William Lane Craig on Presuppositionalism, More on the White/Howse (Get It?) Controversy

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00:34

And greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. It's good to be back here in Phoenix, even though it is,

00:40

I already miss my, you know, I talked about my second home, and everybody's going, oh boy, apologetics is good.

00:49

It's not my home. But when you're made to feel as welcome as I am there in Evergreen, it's a second home.

00:57

And it's become an important part of my summers. And so I was just up in Evergreen, and you all saw that on Skype.

01:04

And I guess people were contacting Rich, thinking that I'm dying or something, because there was like one, there's one light up here, and then some windows over there.

01:13

And so the lighting is terrible. And it looks terrible. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. Oh, yeah,

01:20

I always get nervous thing with the leg. The wife's always hitting me in the leg during church. Stop that. You know, so when you're when you're climbing,

01:29

I don't, I don't know, I forgot to add it all up. I think I get to like 49 ,200 feet, I want to get to 50 ,000 feet of climbing.

01:36

Your legs are gonna shake a little bit. When you're not working out. It's just, yeah, it was it was it was a great time.

01:42

And even though all sorts of weird and wild and crazy things happened while I was up there. It was nice to be amongst friends and in the beautiful mountains and you get away and and crazy people can't follow you up mountains.

01:56

Um, so anyway, a couple things I want to I want to start off looking at, you know, we want to we want to keep up with what's going to be going on here because this is fascinating.

02:09

I was just experiencing frustration because how long have we been here now at this?

02:17

How long? 10? 11 years still haven't organized my library.

02:23

Um, when we when we move my library here, it's, it's semi organized.

02:30

And after 11 years, it's sort of like, I think I know where most everything is. But I can't find my

02:36

Van Til books. And I know exactly what they look like, you know how you know exactly what color they are and what covers they've got, and where you've seen them and the whole nine yards and I I you can see it in your mind.

02:53

Just which shelf is it and I and then you you scan through I've got a fairly decent sized library and I couldn't find my

03:00

I mean, I've got it in Lagos. But sometimes you just want to hold the book up and say see, here's my markings on it and stuff like that.

03:07

Anyway. Then the terrible thought crosses your mind. Did I lend them to someone?

03:16

And I can I remember who it was? And generally you just go No, I have no earthly idea and they're gone.

03:24

Never see them. Never see them again. Fascinating situation has developed.

03:32

And that is that William Lane Craig is reviewing a debate that Saiten Bruggenkate was involved with and hence is making comments about apologetic methodology.

03:49

And before we talk about any of the other controversies going out there, and believe it or not, shockingly,

03:54

I might be involved in some controversies. No, no, you don't believe me.

04:03

No, I yeah, right. This is this is important stuff.

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It's something we've been talking about all along. What is presuppositional apologetics?

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What's the difference between William Lane Craig's approach and our approach?

04:23

Now, it's interesting. I found the following statement you ready to you ready for sound?

04:31

I found the following statement, refreshing, and important.

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And something that we can we, you know, you've got to, you know, give

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Dr. Craig credit for. Oh, I need to go back to normal speed. I was looking for something someplace else.

04:52

1 .8 speed would really sound very strange. Here's something that you've got to understand from Dr.

05:00

Craig. Dr. Craig Very much of what he said. The only thing I would have to add is with regard to this distinction between knowing my faith to be true and showing it to be true, he discussed showing our faith to be true by the use of argument and evidence.

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This is the task of apologetics. And he left behind knowing our faith to be true.

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And I would simply want to add to that that the way in which we know our faith to be true is primarily through the witness of the

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Holy Spirit. We are not primarily dependent upon arguments and evidence for knowing

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Christianity to be true. Rather, God bears immediate witness to us by his own authority that our

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Christian faith is true. And arguments and evidence are like a second line of defense that will come alongside and say, yes, yes, indeed, it is true, and there are good reasons to believe this.

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But apart from that— Paul Well, stop there. Okay. You know, I appreciate that.

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I mean, there is an element right there of important truth in regards to the role of the

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Holy Spirit of God in—I mean, I would argue that that requires regeneration, so on and so forth.

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Very, very important. But what Dr. Craig is doing is he's reviewing this debate that took place on methodology between Saitem Bruggekeit and—I'm sorry,

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I forgot to write down the other individual's name. Maybe somebody can throw it up in channel for me.

06:40

That would be nice. And as I'm listening,

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I know that sometimes some of the people from Dr. Craig's group listen to the dividing line.

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I'm just going to be straight up honest, and I'm not trying to be disrespectful. I just get the distinct feeling that Dr.

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Craig has not read Van Til, or Bonson, or any of the other writers,

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Olyphant. I just don't get the feeling in listening to his comments that he's actually read any primary source material within the presuppositional camp.

07:27

Even when Saitem Bruggekeit makes the reference to Reformed theology, he tries to challenge that and makes reference to very early

07:41

Reformed writers. Well, I think you can find plenty in the

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Institutes that plainly indicates the primacy of God's speaking, the primacy of the revelation of God's knowledge over man's knowledge, et cetera, et cetera.

07:56

But Sai is exactly right. The issue here is theological. It is what you believe about the clarity of divine revelation and whether revelation gets through, and therefore, that determines your methodology or whether or not.

08:15

And this was a short program. It was only 20 minutes long, and since they're playing other people's statements, there's actually only a few comments to get to from William Lane Craig.

08:26

I'm looking forward to the rest of it, but obviously, we want to try to keep up with what's being said.

08:36

If we just wait until it's all over with, then it's going to take a whole lot of time that we need to spend on other things.

08:48

So I want to get to that. I want to play his comments and comment on his comments and see if we can maybe make something good come out of this review from Dr.

09:06

Craig. And I see in channel, we have the redoubtable Saiten Rugenkate in channel, so maybe we'll get some comments from him.

09:17

Before I get to that, I was going to dive right into it before I get to that. There is somebody in channel.

09:24

I'm sorry, somebody on Twitter right now that has been perfectly honest with you, driving me crazy for a few days.

09:31

And I want to respond. Maybe someone will. His nick is

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Jeff the GK. Jeff the GK. And I would just like to respond to what he's saying.

09:45

We're going to have more to say about this a little bit later on, but since it's right there, since it's right in front of me, before we get to other things.

09:54

Here's the last few tweets. Do Muslims need Jesus? Yes, absolutely. But that doesn't change the fact that Dr.

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Oakley, 1689, that's me. People always ask why the Dr. Oakley. I love

10:06

Oakley sunglasses. Oakley anything, basically. Used to have lots and lots of them.

10:12

And then I had to sell most of them when I had to go back to prescriptions. But my eyes are getting better. So, I've got a bunch of Oakley sunglasses again, but I don't think

10:21

I've actually bought a new pair. Have I told you about this? You can get lots of used pairs on eBay.

10:27

And now there's a company called Revent that is making really cool replacement lenses. So, the frames are really robust.

10:36

So, you clean them up. Sometimes you change the little rubber thingies on them. 35 bucks for a pair of replacement lenses and voila, you've got brand new

10:45

Oakley sunglasses. These are not prescription. I guess

10:51

Revent might do actually prescription stuff. I don't know. I don't know. Anyway, that's where the name came from.

10:56

1689, London Baptist Confession, blah, blah, blah. How did you get your Twitter handles? I mean, unless you have something really exciting like Bob as your

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Twitter handle, some of us had to actually put a little thought into it. Anyways, yes, absolutely.

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But that doesn't change the fact that Dr. Oakley 1689 called this man a mentor and kindred spirit. Kindred spirit across the great theological divide that separates us.

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What about context, sir? I've been watching a lot of your tweets for all week.

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And it's like you either haven't watched or don't care to watch or don't care what the facts are.

11:42

I don't know. But I explained and I've explained at least three or four times now exactly what

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I meant by that. Why can't you listen to the explanations? Why can't you hear it? Do you have some refutation of it?

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I'm the final authority on what I meant when I said those words. And I would repeat those words because Dr.

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Cotty amongst his people has the emphasis amongst them that I have amongst mine.

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That's what I meant. He presses them to be consistent with their beliefs. Specifically, what I was referring to there was his statement to his people, why in the world should we teach people to memorize the

12:24

Quran in a language they don't understand if we don't teach them to live by the principles contained in the book?

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And I say to Christians, why in the world should we do all stuff of the Bible if we're not actually living it out? That's what

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I was talking about. If you're so prejudiced, if you are so bigoted that you cannot believe that there would be someone in another religion that actually tries to live their religion out, well, then

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I'm sorry for you. You obviously live in a very small place in a very small world and you've never met anybody else.

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Or you just live in one little commune someplace. I don't know. But that's what

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I meant. I stand by it. You can't refute it. So what's your problem?

13:08

And then the term mentor. Yep. So are a number of other people. I can name

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Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses and Roman Catholics that I've learned from. And if you haven't learned from, then that means you seem to enjoy your ignorance.

13:22

Okay, said it. All right. But as soon as they get control, their philosophy changes.

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This is a concern that I believe Dr. Elias Sikastian doesn't understand or care about. Their philosophy changes as soon as they get control.

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Look, how many times have I talked about what happens as the number of Muslims increase within a society?

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And I'm talking about certain kinds of Islam. I'm talking about certain people within Islam.

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How many times have I talked about this? What does any of that have to do? See, this fear that you have, oh, but they, they might take control.

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So we must fight them. And we, we just, we've got to put the walls up and we've got to, we've got to fight them. We've been given one power, one power, and it's not political.

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It's the gospel. That's the one power we have. And you seem to not really believe in that, which is strange.

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Then I said, I said to him, your context, you got a real problem context. What am I saying is wrong?

