Road Trip Before the Storm

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line, a road trip edition once again, got to get used to being in here for a while yet. We are not quite halfway through, well, yeah, we're not quite halfway through this particular jaunt and hunkering down for a major winter storm that could or may or may not produce snow and ice.

That's the thing that they're saying to be concerned about is the ice. You can get power outages and stuff like that. And I will confess, I don't have a whole lot of experience driving in snow, but ice, not so much.

So yeah, we'll see what's going to happen and start teaching at Grace Bible Theological Seminary on Thursday. Thursday, six hours on Thursday, six hours on Friday, six hours on Saturday. Yes. Plus evening time stuff, well, at least on Thursday and Friday, not necessarily on Saturday.

By then I may just beg out and go, I'm here that or it's Thursday and Saturday. Maybe it's Friday. Well, whatever. We'll find out soon enough. And so that's what we got coming up. I just did two hours on Iron Sharpens Iron with Chris Arntzen, and we talked about the simplicity issue.

We talked about it more than we needed to, basically. And so we are on Odyssey this time, so I can talk about other stuff that is going on in the world. It is interesting to be following some of the news, which for me, while I'm on the road, is frequently Twitter or something like that.

But what's going on in Canada with the truckers? And I was just watching a video where farmers broke through a police barricade to go and support the truckers. You know, truckers and farmers have very large vehicles, a whole lot bigger than those little police cruisers, let me tell you.

And so interesting stuff going on. This is important stuff because these are the tyrants with their toadies versus freedom-loving people trying to say, no, that's not what the law says, and you all need to stop acting like you're in charge of everything.

We'll see what happens there. I found it fascinating and encouraging that Jordan Peterson retweeted Doug Wilson's commentary on his comments on The Joe Rogan Show. I think that's neat. We're going to keep praying for Jordan Peterson.

I think that's exciting and completely in the Lord's hands as always, as it always is. So I got myself, in hindsight, I should have just done what I do most of the time anymore. Most of the time anymore, when I see things on Twitter and Facebook, I've just come to the conclusion that there is so little concern to think clearly, even amongst Christians in social media, that why bother?

And even amongst my own tribe, to be perfectly honest with you. So I got myself into a situation, a night before last, I'm just trying to catch up with stuff after a busy day speaking. And I see some discussion going on, on some Reform threads, about Greg Bonson.

And just to let people know, I was not buddy-buddy with Greg Bonson. We didn't sit around and talk theology and apologetics, but we did know each other. And we had some communication. The last time I saw him alive was just a matter of a couple of months before he died.

And fascinatingly, fascinatingly, you will find this interesting. It was at the church that we now rent. And so the last time I saw Greg Bonson, he was speaking behind the pulpit, that when you watch Apologia, and I'm preaching, or just preaching, same pulpit, same church, same pulpit, quite interesting.

And I think the most important element was that he contacted me, I forgot what the exact, I think it was 94. He had been making some comments on Roman Catholicism. He had done a, I think it was in LA, a Radio Collins show, along with Jerry Matitix.

Now, that was an interesting encounter, given how fast Matitix can talk. And so Greg contacted me, he was supposed to debate Jerry in Omaha, Nebraska. And the opportunity came up for him to debate two homosexuals the same weekend.

So he asked me to take those debates with Jerry. I'm sure Jerry was very disappointed by that. I'm sure he was. But I was honored to do that, even on short notice, and went up to Omaha and did those debates with Jerry Matitix.

And so it was important, Greg sort of saw, and this was, like I said, 94, he saw what was coming, as far as the social direction of things. And so he had written a book on homosexuality. And you got to understand, that was not a common thing to do in the 1990s.

And it wasn't a popular topic, even amongst Christians, obviously. So that was part of our encounter with one another. So anyways, I saw someone talking about David Paulman. Now, since even yesterday, I've discovered, well, I did a search for books by David Paulman.

And I found that he'd written the foreword to a self-published book on apologetics. And then I found out that Eli Ayala had had him on with a presuppositionalist to have a presuppositionalist evidentialist debate.

