James White: The Most Prolific Christian Debator In History

Apologia Studios

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

When the scribes and Pharisees asked our Lord about the greatest commandment, He replied, You shall love the

00:05

Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.

00:10

So, why do we hear some of today's most prominent pastors saying things like this? It had everything to do with how we talk about the

00:19

Bible. And specifically, or along with that, what we point to as the foundation of faith, which for most

00:25

Christians, unfortunately, is the Bible. We need to do better.

00:31

We need to love God with all our hearts and stand unashamedly on the rock of His Word. We need to love the

00:37

Lord with all of our souls, and respond to the worldview issues of our day with the wisdom and discernment that comes only from Him.

00:44

We need to love the Lord with our minds, and understand the calling of God's people in every area of life in God's world.

00:51

We need to love the Lord our God with all our strength, and face the work of building a life -giving, God -honouring culture.

00:58

Join us for 10 days at the Runner Academy for Cultural Leadership, as we consider how the gospel influences all of life and culture, and the role that we have to play in applying foundational

01:09

Christian thinking to every area of life. Non -rockabodas must stop.

01:29

I don't want to rock the boat. I want to sink it! Are you gonna bark all day, little doggie, or are you gonna bite?

01:37

You're being delusional. Delusional? Yeah. Delusional is okay in your worldview. I'm an animal.

01:43

You don't chastise chickens for being delusional. You don't chastise pigs for being delusional. So you calling me delusional using your worldview is perfectly okay.

01:50

It doesn't really hurt. It's hung up on me! Desperate times call for faithful men and not for careful men.

02:03

The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men, lauding them for their courage.

02:11

Go into all the world and make disciples. Not go into the world and make buddies. Not to make brosives. Right. Don't go into the world and make homies.

02:18

Right. Disciples. I got a bit of a jiggle neck. That's a joke,

02:25

Pastor. When we have the real message of truth, we cannot let somebody say they're speaking truth when they're not.

02:33

Make an homies journey, so you will never...

02:48

But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you'll be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled.

02:55

But in your hearts, honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense, an apologia to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.

03:06

Yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.

03:14

Of course, that is from 1 Peter 3, 14 through 16. That's where we get our name.

03:21

I couldn't help but notice the emphasis you put on me and softy. Yeah, I did. Just for a reason. No particular reason.

03:28

A very specific reason, which we'll get to. Welcome, everyone.

03:34

Another episode of Apology Radio. Luke DeBear here, hosting again. I'll explain that in a second. Got the old

03:41

DOC, you know me. Yeah, good to be here. Zach Conover's back with us.

03:47

Yes, sir. He had to recover from G3 last week. I'm still recovering. I'm still there, yeah.

03:53

Who knows? I see the light, but it's still dim. Yeah, that was quite the conference.

04:02

Well, we were going to actually address the panel discussion today.

04:09

But it looks like we'll be doing that in a couple weeks. Yeah, I'm excited for that. That should be helpful, hopefully, to some people.

04:15

It was helpful to me to listen to. Oh, yeah. It was great. So be looking for that. That would be the panel discussion that Dr.

04:22

Wright was on. And not only was he on it, he spent a good deal of time speaking.

04:28

He did. According to the report, I think he had 38 minutes. He spent talking in comparison to, well, someone had been sharing a graphic of some sort saying, this is how much time he spent talking and this is how much time everybody else had to talk.

04:43

But I think, honestly, that's because a lot of the questions were directed towards him, which seemed to happen when we talk about these subjects.

04:51

Since he's apparently a Christian nationalist. Just kidding, he's not. That reserves the right to define what that means.

04:58

He's not. But thank you, everyone, again for tuning in. I'd like to thank our sponsors,

05:04

Ezra Institute, who saw the video there at the beginning. And, of course, Ion Layer. They're amazing. I am awaiting my next shipment.

05:11

I'm excited for that. And I believe if you go to IonLayer .com. I messed this up last week, too.

05:18

If you go to IonLayer .com, you go to checkout, the coupon code APOLOGIA, you do get a discount off your first order.

05:25

And it's an awesome, awesome product. The Fountain of Youth, they call it. Yeah, I figured

05:31

I'd just get to my right place. That's not the normal,

05:37

I don't think, though. No, I don't think so. It was just a one -off. Because they're our sponsor. And they're great.

05:43

The product's great. So Pastor Jeff, he had to make an emergency trip to Wisconsin this week.

05:50

When he gets back, I'm sure he's going to tell the full story, so I don't want to steal his thunder. But there's a possibility that the

05:59

Durbins were going to be able to adopt a couple twin girls from Wisconsin, and they came nine weeks early. Talk about a whirlwind.

06:07

Yeah, Jeff and Kenny had to fly there. They're there right now. The babies are doing well. They're in an incubator, of course.

06:14

They're trying to figure out how that whole situation is going to go down. So we're praying for them.

06:20

He'll be back here, I think, this weekend, hopefully. But we have a special guest.

06:28

We do have a special guest. So we are doing a little mash -up show today. I don't know if we've actually done it over Zoom.

06:36

We've had this man in the studio a few times. But I'll go ahead and bring in my fellow elder and friend,

06:46

Dr. James White, in the DL studio with a really bright shirt on today.

06:53

Well, I normally have a bright shirt on. You do. It's true. It's the only way to keep myself awake. When you're as old as I am,

07:00

Luke, as you remind me all the time, you've got to use anything you can to stay conscious. That's true.

07:06

So that's what we're doing. But I've been on Apology Radio dozens of times.

07:12

What are you talking about? But I don't know if we've actually Zoomed you in. Oh, no, no, no. No, it's the first time we've done Zoom. Yeah, because I'm doing the dividing line right after this.

07:19

So, yeah, it's sort of necessary to do it that way. But, yeah, I've been there. I've been there lots of times.

07:25

Come on now. Give me credit. I'll give you credit.

07:31

I'm just going to take his tip about the bright shirt because as a dad of four, you need something to help you stay awake sometimes.

07:39

Not Red Bulls. Definitely not Red Bulls. I can't do Red Bulls. That's the problem.

07:45

I can use some caffeine right now. I really, really could, but it would kill me. I got my coffee.