14:23

Is this not what YQ believes and what you reaffirmed during your Janet Mefford interview? Then what is disappointing is that people are more concerned about preserving

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Dr. Oakley's ministry than about his unbiblical actions. You've not shown me any unbiblical acts, actions,

14:38

Jeff, not a one. You haven't even tried. What you've shown me are politically incorrect actions.

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Now, what's interesting is for years, the term politically incorrect has been defined by the liberals. And so it's politically incorrect to use gender pronouns and so on and so forth.

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But you know what I've discovered recently? There's a rightist politically incorrect too.

15:00

And the, the being politically incorrect with the right is violating what they're trying to push and what are they trying to push?

15:07

Well, the, that we've, we need to stand firm as good old Americans against these people.

15:19

I challenge you, uh, Rich, the phone's on? Jeff, the

15:25

GK, you want to call? 877 -753 -3341.

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Only you, only you. Uh, in fact, uh, what I'm going to do here, you and you alone are free to call right now, live on the

15:44

DL. 877 -753 -3341.

15:52

Tweet! How about it, Jeff? Let's have a chat.

15:58

Let's have a talk. Let's talk about facts. Let's There's that.

16:11

And we'll see if, uh, if he wants to, uh, participate with, uh, with that.

16:16

Okay. What? Yes. Well, we're going to get to, believe me, we're going to get to all that, uh, as, as time, as, as time will allow here.

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But I said I was going to deal with William Lane Craig. And so we're going to, we're going to deal with William Lane Craig. Then we will get to Janet Mefford and all the rest of those things.

16:36

Uh, but I only have a few minutes of stuff to play here. So, um, what, what is presuppositional apologetics?

16:47

What is the issue? Well, it hasn't come up yet. And when they, uh, when they started the discussion, they played the other fellows.

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And did someone, I forgot to look in, uh, in channel and someone placed the name in channel for me here somewhere.

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Uh, I've scrolled back and I haven't seen anything anywhere here. So maybe somebody, somebody did.

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And I was talking about too many things. I don't, I guess, I guess not. Anyway, uh, they, they played the other fellows opening statement.

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I apologize. I didn't, didn't write it down. And, uh, then they started going for, uh, size.

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I'm not sure if they started at the beginning, um, or anything like that. I, Eric Hernandez, thank you.

17:34

Uh, they played Eric Hernandez. I'm not sure if that was the whole opening statement. I really don't know what the context of all those things were, but when they dove into size statement, um,

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Psy was being very conversational. So it's not like he started off by saying, well, let me give you a fundamental definition.

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He was comparing and contrasting things and maybe I'm being naive, but it, it seemed, it's like Dr.

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Craig, it almost seemed like when I debated, uh, John Dominic Crossan because for Crossan, it was sort of like,

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I've never really run into anyone who believed things like that before. That's very strange.

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Uh, you know, cause his reading is just completely within the ultra left side of the theological spectrum.

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And so it's like, it, it just struck me that the Craig's responses were sort of like,

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I've, I've, that just seems very strange. I don't, I don't understand why someone would say that. And you're, you're just like, if, if you, if you really have worked through anything by Van Til or anything, you wouldn't respond that way.

18:58

And that's why I'm saying, I, I just don't get the feeling that he's read these, these things. I just, and, and one of the reasons is the presuppositional perspective, because it is primarily expressed.

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I mean, every major writer I know of is, is a Calvinist. And when

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William Lane Craig was asked to identify false teachers in the church, he identified Calvinists before Roman Catholics or anybody else.

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It just strikes me that I think there's a really good chance that Craig just has never really, uh, wrestled with a meaningful, you know,

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I would, I would love to see Scott Oliphant and William Lane Craig, you know, maybe he won't, maybe

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Craig won't debate me, maybe debate Oliphant. I would love to at least see some type of a, of a dialogue or something going on there.

19:51

It'd be fascinating. So let's dive in. I want to hear what's, what's said here and make a few comments, then we've got other things to, uh, to get to.

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Oh, you know, it'd help if I clicked right there. Here we go. With this presuppositional approach.

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Historically, that's not the case, Kevin. The original - Okay, I skipped, I skipped something.

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This presuppositional, let's interject at this point, because he said a number of things that I think are really odd.

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Notice that he first associated Reformed theology with this presuppositional approach.

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Historically, that's not the case, Kevin. The original Reformed theologians in France were strong defenders of apologetics.

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Indeed, they thought that the - Did you catch that? Strong defenders of apologetics, as if presuppositional apologetics isn't a strong defense of apologetics.

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It is a strong defense of apologetics. Um, I would just, I would just throw out the question to Dr.

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Craig, have, have you read book one of the Institutes? Because that's where the knowledge of God, knowledge of man, that's how the whole discussion takes place.

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And it really seems to me that Van Til had a, had a firm grasp that the issues that we have today were not present in Calvin's day.

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The apologetic focus and concern was not present in Calvin's day. But the theology of Calvin and the preeminence of divine revelation, the deadness of man and sin, the absolute sovereignty of God and working out his decree, reprobation, that's all unquestionably there, which is not a part either of Dr.

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Craig's theology or of an evidentialist apologetic at all.

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So it just strikes me that to ask the question, and that's something

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I'm gonna be listening to, and maybe they can answer this, and maybe somebody can work it into one of the questions that's asked of him, you know, have you really taken the time to seriously interact with published sources on this issue?

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That's, that's one of the issues I'd like to have an answer to. The way in which the Holy Spirit would commend the truth to unbelievers was through the intellect.

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And so early Reformed theologians like Philippe de Mornay, a French apologist, had a strong emphasis upon reason as the tool the

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Holy Spirit would use to bring people to himself. Reason based upon what, however? Autonomous reason?

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Reason that places, see, later on, Craig's going to reject, really,

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I think, one of the most biblically accurate and foundational examples, and that is placing man in the position of judging the existence of God.

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He's gonna say that's a prejudicial example. It's a biblical example, a very strongly biblical example.

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So I'm still, you know, we're sort of in a preliminary thing. They've just gotten started in reviewing the debate.

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I'm not sure how many, I don't think they said how many episodes this is gonna go through, so we'll find out.

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And so when Ten Bruggenkait said, I can't bring anyone into the fold, well, every

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Christian, every Arminian or non -Reformed person would agree with that. Of course you can't.

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A conversion is exclusively the work of the Holy Spirit. Do you believe that?

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It's one thing to say, see, because again, is grace necessary and hence exclusively dependent upon the work of the

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Spirit to begin the process, or is it sufficient, that is, the

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Spirit can bring about regeneration, conversion, without the free cooperation?

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See, as a Molinist, that's not what he means. Unless he's changed, which no one, you know, no one sent me the note.

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But the whole reason for being a Molinist is so that you can sort of affirm two contradictory things, theologically speaking.

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But the point is that the Holy Spirit uses means to bring people to himself.

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Preaching is one of the means, but so is argumentation and evidence. So these are red herrings that really say nothing in favor of this presuppositional approach.

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They're not red herrings. The intimate connection to Reformed theology is central.

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And unless Dr. Craig has completely changed his perspective and is no longer promoting

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Molinism and no longer making the presentations he did, I just don't get the feeling that he's understanding what

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Psy was saying and the relationship. I think Psy probably was assuming that someone listening to this has actually done more background reading on this topic than maybe

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William Lane Craig has actually done. Because certainly, it doesn't fit in the super academic circles to be basically reading

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Van Til or something along those lines. Neither does the fact that presuppositionalism doesn't require you to be brilliant.

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This is really an odd reason to be a presuppositionalist because you can be stupid and be a presuppositionalist.

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That is not to say that therefore this is the correct apologetic method to use.

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I don't really think that's what Psy was saying. I have a feeling that what

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Psy was saying is what I frequently say when I teach apologetics.

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And that is when you use classical argumentation, when you use the classical theistic proofs, you know,

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I, for example, disagree with Bonson. I think the cosmological argument is a valid argument.

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I think Bonson sort of dismissed it. But it's valid in the sense that within a

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Christian worldview, it reflects a truth of God's created order. So it makes sense, but only because the

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Christian worldview is the true worldview. I don't expect it to convince an unbeliever who's in rebellion against the facts he already possesses.

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But there are certain theistic proofs that are, well, it's like the ontological argument.

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You can read about it and you can talk about it and you finally go, yeah,

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I think I've got it. I think I've got it. And then 30 seconds later, you don't have it anymore.

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And so even if you could get it, it's almost impossible to communicate to somebody else.

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And it's like climbing over that last ledge onto the knowledge of where God is and you fall down the other side.

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I think what Psy was basically saying is to use

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Dr. Craig's argument, you've got to be brilliant. You've got to handle all this stuff in the same way.

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And from the presuppositional perspective, it's not up to you. It's basically up to God's word.

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And you're dealing with the reality that each person you're talking to is in different ways suppressing the knowledge of God.

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That's what you're dealing with. And so I don't think Psy's point was, hey, this is apologetics for stupid people.

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I just don't think that's Psy. Yeah, in Channel, in all capitals,

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I wasn't. If I misinterpret you,

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Psy, let us know. It takes about 30 seconds. There's a sort of 30 second lag between what I say and what

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I end up seeing in Channel. But yeah, I don't think Psy was trying to say that presuppositionalism for dummies is for dummies or something like that.

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It's really not. Anyway. In the Christian faith.

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And it doesn't glorify God in the response to objections to just quote the

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Bible and say, well, I don't need to have an answer to your objections. There's no virtue in being ignorant.

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So I don't think that that is a legitimate commendation of the presuppositional approach.

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I am very sure once again, that's not what, that's not, that's not what was being said.