But when I first saw stuff, all I saw was, I think it was Eli, I think he was posting somebody else's article going through Dr. Bonson's, sort of his vitae, his accomplishments in life, his education, all the areas that he studied, and not only academic degrees, but prizes that he won and that kind of stuff.

And all of this because David Paulman had basically just, and see, when I read what Paulman said, Paulman then attacked me, Jeff, other presuppositionalists. And to be honest with you, I didn't care about that.

He doesn't know me from Adam, so what did he have to say about me? Utterly irrelevant, completely, I don't care. The only thing I was concerned about is Dr. Bonson's dead, and Dr. Bonson would have a more primary place than I in the development of presuppositional thinking.

He's one of the key people interpreting Vantill. Obviously, there are differences. You know, Frame's interpretation of Vantill is not the same as Bonson's interpretation of Vantill. But this is all important stuff.

And honestly, when I saw it, all I cared about was the reality that here was a person basically saying, Bonson was an original thinker. There are lots of people who did far more in-depth stuff than him.

And the only reason that people are impressed with Bonson, White, Durbin, I think he mentioned and somebody else, there were some other people in there. There's a list of people. They're all shallow thinkers.

It's their ability to engage in rhetoric. And I mean, I know that's just absurd. And that should have been enough. I should have just gone, oh, why are we even bothering? And that is sort of why I said what I said, because anyone who has dealt with Bonson, listened to Bonson interacting with people, I've had the opportunity of reading some materials by Greg that are not available outside of a very small circle.

And the man was a deep thinker. I don't agree with him about everything. But when I disagree with him about something, I have to really know why I'm disagreeing with him. That's one of the things that demonstrates someone who is a deep thinker.

Anyway, when I first saw it, I'm like, why did someone take so much time to defend Bonson against this guy? Who is this guy? I've never heard of this guy in my life anywhere. And so I click around, it was Facebook, and I find his profile.

And he posted there, evidentialist, radical internalist, Christian rationalist, classical Arminian, and classical foundationalist. Okay, so we've got a guy who's really into philosophy here. And so I want to know, okay, if you're going to pan Greg Bonson, you need to have a standing to do so.

Okay, from my generation, if you're going to pan Greg Bonson, you're going to have to have a proper standing to do so. Evidently, that's not the case anymore. I blame the internet for this. But I was raised to have respect for people who are older than you are.

I've mentioned the shock that I experienced when I was sitting in Michael Kruger's office with Dr. Anderson as well. And I realized I was the oldest person in the room. I was taught to show respect for other individuals, especially those who are older than I am, or even along my same age, to say sir and ma 'am, that type of stuff.

And that you would not engage in dismissing someone's entire work when you yourself have not yet done any work. You needed to earn your voice. That's how I was raised. That's no longer the case. It's no longer the case.

As long as you have an internet connection and a good microphone, you get to say whatever you want. And I find that just horrific. It has not advanced the conversations in any meaningful fashion at all.

And has led to great division and cheapening of the conversations online, in my opinion. So I'm looking at what he himself posts. And I look at what he's doing right now. Sales Associate at Dillard's.

That is an honorable work. But it tells you that he has not yet, in his life, earned the standing to say the things that he said. Oh, I know. It was a hot take. I don't know where all this stuff comes from.

I don't know who first came up with a hot take. It wasn't more than, what, two years ago. I think it was the first time I ever saw it. So some might say it doesn't oh, come on. He was just simply no.

This young man, and looking at his picture, and then I saw a video today, that video that Eli Ayala did that had him on. I'd say he's about 25, maybe 24. He does not have any ground to say what he said about Dr. Monson, let alone the rest of us who are alive.

And if you're a Christian and you think, oh, yes, he does, what Bible are you reading? Do you not recognize that there needs to be a demonstration of showing respect for your elders in the Christian faith?