07:52

Red Bulls, no boredom. I can't touch that stuff with a 10 -foot pole. I'd be under this table so fast you wouldn't believe it.

07:59

Well, we're excited to have Dr. White on today as he's celebrating 400 years.

08:04

I'm sorry. There's an extra zero. Wrong. Nope, sorry, 40 years. 40 years of health and omega.

08:11

That's Sunday, correct? Is that the anniversary Sunday? Well, we've got the big celebration on Saturday.

08:18

I don't know this. I have to go look at the documents to see when it was the 420 -something.

08:26

I was 20 because I'm 60 now. So I was 20 when

08:31

Kelly and I and Mike and Linda Beliveau signed the documents that incorporated

08:37

Alpha Omega Ministries, which at the time we were just going to be We had a few books that I had purchased on Mormonism.

08:48

We had one photocopied tract, and it was, in hindsight, semi -heretical.

08:56

But I was 20 years old, and we had started witnessing the Mormons, and we were doing a class on Mormonism at North Phoenix Baptist Church, and we had started doing the

09:06

Easter pageant. I don't think we had up to Salt Lake yet.

09:13

In fact, the first time we went to Salt Lake, it was in May because we didn't know about a conference. We had nobody to tell us anything when we got started.

09:24

It's not like we just had to go with what we could learn as we went along, and once we found out about the conference, then that changed everything.

09:36

For 18 years, we'd go up to conference twice a year.

09:43

Initially, we were so young, we actually drove up. We drove through the night,

09:49

Friday night. The first time we did it, it was three of us, me, Mike Beliveau, and a guy from North Phoenix that we basically ruined.

10:00

We tried to train him in the car on the drive up. Don't do it that way. No, don't do it that way.

10:07

But we drove up overnight, went to the Tanner's house, Gerald and Santa Tanner's house, showered, got changed, went and passed out tracks all day at the conference, and then got back in the cars.

10:21

We may have changed someplace. I don't remember. We drove back that night, and we're in church

10:28

Sunday morning. It's like a binge evangelism weekend. And that was as dangerous.

10:35

I mean, we were barely functional by the time we got back. When you're 20, you're stupid, and you do stupid things.

10:42

That drive is a brutal drive. They literally have those signs up everywhere to make you stay awake.

10:50

I remember one time we were driving up there, and it was winter, and there was a semi -driver pulled off to the side of the road, shirtless, doing jumping jacks.

11:00

Just stay awake. Just stay awake, yeah. That is a brutal. I can't imagine doing that all in one day. That's insane. Yeah, it was.

11:06

It was. And we eventually started taking groups up, and we would go up on Friday.

11:14

Yeah. So we'd have the night beforehand, and we'd stay at the luxurious Motel 6.

11:21

There's one downtown. Man, it's like $69 .99 now. Back then, it was like $19 .99,

11:29

I think, in those days. There's one down on State, I think, and then another one out toward the airport.

11:35

We stayed at both of them. So we started doing it that way, so it was a little bit safer, and then coming back on Sunday.

11:42

So we learned, and then by the time we finished up, we were flying up on Southwest or something like that and arranging stuff very, very differently because we had aged, and we couldn't do that kind of stuff anymore.

11:56

So yeah, but that's where it all started. When we first started the ministry, all we wanted to do was witness to Mormons.

12:03

We didn't have any future plans other than let's witness to Mormons.

12:11

Very quickly, people started asking questions about Jehovah's Witnesses, and that expanded into that.

12:18

So yeah, 40 years. When you think about it, it's only 480 months.

12:28

It's still a long time. I was two when you started. Yeah, I wasn't here.

12:35

Well, see? As I think about apologetics ministries, there aren't many that have been around that long that haven't gone wonky like CRI and stuff like that.

12:50

So I honestly think a lot of that's due to the fact that we never pretended to be or wanted to be a church.

12:58

We always wanted to be an assistance to the church. People tried to make us into a church, and we're like, no, we're not going to do that.

13:05

And I think that's been part of the blessing of the Lord because I look back over those four decades, and man, there were so many times when stuff happened or people came along that could have completely derailed us.

13:26

And normally, honestly, it was people with money. It was people with money.

13:34

You've got to understand, when you've got big donors, they want big influence. They want to be able to determine where things go.

13:43

And early on, we just adopted the attitude that the

13:50

Lord's going to have to take care of us because we are not going to do what... And I understand a lot of people have to do these types of things.

13:58

We've just... I remember going to a ministry. I won't mention it. I remember going over to California to speak for a ministry.

14:06

I think I was speaking on the reliability of the New Testament, something like that, because sadly, apologists who read

14:13

Greek and Hebrew and do textual criticism are very rare. Never understood that.

14:19

I think it's one of the greatest advantages you could ever have, but that's the way it is. And so they left me alone in this conference room at their office for a while where they're going and doing something else.

14:29

And I'm looking at their schedule and stuff. And the vast majority of the time in the schedule was donor maintenance.

14:37

It was contacting donors and doing mailing lists and all the rest of this kind of stuff.

14:43

And Rich and I just stink at that. So for us, it's always been keep doing the work, get it out there.

14:55

For a long time, it was on radio, just like you guys were. We were on the same station for a while. And then when we shifted to the

15:07

Internet as it started to come into existence, the

15:12

Dividing Line program, we've never spent one dime to promote the

15:19

Dividing Line. We've never bought Facebook ads. We've never had anything printed. We've never done anything.

15:26

And globally, without a question, it's the most watched apologetics webcast in the world.

15:33

There's just no question about it. I mean, I've traveled everywhere. At least I used to. I still travel everywhere.

15:39

Yeah, you do. Continental, U .S. Yeah, on the continent now. But I'll never forget the first time

15:46

I visited Pachasthroum, South Africa. Try saying Pachasthroum three times fast. It's lots of fun.

15:53

And yeah, you've already been drinking today. So I was in Pachasthroum, South Africa.

16:03

The first time I was there, this homeschool family comes up to me in South Africa and starts talking about how central the

16:13

Dividing Line has been to the education of their kids. All their kids know me.

16:19

They're all excited to meet me, all this stuff. And it's on the other side of the stinking planet. And that's when

16:25

I started realizing some of the most precious things have been... Again, I used to spend a lot of time in South Africa, and I do miss going to places like that.

