated an incapacity to think rationally and in proper and critically in proper categories.

42:35

He'll take that to be an insult, too, even though, again, it's just proven by the facts of the case.

42:41

But what I just said was I was talking about both sides in the

42:49

Flowers, Pritchett, Zaccariotti, Hernandez debate, and I said both sides behaved horribly.

42:57

That's not an insult. That is an, at the very worst, it's an observation that was shared by a large majority of the people who watched that particular debate.

43:10

But if you can't tell, if someone cannot even understand what an insult is, man, do you watch television?

43:19

You must think that, because there's a lot of insulting stuff on television these days, but with the incapacity to make category distinctions, you must think everything, you must think every newscast is just an insult fest over and over.

43:34

You must think everyone talking to you is just insulting you over and over again, or you just leave that for Calvinists.

43:41

It's really hard to see. Hey, Leighton Flowers thinks that that was exegesis. You need to understand,

43:49

Dr. Flowers thinks he just did exegesis. What he did was eisegesis, and he seemingly doesn't know the difference between the two.

43:56

What he did is he quoted a bunch of verses, did not provide us with anything that actually meaningfully connects them together outside of, in his mind, see, he has this idea, and so every verse that could be related to that now becomes exegetically relevant.

44:15

Okay, then he stops. That's an argument. That's a statement. It accurately represents what had just happened.

44:22

It accurately represents the consistent methodology of the person. That's not an insult.

44:28

So I'm sorry that you think those are insults. You're just misinformed. If you want to contact us,

44:35

I could recommend some basic texts on logic, logical thinking, and you can consider that an insult, too, but I don't know what else to do.

44:46

Because the whole thing you put together demonstrated that when it comes to the categories of thought, you've never been trained to operate in them in a consistent fashion.

44:57

That's all there is to it. You just got to look at it. That's the way it is. That's the way it is. Were you going to pop in there?

45:05

Well, I was just going to say, as soon as I saw you, you sent me the link to it, and I played just a few shots.

45:11

I bounced through it, and I'm like, this is an excellent example of the problem.

45:18

The problem that they keep looking at these things, and they cannot functionally tell the difference between what

45:25

Drs. Pritchett and Hunter did, which they apologized for, and apologized for it, and they left nothing out.

45:33

And I've had Reformed people on Twitter try to drag me back into it.

45:42

Stop right there. They're done. They faced it, and they went through it, and that's it.

45:50

Leave it alone. But that is not what happens on this show, and the fact that someone cannot tell the difference, you get to a point to where it's like, why do

45:59

I continue to go down this rabbit hole with you? Because it's

46:05

Twitter. What else is Twitter for? Yeah, exactly. And so at a certain point, I just got to step back and go, you know what?

46:12

It's better that you don't see anything that we do. Ever. It's better that you just stop hearing from us, because you do not fathom what you're listening to or you're watching.

46:28

You just don't. I'm not seeing the first one.

46:34

Well, okay. This is live. Yeah, Drake did a five -part. Okay, yeah, this is live.

46:40

So Drake responded. So before we totally leave here, thanks. Hi, Drake.

46:48

One, pretty simple, really. I didn't want to be a Calvinist, but still wanted to hold onto the biblical concepts of salvation as by God's grace alone, through faith alone, because we're

46:55

Christ alone. The more that I listened to the rational hermeneutics of men like Dr.

47:01

Flowers, the more commonality that I saw in Rome, whose claims I had already been wrestling with off and on for years by that point.

47:08

The Roman Catholic view of God infusing grace via synergistic working with the sacraments made more and more sense to me, which scared me a great deal.

47:15

I wanted helpful answers which could sway me away from Rome, but found that most of the apologists in that camp were vociferous proponents of mere

47:21

Christianity, and thus wouldn't touch the important issues with a 10 -foot pole.

47:27

Well, that's for sure. It was only by God using such men as Dr. White and a great many other Reformed Calvinistic brethren, as well as the book of Hebrews, thank you,

47:36

Lord, that God showed me that salvation was a monergistic work of all three persons, the immutable, impassable, and holy trinity acting in complete unison with each other.

47:45

Only then could I come to consistently understand and hold the biblical truths we have come to summarize as the five solos, penal substitution, internal security, etc.