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You know, years and years ago, I was sitting, I remember which direction

29:29

I was sitting. I remember what table I was sitting. I was sitting at the Christian booksellers convention and it was in Dallas because I remember it was really hot outside.

29:37

When you live in Phoenix, it's really hot outside. It was really hot outside. And I was having lunch with Norm Geisler.

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Yeah, this was before the Potter's Freedom. This is back when Norm liked me. And up came the topic of presuppositionalism.

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And not only was it like a veil came down, but it was so clear to me that Norm had not only no idea really what

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Van Til was saying or what the emphasis was or anything else, but nor was he going to be interested in hearing someone try to explain it to him because he just had, hey, this is what it is.

30:28

I've already rejected it. No reason to go back over it again. And I don't like when someone tells me that I don't understand it.

30:37

And I'm getting that same feeling here. I'm getting the feeling that what they think is, oh, these people don't believe in evidences and they can't give answers from scripture.

30:51

And when it's all a matter of theological perspective in regards to the nature of the person that you're seeking to reach.

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And that's really what comes up when we get to Romans chapter one. But there's, hey, look, even a bunch of people.

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I've said, I'm going to offend some folks here, but this is old stuff.

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I remember back in the late nineties, early two thousands, I was teaching a

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Christian philosophy of religion for Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary back when I could still do that and for political reasons.

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And one of the books, one of the assigned reading books was to read

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Classical Apologetics by Gerstner and Lindsley and Sproul.

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And I love R .C. We've all learned so much from R .C. But R .C.

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loves Thomas Aquinas. And because of his love for Thomas Aquinas, I just have never heard him accurately represent.

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Now, except once when he and Bonson clashed, he sort of was forced to deal with Bonson at that point.

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And to this day, I think Bonson really prevailed in that conversation.

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But there's a strong prejudice to just present presuppositionalism as a shallow, blind, you just simply quote the

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Bible and there's no... And the true presuppositionalist says all evidence is my evidence because all evidence is

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God's evidence. I just refuse to put the lost person in the position of being the judge of that evidence.

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I am going to constantly, in how I present my evidence and how I present everything, make sure that he knows he's under the judgment of God, and that he is not getting to judge

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God. And that's the very illustration that Psy uses here in a moment that, oh,

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Dr. Craig really, really does not like. And I think that if anything is gonna come out,

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I think over the next few episodes, it's gonna... This is where it starts right here.

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They hear quite a lot that everyone believes in God, according to Romans 1.

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And an atheist will fight you tooth and nail on that. And they say, yeah. Well, what Paul says there is that everyone knows that God exists, but that they suppress the truth in unrighteousness.

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And I believe that. I think that's what Scripture teaches. Interestingly enough, though, how does

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Paul say that they know that God exists? It's through the evidence that God is left in nature.

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Now, I would love, I would love to hear Dr. Craig work through Romans 1, 18 through 32 exegetically.

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Exegetically. Exegetically. Because, and when

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I could do it today, we may end up having to. We've done it many times in the past. But the revelation that's found there, the foundational revelation that's found there in regards to man being unapologetus, without a consistent response, this to me is the heart of the presuppositional methodology, is that if any person, atheist, religious, agnostic, pagan, whatever, if any person is unapologetus, and that's why many people have to say, well, this is just about specific people.

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It's not universal, which is why I have to be able to go to Romans 3, demonstrate that from Paul's perspective, he was making it universal.

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If that's true, then what that means is it's not that they don't give a defense. It's they can't give a reason defense.

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There's no consistency there. That's what gives you the ability to provide the internal critique, to demonstrate that while they may make a defense, it will not be a consistent defense.

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Because they live in God's world. And as God's creatures, then they have to deal with God as he is.

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And so, I would love to hear, because Dr. Craig doesn't give us, he says they know this because of the external evidences.

35:28

Well, God revealed it to them. Is that just external? There is some question when it says

35:34

God has revealed it to them, because when it says in them, it uses the plural. So, it could be internally within them, their conscience, or externally in the evidences of his existence and his divine power, which holds men accountable to give thanks to him and honor him as God.

35:54

That's extent of general revelation. The general revelation is absolutely clear.

36:01

If it's absolutely clear, then why is Dr. Craig's argument that the majority, the preponderance of the evidence points to the greater probability of existence of a

36:10

God? How do you fit those two together? To say on the one hand, yeah,

36:16

I believe men know God exists. Well, what's the nature of this knowledge? What's the suppression?

36:26

Does Dr. Craig really believe that in his presentation, the cosmological argument, he is prying up fingers of someone who's suppressing that knowledge or that he's actually giving new knowledge to them?

36:40

These are questions that this series is going to raise for a lot of folks that I don't think were answered in the first one, which, hey, if this ends up being 10 long, then 10 sessions long, then maybe we'll get that information.

36:55

I don't know. So, how is this presuppositional? It's not on the basis of Scripture.

37:01

So, if you want to... See, he seems to think that presuppositionalism simply means that you just quote

37:08

Scripture rather than recognizing that when you see the presupposition of Scripture that man is in rebellion against God and that man was created dependent upon divine revelation in the first place.

37:22

And that therefore, Scripture does not look outside of itself for some kind of affirmation in the argumentation of man or fulfilled prophecy makes

37:34

Scripture true. No, fulfilled prophecy happens because Scripture is true, not the other way around.

37:42

But again, I just don't get the feeling that he understands. I don't get the feeling he's read.

37:49

Can I make a suggestion to someone who maybe knows Dr. Craig? I mean, I'm sure he's a voracious reader.

37:55

I'm sure he's a swift reader. Could you read Covenantal Apologetics by Scott Olyphant?

38:03

I mean, if you don't respect me, then respect Dr. Olyphant.

38:08

He teaches at Westminster, brilliant mind, current, very much in the philosophical realm, like you could stand toe -to -toe with Craig in the philosophical realm.

38:21

Why not read Covenantal Apologetics? You know, the irony, it just struck me just as I was saying that, because I hadn't thought about saying that.

38:29

The irony is, and you could go listen to my interview of Dr. Olyphant from two summers ago on the

38:36

Janet Mefford Show when I filled in for her. Fan the flames of their knowledge of God that they've somehow been just suppressed.

38:43

You want to point them back to what God has shown? Well, one might conclude that, might one.

38:49

But here's the problem. They're suppressing it. They're holding something down. They're already in possession of it.

38:56

How is reminding them of, see, that's not what

39:01

Dr. Craig does. Dr. Craig is presenting arguments. He's not saying, you already know the truth of this.

39:08

I've never heard him say that. Now, if that's what he's always intended, well, cool,

39:14

I guess. Kevin, I mean, think in the Book of Acts when

39:19

Paul and Barnabas arrive in Lystra and they do a miracle and the people think that the pagan gods have come down to earth and the priest of the

39:31

Temple of Zeus comes out and wants to offer sacrifice to Barnabas and Paul as gods.

39:38

And they say, no, no, we're humans like yourself. The God who made the heavens and the earth has not left himself without witness.

39:47

Namely, he's given you fruitful seasons and times and so forth. So they thought that the evidence of the true

39:54

God was what Paul says in Romans 1. He has revealed himself in nature, and this provides evidence of who the true

40:01

God really is. Jesus said, I will give you words and they will not be. Okay. Yes, the extent of natural revelation, general revelation, but the supremacy of specific revelation, special revelation, inscripturated revelation, central to the presuppositional argument.

40:24

I'm not getting the sense yet that Dr. Craig is fully aware of that.

40:31

That's going to be one of the things we're looking at. Last section here, believe it or not, it was short. It was short because once you played like five minutes from the other fellow and then some of Si's statements, one of the key issues is how do you view the person you're attempting to reach?

40:48

Are you inviting them to judge God's existence? And I say, that's what

40:55

Dr. Craig always does. When Dr. Craig says, I suggest to you, please consider the possibility that the preponderance of the evidence points to the greater probability existence of a

41:08

God. You are saying to that person, I am inviting you to make this decision. And the presuppositionalist says,

41:17

God is the one who judges, not the pot. The potter judges the pot.

41:23

The pot doesn't judge whether the potter exists. The pot already knows the potter exists.

41:29

Our job is to pry those fingers up that are doing the suppressing, that are doing the holding down. Okay? So listen to what

41:38

Si says, and then listen to the response from William Lane Craig. That if you examine the evidences, then you become judge of the evidence.

41:46

That's the one thing that I say to people. I say, where do you hear evidences most often out in the secular world or out in the world? You hear in the court of law.

41:52

So somebody comes up to you and says, I don't believe in God. First of all, they're blaspheming God because God says they do believe in him. And we're rejecting what

41:58

God's word says. And most people just ignore that and say, well, let me give you some evidence. But evidence is given to the judge and to the jury to try and acquit the accused.

42:06

You know, that's what the crown attorney, or I'm in Canada, so I guess it'd be the prosecuting attorney is trying to do, or the defense attorney is trying to get his client off.

42:15

So in this courtroom, we are elevating the unbeliever into the judge's chair. And who occupies the criminal's box?

42:21

The Lord of Glory. And we present evidences to the judge and jury to try and acquit God. Now, the thing is, we can do that.

42:28

God has given us wonderful evidence as far as existence. But here's the problem. Even if you win that argument, the unbeliever is still the judge.

42:35

Yeah, I think we should interrupt at this point. I think that— Now, let me just stop there. The first time

42:45

I heard of Psy was on the Unbelievable radio broadcast a number of years ago. But I remember—oh, goodness.

42:55

Do we still have that atheism tract around someplace? Probably stuck in a box somewhere.