Well, this doesn't have anything to do with the church. It doesn't? Maybe that's the problem. Maybe the whole thought process here is, oh, this is philosophy. This doesn't have anything to do with the church.

All these people that you're blasting are ministers of the gospel? Hmm, interesting. Anyway, so I my whole purpose, and now I wish I hadn't done it, but my whole purpose, I said, who's David Paulman?

I said, this says everything that needs to be said, and I screenshotted what he himself posted about himself. Oh, how dare you do that? And I included the sales associate at Dillard's. I said, this says everything that needs to be said.

What does it say? Evidentialist. How many evidentialists do you know are going to be very accurate and careful and balanced in their analysis of someone like Greg Monson? Radical internalist. I have no idea what he thinks that means.

It obviously has some special meaning for him. Christian rationalist. I've got a feeling what group that puts him in. Classical Arminian. Well, you're I have often said presuppositionalism is utterly incoherent with any type of form of synergism, to be honest with you, because presuppositionalism is based upon accepting a fully-orbed biblical theology of the deadness of man and sin.

Arminianism doesn't. Therefore, there you go. And so what I was saying to my reformed brothers, I didn't care whether he saw it or not. I didn't expect him to. It wasn't I didn't care. Why are we expending this effort?

This person's criticism has no validity. It has no weight. None. And amazingly, the response from almost everybody has been he has the perfect right at his young age to completely pan not only the dead but the living without providing any meaningful foundation for doing so, falsely arguing that the only thing we do on this program is I show off my rhetorical skills.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, when we're working through Hebrew and Greek and stuff, it's just all rhetoric. And when we do theodicy, it's just all rhetoric. Oh, I'm just dealing with the history of Islam. Oh, it's just all rhetoric.

It's astonishing to me how many people have jumped to defend youthful foolishness rather than taking the kid aside and saying, you know, that may not be the direction to go. It may not be the direction to go.

So I posted this next morning. Chris Day writes to me on Facebook. Now, Chris Day is always very nice to me. We obviously disagree on a number of things. He's always jonesing for debates, but he's always been very nice to me.

But what he writes to me saying, I'm sure you didn't intend to do this, including where he works. I'm sure you didn't intend to do this, but because it would be beneath you to do something like that. That is a rebuke.

He's saying that if you did intend to do that, which I did, that is a rebuke. And so all I said in the article I wrote to explain all this stuff was, Chris Day wrote and rebuked me for doing that. And that's all I said.

Well, he just, you lied about me, and I was like, oh, Chris, you just really need to work on developing a little thicker skin. That's just not even worth going any farther with that one. Anyways, what we have here I think is just an example of how different online interaction is from what it should be in the church in real life.

In the church, if you're a 25-year-old young man, if you do not honor the gray hair around you, you're foolish. And the Bible says that. And if you think because you've read a bunch of philosophers, you're not subject to what the Bible says about that, you're going to be in grave danger of shipwreck of your faith.

At least I'll tell you that. I'll warn you if nobody else will. There's a reason the scriptures tell young men to honor those who are older. There's a reason for that. And when you don't, it puts you in really bad places, in really bad positions.

Just be aware of it. So probably another example for me. Don't even bother. When you see that stuff, yeah, you might be able to say something meaningful, but there just aren't enough people that think straight enough to figure it out.

You all hopefully are aware that, and I'm sure I'm going to mispronounce the woman's name, that Pivey Raisinen is, I believe, the trial is still ongoing. I haven't seen anything about the conclusion of it.

But this is a and there's a bishop, Bishop Poiola, I think also is on trial. And she was a member of parliament. Is this Finland or Sweden? Unfortunately, the oh, here you go. For some reason, the yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Oh, that's why I did it. It's because it's not in there. This is an ADF bulletin. And fascinatingly, all it talks about is Europe. I've seen a number of others. It's a Scandinavian country.

There you go. How's that? She is on trial for hate speech. And here's the thing that has to be remembered. This is for a pamphlet expressing Christian beliefs on the doctrine of marriage. You ready for this?