47:53

Sorry that these seem to be out of order. No, it ended up being in order, well, upside down order, but they were in order.

47:59

Thank you, Drake, and thanks be to God for his grace toward you. Yeah, Hebrews is just awesome in that way.

48:10

So, hey, that's exciting. Thank you very much for taking the time to write that, and you're exactly right.

48:18

You're spot on, but you are the recipient of God's grace in that because there have been many others who ended up going that direction, and you're exactly right.

48:29

There is a rationalism rather than a supernaturalism. How many times have

48:35

I said it in responding to Layton Flowers? His objections are based upon flattening out the beautiful, deep truths of scripture into just a two -dimensional plane rather than seeing how they're related to one another in the rich and beautiful way that especially

48:53

Romans 8 and 9 or Ephesians 1 or Hebrews is so important in providing to us.

49:03

So, thank you very much. I'm glad I looked over there and saw that. Thanks, Drake. I appreciate that. Okay, a couple other things here.

49:14

I mentioned last time on the program, shifting gears, mentioned last time on the program that one of the things

49:19

I just wanted to comment on, Robert Gagnon has taken this apart and and and destroyed it already.

49:28

So, no reason to belabor the point, but there was a article, and for some reason

49:36

I am unable to pull it up here in my articles. Meanwhile, Rich is about to have a sneezing fit, and thankfully we did not have the rich camo at that moment.

49:47

Right now it needs to be cleaned off to be able to be used anyways. Um, there it is.

49:55

Look, folks, when Rich sneezes, he does it up full. There's no such thing as a half sneeze for the

50:01

Pierce Master. He has always been that way. Whatever you do, don't do this thing because stuff's going to fly.

50:11

Boom! Boom! That's exactly right. It'll be the end of that when he sneezes, he sneezes.

50:18

Um, there was an article posted June 14th. Has homosexual always been in the

50:25

Bible? Folks, it is so plain to me that the other side realizes that especially either new

50:36

Christians or Christians that are in churches that are never going to dare address this type of stuff in the pulpit, never going to model how to do critical thinking themselves.

50:49

Again, this is something that I'm really thankful in both of the churches

50:57

I've been in in my adult life. You model from the pulpit how to handle scripture, and in these days, when

51:09

I preach at Apologia, when Jeff preaches at Apologia, Luke, Zach, Zach Hanover preached

51:15

Sunday, there is a constant application of scriptural truth to the current situation so that all of our people, not just the leaders, but that all of our people can be involved in proclaiming the lordship of Christ, applying the gospel, calling people to faith, and doing so biblically and consistently.

51:46

We may fail at it, but we are certainly trying to be consistent about it.

51:53

And the people on the left know that if you can confuse

52:01

Christians through social media, public media, stuff like that, they're probably not in a church where they're going to be able to get unconfused.

52:15

And if you're in a good church where you know you can approach your elders and you know that they're going to have the background to at least, if they don't know, find the answers for you or probably will have the answers themselves, you're not the ones they're going after.

52:29

But these types of articles, this was on forgeonline .org, is specifically designed to create confusion based upon not being able to recognize how the

52:42

Bible came about. First of all, you find yourself a Bible scholar someplace, dime a dozen.

52:51

So we've got buffering going on, huh? Lovely. And so you find a

52:59

Bible scholar and you ask confused questions that elicit confused responses.

53:08

And the person may be an unbeliever anyways, and so the confused responses are only multiplying. So what they've done is, for example, it says the word arsonokoitai shows up in two different verses in the

53:22

Bible, but it was not translated to mean homosexual until 1946. We go to sit down with Ed Oxford at his home in Long Beach, California, and talk about this question.

53:33

You have been part of a research team that is seeking to understand how the decision was made to put the word homosexual in the

53:39

Bible. Is that true? Stop immediately. Obviously, the term homosexual is primarily an

53:48

English word. The question is, does arsonokoitai, that's a plural form, arsonokoitai, or its constituent parts, especially as derived specifically from Leviticus chapters 18 and 20 in the

54:06

Greek Septuagint translation, the Old Testament, as seemingly coined by Paul or by a rabbinical source immediately preceding

54:16

Paul, because it seems that Paul's utilization is the earliest. There's one other that may be contemporaneous, but a lot of people think

54:26

Paul coined this phrase and hence derived it from the Greek Septuagint. What does that refer to?