43:01

But yeah, being reworked, good. Because I did an atheism tract, and that was back in the

43:08

Joe Charles days. That was the 1990s that I did that. So Psy will have to tell me who was here first on that one.

43:17

And of course, I wasn't original on it either. Many people had come before me. But I remember very, very, very clearly the presentation of this very issue in that tract.

43:33

And that is exactly where the issue lies, is how are you going to view the person?

43:44

And how are they going to deal with the information you're presenting to them? If they're rebel sinners, then the idea of just presenting new arguments rather than exposing the hypocrisy of suppressing the truth they already have is going to get you absolutely nowhere.

44:03

This is the issue. It's a theological issue. And I think that's why a lot of people struggle with this is because they want to be a philosophical issue.

44:12

They're much more comfortable with being philosophical rather than theological. And so if the sinner is sitting in the chair of the judge, he's just going to dismiss any evidence that would demonstrate that he's not supposed to be sitting in that chair, that that's not where he belongs, that he is ontologically not fit to be taking the role that he's taking.

44:41

And of course, in our secular world, there you go. In our secular world, that's a completely different issue.

44:46

But as soon as Si gives that, then listen to William Lane Craig's response. Silverman Yeah, I think we should interrupt at this point.

44:54

I think that he's employing a prejudicial analogy here. There's no reason to think that—

45:01

Jared No, let me just—prejudicial analogy? How about Potter and the

45:07

Clay? I think that would even be more prejudicial and yet even more biblical.

45:16

Prejudicial analogy. Well, if you think something's prejudicial, then what is the source of the prejudice?

45:27

It would seem that this would require the idea that, well, if you view man as a creature who's judging

45:35

God, that's prejudicial. Listen to why he would dislike that, which says a lot about his anthropology.

45:44

Over against his suggested analogy and see if there's anything—well, it'll be enlightening.

45:54

Silverman We are talking about a criminal case in which God is the accused and the unbeliever is the judge, to whom evidence is being given.

46:04

I mean, why not think of this in terms of another analogy? For example, the analogy where a person has a fatal disease and we have evidence of a cure that can help him.

46:20

Jared Now, think about—I want you to think about this. This is one of the leading evidentialist apologists in the

46:27

English -speaking world. And this is important stuff. Think about that analogy.

46:35

Do you—I see fundamental category problems there. Fundamental category problems.

46:43

Okay, we're looking at the apologetic situation. Okay, let's view it as you're dealing with a secular atheist.

46:52

There are a few of them running around today, like an entire generation.

46:58

Um, you're dealing with a secular atheist, and from Si's perspective—I hope he doesn't mind if I speak for him—you cannot allow that secular atheist, who rejects

47:17

God's existence, says, God is not spoken. I am not a creature. You cannot allow him to—or her—to think that they are in position of getting to sit as judge and jury over any evidence of their own creatureliness.

47:40

Because the Bible says they are unapologetus. They already know God exists. They're suppressing that knowledge.

47:46

And they're twisting their relationship with God. They're twisting their relationship with their own creator, and hence twisting their relationship with what's around them.

47:54

That's the context, by the way, of the discussion of homosexuality in Romans 1. It is a sermon illustration.

48:00

It is an illustration of an argument that this twistedness that results in the creature doesn't result in a twistedness in God.

48:07

It results in a twistedness in the creature will even go to the level of their basic sexuality and personhood.

48:15

That's Paul's argument. And so, there you have Romans 1. There you have the illustration of Si's giving that you cannot—it is utter futility to appeal to a rebel who is in a position that he is not in.

48:33

Not in. Does the Bible tell us that man is in a position to judge the existence of God?

48:40

No. Man lives in God's world. So, I'm struggling a little bit, and I imagine a lot of the rest of you are with me.

48:55

How does convincing someone of a horrific sickness or illness, how does that fit as a categorical parallel to this situation?

49:20

I mean, if I had—and the older I get, the more convinced

49:26

I am, I think we all have cancer, to be honest with you. The question is whether it's going to manifest itself or not. I really do.

49:34

Especially guys, I think. But it just seemed—this is my conclusion. But let's say, for the sake of argument, that I have some terrible disease.

49:47

The only way to try and make a parallel here is that I am self -deceived about it. And that I feel the aches and pains and things like that, but I just—I'm self -deceived about it.

50:02

I'm closing my eyes to that. I think that's how he's thinking. But there's nothing here about rebellion.

50:11

And that's where the issue is. Because anthropologically speaking, evidentialism fits much more, much more with a

50:23

Wesleyan, Arminian understanding of man than it does with a reformed view.

50:30

And that's why Sy was right. It goes back to that fundamental issue. There's nothing here about rebellion.

50:36

There's a lot about rebellion in Romans 1. Exchanging what? The truth of God for the lie.

50:42

It's that constant exchange. The exchange results in the darkening of the mind and the reasoning of mankind, etc.,

50:51

etc. And it has nothing to do with disease. I mean, eventually you can sort of get around to the sickness of sin and life in Christ and so on and so forth.

51:06

But that's not what we're talking about here. It's just categorically. I was left going, really?

51:14

You're trying to convince someone that you have the cure to their disease.

51:20

How is that just on an epistemological level, ontological level, philosophically? I mean, here

51:27

I am saying to William Lane Craig, I think philosophically you blew it there. When does that happen, eh?

51:36

Yeah, there's a problem there. To be cured of this fatal disease and in order to convince him to take the medicine, we give him evidence of the clinical trials and medical studies that have been done to show that this is really an effective cure.

51:54

And we plead with him to then take the medicine and be cured.

52:00

I mean, why not use that analogy instead of this? Take the medicine and be cured.

52:06

That's the same thing as acknowledge that you're a creature and that God is

52:14

God and you're not. I mean, why make such a huge stretch?

52:20

A very prejudicial analogy of the criminal case. To extend my analogy, the evidentialist would say, here are some medical studies to convince you that the cure works.

52:35

Here are some that the cure works rather than God exists. There's no connection here.

52:44

There really isn't. And then we get more misunderstanding of what the presuppositionalist is saying.

52:50

The presuppositionalist just says, it works. Take my word for it. I have authority that says this cure works, but I will...

53:00

You see the problem here? Because you see, God has authority to say, I exist and you're my creature.

53:07

And we are announcing that to our fellow creatures. When you completely miss what the issue is, then you've got this, oh,

53:14

I can't tell you why the cure works. Just take my word for it does. I'm a snake oil salesman type thing.

53:29

It's just the beginning, okay? Let's not prejudice the whole thing. It's just the beginning.

53:35

But it's going to be useful. It's going to be interesting to follow through on the rest of it.

53:41

It really will be. And I'm looking forward to it. So we're certainly going to be listening and we're going to be seeing when the new podcast drop and things like that.

53:51

Twice, I have asked my Twitter critic, who evidently is

53:57

Jeff Dornick, who I had blocked.

54:04

And then evidently what he did is he came back into Twitter. Crazy Cat Katie discovered this.

54:11

She's scary about things like this. Yeah, I had blocked Jeff Dornick. And then this Jeff the

54:17

GK came back and joined July of 2017. So he's just joined and that's where it's coming from.

54:25

So evidently, Jeff doesn't want to call.

54:31

I'm sorry? He's gone silent. Yeah, not responding. Suddenly you put that telephone number up there and nothing, that's it.

54:39

Boom. No more posts. I'm just a terrible, horrible, nasty man. Let's talk about it.

54:46

And all of a sudden, poof. Yeah. So anyway, well, that ain't the first time.

54:54

Let's see, is Algo in channel? Yeah, Algo's in channel. Algo, what was the name of that guy?

55:02

Oh, years ago. Remember, we were here. So there is this guy that was going to give me this whole list of all my errors about Roman Catholicism and stuff like that.

55:13

And then he said, give me six months. Guardian. Who? It was Guardian. Was it Guardian?

55:18

Guardian. Okay. It had to be Guardian because the only other name

55:23

I know is Mickey. Remember Mickey Meltdown? Mickey, that was something else. It was Guardian. Yeah. And I think the guy called in, if I recall correctly, said, give me six months.

55:35

And that was like, what, about eight years ago? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

55:41

So there you go. Interesting, interesting stuff. Okay. Lots of stuff to get to.

55:52

And I do not want to spend a tremendous amount of time on this subject.

56:01

I don't want people to feel like we're beating it to death. At the same time, you need to realize, and by the way, was it christiannews .net

56:14

or com? I think it's .net. A article was put out.

56:22

I was still up in Colorado, so I think last week. Yeah, .net,

56:41

christiannews .net, which I believe is the group that did the beer and tattoos thing last year. May have been the same writer.

56:52

I don't know. Anyway, I was just really pleasantly surprised.

56:57

I want to thank them for that. As I noted, I'm not a big fan of beer and tattoos, in a Facebook post.

57:05

Accurate citations, contextual citations, citations from me in response to the critics, fair citations of their stuff.

57:17

Yeah, I thought so. And so kudos on that.

57:25

Just wish the beer and tattoos thing last year had been done on the same grounds.

57:31

And then even a link to the video from the first night of the dialogue when, to the very point, which

57:42

I think is one of the most vitally important aspects of that dialogue, where I expressed my greatest desire for Yasir Qadhi and then he for me.

57:57

Which, by the way, I'll just be perfectly honest with you. As I think about my many critics,

58:05

I have a hard time, honestly, seeing any evidence in almost any of them of any concern for Yasir Qadhi at all.

58:12

I see a lot of fear, prejudice, bigotry, but I don't see much evidence of an actual concern for that man's salvation.

58:22

And in fact, I see in a lot of people much more concern about the maintenance of the

58:28

American way of life than the salvation of almost any Muslim soul at all. But that's my feeling about that.

