A Tribute to Rushbo, Prayer for James Coates, Augustine and Zosimus

Rush Limbaugh’s Death, the Tribute Tie, and James Coates

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. We are here today on a Tuesday, the 18th of February. And as most of you know, I think most of you heard that yesterday, famed talk show host Rush Limbaugh passed away.

I'm not going to make comment about the vile elements of humanity that are dancing upon Rush's grave today. I'm not even going to give them any more reference. It's sad. Very, very sad that that's going on.

But I did want to point out that, especially back in the 90s, before the internet became what the internet has become, a lot of people would listen to Rush Limbaugh. And especially when you get in the car during a certain time of the day, that's pretty much what a lot of people did.

I saw a lot of people yesterday writing tributes and saying, wow, you know, I can remember very clearly that was sort of part of my life back in those days. And certainly he was on the air all the way through the end of the year, once or twice, I think, since the turn of the year.

But anyway, back in the early 90s, he put out, he started making ties. And they were called the No Boundaries Collection. And I really couldn't afford them, but I bought them anyways. And I'm pretty certain, I'm wearing one, I'm not wearing the one I was going to wear, because I couldn't find my black shirt.

Black shirts tend to end up in bad places. They end up in your workout clothes, you know, black is not a good color for surviving laundry sorting and stuff like that. So I couldn't find my black shirt.

And I was going to wear this one. I even posted a picture. So this is the stained glass Rush Limbaugh tie. And so I was going to wear this today. It is certainly the king of the Limbaugh ties, I think.

And once I can find my black shirt, I will wear it again. And so I'm wearing one of the first ties that I got. This was the fire tie. This was extremely popular amongst charismatics, because you got your fire thing going.

And so I wore that today because I had to wear a dark blue shirt. I think this was my first one. I think this was the first one that I got. I'm pretty certain they had the little chain on the back, which didn't always stay on.

In fact, I don't, as that one does, but the stained glass one does not have, its chain went bye-bye. That was one thing that over time would happen if you wore them a lot. And he would do different colors.

So notice what this is. This is the same one I'm wearing, but a different color scheme, see? So he'd normally do two. I think on his couple, he might have done three. I'm not 100 certain about that.

But they'd have these at, I think, Macy's, if I recall, over at Metro Center, back when Metro Center was still a thing. Here's another one that I grabbed today. I think I have at least 30. I may have 40 Rush Limbaugh ties.

And I bought them when they first came out. So back in the days. And so my tribute to El Rushbo is to wear my Rush Limbaugh tie today. And now, some people, some insane people on the internet have suggested that I should wear a Rush Limbaugh tie with a Coogie.

Now, I want you to understand something. First of all, Rich just became ill in the other room. I think he's looking for a waste paper basket. We just had lunch, and I should have warned him about that.

But you need to understand that the combination of Rush Limbaugh tie with a Coogie creates a color interaction implosion with possible universe-ending parameters, and definitely would create a singularity that would consume the Earth.

And so, look, most of you folks do not have the skill set to either do the Limbaugh tie or the Coogie. All right? There's a lot of training that those of us who can handle these things have had to go through.

Rich obviously failed out of that training very early on. Has a few Limbaugh ties, so he's got like a level tier one type thing. But once you try to get into the upper advanced stuff, just be careful.

Because did you see what happened to Vulcan? That had nothing to do with some Romulan dude. That was actually the combination of a Rush tie and a Coogie. That's little-known backstory to the various timelines in Star Trek.

That's why that one sort of got cut off. So yes, I would highly recommend to you, I was really touched, I pulled it back up last night when Rush was given the Freedom Medal during the State of the Union address in 2020.

I thought that was really special. And so Rush will be missed. I think that a lot of the media opportunities we have today were due to Rush Limbaugh and what he did, even though he started well before podcasting and webcasting and all the rest of that type of stuff.

He was a geek. And so he got into that stuff pretty early on as well and was always sort of on the cutting edge of those things. And I appreciated Mark Stein's words when he said, talent returned to God.

Because of course, Rush's thing was talent on loan from God. And it really did seem to me toward the end, there was a, you know, David Limbaugh, his brother, is a well-known Christian writer. There seemed to be a credible expression of faith in Christ on Rush's part.