54:35

And what have English translations down through the ages, well ages, since immediately before the

54:44

King James, there were a few English translations. I mean, you know, Wycliffe and so on and so forth, but the language has developed so much since then.

54:50

How was that rendered by them? Was it rendered euphemistically because of how horrendous the sin was considered?

55:04

And how does any of this relate to Romans 1, the continuing abiding validity of moral law in regards to the created order of male and female, the nature of marriage?

55:18

These are the, this is, if you're dealing with it seriously, those are the questions you'd be asking.

55:26

But so much of the stuff online is simply meant to play upon the ignorance of the

55:33

Christian people. And this is an article that did that. And so it raises the question, well, why did they use abusers of mankind and so on and so forth?

55:44

All of that is quite interesting. Why Puritans viewed things the way they did and so on and so forth.

55:51

But it is a historically interesting question only after we have been able to obtain a sound understanding of what the original terms referred to.

56:06

And what they want to do is they want to create confusion about what the

56:12

Bible is actually talking about and try to make it look like conservatives have been weaponizing the

56:20

Bible against gay people. That started with Moses, guys.

56:26

That started when he said, when Moses identified one of the sins that were so heinous in God's sight, that the land spewed the people who committed it out.

56:44

That was one of the sins. That was approximately 3 ,400 years ago.

56:54

Okay. We didn't start it. Jesus didn't correct it.

56:59

He rose from the dead, his opinion final. So just when you see this stuff, it's sort of a test.

57:10

If you can go to the elders in your church and they'll be able to give you a solid, consistent response, you're in a good place.

57:16

If you're not there, you might want to be looking around and find one. Um, real quick,

57:23

I do not doubt for a second that it would take me more than five minutes with my computer warmed up to pull off of the leading news source sites, sufficient examples of the destruction of human flourishing in Western society due to the lurch toward quite simply communism.

58:00

Um, it would take me no more than five minutes per day to find at least three glowing examples of insanity, cultural destructive insanity.

58:12

And by the way, if you're going, I don't know, communists go listen to the comments from the

58:19

Denver city council woman on capitalism and what she by any means says we must do to get rid of capitalism.

58:34

It is straight out of Marx. It's straight out of Mao. It is as red a communism as you can have.

58:43

And she is an elected office. The communists are not at the gates. They are in control of city councils.

58:52

They are look, I could name half a dozen Democrats in the house and the

58:58

Senate that if they were just honest with themselves, and if you gave them a serious test, they actually had to answer honestly would test full on positive for pure communism.

59:12

That's what they want. Don't even don't even obvious, obvious, obvious, obvious.

59:18

And every passing day will only prove that more. But if you want pure insanity, a

59:27

California bill to allow prison inmates to decide their own sex.

59:37

Yeah. Um, it requires corrections officials refer to them by that sex and house them with inmates of the same sex.

59:53

It comes to a point where the insanity becomes pure stupidity.

01:00:01

This is stupid. These folks have the IQ of a wet shoelace. This is disastrous.

01:00:11

It's anti -women. Oh my gosh. I don't want to do. You don't want ladies.

01:00:16

Don't do anything in California that could get you thrown in prison. You're going to be housed with these people with rapists.

01:00:23

You are in deep trouble. They're going to be putting biological men in your cell with you who are convicts.

01:00:30

It's insanity. It's evil. It's absurd. It's always anti -women.

01:00:35

The ladies just need it. If any woman who votes for this leftist progressivist insanity, you hate yourself.

01:00:46

You really do. You don't get it. You're voting for the people who murder half of your gender in the womb.

01:00:54

And then they deny your gender actually exists. They're pushing to have men who are biological men to destroy you in every sporting event.

01:01:03

Your daughters will never get to win races or play in sports anymore because the wimpy men who can't compete against the men are going to be winning on the women's side because even the wimpy men can still beat the women.

01:01:17

That's just the reality of it. Sorry, just how it works. We've talked about this before.

01:01:24

The men in the professional tennis ranks from 200 to 400 could still beat the top -ranked women.

01:01:32

It's because of testosterone. Hello? It's just the way it is. Now, maybe some sports like curling are still safe, but I'm not really sure they're sports.