From 2004. 2004? 18 years ago? You can there were no the laws that are now being applied did not exist in 2004. And they are being retroactively applied? Wow. We think of these European countries as Western democracies?

Not so much these days, Tom. You dare even express a clear biblical statement about men, women, marriage, relationships within marriage, children, obey your parents, the concepts of submission. And these leftist totalitarians want to minimally bankrupt you and maximally stick you in jail.

Now, in all probability, they only want to do this a couple times because they know once you've done it publicly to a member of parliament, then that will chill the speech of anyone else. All those booklets will somehow disappear, and there will be no more expression of inappropriate beliefs.

So this is the government doing it in Europe. Corporations are doing this in the United States. Joe Rogan, we're going to take our music and we're going to go someplace else. Now, this is so completely different than anything in our experience.

I mean, I'm old enough to remember the days when sports players were focused upon playing sports. And you couldn't tell what the political perspective of the catcher or the pitcher on the baseball team was.

Or the announcers. And you couldn't tell what the politics of the singers were. That sort of started changing in the 60s, obviously. But even then, the idea was let everyone express their perspectives.

Let there be freedom of speech. Well, that didn't last long, did it? No. And so you've got people trying to get Joe Rogan canceled. For what? How many of the people trying to get Joe Rogan canceled could last two minutes talking to any of the guests that have made people so angry?

They couldn't. They couldn't. There's no debate. There's no refutation. It's just we are going to define what you're saying as misinformation. It's false information. Dr. Fauci told me so. And we've become so childish, and I do mean childish as a society, that people don't realize, hey, the best way to deal with that is not to silence speech, but to refute it.

It's to say, they're saying this. Here are the facts. And that's why when these fact-checker things come up in social media, I click on these things and they are infamous. They are infantile. They're just kids.

And that's the level it's on. There's a fact-checker. Oh, my goodness. The ability to critically listen, analyze, it's gone. It's gone. Safism rots the brain. I'm going to tell you right now. Safism rots the brain.

Safism is a religion for children. I was thinking about from my childhood, I remember this. I don't know why it was there. And when I visited since then, I guess they built homes there or something, but there was an open area.

It may have been not developed yet, possible. And there was, I don't know how to describe it. It was a dirt mound that had been long enough that trees had grown on it. Here it comes. I started hearing something.

I'm going, what's that crackling? It's not crackling. It's rain on the roof. Well, that's about, they said around 6 o 'clock. And that's pretty accurate. That's pretty good. And so the great winter storm begins.

We will see what this will result in. Anyway, sorry about that. It's a nice sound, though. And if it goes all night, which it's supposed to, I will sleep really well. Because that is one nice thing about being in a fifth wheel is the sound of rain on the roof.

It's pretty cool. Anyways, there was this thing over there. And the neighborhood kids would go and, believe it or not, we were allowed to dig in the dirt. And, you know, you'd find earthworms and rocks.

And sometimes it looked like an arrowhead and all sorts of neat, fun, cool stuff like that. And then you'd go over to your neighbor's house and you'd drink out of the hose. Probably why we handle COVID better than the young people who have never been exposed to all that stuff, I suppose.

Anyway, a storm came in. And I mean it was the lightning, thunder, sudden storm came in. And it caught us by surprise. And I was young enough that all I had was a tricycle at the time. It was probably somewhere around kindergarten, first grade, somewhere in there.

I don't know. Anyway, and it starts coming down and there's lightning and stuff. And I'm trying to get my tricycle back home across this field. And out of the gloom, here comes my dad. And he picks me up in one arm and grabs the tricycle with the other arm.

And we hustle out of that lightning storm. And I'll never forget that. Because what do children want? They want to be safe. And I wasn't safe at that point. I had felt safe enough when I was just digging in the dirt.

And yeah, I was a little ways from home and that was fine. But then everything changed. You want to be safe. Children want that. And parents want to provide it. Safism, it's fully understandable why someone with a tricycle wants to be safe.