I don't think that was the case early on, but I think that was something that came over time. So our condolences to the Limbaugh family, David Limbaugh, Bo Snurdley as well. He was, there was somebody that was with Rush for a very, very long time.

And let me just simply say, complete shame on all of you who are dancing on Rush Limbaugh's grave. It's just absolutely disgusting. One other thing. What? Oh, that's not even, no, they're, that's, you're being way too nice.

One other thing, I think it's very important for us to recognize that just north of the border here in the United States, Pastor James Coates is in prison right now for having church. And I've said on Twitter today, and I'm just not even, not even going to be playing these games with those of you who are doing these things, but there are people, of course, lots of people, including people who call themselves Christians who are saying, no, he's in prison for violating the proper rules of the state.

He's trying to kill people. He's not being safe. I even just saw a tweet, the role of the church is to keep us safe. I remember that in the New Testament. You remember that in the New Testament? I remember that in the New Testament.

Everybody joined the New Testament church for safety reasons in the New Testament. Yeah, that early church thing with the lions, let's not worry about that. So those people that are pulling this thing, who have completely bought into the panic, they've completely bought into the narrative.

They don't, they don't look at numbers themselves. They don't do any research for themselves. They just believe whatever MSNBC tells them. You folks are going to be the first people lining up to get your church compliance certificates when they come out, and they will.

And you're going to be the first ones submitting your sermons to the government for compliance. And you go, that would never happen. It's happening in, I think Sweden, I think it was Sweden was doing that.

They're already setting up the system to do that. Might've been another one of the Scandinavian countries or one of them up there. I forget which one it was, but I think it was Sweden. And you're going to be the first one ratting out any quote unquote radicals in your numbers to the government.

So you're going to be just like the state church in China, you know, the ones that get the state approval, which means they're no longer the church. You've already given in. You've already given in. So those who haven't and recognize what's actually going on, that this is the very clear steps of tyranny.

This is Caesar saying, we will tell you what you can and cannot do. And we started off with two weeks to flatten the curve and we're, what did Joe Biden, who knows? Joe Biden doesn't know what Joe Biden said, but he's talking about, you know, masking, double masking into 2022 and all the rest of this kind of stuff.

And we we've been saying for months, it has nothing to do with virus, has nothing to do with the virus. It has everything to do with global reset, what it's all about, and you can close your eyes to it and you can continue, you know, just recirculating TGC articles.

But that's just the way it is. So there you go. All right. So pray, of course, for James Coates and the church up there and all the faithful Christians in Australia, especially in Victoria, in Canada.

And look, the greatest thing that Canadian Christians can do for James Coates is to open your church on Sunday and worship God and pray for him. Okay? Because they won't even let his family come see him.

They're treating him like he's a terrorist. And that's exactly how they're going to spin this type of stuff. I was told years ago, and I've said this on Twitter, Michael Fallon told me years ago, what they're going to do is they're going to use public health emergencies as their mechanism.

Rich is going, yep, told you the same thing. Yep. And I'm sitting here going, what? You know, we're not seeing it around us. But see, he had heard all this stuff. He had been doing these meetings and these conferences, and he's listening.

I think most of the people didn't think that the people who were setting up the conference schedules would actually be listening. Well, he was listening. And he was telling us this stuff. And it was so hard to believe it because you're looking around, you don't see it.

Well, here it is. Here it is. And oh, has it been effective? Oh, has it been effective? The Karen cult has taken off. I think they're probably actually shocked at how effective the Karen cult has been.

And so here you go. There will always be a threat because we have treated this one disease unlike any other disease we've ever treated in the past 50 years. And so there will always be something else.

There will always be a new strain. Remember, we played for you the audio that came out of the Liberal Party in Canada. I think it was October, November. And they said, you know, more lockdowns, stringent lockdowns, and then COVID -21 in March.

Now we've already got the new strain stuff happening. Just waiting for COVID -21 and already seeing news stories about how the vaccines won't do anything for the new strains. And so now you've got to wait for a new vaccine.