16:35

And people wonder why in the world, but that's another story. I do miss my friends down there.

16:40

There's some great, great believers, and they're struggling with... We think we have pressures. Oh, my. They face so much all the time.

16:48

But two different churches. I was in the Johannesburg area.

16:54

I had groups, three or four Black African young men come up to me.

17:01

And there was about four years between these two incidents. And they said, Dr. White, we just want you to know we came to hear your speech today because if it hadn't been for the

17:15

Dividing Line, we would not have made it through uni. Because if you travel anywhere in the

17:22

English -speaking world outside the United States, it's uni instead of university, college, whatever it's called.

17:28

I didn't even know what you were talking about. Oh, yeah. They said all of our professors were teaching us about the

17:34

Bible being a myth, and we just didn't have anybody to get answers to that stuff except for you.

17:41

Listening to the Dividing Line is why we have graduated, and we still have our faith. Wow. And there were two different groups.

17:48

Like I said, about four years separated two different churches. And that's why we do this.

17:58

You know Vodhi Balkam is in Zambia. Yeah. And he had me up to speak at the college up there, and some of his students asked me to do a webcast with him.

18:12

And it literally, the web, it was at a desk in the library, which is inside, you know the container, the shipping containers on the ships, you know that you can literally turn them into trucks?

18:25

That's what the library is at the college. Oh, wow. It's a shipping container, okay, with electricity, and they put shelves in, and that's what the library is.

18:33

And I'm sitting there talking to these guys, and they start asking me about my family. And I go, yeah, you know, and so my daughter has a webcast.

18:43

She's been, has been doing real well with that. My daughter's Summer. And when I say Summer, both these guys are like, wait, wait, you mean, you mean

18:51

Sheologians? You mean Summer Yeager? And I'm like, yeah, I'm Summer's dad. And they're like, they're blown away.

18:58

They're like, yeah. What a connection. I'm just so much more excited about that. I don't know who you are, but Summer.

19:04

Yeah, yeah, you're Summer's dad. This is incredible, you know. And so to see that kind of thing going on,

19:10

I mean, I was in, I'm not sure if you've, I'm not sure where you guys went when you were in Ireland.

19:16

But, because I've been to Dublin and Belfast. Yeah. I did a debate, I think in 2018 or 2019 in Belfast with a

19:23

Roman Catholic on indulgences. Wow. Now you got to understand something. I'm old enough to remember the troubles in the 70s.

19:31

It was on the news all the time. Sure. With the bombings and the killings and stuff in Northern Ireland. Right. The fact that we could have a debate in Belfast, Northern Ireland on indulgences is pretty amazing.

19:42

It really is. It really is, yeah. But that church had me do something on a

19:47

Saturday morning for one of their groups. And I asked, off the top of my head for some reason,

19:53

I asked, by the way, how many of you have heard of my daughter, Summer Yeager of Sheologians?

19:59

About a third of the room put their hands up in Belfast, Northern Ireland. That's funny.

20:05

So it's an amazing time to be doing ministry because, you know, 30 years ago, that would not have been a possibility.

20:12

Oh, no. This just didn't exist as a possibility. And obviously when Alpha and Omega started, there was no...

20:19

I remember when I got my first pager. Oh, man, was I super fly cool.

20:26

I mean, I had a pager. I could pull over and put a quarter in a phone and call people.

20:34

It was great. It was fantastic. You could say things like super fly. Yeah. Yeah. So we had no way of knowing whatsoever in 1983 what we'd be doing in 40 years.

20:51

We never even dreamed that we'd still be doing this in 40 years, let alone doing it around the world, globally, doing the kind of stuff.

21:04

And you saw, I'm sure, Tobias and Peter told you a little bit about the impact we've had with their church and the encouragement there and things like that in Frankfurt.

21:19

I got to teach in Samara, Russia in 2019. That was a little freaky.

21:24

I got it. Yeah. I remember you messaged me a little freaked out, yeah. It was a little...

21:30

Look, I was in school when we would practice getting under the desks in case of a nuclear attack from the

21:38

Russians. Yeah. And so going first over to Ukraine, to Kiev, actually

21:44

Irpin, which is a suburb of Kiev, and teaching over there. I've forgotten how many times teaching for the

21:51

European Biblical Training Institute. It was... I had to get over...

21:57

It was a little like Peter. I needed to have the sheet come down from heaven a few times because they had always been the enemy.

22:06

And so to be in... Still are. Well, yeah. But to be in amongst a bunch of Christians who they're singing the same hymns, but in a different language.

22:20

Right. I just remember the first time I heard that, thinking about my mom, because it was after she had passed, going she would...

22:28

She could never have understood what I'm going through right now, being this far away.

22:34

And when I went to Samara, I mean, that is in Russia. And we have... There are lots of believers in Russia.

22:42

And they... I was actually speaking in the church when a bunch of police came in in the back.

22:50

And we were wondering, is this it? Did they hear we were talking? Because I was addressing some controversial issues while I was there.

22:58

And we were wondering if we were going to be visiting with the modern equivalents of the

23:04

KGB or whatever. But that's what they face all the time. And so anyway, all that to say that to have that opportunity to see how far sitting down in this room, which is where we've been doing things since 2006 anyways, where that goes, and who sees it, and who's helped by that.

23:27

Yeah. It's pretty amazing. So how long have you been doing the DL? Well, you got to remember,

23:35

I grew up doing radio. I started doing, working as a disc jockey my sophomore year in high school.

23:43

Wow. My dad was the manager of KWAO Radio, FM 106 .3 in Sun City. That's why we moved out here from Pennsylvania was to put that station on the air.

23:52

And it was not a Christian station in the sense of having just only

23:58

Christian programming. It was an evangelistic station. So the idea was we played big band music because that's what people in Sun City at that time would be listening to.

24:06

Now we'd be playing the Beatles, I guess, or something. Honestly, seriously, as people have gotten older.

24:15

And then we would have these evangelistic messages called Pause for Good News during the course of the day.

24:22

And then on Sundays, we would have a number of churches. In fact, you'll have to remind me sometime maybe at the leadership thing.

24:29

I stumbled across a recording from that radio station of a group.