It is not understandable why someone in college wants the government to do the same thing. That a society made up of people like that will be taken over by societies that actually have men and women in them.

That will take risks. And the children will be enslaved. And that's what's happening to the West right now. We're watching it right in front of us. We're watching it right in front of us. So we pray for Christians who are being persecuted in Europe for believing what Christians have always believed.

And then we look closer to home. And I had not heard until last week about the West Lafayette City Council. The West Lafayette City Council. Now, there is wisdom in all of those on our side who have been saying we need to act locally.

We need to get the right people into the local positions of authority. And go upward rather than being totally focused on president, senator, etc., etc., the top-down type stuff. But the other side does the same thing and has done it.

Why do you think all of these school boards are run by communists who literally defend pornography in public schools? It's because they long ago learned this is how to influence this culture, take over the educational system.

And so in West Lafayette, the West Lafayette City Council here in the United States, this is a bill that's come back into consideration now that is very similar and even worse, as far as I can tell, than C -4 in Canada.

And here in the United States, so you've got at the top, you've got the Equality Act already passed in the House. You've got the Equality Act, so you're trying to do it from top down. But they're also trying to do it from bottom up.

And that is to fundamentally make illegal the application of the Christian gospel. This says the ordinance discourages licensed professionals from providing conversion therapy, underlining the consensus views across professional counseling and psychiatric organizations that conversion therapy damages the physical and psychological well-being of minors.

Enforcement is reserved for unlicensed persons who would incur a $1 ,000 fine for engaging in conversion therapy with a minor person. Per the ordinance, an unlicensed person is someone who provides counseling or psychotherapy but is not licensed through the state of Indiana.

In other words, parents, pastors, there are a lot of churches that provide counseling places, free counseling places for people to come get help. For drug issues, sexual issues, things like that. And so here, down here, trying to go this way, trying to meet in the middle, trying to make it an airtight prohibition to practice the teachings of Jesus in Western culture.

And in the United States, specifically here. Hadn't heard about it until just recently. The battlefield is wide. The battlefield is wide. And you must understand that these individuals are pursuing these things because in their rebellion against God, they are seeking to suppress his truth and his knowledge.

That's what they're about. This is spiritual. We have to, we must, we will be absolutely incapable of engaging this battle if we do not recognize its spiritual aspects, its spiritual foundation. And we will be incapable of doing that as long as we continue to hold the myth of neutrality.

And many of us, it was drummed into us from our youth onward. That the government is neutral outside the realm of the commands of Christ. And you can't bring to bear in that realm the voice of authority of Jesus Christ.

We will be, we have no weapons to fight that battle. And that's what's happened because we've accepted that bifurcation of Christ's authority. We've accepted the idea that we need to do politics and create majorities over here.

To try to, I'm not sure why we bother to try to, but to try to resist the promulgation of evil and things like that within society. Not recognizing we have given up on the very power that's been given to us.

The very power that's been given to us, we've given up on it. We have to change hearts and minds. That's the gospel. The gospel has to be brought to bear in all of these instances. And people my age were taught you don't talk about politics and religion.

And what that meant was you never put the two of them together. And so when the Christian faith directly addresses that which is now the central aspect of political promulgation of power. We feel really uncomfortable saying what needs to be said.

Well, we still need to say what needs to be said. And believers in West Lafayette, Indiana need to be going to those meetings. And pronouncing when opportunity is given and a lot of these city councils are starting to learn.

We don't want to hear from what the people have to say because we know what they're going to say. But there needs to be, it's on YouTube someplace. But when I spoke to the Phoenix City Council, you only have three minutes.

If you want to work on expressing yourself succinctly, that's a good way to do it. When I spoke to the city council in Phoenix, I was very straightforward in saying to them, this is what happened in Germany.

They knew Buchenwald was there. They saw the smokestacks. They saw the lines of people going in but not coming out. There's a beautiful little town right down at the bottom of the hill. And they lived as if it wasn't happening.