And it's just going to be going on and on. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever put these numbers in meaningful comparison to anything else in the past. All has a purpose to it. All has a purpose to it. So the best thing Canadian Christians could do on Sunday is cut those padlocks off, open the church and pray for James Coates and pray for your nation.

And tell Caesar to get back in his lane. That would be the best thing that would happen. I'm just gonna let you know right now, we're about to dive into a deep subject, but Rich will tell you that about three minutes before the program started, I did three hours on bike last night and then two hours this morning.

So I've done a hundred and what that turned out to be, 110 miles, something like that in 18 hours at over 200 watts average per hour. Now, some of you have no idea what that refers to. Fine. If you're a cyclist and you know, okay, did some good, did a good workout.

Yeah. And then my right hamstring decided to go into a wonderful spasm right before the program started. So I'm hoping that's not going to happen again, but if it does, that's going to make a great meme.

That's all I can say is someone will be so unkind as to turn the screaming and the pain into a meme. So you just need to have a very fast commercial break, queued up and ready to go in there. Huh? No, no, no.

You need to hit it fast and that's not how it's, no, it'll take a few seconds. Yeah. Cause I didn't want it to hit again. Um, so yeah, so just, just warn you ahead of time, this could happen. It happened right for the program.

I can still feel it down there. We will see. We will see. I should have done a recoverite shake. If I had some, uh, hammer recoverite around, I'd have Rich mix some up and, and it would, uh, it would help, but, um, uh, distant something to, to keep in mind.

Augustine, Purgatory, and the “Rome Has Spoken” Misquotation

All right. Let me, I've, unfortunately I found this clip and then somehow it kept going. It, it, it, so here is, I'm going to go wide on this. I want to start off by playing a clip from two, I think this is 2001, 2001 was not a space odyssey.

Um, so we're talking, we're talking 20 years ago. I did a debate with Dr. Mitchell, not Dr. Mitchell, father, Peter Stravinskis, who has two earned doctorates from Ivy league schools was the editor of the Catholic answer.

And Stravinskis came into this debate. Um, well, Chris Arnzen will tell you when they first contacted him and said, well, who would I be debating a James White? Oh, he's harmless. And, uh, he's right.

I'm, I'm just a, I'm just a soft, lovable fuzzball always have been, but not in debates. And so he hadn't read anything I had written. His opening statement was about dialogues that he had had with Jimmy Swaggart.

Yeah, that was right down my alley. And it didn't take long for him to realize that he had made a major mistake to take this debate and to prepare or to not prepare in the way that he had. The cross examination was absolutely classic.

We have for a long time posted just the cross X on first Corinthians, uh, chapter three and the subject of purgatory. It was incredibly clear. It was, um, Michael Fallon was there and, and he told me the story that, um, he was talking to Roman Catholic afterwards.

And in speaking to the Roman Catholic, Roman Catholic said, oh, when the father was speaking, you could just feel the Holy spirit. But when white was talking, you could see the demons coming out of his head.

Yeah. So he was listening very, uh, fairly and, uh, and things like that. Anyway. So I, I want to play you a segment from the second cross examination. So we already had the first Corinthians three thing was already done.

I wanted to get back to it, but, um, Augustine had come up a couple of times and in his asking me questions, he went to the, I wouldn't, he actually, again, he went to the section and he wouldn't give references.

And I may, I may play this later on. We cover this, uh, at another point, but, um, I had, you'll, you'll see, in fact, in this clip, you'll see that I am using a handspring visor, my little doohickey, uh, as he referred to it.

It's 2001. Okay. Palm pilot had just, you know, the Palm pilot stuff was, had only come out in like 95. Gizmo. Yeah. And so I was early on a adopter of tech in debate, basically. And so I wanted to get his response.

I had responded to his, I would not believe the gospel, except that on the testimony of the Catholic church, he expanded that beyond what, what Augustine actually said and didn't seemingly know where Augustine said it.

And in my response, I told him where Augustine said it. And if we have time today, which I doubt we will, but if we have time today, we'll take a look at that too, because it fits into this whole section.

Um, but I wanted to ask him a question and this was what happened as a result. We ready? Here we go. And we got nothing. Well, isn't that great. It was working just a second ago. Mute unmute. All right.