24:37

North Phoenix Baptist Church had a television program ministering and stuff like that. And there was a high school singing group that we had.

24:45

So we had a band. I mean, that was a big church. So you could do a lot with it. And Kelly and I sang in that group.

24:51

And you had to try out for it and stuff. And she and I sang in that group. And I have a recording of that group singing a song called

25:00

Cornerstone. Now this is over a telephone line, so it's not exactly high quality recording. But in fact, just a little story,

25:07

I don't know if you know. The Wednesday night before Kelly and I got married, we got married on a Friday in 1982.

25:15

And the Wednesday night before, she and I sang a duet together called

25:21

I Am Willing Lord. And then we sort of changed the lyrics toward the end, We Are Willing, because we were about to get married and stuff like that.

25:29

And I have the recording of that too. And it all went through that radio station. So the point is,

25:34

I was used to doing radio. Microphones don't bother me the slightest. Keeping time, making sure you're getting done at the proper time.

25:43

This has been an advantage to me my entire ministry, especially in debates. Yeah, no doubt. To be able to do that.

25:49

So it was natural once Alpha Omega started. The ex -Mormons,

25:59

Concerned Christians, out in Mason. Remember them? Yeah, oh yeah. Okay, Concerned Christians had a radio program.

26:06

And so they invited me on very early on because I can do radio really easily. And so it didn't take long for us to go,

26:15

Yeah, we probably need to try to do the same thing. Though we didn't have any money. I mean, good grief. We had no, you know, doesn't have anything.

26:23

But we started doing the dividing line. Oh goodness. I'd say regularly on Saturdays at a couple different stations,

26:31

KPXQ, KHEP. I think we were on three different stations. Rich seems to remember the call signs better than I do.

26:39

We had to drive way out into the West Valley for one of them.

26:44

I remember the place smelled so funky. Oh, it was bad. You know those old, old places where the carpet's moldy and stuff like that.

26:53

We probably got exposed to all sorts of diseases and things like that. But all sorts of stuff like that.

27:00

So we started pretty early on. I'd say the first dividing lines couldn't be any later than 84.

27:07

Wow. So we don't have almost any of the recordings of that. The ones that we've been able to archive and post go back to 98.

27:17

But we were doing the dividing line back in the 80s. But again, it was primarily limited to Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, related subjects like that.

27:29

And then in the 90s, I remember I was teaching for Golden Gate. And I remember very clearly one

27:36

Saturday I had to teach a systematic theology class in Tucson for Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary.

27:42

So I get done teaching the class in the morning. It was a Friday night, Saturday morning thing. I get in the truck and start driving home.

27:51

And you could hear the station down in Tucson. I tuned it in and a Jehovah's Witness, a sharp

27:57

Jehovah's Witness had called in. And other guys from the ministry, volunteers obviously, were taking my place.

28:06

And I had my first cell phone and don't ask me because back then this was not supposed to happen.

28:11

I actually called in from a cell phone and managed to stay connected long enough to debate that guy while I'm driving up 17 from Tucson to Phoenix.

28:25

It's multitasking right there. That's funny. Yeah, it was. Is that one of those ones that was connected like a box?

28:31

Like an ammo can? It was pretty big. It was pretty big, yeah. I forget exactly when it was, but I remember being extremely stunned that I was able to A, get through, and B, stay connected and actually do anything.

28:45

That's funny. But yeah, we did that kind of stuff for a while until somewhere around 2000 we realized that almost all the phone calls we were getting were coming from this new thing called the internet where the station was live streaming via real audio.

29:04

MP3 hadn't been invented yet. Right, right. And so they're using real audio. And one day, we're sitting around, we got no money, and you know how much radio costs.

29:13

And we're like, look, if everybody's listening on real audio, can we do real audio?

29:19

Can we do what the radio station's doing? And hence, Christian Apologetic Webcasting was born because we were pretty much the first ones to do it.

29:27

And we did it because we were just poor as church mice. We just didn't have any other way to do it.

29:32

And so once we started doing the dividing line via real audio, then one day,

29:38

I did a response to Adrian Rogers. Okay. Biggest name in Southern Baptists at the time.

29:48

He had preached a sermon against Calvinism. And I did a response to Adrian Rogers, and that was the beginning of Radio Free Geneva.

29:57

Oh yeah, I remember that episode. That's when it really took off. That's when the program really started doing what it needed to do.

30:06

So yeah, it's... It's amazing what can happen in 20...

30:12

almost a quarter of a century. Just how quickly the technology, where it is now, and how it enabled you guys to have a worldwide audience so quickly.

30:22

I mean, maybe it didn't feel quickly at the time, but just the impact over a trajectory. Yeah, it was really...

30:28

Until the internet came along, and I remember when it first came along, someone helped us get a website.

30:36

And we had... It was something... Texas .net or something.

30:41

Talk about a wacky URL. But no one even knew what a URL was then.

30:46

This was new to everybody. Everybody's website had all sorts of flashy, flashy things. It was just...

30:53

You look back at it now, and it's pretty amazing. And I had to do a lot of the coding myself, and learn to use programs and stuff like that.

31:03

It was tough. But once the internet started taking off, then the ministry started taking off.

31:11

Because up until then, you're pretty much... The only way you communicated with people was with things like newsletters.

31:20

Oh my goodness! That's how people were getting information. Oh, but the time and the effort and the printing and the folding and the stapling and the addressing and the bundling and the bulk mail.

31:34

Oh my goodness! That was an amazing thing to have to do. But that was the only way you could communicate with people.

31:40

So you had to do it. And it's amazing how fast, once the internet took off, all that just went by the wayside.

31:49

You just didn't do it anymore. And so that's when... That's when the traveling started.

31:56

In 2003, I did my first trip outside the United States.

32:03

That was to speak at the FIEL conference down in Brazil. And then once I got my passport, a

32:12

Reformed Baptist from London contacted me and said, we'd like to have you come over.

32:18

The funny thing is, I was sitting right next to a guy who was coughing his head off on the plane from Phoenix to Chicago.

32:25

So within two days, I was deathly ill on that trip. I'm so glad they took care of me.

32:32

And I still did everything I was supposed to do, but it was literally... In one of the conferences,

32:38

I was sitting in a chair. And by the time I got done, I was either going to woof my cookies all over the front row or pass out.