01:01:42

Anyways, and of course, it is a bill by San Francisco Senator Scott Weiner.

01:01:52

You can't make this stuff up. San Francisco, where else?

01:01:59

What's happened to San Francisco? Look at what's going on in San Francisco. The piles of human feces, read the news reports, the public health menace.

01:02:15

You have to take a rake to the playgrounds to get the needles out before you let your kids play.

01:02:22

This is what progressivism brings you. This is where we're headed. It's just, it's absolutely just.

01:02:30

That's all there is to it. Okay, two more things.

01:02:38

I'm looking at my list here. I jumped all over it, but that's not overly surprising.

01:02:45

I hope that you all saw the link that I posted yesterday to Samuel Say's article.

01:03:00

He was taking, it's called Our Fathers, Our Failures.

01:03:06

So first of all, if a good, solid, conservative

01:03:14

Christian publisher hasn't already gotten a hold of Samuel, they need to. Because if you all can't recognize a future best -selling

01:03:27

Christian author, I can, but I can't. I don't own a publishing house. Samuel Say is just a bright star, just one of those people that makes you go, the next generation, the

01:03:46

Lord still has his people, despite how messed up everybody else is. It's a tough article to read because it's just so brutally and personally honest, but Samuel then says, and I, Samuel, brother, you then, you see, you said it so much better than I did.

01:04:04

I made the mistake of saying it in 530 words in a Facebook article, but said the same thing that I said a few years ago.

01:04:12

It just got me into so much trouble. And I linked to a really good Prager University film, a video from about two years ago, about the main problems in the community, which are not what you hear about, which are not the external stuff.

01:04:31

But first, foremost, right up front is a complete breakdown of any representation of a semi -meaningful

01:04:44

Christian understanding of marriage, family, and sexuality, which was once there, which was once there, but gone.

01:04:59

So there is rampant fornication.

01:05:04

The music and the clothing screams for it. And when you teach men that they really don't have any responsibilities for themselves or for the women they impregnate, because they're just victims anyways, the result is the plague of fatherlessness.

01:05:30

Now, what Samuel does, which is fascinating, I had never even thought about this, is he points out, guess what?

01:05:37

The percentages are the same in Canada or the United States and points out

01:05:42

Canada doesn't have the history the United States has of the racism and Jim Crow laws.

01:05:50

So it's not because of that. There's something else going on. What is it?

01:05:58

You would think other people would have thought of that, but Samuel gives his own story of only having once seen a picture at age 19 of his father, who in the picture was age 19.

01:06:13

One time, that's all. That's all he's ever seen. That's all he knows. And what the result of that is, and look, there are dozens and dozens of meaningful studies that substantiate this.

01:06:30

It's not really a questionable thing. But you're not allowed to say those things.

01:06:37

And Samuel is a very black man. Doesn't matter.

01:06:46

See, skin color really isn't the issue. It is bowing to the program, to the crusade.

01:06:56

And so he's liable to be attacked and was attacked just as much as anybody else.

01:07:05

Doesn't matter. They don't care. I said it, racist. It rings hollow when it's said to him, but they'll still say it.

01:07:16

They'll still say it. So look it up. Slow to write, slow to write, oneword .com,

01:07:21

Our Fathers, Our Failures. Read it for yourself. Share it with others. Good, good stuff.

01:07:29

Really good stuff. Okay, two more. Actually, two more. There was an announcement, and I know the breadth of topics we're covering today is absurd.

01:07:47

June 11th, Robert Truelove. Dr. Truelove, in promoting the

01:07:52

Text and Canon Conference, October 25th through 26th, 2019, Atlanta, Georgia. I'm still going to be in Atlanta, early

01:08:00

November. Anyway, June 11th, advocacy for the received text.

01:08:14

Is not founded upon critical proofs for the corruption of manuscripts like the

01:08:21

Papyri, Sinaiticus, or Vaticanus. When we take up the argumentation of a critic, we give ground to the critics.

01:08:33

Now, so what I hear that saying is the basis of this particular theory, it's not a theory of textual criticism because it's eschewing doing textual criticism.

01:08:54

It is a theological assertion that the textual material attendant to the

01:09:13

Reformation, it was attended to, it was not the central aspect, it wasn't even the central aspect of the work of Erasmus or Beza when we talk about the

01:09:22

Greek. Both of them were more concerned about the Latin than they were the received text in Greek.