And when we liberated those camps, we forced the inhabitants to tour the camp to see what had been going on right under their noses that they'd never done anything about. The German Christians, not all of them, the vast majority, had bought the myth of neutrality.

And we have as well. We have as well. And it's so easy to slip into it. It's so much more comfortable. It's so much more comfortable. And maybe you're like me. So this myth of neutrality is something that we have to, on a daily basis, seek to remove from our thinking, remove from our experience.

By the way, if you hear stuff in the background, it's raining harder now. We are, like I said, on the road. Can't really see much. You could have if we had gone earlier. You'd see the other RVs parked behind me and stuff like that.

But we are in the first leading edge of what's supposed to be a winter storm. It's still 65 degrees outside. But it will be down to around 11 within two days where I am. So yay. I'm getting to wear all my coogies anyways.

And even Rich would wear a coogie if he had to in these temperatures. Don't count on it. But he would. Anyhow, so back to where we were. The daily application of the Lordship of Christ. Do you want to explain where we were?

That we had a glitch? I thought you were splicing these together. I will later.

But anybody watching live knows that things just went nuts.

But we're back. Yeah, well, something went haywire with Wirecast. And we're just picking up where we were. And we'll edit them together and post it. Make it work. There you go. I'm not going to try to pretend I knew exactly where I was in the sentence when all of a sudden Rich says, oh, something just went wrong.

But anyhow, these are the things that we must be doing. Let me look real quickly here. There was one other. I do want to make mention of an article real quick. And then I'll sort of close off with some biblical thoughts.

But the other Paul, the other Paul64 .blogspot .com posted an article called Irenaeus and the Problem of Tradition. And it's talking about that first reference to apostolic tradition in early church history from Irenaeus where he says Jesus was at least 50 years old when he died.

And this had to do with the recapitulation theory and all the rest of that stuff. It's something we've talked about many, many times on the program. It's good. I would recommend it to you. I'll try to remember to link.

But he mentions some of the responses, including one that was written to me because I've been talking about this for years, by Mark Bonacori. And I'll be honest with you, I had forgotten about it. It's not something to think about.

I hadn't seen the name Mark Bonacori for a long, long time. I don't know if he's still out there, what he's doing. It's like Dave Armstrong. Is Dave still up in a tree? I don't know. But I don't, I do not have the time or the energy to be chasing these things around in these various groups.

It's just, it's not my thing. And so he makes reference to it, to Bonacori. Bonacori. And then what he does is he quotes from, and here's what he says. And Bonacori interprets it as follows, parentheses, the schizo-formatting is all his doing.

Parentheses close. And you know when you're dealing with someone who uses four question marks and then four exclamation marks and then bold and italics and then bold italics and then smiley faces and then laughter.

That's what this whole article was. It's probably why I had forgotten it because it wasn't serious. It was a desperate, desperate attempt to provide, and this is what it is, provide a reason to continue believing.

And that's what Rome's apologists, that's their primary task. It was like that awesome video. Man, I should have queued that up and we should have played it. That awesome video, Fix It With Newman, the video that was put out this last week where they took that advertisement for the type of tape that you can like, you know, there's water gushing out of a clear barrel and you slap it on there and it holds and it stops the leak.

And the guy cuts a metal boat in half and then tapes it back together, this stuff, and then takes it out on the lake and it's perfectly dry inside. And all of a sudden, I don't know if that stuff works that well.

What is this stuff called? I forget what it's called. Anyway, Miracle Tape, Wonder Tape, I don't know. Everybody's got to have some in their house just in case their house splits in half and you can tape it back together again, I suppose.

But what they did is they took that advertisement and they took out the Wonder Tape part and said, Fix It With Newman. So have you discovered the early church fathers did not believe what Romans always said they believed?

Well, Fix It With Newman. And, of course, John Henry Cardinal Newman, development hypothesis, all the rest of that kind of stuff, acorn to the oak tree. It's the excuse for, yes, we've always believed the same thing for 2 ,000 years, except for when we didn't.