32:50

One of the two. I don't know what I said. I can't imagine anything I said had any value whatsoever.

32:57

It was bad. It really was. Yikes. But that started a whole series of trips to the

33:05

UK, to London, to that area. One thing led to another. I'm sorry?

33:11

One thing led to another, it sounds like. It did. And the Muslim emphasis started the next year, in 2006.

33:18

And so, especially in South Africa and in London, there's a lot of Muslims.

33:28

And they're very interested in Dawa. They're very interested in doing debates. And yeah, stuff really started taking off from there.

33:38

But I've always resisted trying... I've resisted trying to be the quote -unquote

33:44

Bible Answer Man. Sure. I don't think that's a wise thing to call yourself in the first place.

33:51

But, for example, I've never written on Eastern Orthodoxy. And, well, let's not use

33:57

Eastern Orthodoxy because I'm probably going to end up having to address that here in the not -too -distant future because there's a lot of stuff going on in that area.

34:04

The main reason I haven't done Eastern Orthodoxy, to be honest with you, is because it's next to impossible to explain to Western thinkers what

34:11

Eastern thought is all about. It's very difficult to put into words. So that's a little bit different. Let's use

34:17

Hinduism and Buddhism. I've studied them both. I had to teach a class for a seminary in California once where I listened to entire graduate -level classes on both subjects.

34:28

None of it stuck. None of it stuck. I suppose if I could sit down with adherents of those systems and have extensive conversations, maybe it would.

34:37

Just haven't really had those opportunities. And so I don't claim to have an answer to everything there is out there.

34:45

And I fear the people who pretend that they do. But we have slowly, over time, expanded.

34:55

And it's interesting. I talked to Bethany House about the possibility of a book on Islam right after 9 -11.

35:02

I am so glad that didn't happen. I wasn't ready for that at all. And in fact,

35:08

I think it was 13 years later I finally wrote my book on whatever

35:13

Christian needs to know about the Quran. But I knew nothing in 2001 in comparison to what

35:19

I knew in 2013 -2014. So the Lord's always been good. He's always protected us from doing really ultimately stupid things, destructive things.

35:29

Because you could do... It's easy to do stuff like that. Yeah, that's praise

35:34

God. I was just thinking, I wanted to ask you. Given that you guys were such trailblazers in a lot of ways with this, and having a ministry with 40 years behind you now,

35:50

I think the question that people, Christians in particular, are asking now that we see anti -Christian ideologies infiltrating the church and causing our leadership that was once trusted to go astray, and evangelical leaders that have been embroiled in scandal and controversy and losing their ministries, like those ministries even folding up in some extreme cases, to what do you attribute the longevity and consistency that you guys have had for four decades?

36:25

Now obviously the grace of God has been what sustained you the most. I can't imagine the answer will be much more than that.

36:33

However, when I look at it, I think people are asking the question, how do I finish well?

36:39

Not just how did this start, but how do I actually run the race and finish well as a

36:46

Christian, and in particular a Christian doing a ministry like this that can be intense.

36:52

You're engaging a variety of different worldviews and still more to come. To what is that consistency and longevity attributed to?

37:01

I've had to give some thought to that. Like I said, I think there's some commitments we made early on that have been very helpful.

37:10

We made them at the time not really knowing what kind of impact they were going to have.

37:17

The focus on not being a church, of always being there to direct people to the church.

37:24

I remember when we first started going out to Mesa, one of the rules we came up with pretty early on was we would request that you be a member in good standing in the local

37:37

Evangelical church because passing out tracts to Mormons is spiritually dangerous.

37:45

There was a guy, I have no idea what ever happened to him, but there was a guy that I came to know in the middle 1980s by the name of Mike Paris.

37:56

When I first met Mike Paris, he was an expert on Jehovah's Witnesses.

38:03

He knew the Witnesses inside and out and that was all he did.

38:10

But he also wasn't a churchman. He wasn't involved with the church. He was sort of a lone ranger.

38:16

And I remember getting the call one day that he had become a

38:23

Jehovah's Witness. And I learned from that situation and many other situations similar to it, the spiritual danger of being involved in what's called

38:37

Christian apologetics. And that you shouldn't be involved with that if you are not properly grounded and rooted in your own faith and in the life of a church and things like that.

38:52

And so we came up with that kind of rule early on which turned a lot of people off but that meant we weren't necessarily having to associate with people that might have caused us problems.

39:05

And so the focus on us being part of the church, serving the church, and then

39:16

I'm not going to say we've always followed this line perfectly. And I was raised independent fundamentalist

39:24

Baptist and so there's a separatist element that was bred into me early on.

39:30

But at the same time we also recognized

39:36

I could also see that I couldn't maintain that kind of fundamentalist separatism and actually consistently reach out to the

39:46

Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, the Roman Catholics whoever else it might be. So you had to try to find a balance.

39:52

It's a balance I've been developing my entire adult life. And so part of us, on one side we've been you know what, we're going to sort of do our thing and we're not going to allow ourselves to become entangled with politics and big donors and things like that.

40:16

I need, I've said on the air many times, I'm too stupid to run all the filters that other people run.

40:24

I need to be able to say what I need to be able to say as clearly as I need to be able to say it. And I can't be sitting here going well if I say that this donor is going to be upset and that donor is going to be upset and if I go over here that donor is going to be upset.

40:36

I can't do that. And so we've just had to be willing to live with a little.

40:48

You know for a long time in those early years Rich who is

40:54

I mean there's only two employees in this ministry, me and Rich, that's it. Everything else is a volunteer. Well I'll take that back.

41:02

We pay a little something to some people who do technical things but as far as here in the offices, it's just me and Rich.

41:09

But there were many years before Rich came to work for us where he was working for a food company.

41:16

Unmarried single, no bills and I've lost track of how many times basically when it came time for my little salary he just wrote out of his own checking account.

41:29

I mean that's just the only way to do it. So we were poor as church mice and so the temptation to get the big donor and to get the big chunk of cash

41:40

I remember we had this teeny tiny little two room office on 16th Street south of Camelback and we were just busted.

41:49

We'd had nothing and we had a prayer meeting after church. We went over to there and we needed a thousand bucks.