Well, so this is at two 29. Oh six.

We okay. I'm sending you sound.

So there's, it's more likely that something has changed over there than it is over here. We should have tested sound beforehand. We just assumed everything would be working. I can only plug it in one way over here and it's working on my end.

Um, so, um, I don't know what to say. I have reset it. I've reloaded it. Um, I don't know here. Let me, let me try this. Yeah, no, it's, it's on your end. Cause this is, this is a different program. So something has gotten moved, uh, discombobulated disconnected something somewhere.

And that's going to make it impossible to do the program you're going to do today. Uh, cause I have to play stuff. So well, that, that may be what we have to do. That's, um, that's going to be all right.

Well, I apologize, folks. Uh, we've not had this problem ever before. Um, but, uh, the sound is no longer getting to the soundboard, uh, or it's happening. I don't know what, um, in getting stuff to you.

So I will have to, uh, put the sound up as loud as I can and put the microphone down on the PC speakers. That's not a good way of doing things, but don't have any options as far as I can see, uh, right now.

So, um, this was what took place in the second, um, cross-examination. Let's, uh, see if we can pick it up. Don't know if we will, but let's, let's try.

I don't think it's, uh, fair to characterize the Catholic opposition to.

Okay. Let me, uh, I had it set up correctly, but, uh, I want to get back to first Corinthians chapter three here in a moment, but, um, since you read an Augustine quote, I wanted to read an Augustine quote and get your take on it.

Um, Augustine said you ought to notice, particularly in store in your memory that God wanted to lay a firm foundation in the scriptures against treacherous errors, a foundation against which no one dares to speak who would in any way be considered a Christian for when he offered himself to them to touch this.

He did not. This did not suffice him unless he also confirmed the heart of the believers from the scriptures for he foresaw that the time would come when we would not have anything to touch, but would have something to read.

Would you find that particular expression of statement by, uh, Augustine, uh, consistent with the denial of solo scriptura that is a part of Roman Catholic theology in which you've presented this evening?

I don't think it's, uh, fair to characterize the Catholic opposition to solo scriptura as being anti-scripture. Um, scripture in Catholic theology is a Norma Normans, which is to say it is a norm that serves as a norm for everything else.

The Catholic church can never teach anything that is, that is not, excuse me, the Catholic church cannot teach something that is explicitly forbidden or condemned in scripture. We can take, uh, account of a silence in scripture.

Um, again, this was certainly the principle of the reformers that what the scriptures do not talk about, uh, a Christian is free to do or not to do. Um, what Augustine, who certainly had a very, very highly developed theology of revelation, which is more than just scripture for Augustine.

Uh, Augustine also would be very comfortable in saying at another point, Roma has spoken and the case is closed.

And sir, could you tell me where that's found? No. Again, I don't have my little, is it not true? That's found in sermon one 31. Have you ever looked at sermon one 31, sir? Okay. And are you aware that that phrase that you just quoted never appears in any text of sermon one 31?

I can provide you with the actual Latin text. You want me to look it up? That does not appear anywhere in a sermon. One 31.

Did I, you think I care about the number of it? It doesn't.

No, no, sir. The, I'm sorry. Uh, the, the, the point I was making is you seem, you, you just made a quotation from Augustine and I'm challenging you that, uh, while that is said to appear in sermon one 31, uh, that is a, one of the most common apologetic errors of Roman Catholic apologists.

And what manuscript are you using? The standard one used by, uh, actually anyone in fact, uh, saw, but I, I can't, I would be glad to explicate on that and provide you with the actual Latin, but that is, uh, not, uh, the text of what he said, but going back to what he did say.

Okay. So, um, was that readable? Okay. All right. Uh, we'll have to do it that way for now anyways, till we can figure out what in the world happened. Yeah, I, I, I have, I have no idea. Um, but it's your fault.

Why Sola Scriptura Makes Protestant Use of the Fathers Different

Uh, anyways, so as long as it's understandable, it may not look as good, but it, uh, anyway, anyway, so here was cross-examination and I chose to bail out of that at that point because there was no way in a debate on purgatory for me to explain, cause he didn't understand it.