58:39

Last week on Friday, Janet Mefford, on whose program

58:46

I have been many times, I suppose I should use the past tense, had been many times.

58:53

My last appearance was Monday, which was recorded on Friday, by the way.

59:04

And I recognized,

59:09

I heard that she was going to have Jim Simpson on. Did she call you or a producer call you?

59:15

She called you directly. Was going to have Jim Simpson on. Now, just to remind everybody,

59:21

Jim Simpson did a what I call a hit piece. You can call that prejudicial if you want.

59:28

But a hit piece on me. I call it a hit piece because on any journalistic level, he did not contact me.

59:37

When I wrote to him on Twitter, which is so difficult to find people these days,

59:43

I asked him if he had read any of my books, seen any of my debates. I didn't ask him if he had watched every single one of my 159 moderated public debates.

59:54

And if he had seen any of my refutations of Brandon House, because he pretty much just repeated the Brandon House line, but expanded on the attacks on Yasir Qadhi.

01:00:04

And Yasir Qadhi is this terrible, horrible man. And it doesn't matter what he says. He's just engaged in Taqiyah. And he's actually, you know, a leader in the

01:00:10

Muslim Brotherhood and all the things like that, which is the Robert Spencer inspired meme that just you just have to follow that if you're going to be a part of this group.

01:00:22

And his response was, why should I? You're wrong. So he hadn't contacted me, hadn't done any research, just took

01:00:31

Brandon House's stuff, expanded it with stuff that he had, and put out the hit piece, which

01:00:39

I responded to last week. And the only part that was relevant, the allegations, theological allegations, just fully refuted it.

01:00:49

Just, I mean, I think to any honest, hearted person that would just look at the facts, just took it apart.

01:00:57

Janet did not challenge Jim Simpson on anything. She softballs all the way through.

01:01:03

That's a good question. Oh, yeah. All the way through. Even when he made the absurd allegations about money.

01:01:11

Well, I don't know. But where's the money coming from? They sold tickets. This is White and Cottie going around making money off of sitting around talking about Christianity.

01:01:19

I don't know. That's the nice way of making accusations without having to back them up.

01:01:28

And of course, it was a lie. And one of the things that's bothersome to me is that Janet clearly listened to the program

01:01:36

I did in response to that. She took offense at many things I said, but never brought up the reality of the fact that her guest, and she had called it a good question about the money, had simply, once again, if he had just done a little bit of due diligence, would not have been making these kinds of false accusations.

01:02:02

And so when I listened to Janet's interview with Jim Simpson, I knew that it was going to be at least somewhat of a controversial or confrontational discussion.

01:02:19

But I have a lot of character flaws, folks. Really do. One of them is

01:02:25

I tend to think the best about people. And that's got me in trouble a number of times.

01:02:34

And the list of former friends that...

01:02:40

My former friends list has really exploded over the past six months or so.

01:02:46

Really, really, really has. But I still, in the midst of that, try to not become absolutely skeptical about everything.

01:03:01

And so I hope for the best. I hoped for some meaningful discussion.

01:03:10

I hoped that Janet would be interested in knowing about what happened after the dialogues, the doors that were opened, the gospel presentations, that type of stuff.

01:03:22

I was wrong. Anyone who listened to it knows that nothing was said about Jim Simpson.

01:03:32

Nothing was said really about the article. She started off the ground rules that I couldn't even mention to anybody else other than the

01:03:40

Jim Simpson thing. And so I just want everybody to understand, you know, we played some sections of the original hit piece that Brandon House did.

01:03:50

And from what I understand, I haven't been spending a lot of time doing it, but if you go over to Brandon House's social media and stuff,

01:03:57

I am his 24 -hour obsession right now. It's just, I was told a couple weeks ago he interviewed some guy, some poor guy, on some political issue, he kept bringing me up.

01:04:08

The guy never even heard of me. But I'm just his obsession. And I can assure you, he's not mine.

01:04:16

But I want to play you a clip from the July 7th

01:04:22

Worldview Weekend program. And just as an example, and we're going to come back to this a little bit later on, but I want you to understand that at one point during the interview, when

01:04:39

I did try to sneak in between the interruptions, what happened as a result of the dialogues,

01:04:47

I was talking about the young lady who asked me that question, remember? How do you handle the impact of pagan religion upon the development of the

01:04:55

Trinity at the Council of Nicaea? And I made the statement, I said, and I'll be honest with you,

01:05:01

Jen, I said, I don't think most of my critics would even be able to answer her question.

01:05:06

That's ad hominem. You're just attacking people. That's not fair. Let's listen.

01:05:12

Since she told me I couldn't even talk about these people. Was I engaging in ad hominem? Let's listen to the

01:05:21

July 7th Worldview Weekend with Brandon House. Welcome back.

01:05:27

Glad you're with us. We're all going to have to talk really fast because we have about two hours of this stuff to get into eight minutes. Dr. D.

01:05:32

Young, you have been using 2 John 9 -11. I've been using 2 John 9 -11. Sharam has been using 2

01:05:39

John 9 -11. Andy Woods has been using 2 John 9 -11. All of us have been using the same text to describe what is going on.

01:05:47

Now James White has come out with an article June 30th, the same day, by the way, that Linda Sessura reportedly made her comments, and is saying 2

01:05:55

John 9 -11 examined and that it really doesn't apply to him. You want to comment on that?

01:06:00

Any heretic can pervert the scriptures to make it say whatever they want. From the very outset, first time you mentioned

01:06:06

James White to me, Brandon, I said the man does not believe the Word of God. He's a heretic. I think we're supposed to mark him and then get rid of him and just forget about him and get on with teaching the true

01:06:18

Word of God. I mean, if he understood the true Word of God, he would not be doing this in the first place.

01:06:23

So I, without question, think the man is a heretic. I don't care how much seminary training. I don't care if he's got a

01:06:29

Ph .D. I don't care what he has. He doesn't have B .A., and that's born again, as far as I'm concerned, or he wouldn't be doing these type of things.

01:06:38

Those who do not follow God's Word, the Bible is plain. They're heretical. We're not to deal with them.

01:06:45

And, Sharam, quick comment, because I've got to get Jimmy in here on the northern border and what's going on with the burning of the American flag in the Middle East.

01:06:51

You just told me during the break you just had a conversation last night with Dr. Andy Woods over that very topic. Can I just point something out?

01:07:00

Here in the midst of basically saying that, you know, accepting the charges against a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, I mean, we could point out the violations of numerous scriptural parameters here.

01:07:17

But in the middle of that, someone's burning flags in the Middle East, the American flag, and we need to talk about that.

01:07:24

We need to talk about that. I think it tells you something. Andy Woods called me and said, and I don't want to -

01:07:30

And by the way, Andy Woods is now on the Worldview Weekend network.

01:07:38

Paul Flynn is now on the Worldview Weekend network. So if you join the bandwagon, you get airtime.

01:07:48

And so they're just interviewing each other. You know, all the critics all get together, and look how many of us there are in our merry little band.

01:07:57

Yeah, it's interesting. Words in his mouth, but his comment to me was, I've read his treatise three times, and I still can't understand it.

01:08:04

He's saying, he's actually saying, according to Dr. Andy Woods, that 2 John 9 is no longer applicable, period.

01:08:10

Now keep that in mind because that is obviously false, and I will document it to be obviously false.

01:08:18

But that's the context of, you know, the 2

01:08:24

John 9 -11 thing. That's the only meaningful argument you're gonna get from these people.

01:08:31

The first guy, I have no earthly, some Bible prophecy dude. He's just a heretic, just don't have anything to do with it.

01:08:39

He don't believe the word of God. And that's what he just did. There was no exegesis.

01:08:45

Let's not actually deal with what I said. Let's not actually engage in the text. Oh no, no, no, no, just dismiss him.

01:08:52

That's the only argument right there. Keep that argument in mind. Period. Well, why is it in the Bible then?

01:08:57

I mean, this is what we're talking about, is that this guy is off the reservation, and any of those who are supporting him—

01:09:03

I am off the reservation. I drove through the reservation from Colorado. I went through the reservation—

01:09:10

So you took the Tuba City route then? I did. Oh, there you go. I did, I did. So I was on the reservation, and I— Now you're off.

01:09:16

So he's right. I am off the reservation because I'm in Phoenix. Are going down the road. We need to, as Dr.

01:09:21

Young said, and I said to you, Brandon, in my mind, I've turned James White over to the enemy. Lord, turn him over to Satan, let him sift him.

01:09:29

If he has any chance for salvation, come back. If not, Lord, you judge him. Because we have to, like you said,

01:09:35

Dr. Young just said poignantly, we have bigger work to do for the sake of the kingdom and the sake of the gospel, and how much more can we warn these people?

01:09:44

Well, and you would think the Bible ministries and folks that are defending him would say, you know, you've crossed the line now with not even being able to exegete the scriptures on 2

01:09:51

John 9 -11, not to mention, you know, when he defended Qadi's use of jihad and Christians are filthy, you can take their property and lives.

01:09:57

Oh, well, you know, Isaiah says we're all filthy. I mean, this is really now moved into a whole— I look at the people that have endorsed his ministry, and what it tells me,

01:10:04

I guess, is basically they'll endorse anybody. Dr. D. Young, Israel's northern border is quite—

01:10:11

Okay, and then they went on to other things. I do want to talk about—

01:10:19

I'm actually gonna try to make something good come out of that. I mean, here you have people, turn them over to Satan, heretic, unbeliever, doesn't believe the

01:10:27

Word of God. You can only give to people's opinions the weight that their own work demands that you give it.