41:55

We had actually leased a copier because we were trying to do, we were trying to get some material out so we had this copier.

42:01

We had to pay for this copier. We just didn't know where it was going to come from. I just remember things like that and it kept us really humble and it kept us from we didn't get connected in ways that could end up influencing what we could and could not say where we could and could not go, what we could and could not address and I guess the biggest thing to be honest with you you saw the lines at G3 you saw for a while Jeff and I were sort of standing next to each other and he'd keep moving away.

42:37

I'm not sure I was wondering what was going on here but you know and I did that Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday morning.

42:48

Had those kind of lines Zach you saw it, you were right nearby. As soon as I stop at G3 the line forms there and it just and it grows from there and I don't know

43:00

Zach if you saw Kelly started getting involved and started moving the lines so it wasn't blocking other people and okay just pictures we don't have time for questions.

43:07

Someone had to do that, someone had to take that role because it was a traffic jam I kept trying to pull

43:14

Jeff to the side. Yeah it's just the way it works there but the thing that people would say now it's funny

43:23

I have to mention this because this is Apology Radio Jeff will tell you the exact same thing

43:28

I'm going to tell you wherever we go in the world people come up to us and they'll say one or two things,

43:35

I found out about you from Jeff or vice versa then

43:41

I found out about Apology from you we're joined at the hip it's inevitable, it's just the way that it is that's in Russia, South Africa Australia, it doesn't matter where we go, that's just the way it is

43:55

I think that's really cool and really neat but the thing that most people say the people who really like us and listen regularly the term they use is consistency you've taught us to be consistent a self contradictory argument is a sign of a failed argument, inconsistency is a sign of a failed argument

44:20

I've just taught people for decades now in every way that I can that you need to apply the same rules of hermeneutics whatever topic you're dealing with in scripture otherwise you're going to be turning the bible into your own private playground and I try to be consistent in that in how

44:35

I'm dealing with others and interact with their arguments so that consistency together with I think too a lot of people have appreciated my friendship with Doug, my friendship with Michael Brown there's not that kind of crusty porcupine -ish thing that Reformed Baptists can often be known for badly so you put all that together and look, you guys do all sorts of interesting stuff on Apology Radio when

45:18

I sit down in this studio I'm not thinking numbers, clicks keeping this audience happy or that audience happy I've done 3 .5

45:29

hour programs on textual criticism, now I realize there are only a certain number of people that are going to survive that, but you know

45:36

I talked to them 15 years later and they were kept out of a cult by it we do stuff that no one else will do because I can make really tough things understandable we have so many homeschoolers that use the dividing line as a resource regularly things like that I think all that's awesome, but I think that that sort of answers the question why have you all kept going?

46:03

It's because we don't really have, we don't view anyone else as competition it's not like we're, and I know a lot of ministries view things like that and so you become angry when you see somebody else getting to do something and you don't get to do that and that could be donors going, it just never crosses our mind, we're not trying to compete with anybody

46:23

I have a certain skill set and I try to utilize that certain skill set to the best of my abilities and I try not to then wander off into stuff that I probably shouldn't wander off into anyway which means sometimes

46:37

I make people a little bit slow getting into stuff and sometimes, you know I've had to sort of be pushed into stuff we had to be pushed into the stuff with Roman Catholicism, it was a fellow by the name of Benny Mears that was working with us and yeah,

46:51

I didn't want to get into that area, it was so big and I didn't know a lot about it but he was a former

46:56

Roman Catholic and he was saying everything you're saying about the sufficiency of the Bible and salvation by grace that's what's relevant to Roman Catholicism too so yeah, it took a little it took a little work and it took something called

47:10

Fidonet which I doubt you've ever experienced Fidonet, the bulletin board systems in the 1980s and 1990s, before the internet started

47:21

I was still even back then, you could communicate with people it would take two or three days but you could communicate with people electronically on a computer and I learned a lot

47:32

I learned a lot about Mormonism, doing it that way, there was something called the

47:37

Mormon Echo and so I was going back and forth with some pretty high power guys on the

47:42

Mormon Echo back then then there was the Open Bible Echo and there were Roman Catholic ones and I would spend hours writing those posts and that became the groundwork for a lot of stuff that ended up being published at a later point in time, it really did but we had to sort of be pushed into dealing with Roman Catholicism because when you think about it if you want to be really, really unpopular be reformed talk about Roman Catholicism because everybody's got a

48:08

Catholic aunt they just love talk about Islam, oh we don't want you here we don't want to get bombed, literally

48:15

I've had that happen so many times, I've had churches yeah sorry but we just can't get the insurance to talk about that because what's going on and so that's the way to keep you small, humble unfunded, is to talk about that subject.

48:33

If that wasn't enough then we made you talk about eschatology and the law of God that'll really isolate you yep we definitely blame you for that one so I don't know if that's an answer to the question no that was very good,

48:50

I think it'll be helpful it's helpful for me to hear and I think it will be for other people too I appreciate that we're already winding down on time here

49:01

Dr. White has to do a divining line after this well we didn't get started until about 7 after so we're good

49:08

Andy P I see your questions bro I'll try to get those in the end or if not we'll get in the after show that's in the super chat by the way but I wanted to make sure

49:16

I didn't miss it so I don't know if you saw the title I forgot to send you the link, I don't know if you saw the live Jeff did the title and description and he said that you're the most prolific

49:25

Christian debater in history and history? history's a big that's what he said so some people were freaking out at the beginning though they thought you died or something they thought we were doing some kind of memorial show or something so how many debates have you done?

49:46

I can't remember it's a lot as of the Gregory Coles debate just a few weeks ago, it hasn't even been a month ago yet because that was

49:54

September 16 that was my 182nd moderated public debate we actually made a shirt did you see the shirt at G3?

50:04

yeah, it had all of the debates on the back, right? yeah, it's really cool looking and that's actually two debates behind because we had to design it at some point

50:16

Jeff just chimed in, I can see he said he is the most prolific Christian debater in history yeah, no, no

50:22

I can't prove that but in terms of volume, I mean official volume no, yeah that's currently alive

50:31

I don't know of anyone who has done as many moderated public debates as I have now today, thanks to the internet there are people that sit in their basement with a fan going in the background and a cat walking by once in a while doing lots of debates all the time so like you, you have a cat

50:52

I most surely do and you'll notice that he's not here right now but as far as serious debates with a serious piece moderator time and something other than just people on YouTube arguing about things like that, yeah,

51:09

I don't know of anybody who has anywhere close to the number of debates that's like one a year, right?