01:09:30

And, of course, they never called it the received text. That is a later description that does not come from a council or even any particular theologian of any note that is representing any kind of widespread acknowledgement that this text over against anything else, because they didn't know of anything over against that, has been given any kind of specific approbation.

01:10:07

They believed that it was acceptably accurate in its representation, but this is pre -critical pre -manuscript collection, pre -collation, pre -all of that.

01:10:29

Beza couldn't do it, Erasmus couldn't do it. It simply wasn't possible at that time, communication -wise, university -wise, library -wise, all of that, to be able to do what has been done since then.

01:10:46

And even that ability developed slowly over time and is still in a statement of development. You wouldn't have to have

01:10:53

CSNTM doing the work they're doing if this was already all done. That wouldn't be the case.

01:11:01

So, it's a theological theory that the text represented that comes out of the

01:11:19

Reformation period is somehow divinely preserved and approved, even though no one at that time understood it that way.

01:11:30

Not in the way it's now being presented now. They believed that there had been an accurate transmission of the text over time, but not of one text over against another text, because they didn't know the over against part.

01:11:42

You can't throw the... Every time they are made to answer that question, you are misrepresenting them.

01:11:48

It's dishonest. Needs to stop. Okay. So, when we take up the argumentation of a critic, we give ground to the critics.

01:11:57

So, maybe this is why they don't want to debate this, because it's fundamentally a giving ground to the critics.

01:12:07

So, you just have to accept it. It's an authoritarian argument. We receive the received text because it is the providentially vindicated text being received.

01:12:23

Notice how many times the term received appears here. At the time of the Reformation, when all matters pertaining to the canon and its text were finally settled.

01:12:37

Wow. Really? Now, notice the playing on the word received.

01:12:46

We receive the received text because it is the providentially vindicated text being received at the time of the

01:12:58

Reformation. When all matters pertaining to the canon and its text were finally settled.

01:13:04

I don't know of a single Reformer who said any of that.

01:13:12

What you're going to get is second and third generation Reformers who, being attacked by the

01:13:18

Jesuits or by the Counter -Reformation, Jesuits maybe a little bit later on, will seek to make claims like that over against the pressure being pushed against them and sometimes went overboard in that defense because they don't have what we have today in the ability to communicate information, collections, so on and so forth.

01:13:45

And it's interesting, Rome has stopped making the arguments she was making in the Counter -Reformation at that point because they were bogus arguments.

01:13:55

But we know that now because we actually can engage those arguments and refute them. This position is saying you don't do that.

01:14:04

You don't give ground to the critic. You don't engage them. But there is so much in that one sentence.

01:14:11

What does providentially vindicated mean? How has it been providentially vindicated that Revelation 16 .5

01:14:21

is the proper reading? How has it been providentially vindicated that the misreading of all

01:14:30

Greek texts at Revelation 14 .1 is providentially vindicated? How did that work? Who did it?

01:14:37

When did it happen? How is it to be recognized? Who spoke of this reception?

01:14:45

What is it involved? Which churches did it? Who examined it? What information was presented?

01:14:53

All matters pertaining to the canon of text were finally settled? All matters? I guess

01:15:00

Turretin didn't have to write the Institutes because it's all been settled, right? There wasn't any reason to vindicate that any longer because it's already been vindicated.

01:15:09

What? All matters pertaining to the canon and its text were finally settled.

01:15:15

It's done. Nothing more to be done. It's finished. Wow, that's a very unusual view of history.

01:15:27

Why do we reject all of those readings not in the received text, including,

01:15:35

I would guess, all those readings, majority readings, that the church had been reading from the start?

01:15:46

Because they are not received. That seems like a magical term because they are not received.

01:15:52

They had been received. Now they weren't received anymore. In so doing, we follow

01:15:58

Christ and the apostles. Really? Who received the text in their day without resort to critical inquiry?

01:16:10

Yeah, but you know, Robert, what that means. That means you are left with an insuperable problem because the apostles accepted the

01:16:23

Greek Septuagint variant readings at Hebrews 8 and Hebrews 10 against what is translated in the received text of the

01:16:32

Masoretic tradition of the Old Testament and translated as such in King James Version of the Bible. So you have an insuperable contradiction.