He, he said he taught a course on Augustine. Well, that's nice. But, um, nowhere in Augustine anywhere does he say Romula cuda es causa finitas. That does not appear anywhere in Augustine. No August, Augustinian scholar says that it does.

Um, the, that is a interpretation of what is found in Sermon 131, which he evidently did not know what Sermon 131 was about, what its context was, what the historical background was, any of those things.

Now, this is very, very common amongst even Roman Catholics with two doctorates from Ivy League schools. All right. It's very common amongst Protestants to just repeat what you heard somebody else say, but you don't really know what the background is, whether it's true or false.

You haven't checked it out for yourself. Nobody can check out everything. So I get it, but he's going into a debate. He's throwing that out at me and he was wrong. He was just an error. Now, how did I know all that?

Do I just keep that? No, because years before that, I had written an extensive article, which is still on our website to this day, about Catholic myths and how they get started. And I had dedicated pages to the documentation of what Sermon 131 was about and the historical background of what happened in North Africa, between North Africa, Palestine, and Rome in regards to the Pelagian controversy.

And there's never been a rebuttal to it. No one has ever said, well, you're wrong about that, because I cited from both Protestant and Catholic scholars. It's not, there's not really, on a scholarly level, there's not really any dispute about this.

It's just that Roman Catholic apologists abuse this statement over and over and over and over again. Now, why bring this up? Because last year, well, I'm sorry, in 2019, Trent Horn, who I debated at the G3 conference a couple of years ago, Trent Horn gave a presentation at a Catholic Answers event on Protestant distortions of the early church fathers, Protestant distortions of the early church fathers.

And one time he does mention me toward the end, but there were clearly other places where he could have, where he was making reference to something about me, but he didn't make reference to me. We are going to be working through Trent Horn's presentation and refuting it thoroughly.

I have already taken the time to go through the video and to reproduce all of his slides. So we have the entire presentation. We have the audio. He makes reference to a book. We've got the book. I've got that.

Oh, I was supposed to have that queued up and forgot to do so. We've got the book. And so we want to provide yet another example of the fact that Protestant apologists can go toe-to-toe with Roman Catholic apologists on the subject of church history, and we will always win.

You know why? It's real simple. Let me, before we listen to what Trent Horn said, let me remind you of something. And I've been saying this every time we have engaged in historical discussions with Roman Catholics, Roman Catholic apologists, etc., etc.

I've had to bring this out and to emphasize it. Why is our handling of the early Church Fathers to be more trusted than a Roman Catholic's? Real simple. I have no magisterial authority telling me what to find in the early Church Fathers, because I believe in solo scriptura.

So I have a very clear interest in such issues as textual criticism because the text of the Scripture becomes the standard at that point. But I believe in solo scriptura. I believe that the ultimate authority is that which is theanustas, that which is God-breathed, and that what I believe has to be based upon, find its origin in the consistent reading of all but only that which is theanustas.

Now, if you're a Roman Catholic, you've probably only heard solo scriptura defined as in issues of material and formal sufficiency and things like this. It's extremely rare, even amongst the best Roman Catholic apologists, to have an accurate, meaningful definition given, partly because most of them do not know what it is, partly because those who came before them gave them bad definitions.

Carl Keating did this, for example, and there's sort of a hesitation to say, yeah, that wasn't all that great. But what solo scriptura says is that there is a genre of revelation that is theanustas, it's God-breathed, and it's unique.

And it's found only in scripture, and there's nothing else that's theanustas. And so my beliefs have to be derived from a reading of only that which is theanustas, solo scriptura, and all that is theanustas, tota scriptura.

That then becomes what drives a meaningful, believing, hermeneutic methodology, consistent methodology of interpreting scripture. Now, the Roman Catholic is not in that position. Why? Because of the dogmatic teachings of Rome.

Let me give an example from the subject of the papacy, because obviously, it was interesting to me. Maybe I missed it, but I don't think I did. Trenhorn never mentioned Pope Francis in his talk. Now, you might say, well, why should he?

Pope Francis didn't live in the early church. Well, it's true. In my experience, back when John Paul II was alive, it was pretty unusual to listen to a Roman Catholic go through an entire presentation and not make some reference to the living Pope.