51:18

huh? no, a little bit more than that you might want to work on your numbers a little bit it's like one debate a year it's 186 no they've sort of gone in spurts

51:36

I mean in 2019 it really looked like I was going to be blowing by 200 real quick and then something happened in 2020 that's what

51:45

I was thinking I was like, man, is he going to make it to 200? that'd be epic you're going to have to get a bigger shirt that's the next shirt stage is the 200th debate and we'll see my memory's not what it used to be

52:00

I don't, I hope I know Luke will, Luke could care less I'm hoping that there will be people around who will say, yeah high time to hang that one up, buddy you've done your because I've seen people just think of the great athletes that played two seasons more than they should've they could've gone out on top but we won't let you go full

52:26

Joe Biden, don't worry full Joe Biden? maybe partial appreciate that very much

52:38

I've got five coming up and this may be my first Joe Biden moment is the fact that I've actually scheduled a single road trip where I'm driving

52:51

I'm not being driven, people need to understand that, I'm doing the driving, I'm doing the hooking up, I do all the work where I'm driving for 32 days and doing five moderated public debates two against Trent Horn, who's obviously one of the best the

53:12

Roman Catholics have Dale Tuggy the king of the Universalists Leighton Flowers that one's, everybody's just like oh,

53:21

I didn't realize you were debating him again I missed that Leighton Flowers on John 6 that's gonna be fun a lot of choice meat going on there oh yeah, got some choice meat going on there and Dr.

53:34

Thomas Ross on can Baptists be Calvinists someone would debate that?

53:41

yeah he's landmark Baptist he'll debate it so that's five and I'm teaching

53:49

Baptist church history at Grace Bible Theological Seminary and I'm speaking at the conference in Tullahoma all as a part of that one trip so that may be my first Joe Biden moment

54:00

I get sick and I'm in trouble anywhere along the line weren't you supposed to be doing like three nights in a row or something back to back to back well, we're doing four of the five are at First Lutheran in Houston Evan McClanahan's the pastor there man, he just loves debates did you ever see the debate that Leighton Flowers and the guy from Trinity did against Zacariades and that other fellow, the two hypers where the hyper -Calvinists were yelling and screaming and spitting at the

54:36

Armenians that was at Evan McClanahan's church that was his first shot at a debate and I sort of came in and helped rescue things afterwards because he was like wow, we didn't expect that one yeah,

54:48

I bet but he's just a go -getter it takes a lot of work to be calling people back and forth being that intermediary it takes a lot of work so if they're willing to do it then what

55:05

I'm doing is I'm going through Houston twice so I start off in the trick, I go straight to Houston do the debates with Trent Horn, and then

55:14

I leave and I go to Tullahoma, I do the debate with Ross, that's a Jeffrey Rice's thing and then the next weekend

55:23

I'm teaching at Grace Bible Theological Seminary and then I come back to Houston and on a

55:28

Thursday I debate Leighton and then on the Saturday I debate Dale Tuggy so there's very little connection to the topics, that's the problem yeah, that's what makes it difficult, it's not the same it's just going to be the amount of preparation

55:44

I mean, I'm having to start that once we get done with next week and it's not like, that's the only thing

55:52

I do you guys know what I mean yeah, exactly other things that we have to do like,

55:58

I am preaching the next two weeks at Apologia and the next sermon, not exactly one that's going to be easy to do so I've got a lot of other stuff going on so yeah, the preparation,

56:12

I need to start, literally, the preparation and stuff that far ahead, I normally don't do that, but I'll have to because five debates is that's going to get me to 187 so we'll see what happens after that I'll get these couple questions in real quick so Andy P said,

56:35

Dr. Wright, will you do an evening of post -millennialism with the panel to debate some of the different takes on theonomy, christian nationalism, etc.

56:42

and can you do it in Tucson? You basically just did, that's basically what the panel discussion was at G3, which we'll be getting to,

56:51

I just wanted to tell him that it basically did the next question is a little bit deeper he said, can you guys explain if natural law contradicts or has to contradict vantillianism yeah, that's a big area the question isn't natural law, it's natural theology, what's the nature of natural theology what's the how do you even define natural law and the vantillian position is, yes, there is such a thing as natural law, but man is going to look at anything that is a part of God's revelation through the twisted lens of his own fallen nature and his suppression of the knowledge of God, so you have to deal with that issue first and foremost that's the whole point of presuppositionalism it assumes a biblical anthropology that, and I'm going to be talking about this on the dividing line coming up that's part of my pushback against Stephen Wolfe and his form of christian nationalism is he's a

57:52

Thomist, he's not a presuppositionalist he's not vantillian and he says that's all 20th century garbage that's the terminology he used in a tweet to me yeah, it's all 20th century garbage so there has for a while, being presupp was cool, mainly because Jeff was cool but now there's a huge pushback and I don't know if you've seen all the

58:20

I was once a presupp type videos that are out there now but there have been a number of them, especially from Reformed Baptists anyone who buys into the new resourcement of Thomas, you cannot be a fan of Thomas and be a fan of Vantill if you've read any of Vantill, you know this is the case, but most people don't know the whys, and it goes to what man is biblical anthropology, what the nature of sin is, and Thomas' understanding of how man can know

58:58

God the extent to which man can know God from natural reason but also ironically a rejection of the idea that God's revelation of himself in nature actually does get through, because that's what the presuppositionalist is saying, is it gets through and he's saying it doesn't so you can't hold both positions, and that's why there are a lot of people who were presupps but they didn't know why they were presupps they really never practiced it that have abandoned it and gone back to what they're calling classical theism, which is not what classical theism is, but that's another whole big topic as well

59:38

Okay, we'll end here on a fun question from Elementy11, if you could do a dream co -debate with someone, who would it be, and who would you choose as your opponents?