01:16:43

Given this, canon is vindicated and authenticated by God and the text is the very substance of canon.

01:16:53

So this could be really interesting. I hope that they're willing to put their stuff out because I certainly have already made

01:17:06

Michael Kruger aware of the utilization of his argumentation by these folks in a way that Michael Kruger would never accept.

01:17:16

So my hope is if his schedule allows to interact with the assertions that are made on this level, and that is that when you look at canonicity, that you can simply utilize the overarching categories of canon to establish one traditional text and hence avoid all textual critical inquiry, even though that form of the text was the result of textual critical inquiry.

01:17:50

So you get to use it long enough to produce a text and then you stop using it. The inconsistency is glaring and indefensible.

01:17:59

Glaring and indefensible. But that's the nature of these theological constructs that seek to avoid the reality that the church has dealt with from the beginning and because that's what it's doing.

01:18:16

It's avoiding that and it's not a particularly reformed way of doing things. Calvin didn't do it that way, but anyway.

01:18:27

Okay, one last thing and I've got nine minutes to do it and it's going to be dangerous.

01:18:38

Sam Shamoon, June 13th, he writes a report on the dialogue

01:18:47

I had tonight with Chris Lasala and his friend John. Suffice it to say, it was very heated and I enjoyed it very much.

01:18:54

However, I realized that these men hold a view of the Godhead that, though not identical to what informed

01:19:00

Trinitarians believe, is nonetheless not heretical. Let me explain.

01:19:07

Chris and John believe that Jesus and the Spirit eternally existed as part of God's own being.

01:19:14

However, they believe the Son and the Spirit were brought forth from God's own being and therefore were not brought into being from nothing.

01:19:25

It was this act of bringing forth Jesus that Jesus became

01:19:31

God's Son and a personally distinct conscious being from the

01:19:36

Father. So there was a point in time when the Son was not, evidently. And then the

01:19:43

Son is brought forth and becomes a personally distinct conscious being, distinct conscious being from the

01:19:51

Father. They further believe that Jesus is not Jehovah since the

01:19:58

Father alone is Jehovah Most High. So you have division in the being of God, clearly.

01:20:04

You have confusion of being in person and hence no matter how you slice it, this is a subordinationist perspective.

01:20:13

The Son is not autotheos. This makes eternal functional subordination.

01:20:20

I mean, that's not even on the table because this is so far below that. Sam says, now the reason why

01:20:28

I say this is not outright heretical is that their views are a lot like the views of the

01:20:35

Antonicene fathers, namely Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Irenaeus, etc. These men also believe that the

01:20:41

Son as well as the Spirit was an eternal intrinsic aspect of God's own being. They affirm that Christ eternally resided within God's own mind as God's reason.

01:20:50

God then summoned forth His reason and Spirit, thereby begetting or giving birth to His inherent reason before the moment of creating the entire creation.

01:20:57

It was this act of begetting that the internal reason became God's Son and personally distinct from God without severing from Him.

01:21:04

The difference being is that the fathers believed that Jesus was in fact Jehovah God. Well, there is a huge difference there because even as that presentation, which you can't apply all the way across the spectrum to each of these men because there were differences between them, but even then you still only have one

01:21:26

Jehovah, you still only have one being of God. And it sounds like these other guys divide the being of God.

01:21:33

So here is why I'm mentioning this. The argument is, well, if you look at the

01:21:42

Antonicene fathers, you find people who said things that we would, if a professor at the local allegedly conservative seminary said some of the things, normally speculative things, that some of the

01:22:01

Antonicene fathers said, they'd be drummed out unless they're willing to recant.

01:22:07

But what Sam's saying is, if I'm going to be consistent, I can't do that. Here's where I think

01:22:13

Sam completely missed this. This is not a matter of, and this is an important thing to talk about carefully.

01:22:27

Roman Catholics will say, well, this is where you need the Church's authority. The Church will tell you x, y, and z.

01:22:34

Now, the vast majority of the hierarchy doesn't believe almost anything the Church actually teaches about any of this stuff anymore.

01:22:40

It's just a convenient thing, which should in of itself tell you that there needs to be a biblical basis.