But Catholic apologists know down in their hearts that Pope Francis is not their friend. He does not believe in evangelism in that sense. He does not believe in proselytization. And they also know that he's a liberal, and he doesn't believe a lot of the things that they believe.

On one side, they have to go, yes, he does, because he's the Pope. Now, on the other side, they go, yeah, I know, but he's the Pope. It's just a tough day. So anyway, Roman Catholicism tells its people that what it believes is apostolic by definition.

And therefore, you will always be able to find early church fathers who are teaching what Rome teaches, that this is apostolic. Now, there can be development on a certain level, but it's apostolic teaching.

That's what goes on. So let me give you some examples. The Vatican Council, 1870, said, We therefore, for the preservation, safekeeping, and increase of the Catholic flock, with the approval of the sacred council, do judge it to be necessary to propose the belief and acceptance of all the faithful in accordance with the ancient and constant faith of the universal church, the doctrine touching the institution, perpetuity, and nature of the sacred apostolic primacy.

So notice the claim. In accordance with the ancient and constant faith of the universal church. Well, maybe that's just, you know, no. At open variance, this clear doctrine of Holy Scripture, just continuing on, as it has been ever understood by the Catholic church, are the perverse opinions of those who, while they distort the form of government established by Christ, the Lord, and his church, deny that Peter, in his single person, preferably to all the other apostles, whether taken separately or together, was endowed by Christ the true and proper primacy of jurisdiction, as it has been ever understood by the Catholic church.

Now, the simple fact matter is that's a lie, and any Catholic historian knows it's a lie. They know that every single one of these texts has been interpreted in early church history in a way other than the Roman Catholic church takes it, or the way other than Vatican I took it.

John Henry Cardinal Newman knew that. That's why John Henry Cardinal Newman opposed the promulgation, the doctrine, of papal infallibility. And when Newman then, once it was defined, submitted to it, that's why, and Trent Horn started off his talk about, he was quoting a Protestant scholar who said that one of the most arrogant things he'd ever heard was Newman's statement that to go deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.

Well, that Protestant scholar, whoever it was, he didn't say who it was, was exactly right. Because if you know anything about Newman prior to Vatican I and after Vatican I, then you know he flipped. He gave in.

And so, to go deep into history is to realize that John Henry Cardinal Newman, though a brilliant man, is no guide in these matters, and was no brave man to stand for historical truth, either. So it is an incredibly arrogant thing when Roman Catholics quote that text.

But the point is, notice what the, in dogmatic teaching, you have these claims, ancient and constant faith, the universal church, as it has been ever understood by the Catholic Church. These are untrue statements.

And so what happens is, same thing that you saw happening in the first two debates I had with Jerry Matitix back in the early 1990s, coming up on 30 years ago now. And what does he do? When I quote an early church father, that's just his private opinion.

When he quotes an early church father, that's divine tradition. Again, sola ecclesia is what leads to this. The church is the final authority. The church defines what scripture is, what scripture means.

The church defines what tradition is and what tradition means. And so the church isn't under the authority of these things because it defines and interprets all of these things. Can't get out of it. It's an epistemological black hole.

And as much as they want to try to get out of it, they can't. And the more they struggle, the deeper they get in. So, the Roman Catholic Church has a, there is a document from a number of years ago. This is from 1896 called Satis Cognitum.

Satis Cognitum. Listen to these words. Wherefore, in the decree of the Vatican Council as to the nature and authority of the primacy of the Roman Pontiff, no newly conceived opinion is set forth but the venerable and constant belief of every age.

Now, my Eastern Orthodox friends know that's not true. I know that's not true. Honest Roman Catholic historians know that's not true. And so what Roman Catholics have to do is they have to find in history what Rome tells them to find in history.

And so I submit to you that if you're going to be a faithful Roman Catholic and you're going to believe the dogmas, you're going to believe when the Marian dogmas are defined, when the bodily assumption was defined, and you've got the anathemas, and you can't even think other than this, and so on and so forth, you are forced into a situation to find in the early church what Rome is teaching today.