59:51

Oh, wow well, you know I have real interest in various areas, so I could view,

01:00:01

I could see some there are certain Muslims that I would love to see a two -on -two type debate with Oh, yeah, that'd be interesting

01:00:08

I would love to convince Yasir Qadhi to do a debate on the nature of the

01:00:18

Quranic revelation as far as changes in manuscripts and things like that that would be really cool Obviously, I would love to get a high -ranking

01:00:27

Roman Catholic crelate to debate especially to debate the what's going on right now

01:00:37

I mean, the letter that Uh -oh Rich, you just knocked me off the earth

01:00:44

We're back. Come on, Rich We're back I saw you reach down there

01:00:51

He's saying he's sorry After all these years of listening to DivineLand, this is my chance to yell at Rich Rich, quit messing around in there

01:00:59

This is the equivalent of what happens at church when the lights get flicked Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah

01:01:04

So, I'm telling Rich Luke said, stop messing around in there So, anyway

01:01:10

In fact, the light went off on my thing up there Let's see if I can bring it back.

01:01:17

There we go. I got it Anyway, so it would be an issue of dealing with what topic?

01:01:25

Are we talking about getting Dawkins to debate? Are we talking about getting a high -level Roman Catholic to debate?

01:01:30

Because that would determine who I would want to have along with me in something like that. But let's just be honest

01:01:36

Jeff and I were canning gloves So, you know I've told people that, you all know that last debate that we did in April.

01:01:45

You know what Jeff was up against Was that a debate? Well, it was No, I know,

01:01:50

I know. I'm kidding It was, and Jeff could have mailed that one in He could have come up with lots of excuses given what he was facing with his mom and everything that was going on, but he was on fire.

01:02:05

And he did a lot more talking in that one. There was a physical reason for that And if you were there, then you knew that I couldn't hear half of what the other guys were saying

01:02:14

He was physically closer to them, and so he could even hear what the Indian fellow was saying

01:02:20

Yeah, it was hard to understand I'm like, I'm gonna have to let the younger guy who's closer go here, because you know, but he was on fire that night, and so yeah, on subjects like that I think

01:02:36

Jeff and I make a pretty good pair. There's not a lot of people smart enough or brave enough to take the two of us on Yeah, well

01:02:44

I don't think Dawkins will ever do another debate after the Linux one, because he got his rear end handed to him, but I would love to see,

01:02:53

I mean this will never happen, but I would love to see a high -ranking Mormon official do a debate.

01:02:59

That would be amazing Except, there's probably never been a time in history where they are less likely to do that I mean, a

01:03:08

McConkie? Oh man McConkie, I think McConkie wanted to do stuff like that, and he wasn't allowed to, but there aren't any

01:03:15

McConkies left in Mormonism It's sort of a sad reality Someone said

01:03:21

Wilson and White vs. the World. I like that idea too Yeah, I'd love to team up with Dougie to do something like that I think we do pretty well, but we have to get the textual issue out of the way

01:03:34

I wanted to do that, we were scheduled to do that in April March -April of 2020, and that got nix -made, and I still want,

01:03:44

I'm that close to getting him over into the right area as far as textual criticism is concerned

01:03:50

I really think I am, so we'll see Alright, well one other question Thank you

01:03:55

James Solomon Has any one of you all heard of Great Awakening International?

01:04:00

Have not Sorry But yep, that's it

01:04:07

Thank you See, it's weird when I have you on the show because I have to refer to you as Dr.

01:04:13

White but then I struggle because I'm like, should I be calling him James or Dr. White? Because when you came on to be an elder you're like, stop calling me

01:04:20

Dr. White so I had to train my brain to start calling you James, and now I have you on Apology Radio and I have to revert back to my old ways

01:04:27

It's challenging Well, you're going to have to listen to my sermon on Sunday, so we'll be seeing you again fairly soon

01:04:35

Well thank you, this was an amazing time of story time with Uncle Jimmy Yep, yep, it was

01:04:41

You were really using that Wayback Machine today Well that's because we're talking about stuff from 40 years ago

01:04:50

I'm thinking about those things and I'm going to be hearing a whole lot more about it on Saturday when we have our celebration here so I'm sure

01:04:56

I'll be seeing pictures I haven't seen forever, it'll be interesting You're going to be like, who's that guy? Yep, it's true

01:05:03

Well thank you for being on, I appreciate it I know it was the last minute, so thank you

01:05:09

It's great to be with you We'll see you in a couple days Alright brother, thanks, God bless Bye bye

01:05:16

Well, thank you everyone, that was fun A little fun show Just sit back and salt and pepper that man with questions

01:05:23

Yeah, there's a lot of history there and a lot of good guidance and instruction on how to finish well too,

01:05:33

I really appreciated that There were so many questions I wanted to ask him I just didn't even get to I just wanted to hear all those stories as he was telling them

01:05:41

But, thank you everyone again We will be going to the after show here in a minute for those who are all access

01:05:47

Thank you, thank you, thank you, you guys are the best you make this happen Zach and I will be on there,

01:05:52

I don't know what we're going to talk about I was hoping to have James on, but he's going to do the DL so we'll think of something maybe we'll just answer questions which will be all

01:06:00

ADP probably Thank you again everyone and thank you for your support for An Abortion Now We just, oh my goodness

01:06:07

We were just, this week we were sitting down trying to figure out how many states we got going on for next year because we keep getting more and I think we're up around 18 that I know of Zach's got his work cut out for him

01:06:23

Yes, pray for my freshman recovery But thank you guys, seriously

01:06:29

I mean the number of babies that are being saved we don't even know the numbers in the at least in the thousands

01:06:37

I don't know, it's praise God, it's amazing 18 states wanting to put in equal protection bills is insane we're quickly heading to half the union pretty remarkable thank you for your support guys we seriously need it and we consider it a partnership with us when you support us you're part of that work so even if you're not out on the front lines you're not talking to the people putting in bills or legislators you're helping us, you're partnering with us just by supporting us financially and praying for us, so thank you but next week

01:07:18

I think we'll see, Zach and Jeff should be doing another show on Calvinism that's the plan for now, unless something changes with the baby situation so be looking for that and like I said, in two weeks we should be doing that panel discussion which

01:07:36

I'm very excited for it's going to be a good show alright, thank you again everyone we'll see