And you'd expect that we didn't. It's just what it is. It's the same type of thing. That's what all Roman Catholic apologists have to do is fill in the holes because it's just not flex tape. Is that what it is?

Okay. Flex tape. All right. Well, I think I probably have some at home. I think that ad probably worked. I was like, you know, if I ever have a really bad leak, I can just grab this stuff and slap it on there.

And, you know, they don't tell you in the commercial it will only hold for 10 seconds and then make everything worse, but at least you can try. So, anyways, I'll try to remember to link to this because it is a nice short article on an important reality, and that is that apostolic tradition is a phrase that can be made to mean almost anything.

And be careful when people try to make it mean almost anything. Okay. We're going to wrap up with a little bit of a biblical I'm not going to bother to do the screen sharing thing this time around, but it seems like my neighbors are having electrical problems, and I'm somewhat distracted by people right out there.

It's raining, and they're trying to get their RV working. I'm glad that mine is working just fine so far. One obviously, as most of you know, on February bring the why isn't it oh, there it is.

On February 11th, I will be debating Tim Stratton in Houston on the question, is Molinism biblical? Now, that's an easy one if all we do is just stick to what is biblical. And as far as I can tell, any meaningful definition of the term biblical means this would be an easy debate, but that's not all we're going to talk about, obviously.

And in the very inception of Molinism is a fundamental rejection, and this is very clearly a part of Dr. Stratton's entire theology and worldview, is a fundamental rejection of the freedom of God to order time and the events of time in a way that is glorifying to himself and flows from his own will.

The Molinist wants to be able to say that in the final analysis, God's sovereignty and freedom is limited to the overarching things, but the actual form of what takes place comes from the free will of man.

And they have a real they like to use the term divine causal determinism. Divine causal determinism. And, of course, they're filling not so much the divine part, but the causal and the determinism part with Greek philosophy.

In thinking about the Bible addressing these issues, I have been struck once again in translating both the Greek and the Hebrew in Isaiah chapter 10. And what makes me just love the Bible more and more as I get older is when you see divine truths repeated in so many beautiful ways in Scripture that you didn't as a younger person, you just didn't have enough exposure to really see how beautiful these things were.

Isaiah chapter 10 does not start off saying the burden of the word of the Lord to explain his great sovereignty in dealing with mankind in history or something along those lines. It happens in history.

It is a part of what God does with the nation of Israel. It's a fulfillment of Deuteronomy 28 and 29. And, by the way, it's good to see God fulfilling his word. It helps you to have faith that he's going to do so in the future.

But I want to remind you of what is found here. Assyria was one of the most brutal empires in world history. Absolutely not the slightest respect or concern for human life at all, at all. Demonically pagan to its core, demonically pagan to its core.

And God used Assyria to destroy the northern kingdom of Israel, 722 B .C. And listen to what the word of God says in Isaiah 10 5. Woe to Assyria, the rod of my anger, and the staff in whose hands is my indignation.

Now think about what that's saying. God is so big that the Assyrians, who are the most feared empire in the world, are simply the rod of his anger and the staff in whose hands is my indignation. It's a rod.

It's a staff. It's a tool. It's a tool in God's hands. I send it, Assyria, against a godless nation. Ooh, there's a shot. And commission it against the people of my fury to capture booty and to seize plunder and to trample them down like mud in the streets.

What's that? Fulfillment of the blessings and cursings. This is the cursings part, which was considerably longer than the blessings part. Yet it does not so intend, nor does it plan so in its heart. Now, can we agree that the actions of the Assyrian king and of the Assyrians as a whole, these are human actions that on Molchanism, God put them in those positions to do those things, right?

And he had to put them in that position at that time to do these evil things, to accomplish his purpose. But just like you're fitting the Legos together, they are the ones that God had to know as a true subjunctive conditional would do those things in those conditions.

So what is primary? What is in the logical order of knowledge? The first thing is what those particular free creatures would do in that position, right? What did that text just say? Yet it does not so intend, nor does it plan so in its heart.