01:10:36

And so I don't have any reason to give much weight to that.

01:10:42

But the point is, this is the shrill kind of invective. And in answer to Janet— and I have a feeling

01:10:50

Janet will probably listen to this— none of those men would have been able to answer that woman's question.

01:10:57

Not one of them. Not one of them. Don't tell me that Brannan House could quote, off the top of his head, the testimony of Ignatius of Antioch, the deity of Christ, to a

01:11:08

Muslim woman at a mosque. Not gonna happen. It wasn't ad hominem. But you see, Janet just took anything

01:11:14

I said in the most negative possible way. And so it was an ambush, and she took umbrage to my

01:11:30

Bernie Sanders comment. And I will stand by that comment, because she didn't refute it.

01:11:38

She took umbrage to it. She didn't refute it. She simply said, no, it's just not parallel. Yes, it is parallel. It is directly parallel.

01:11:45

That's why it's a powerful example. Bernie Sanders went after a

01:11:50

Christian man for believing Christian theology and said, we cannot have that in our society.

01:11:56

That's not what this is about. You cannot believe that a person is under the condemnation of God if they're outside of Jesus Christ.

01:12:04

If they're in a different religion, they can't be under the condemnation of God. That's what he said. What Yasir Qadhi said was that anyone who is a mushrikun, a mushrik, sorry, mushrikun is plural, of the mushrikun would be the plural.

01:12:23

Anyone who is an idolater is nejis, is filthy in God's sight.

01:12:32

And he believes that the Christian worship of God, including

01:12:39

Jesus Christ, by necessity, because Jesus Christ and I have eternally been God, has to be nejis.

01:12:44

It has to be, well, I'm sorry, it has to be shirk, therefore they are nejis. So if you say, well, we can't have something like that in the

01:12:52

United States. It's terrible. How can someone say something like that? What you're saying is you cannot deal with a believing

01:12:58

Muslim. You cannot acknowledge believing Islamic thought.

01:13:04

What I keep saying to people is, I want to know what Muslims believe.

01:13:10

I want to accurately recognize what they believe. And then I want to develop argumentation against it.

01:13:15

If I just become offended that they, look, if you've just read the Quran, the

01:13:21

Quran itself says to the people of the book, to the al -anjeel, do not say three.

01:13:29

There is only one God. And if you say three, there'll be none to help you.

01:13:35

The fire will be your abode. I mean, that's what the Quran says. And you're upset with Qadi? He's just repeating what the

01:13:42

Quran says. So if you think about what you're doing, you are doing what Bernie Sanders did to the

01:13:48

Christian guy. You just refuse to see it. You have double standards. You have double standards.

01:13:54

And anybody who's followed this ministry for any amount of time knows that I point the finger.

01:14:03

I stood in the Juma Masjid in South Africa and said, we need to have even scales.

01:14:11

We cannot be hypocrites. We cannot have different standards. Well, if I say it to the

01:14:17

Muslims, I've got to say it to the Christians too. And the reason you Christians get away with it is you're not talking to the

01:14:24

Muslims anyhow. You're in an echo chamber. It's a primarily political echo chamber, but you're in an echo chamber and that's why you get away with it.

01:14:32

That's why you get away with it. I can't get away with it. So that's why we're in different places.

01:14:40

So she was Bernie -sandering Yasser Qadi, whether she wants to admit it or not, if you're going to take that argument, as they just did, as one of these guys,

01:14:52

I think it was Brandon House did. And why don't they see the inconsistency?

01:14:57

Well, I don't think Brandon House cares. But if you're not out there talking to these people, then you can get away with using one standard for Christians, one standard for Muslims.

01:15:11

Can't go there. Can't do that. Clearly, at one point, she said to me, well, we need to protect our way of life and our constitution.

01:15:26

And let me just simply say something right now. Leftist, secular totalitarianism is the threat to the constitution of the

01:15:42

United States, not Islam. There are not enough Muslims in the

01:15:48

United States to mount any... Look, does historic

01:15:53

Islam lead to democratic systems of government? No, it does not.

01:16:01

It does not. Islam has never produced a democratic form of government. I don't believe that it can.

01:16:09

Do I recognize that if there were all of a sudden 300 million Muslims in the

01:16:14

United States, that they would definitely want to get rid of a constitutional form of government and establish

01:16:20

Sharia? Of course. It's like if there are 300 million real Christians in the

01:16:25

United States, we might actually have a reflection of Christian values in our laws, but they are not the danger to us.

01:16:35

Folks, can I point something out to you? No matter what, no matter how it goes,

01:16:45

Donald Trump will not be president seven years from now. Okay?

01:16:52

Because the system says you can't do that. He's no Franklin Delano Roosevelt. So someday, someday the left's going to be back in charge again, just like they were under Obama.

01:17:07

And they're going to continue the process. And from what I'm watching, not much is getting done right now, but they're going to be back.

01:17:18

And they are the danger. They are the challenge.

01:17:25

It's not Sharia. It's totalitarian leftism, which guts the constitution of its protections of religious free speech.

01:17:36

And because it presents man as a mere animal, it has no foundation for any kind of restraint upon governmental authority, not only over the actions of individuals, but the thoughts of individuals.

01:17:49

And that's why we have the thought police running around now. And that's why we have people rebelling against God's order of gender and marriage and everything else.

01:17:58

It is secular totalitarianism that is the great threat. And everyone running around selling dried food because ISIS is going to get you is missing the point.

01:18:13

We need to be addressing the millennial generation and the generation after that pointing out to them that they cannot live

01:18:20

God's world on a secular basis, that they are inconsistent. We need to be appealing to the fact they're made in the image of God and calling them to the higher calling that God places upon their life and showing them the transcendent meaning of their lives instead of wasting our stinking time trying to sell fear and making money in the process.

01:18:43

Sorry, that sermon was for free. I am really sick and tired of people who are trying to make the gospel

01:18:52

American again. It's not American. It was true before there was an America. It'll be true after America is gone.

01:19:01

The greatest blessing that any Christian can pray for this nation is not to make

01:19:06

America great again, but to make America repentant again, because there's going to be no blessing upon a people that will stand up with the blessings that God has given to this nation and spit in his face and say, a man's a woman, a boy's a girl, a girl's a boy, and you can marry as many people as you want, or you can marry your dog or whatever else.

01:19:25

That nation that rebels against God has no basis for asking for God's blessing on its military, on its finances, on anything else.

01:19:37

Repentance is what this nation needs. And if you want to be a true patriot, then your every word had better be to this nation, repent and believe.

01:19:46

God's judgment cannot be held back forever. I am sick and tired.

01:19:52

We have so many people from outside the United States that follow this ministry and they're seeing it.

01:19:59

They hear it in these critics. Wow, what is this? What is this flag waving red, white, and blue gospel these people are talking about?

01:20:10

Where'd all that come from? You know, Brennan House was just, last

01:20:17

Friday when I identified the Janet Mefford interview as a disaster.

01:20:24

Oh, that's great. That's wonderful. You know what I meant by that? Here's an opportunity on national radio to actually advance the cause of the gospel and it didn't happen.

01:20:34

See, we have different purposes. We have different goals. I only heard this a few minutes before the program started.

01:20:44

I don't even think you got to hear this, did you? You were too busy. Michael Brown tweeted this out and some of you just got hives.

01:20:55

Did you get a chance to listen to this? Okay. I want you to hear. Michael Brown tweeted this out and, well, it just sort of speaks for itself.

01:21:06

All right. I know that you listen to interfaith dialogue. The discussion

01:21:12

I had with Dr. James White about his interfaith dialogue with a conservative Muslim imam whom critics call a jihadi imam,

01:21:21

Yasir Qadhi. And of course, James would say he is a committed conservative Muslim, but not a jihadist.

01:21:29

Many are debating those issues even as we speak now. But Neil, you listened to the interview

01:21:35

I had with Dr. White and two things you know uniquely living in Iraq. You know how ugly, how murderous, how horrific radical

01:21:44

Islam is. You also know how the great majority of Muslims do not share those sentiments.

01:21:52

From your perspective as a missionary in the Muslim world, was it a wise thing for James to do to have civil discussion perhaps to...

01:22:04

Okay, so just so you understand, Michael has a missionary living in Iraq.

01:22:11

He's living in a Muslim majority nation as a Christian. This is a dangerous place.

01:22:19

These... Some people say, oh, we appreciate your bravery, James. No, these are the brave people. I live in a comfortable place in the

01:22:25

United States. Even the places I go to in South Africa, they're not uncomfortable. This is an uncomfortable place to be.

01:22:33

It's a dangerous place to be. And he's being asked, what do you think? You've listened to the interviews.

01:22:40

What do you think? To bring walls down and maybe to un -demonize certain people and therefore

01:22:48

Christians and Muslims talk face -to -face, or is this just being a useful idiot for Islam? And now you basically desensitize people to the dangers of radical

01:22:58

Islam. What was your take? Now, he laid it out there because that's the accusation.

01:23:04

He's given the option. This individual say, oh yeah, that James White guy, he's a moron. He's exactly what

01:23:10

Brandon House has said. He's exactly what Steve Camp said. He's just out there. Take.

01:23:16

Right. I love that James White did this. I think it was a beautiful example of who we are supposed to be.

01:23:25

Of course, we're supposed to be wise, but we come with love.

01:23:30

The demonstration of the kingdom of God that comes in humility and love. And if I'm debating and arguing, it's not going to sound like love to the person that I'm arguing with.

01:23:44

Are you still there, Dr. Brown? Yeah, go ahead. Okay. This is what we do all the time.

01:23:50

We sit down with people who are on the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of belief and faith, and we have a choice.