01:22:49

But how do we respond to this? Why would I say that I think it is necessarily consistent, on the one hand, to recognize development in the

01:23:02

Antonicene fathers, on the other hand, to say that to say those same things today is heretical? It's real simple.

01:23:10

We today stand upon the shoulders of all those before us who have done one important thing, the exegesis of the text of the inspired

01:23:23

Word of God. Justin Martyr, for example, didn't even have a complete canon. And so, these individuals were living in a period of persecution.

01:23:38

They do not have generations of people before them upon which to stand as far as having been able to carefully analyze and to think through this new revelation that has come in Scripture.

01:23:51

And so, they are developing in their understanding. They are engaging in questions that no one has thought of before.

01:23:59

As the gospel goes forth into the Greek -speaking world, now all these Greek -philosophically -based questions are being thrown, and it takes time.

01:24:11

We have learned from the wisdom of Athanasius there had to be controversies before we could say, oh, we can't say that because then these people are here to say this, so we need to be very careful about that, and oh, you know,

01:24:29

I hadn't thought about that aspect over there. And so, doctrinal development is not an argument against scriptural sufficiency, it's an argument for the depth of Scripture and the fact that we need to grow in our understanding of it.

01:24:46

But once we come to understand fundamental truths, and once there has been the

01:24:55

Christological controversies, and of course, the controversy at Nicaea, and so on and so forth, it's not like you're taught in school that it was just a bunch of political stuff.

01:25:06

Instead, fundamental realities of Scripture have come to be understood. We now have the whole canon of Scripture.

01:25:13

We're able to see all of it. We're able to see, oh, wow, you know, when you think about what was said in the

01:25:19

Carmen Christi there in Philippians chapter 2, we can't go with that kind of a statement because it's going to violate that reality.

01:25:25

And so what you end up with is a clearly defined, exegetically based wall of truth that defines where you can't go out of.

01:25:42

It's not so much a positive definition of everything that is true as it is, here's where the line of error is.

01:25:50

Here, here, here, here, here. It takes time. We are well past that time.

01:25:58

We are well past that time. I had a fellow show up at church two weeks ago that's real big on Nestorius and was talking about some concepts in regards to Marcion and all the rest of this stuff.

01:26:20

Hey, we've already been there. Those conversations have been decided and it's not because someone took a vote.

01:26:29

It's because the word of God has been examined and come to a consistent understanding.

01:26:37

You can't, you can't have a consistent understanding of the New Testament when you don't have all the New Testament yet. So it takes time.

01:26:44

And so on the one hand, I can consistently see development and go, we can't say it the way this person said it, can't say it the way that person said it because they weren't dealing with this reality or that reality derived from this scripture or clearly their understanding of this particular text they'd ever been challenged on.

01:27:03

Over time, that changes. So in the 21st century, if you can't see

01:27:12

Jesus as Jehovah, if you can't see that the New Testament writers plainly identify him as such, that's, you're just rejecting biblical reality or rejecting biblical truth.

01:27:25

And so I would say that to be consistent, you have to give grace to those who did not have the background and opportunity that we have.

01:27:39

But now that it's here, if someone will reject what has been fully come to understand in relationship of the

01:27:49

Christological passages and all the backgrounds and everything else and reject that, that's called heresy.

01:27:56

That's called heresy. And so everything's good,

01:28:03

Sam, to be consistent, I just think you missed the foundation. And this is not the third century, this is the 21st.

01:28:11

And there is a difference between the two. And the difference is not a development of an ecclesiastical structure.

01:28:20

The difference is it takes time, took more time back then than it does now because of our communication methodology, but it takes time to work through the full canon of scripture and to see it in its full -orb testimony.

01:28:37

So, you know what? I got through the entire list.

01:28:43

I got through the entire list. I told people that I wasn't gonna be able to make it, but I actually got through the entire list.

01:28:53

Yeah, that's shocking. So I don't know what in the world I'm supposed to do on on Thursday, but anyways,

01:29:02

I have a feeling, I have a feeling something else will come up. Yeah. All right, folks, thanks for joining us on the

01:29:09

Voting Line today. I know that was a wide variety of topics, but that's why you tune in because you figure

01:29:14

I'll stop talking about something that's boring you within the next five minutes to talk about something that might interest you. Thanks for watching.