I have absolutely no such desire to do that because I don't have that external authority. I don't have that pressing upon me. And so the first class I taught after I graduated from seminary, Grand Canyon College as scholar in residence, was church history.

I'm teaching church history right now for dear, dear fellowship of brothers and sisters in Germany. And at the speed we're going, I'll be a part of church history by the time we would actually finish church history.

Anyway, it's extremely enjoyable. And so this is a subject that I've been dealing with for a long time, but I have to teach all of church history, not just apologetics. And so while my apologist self is very interested in aspects of church history, you have to teach the whole thing.

And I have taught from the beginning that you have to deal with the early church fathers and let them be who they were. Trying to cram them into our debates today will misrepresent them. They simply didn't have interest in a lot of the subjects that we are interested in today.

Asking them particular questions is unfair of them, just as future generations may ask of us questions that we weren't even thinking about. And so I want the early church fathers to be the early church fathers.

And so, for example, like I said, I'm teaching that class and here is my primary, I've had this book out in how long? How long did I put a date in? No, I wish I had put a date. I started putting dates in the eighties.

This is probably early, early 1980s, when probably second year of college, something like that, 83, 84. And this is the apostolic father is Lightfoot Harmer. This is the Greek English. Old now, but it's the one I read.

So it has all my markings and all the little dookie whoppers. You can find the stuff that you want and things like that. Font's not that big, but anyway, the font has gotten smaller since I bought the book.

It's my story. I'm sticking with it anyway. So I can find in this volume quotations that are very much in line with what I believe. The epistle of the Dionysius, in Ignatius, in Clement, in the Didache.

Great stuff. It's got the shepherd of Hermas and epistle of Barnabas in it. There's some weird stuff in there. Stuff that probably is not teaching the way I would teach things. Okay. That's church history.

We don't have everything that was being written. And so you go with what you got and you're going to get a mixed group. It's all there is to it. And so I don't have to turn all these folks into Reformed Baptists because they weren't Reformed Baptists, but the Roman Catholic has to turn them into Roman Catholics because Rome says to.

And that results in true distortion of the patristic materials. True distortion. You want true distortion? It comes from having an authority up here. It says, this is the constant and universal faith of the Catholic church.

Find it. Find it. There's the problem. There's the problem. And we will document that throughout the course of Trenhorn's discussion. Now, I hope that I'm somewhere near where I was needed to be. Our technical difficulties got me all combobulated, but you want to try it again?

Now, folks, you need to understand, even though what I was just sharing with you is valuable, important information. Rich did not hear any of it. Because Rich was running wires, replacing wires, everything, because he wants this to work.

He wants this to work badly. He wants to demonstrate that on the fly, while you were sitting there drinking your coffee, he may be getting old, and he is. But he's good. He still is good. The problem is, I'm building it up, and it may or may not work now.

So I'm going to click a little button here and see what happens. And negative claims saying that the first Christians did... So, Rich, you want to tell us, did we lose a wire? It looks like it just...

You think maybe plugging stuff in and plugging stuff out might have finally gotten something that was old? This is why you keep boxes of wires. I just thought you were trying to get on one of those hoarder shows.

Had the identical wire, brings it in, and I don't have to put the microphone down near the speakers anymore. So, yay! So, on the fly, everyone, I want everyone in the audience to be giving Rich a golf clap because Rush was a big golfer.

He was a big golfer. Did you know who caddied for him three times, and he has a signed ball from him? Kenny. Ken Gontars. Ken's got pictures with him, and he even has the recordings from... Because all three years, he then mentioned him on his program after the tournament.

So, he sent me a picture of the signed ball, and he was unhappy yesterday, as a lot of us were. A lot of us were. A lot of us were bummed out. And so, there you go, Ken. Now, you've been mentioned on the Rush Limbaugh show and on The Dividing Line.

I mean, can you get any better than that? That's from a guy wearing a Limbaugh tie. I mean, that's pretty special right there. Anyway. Okay, I'm not sure where I am here, but let's just fire it up and go with it, all right?

Believe X are fairly easy to disprove because you just have to go back and find one example of where they did believe X. So, that's something, if you see a claim that, well, the early church didn't believe this, don't take that at face value.