01:23:59

I'm either going to argue with you about who Muhammad is and what the Quran is and how evil and violent it is, and the expression of Islam and what it's done to the

01:24:09

Middle East, or we can talk about Jesus, and we can talk about the kingdom of God, and we can talk about what that looks like.

01:24:18

And I can demonstrate that for you, even with how I interact with you as a human being.

01:24:24

My tone of voice, the way that I honor and I respect you as an individual created in God's image.

01:24:30

The last thing we want to do is tear somebody down so we can prove a theological point.

01:24:36

That's not going to convince somebody of anything. At best, it may convince their mind, but it's not going to lead to a genuine conversion in their heart.

01:24:46

And so I applauded James White for doing that. Now, Neil, have you yourself interacted with devout

01:24:54

Muslims? You said maybe 75 % are not devout. The men are not praying five times a day, and many of the younger people are even more alienated from Islam because of ISIS, as you live there in northern

01:25:07

Iraq. Have you interacted, though, with very conservative Muslims as well? I've sat down in the middle of Mosul in individual's homes and had lunch with imams who

01:25:19

I know were leading prayers for ISIS in the mosque. I've sat down with young men who lived their entire time through ISIS and are now studying to be imams.

01:25:31

And I can tell you, the best fruit that we've ever seen is when we sit down and we discuss

01:25:39

Jesus. We don't want to talk about the Quran. We don't want to talk about Muhammad.

01:25:45

Let's talk about Jesus. Let's talk about the truth, because they've never heard these things. That's right. So for us, when we cross the boundary into debate and argument, it's never going to end up good.

01:25:58

But when we can introduce something to them that they've never heard before, there's something inside of them that longs for the truth.

01:26:08

And when we can give it to them, that's when they're introduced to the truth. So pray for those people, my goodness, sitting down with imams who are leading prayers for ISIS in the mosque.

01:26:21

How many times, folks, how many times have you heard me say, if you can just get that Muslim person to read any gospel, doesn't have to be the gospel of John, gospel of Mark.

01:26:35

The Jesus of the Quran is an argument, not a person. If you can just get the message of Jesus to them.

01:26:48

And there's a guy. And look, folks, this is an

01:26:53

American attack upon me. It's a Western culture attack.

01:27:00

This isn't the first missionary I've talked to. And they say, what are these people talking?

01:27:06

Who is this Brannan House guy? He's obviously not out in the world anywhere. And you know, there might've been a day when some of their arguments would have resonated more with me, but I'm spending one out of every six days this year overseas, outside of the

01:27:24

United States of America. And that has thankfully given me at least a little perspective to where I can start seeing

01:27:32

I am uncomfortable when I hear the American flag -waving gospel when

01:27:40

I'm in South Africa, because my fellow South African friends are sitting there going, what does that have to do with me?

01:27:48

You got something we don't have? I'm glad to have that perspective.

01:27:55

There is a missionary. Are you waving at me? Before you get too far afield from the filthy comment, the objection that Yossi Akadi calls us filthy, what has shocked me more than anything, and almost every single time this comes up, is how cavalier the reaction is amongst

01:28:25

Christians when you point out the Bible calls us filthy.

01:28:31

Oh, yeah. And the idea, the almost prideful, okay, prideful response and dismissal of that on the part of believers.

01:28:45

This… Theology matters. This scripture describes us in such a way that if you look at how

01:28:52

Luther looked at that… Yeah, yeah, no kidding. Okay? You want strong language?

01:28:59

You think Akadi's language is strong? Do you? Read Luther on it.

01:29:04

Oh, yeah, I know. Filthy rags before God, and that is our righteousness.

01:29:11

That is the best that we have to offer, is filthy rags.

01:29:18

Menstrual rags. I was listening to a book on Luther's time in the

01:29:25

Vortburg Castle on my drive back yesterday, when I was allegedly being the puppet master telling you what to do on Twitter.

01:29:33

And in most places, I didn't even have a cell connection. Well, why do you think I was so busy? But at one point, when

01:29:45

Luther was… The author brought up a point where Luther said, never call yourself a

01:29:52

Lutheran. He hated when people started using his name. And he made the statement of himself.

01:29:58

He said, I am but poor, stinking maggot fodder. Poor, stinking maggot fodder.

01:30:06

Oh, that's meaningless. Pointless. Don't need to pay attention to that. P -S -M -F. I actually got my phone out and used the voice thing, and it didn't know what to do with maggot.

01:30:16

So I had to, at 65 miles an hour, be very careful entering that in. But poor, stinking maggot fodder.

01:30:24

There is… That's Luther. And yeah, exactly. When we think we are so high and mighty that we can look at what another religion thinks of those who are not orthodox to that religion, and we can't look at the fact that our own view is more, is stronger and more extreme…

01:30:49

But they're Muslims. We're allowed to do that because we're here in America. We're the real believers.

01:30:57

There are no other believers anywhere. And they're… Yeah. Did I keep this open?

01:31:04

Yeah. I do have one little thing at play here. Okay. I wasn't going to add this, but now you mentioned it.

01:31:16

The initial Paul Flynn, Mark Fitzpatrick program. I did listen to all of it.

01:31:22

It's over… It's two hours and 23 minutes long. I was going to try to find this one part where I think

01:31:29

Yasir Qadhi had said something about no one's… I'm confident what I believe. You're confident what you believe. And Mark Fitzpatrick's comment was, well, then why are you bothering to do this?

01:31:38

The only people you should talk to are the people that are willing to change. So in other words, you have to find evidences of regeneration before you can even talk to them.

01:31:46

So don't talk to believing Muslims. But here is the point. This has stuck with me, and I've wanted to mention this.

01:31:53

I just want to play this statement. You got the sound up? Okay. Yeah. Can I comment on that?

01:32:00

Please do. Let me back up. Let me play what I had said. It just drives me crazy, but let's continue.

01:32:07

He wants to seek for consistency amongst his people and his own practice. And so when you have two believing people, one

01:32:14

Christian, one Muslim… Yeah. Can I comment on that? Please do. I think that's even worse.

01:32:21

Because in Scripture, believers are only believers in the

01:32:28

Lord. This guy's an unbeliever. Yeah. He's not a believer. And to call him a believing person or a believing people, whatever, in that bracket is unbiblical.

01:32:38

And it's actually against the gospel because he's not a believer. He's a rejecter of Christ.

01:32:44

He's a rejecter of truth. He's a rejecter of the Word of God. But James said he wasn't compromising. But isn't that what

01:32:50

J .I. Packer probably said back in the mid -90s? And also, I was reading today, actually… And then he goes on with the

01:32:55

ECT stuff, which, of course, I was all over back in the 90s when he was very young. But so much of this criticism has been so frustrating.

01:33:15

Because does anyone, would even Yasir Qadhi think that what

01:33:22

I was saying is that, well, hey, any belief in God is true belief in God or anything along those lines?

01:33:30

Are you seriously telling me there's no such thing as a believing Muslim? That there's no

01:33:35

Muslim that actually believes in Islam? That's clearly the context I was using. Any rational person would see that.

01:33:43

But you transport… Well, actually, in the Bible, you see, the only believing person is a person who believes in the one true

01:33:49

God. And because they believe in a false God, then that's the kind of criticism that I just go, really?

01:34:04

You couldn't have at least a little charity to go, oh, yeah, you're talking about a consistent believing

01:34:10

Muslim. He believes in Islam. You're not making any comments about the truthfulness or falseness of that belief or you're not comparing

01:34:18

Allah with Yahweh. You've done entire videos on that subject and all the rest of that kind of stuff. We're going to ignore all of that, transport in a completely different area and criticize and say that you are standing against the gospel for saying that man's a believing

01:34:31

Muslim. You're standing against the gospel. Wow. I just, you brought it up.

01:34:40

So I thought I would play that. So I go from a nice thing that Michael Brown posts to that.

01:34:49

All right. Let's get back for a moment, as unpleasant as it is, to the

01:34:54

Brennan House thing, where I am turned over to Satan for the destruction of my flesh and if it's even possible for me to be saved.

01:35:11

A heretic doesn't believe the word of God. These are from people who probably never read any of my books or any of this, but they don't care.

01:35:18

That doesn't matter. Couple things.

01:35:24

First of all, I was told anyways that at least there had been some kind of a reference to what

01:35:34

I had written on 2 John. And I wrote something. Did we post it on the website?

01:35:41

It's on the website or is it on Facebook? Yeah, I forget exactly where it is, but okay.

01:35:51

I gave a basic, contextual, original language -based interpretation of 2

01:36:02

John, and I pointed out that it actually begins in verse 7. Because hatipaloi, planoi, exailthon, aishton, kasmon, many deceivers have gone out into the world.

01:36:16

And I connected this with exailthon and its use in 1 John and say he's continuing this discussion.

01:36:25

He's talking about those, specifically, hoi mai hamalaguntas, eisoun, kriston, erkamanon, ensarki, those not confessing

01:36:34

Jesus Christ having come to the flesh. And I pointed out that these are the early, what would eventually become the docetics, the people that denied the incarnation, that denied that Jesus had a physical body.

01:36:49

And so there is a denial of the deity of Christ. Probably there may be, in light of erkamanon there, the denial of the preexistence of Christ.

01:37:01

You can't really totally prove it there, but it's possible. But we're talking about people who claim to be

01:37:07

Christians. We're talking about people who are deceivers. They have gone out from us and they deny the fundamental truth that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.

01:37:18

This one is the deceiver and ha -antichristos, the antichrist.

01:37:24

I had a person ask me just Sunday about what I thought about the identity of the antichrist and connecting it to Pope Francis and stuff.

01:37:34

And I was like, well, actually John uses it in the plural. So there've been many antichristoi, but the point here is that this teacher is one who is against Christ because of their teaching that Jesus Christ had come in the flesh.

01:37:50

They're teaching a different Jesus and they are yet claiming, however, to be

01:37:57

Christian leaders. And so we are told to watch yourselves in order that you not lose what, and it's a very interesting textual variant there, but you do not lose what we have accomplished, if that's how you want to take the verb endings there, but that you receive a full misthon, a full reward.

01:38:21

That then is the context of everyone pro agon, going beyond, going beyond the bounds.

01:38:31

The boundaries are provided by the revelation of who Jesus Christ is and not abiding ante didache tu

01:38:41

Christu, in the teaching people. The key here is these are people who claim to be

01:38:46

Christians. They claim to be holding to the apostolic message.

01:38:52

They may even have claimed that they once knew one of the apostles or whatever else it might be. Not abiding, so they were once, they once made profession, now they're no longer abiding in the didache tu

01:39:07

Christu, the teaching of Christ, the doctrine of Christ. Theon uc echai, does not have

01:39:15

God. That's strong language, very exclusivistic language today.

01:39:25

Hamenon ante didache, the one abiding in the doctrine, this one has the

01:39:31

Father and the Son, both the Father and the Son. Again, this is a repetition of what we already had in 1

01:39:36

John. We know what the context is. And that then becomes the context of the specific commandment.

01:39:44

If anyone comes to you and they are not bearing, ferai, carrying, which would be they're preaching, they're teaching, but they are not bearing this teaching,

01:39:57

Orthodox Christian teaching, then you are not to receive them.

01:40:03

Lambano, to receive them would be to receive them as Christian teachers. This is what you did in the early church.

01:40:11

People would come into the area. There weren't enough people even for entire, in many, most places, there would not be enough to even constitute a full church.

01:40:22

You are not to receive him into your house, nor are you to give him greeting, Christian greetings as a

01:40:28

Christian person. Now, I put all this out there and I said, look, this is an abusive use of John's words to say that you are not to have interaction with Muslims, that you are not to have the dialogue that we had, whatever else it might be.

01:40:51

We were not giving Yasir Qadhi a place of ministry in the church. He never stood behind a pulpit and proclaimed

01:40:57

Islam within the body of Christ, all these things. I'll talk a little bit more about that in just a moment.

01:41:06

So I laid all this out. I presented this information. I don't know if any of these individuals who are calling me a heretic, say

01:41:13

I don't believe in the word of God, turn me over to Satan, can even read the original languages, or I didn't hear any of the exegesis whatsoever.

01:41:23

What we did hear is, well, Dr. Andy Webb says that James White is saying that this could never be relevant today.

01:41:30

It could only be in the early church. Why? Why? This is applicable to Jehovah's Witnesses.

01:41:38

You don't support Jehovah's Witnesses in their work in your neighborhood, do you? Do you give them a place to, hey, come on by my place.

01:41:48

While you're going door to door to my neighbors here and denying that Jesus Christ came to flesh, if it gets too hot, which it does here in Arizona, come on by.

01:41:55

I'll refresh you. I'll give you some lemonade and some water. You can cool off for a while. Then you can continue on your way and go down to the next block.

01:42:02

And if you want to come back, I'll help you out again. It would have perfect application. We do not allow liberals who deny the deity of Christ to come into our churches and teach our people.

01:42:16

Why wouldn't it have application? The point is simply that the

01:42:22

Muslim is not claiming to be a Christian leader. We weren't giving anyone, we weren't saying, come into my home.

01:42:29

I will support you while you're here. I'll give you a place to stay for your, so you can go teach in this local area.

01:42:34

We weren't doing any of that. We simply recognized what the context was in the ancient church and what it would be relevant to today.

01:42:41

That's all. Now, Brannon House, Mr. Bible Prophecy, Andy Webb, refute it.

01:42:51

If you can't, then withdraw it. That's simple enough, right?

01:42:58

Don't just give me, ah, just first time I ever heard James White, I just, he's a heretic. I just need to get rid of him.

01:43:05

Isn't that what we heard? I can play it again if you think I'm being facetious. There wasn't any ex -Jesus, none.

01:43:12

The only argument was, well, that just couldn't be relevant today. Yes, it is. So now that that objection has been thoroughly done away with, what do you have now?

01:43:23

What do you got left? Because you said, we've all been using it, and I've now demonstrated that you've been abusing it.

01:43:29

So what are you going to do now? Probably find something else to talk about. Probably find something else to talk about.

01:43:37

But aside from the lack of ex -Jesus, there was something else that I think a lot of people might not have noticed.

01:43:45

Turning someone over to Lucifer, that's something the church does.

01:43:54

That is ecclesiastical discipline. Who are these guys?

01:44:02

So radio programs now do what the church does? You get some people together on the phone and you're now elders in the church?

01:44:10

You all do realize that I'm an elder in the church, and there's a Bible verse about what you're supposed to do.

01:44:17

There's supposed to be witnesses, and there's a process. You're not supposed to receive accusations against someone.

01:44:23

So are you all elders in a constituted church that I'm a member of?

01:44:30

When did a radio program become the essence of the ecclesia?

01:44:39

Hmm. Wondered about that. There is no ecclesiology here.

01:44:45

There is no recognition that they are abusing each one of these to turn them over. That's what the church does.

01:44:51

That's what the church does. Not individuals. You don't have the right to do that. This Hadrian and the other guy,

01:44:59

Mr. Bible Prophecy Dude, Jimmy DeYoung or whatever his name was. I don't know. You're abusing scripture, and you will answer for your abuse of scripture.

01:45:13

If you're a true believer, you need to think about that. You need to give consideration to that. That's just amazing.

01:45:22

There is also, and we're going to wrap up here eventually, there is also a fair amount of what

01:45:31

I would call archaeology on display. In the church today. The worship of buildings.

01:45:38

Worship of buildings. We keep hearing, you brought a satanic false teacher in amongst the people of God.

01:45:54

Well, we call it a church building, don't we? Because that's where the church meets.

01:46:03

That's why you call it a church building. But if, God forbid, my church or your church were to burn down this week, and you had enough time to, what would most people do?

01:46:22

What would most churches do? Most churches, they're small enough like ours, we would find the closest hotel.

01:46:31

And what would we do? We'd rent the biggest public room that they've got.

01:46:39

Well, unless it's a really big hotel, they wouldn't need to do that. But we'd rent a room. And we'd get together on the

01:46:49

Lord's Day. Now, we've got a nice big pulpit. It's on hinges, so you can pull it down, so you can watch baptisms with the baptistry behind it.

01:47:00

And we wouldn't have that. And we wouldn't have our hymnals because they'd go up in flames.

01:47:11

So we'd have to, well, we could definitely sing a mighty fortress. We could all handle that one.

01:47:17

It is well, we could do that one without, we'd get through it. And we sing a cappella all the time anyway, so we wouldn't need the piano, which needs tuning.

01:47:27

But would the church be meeting in a hotel? You better believe it would.

01:47:34

Because see, the church is the gathering of the people of God for the purpose of fulfilling

01:47:41

Christ's commands of His worship and the proclamation of His word. It doesn't matter where it happens.

01:47:50

It happens around this world in, well, in woods, hiding from authorities.

01:47:58

It happens in jungles, in nations that have no buildings. A friend of mine once went to Uganda and they met in, they had 10 sheets on wooden poles.

01:48:14

That's all it was. No air conditioning, no walls, no windows, bugs, flies.

01:48:20

That was the church. But when the people left, it wasn't the church anymore, was it?

01:48:26

No, because the church is when in obedience to Christ's command and His word,

01:48:34

His people gather in an organized fashion because the apostles went around establishing elders and deacons.

01:48:44

Those of you who are rebels against that, well, I'll let God deal with you about that. But they established elders and deacons and what they gathered for?

01:48:51

They gather for the worship of God in Jesus Christ, the proclamation of His word, through the reading of scripture, through psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, and the practice of the ordinances, baptism, and the

01:49:06

Lord's supper. This is the church. And if that's not the intention of your gathering, that ain't the church.

01:49:22

That was not the intention of anyone. The night that we gathered in a church building for a dialogue with Yasir Qadhi, that was not a church meeting.

01:49:34

Yasir Qadhi was not brought into the church. He was not given a pulpit to preach in the church.

01:49:43

And if you think he was, you're an archaeologist. You worship buildings. You do not have a

01:49:49

New Testament position. You may have a tradition. You may feel strongly about it. I don't care.

01:49:56

I believe in the scriptures. And so, if you want to make that accusation, I can't stop you, but it's not going to have a whit of impact upon me because it's not biblical.

01:50:08

You don't have a biblical definition of the church. You have a pagan definition of the church because the pagans identified their buildings as sacrosanct.

01:50:18

The Christians didn't. Oh, I forgot. Oh, I was going to grab it. What was it? There's been so many things, but there was something from one of these critics.

01:50:29

And it specifically gave this idea of the church building and made connection to the

01:50:37

New Testament. I started laughing. There were no church buildings in the New Testament, folks.

01:50:42

Hello. They met in houses. Even when they started building buildings, once, you know, if the

01:50:50

Roman persecution in a particular area was, you know, would wane for enough time, you could put together a building.

01:51:00

You could build a building. But frequently, they ended up being destroyed when the imperial, especially between 260 and 313.

01:51:09

There were destruction of many church buildings. But this is long after the apostles. The idea of church buildings being sacrosanct, it's not

01:51:19

New Testament. You may have grown up with it. You may have believed it.

01:51:25

You may have been engaged in, you know, we have church building dedications and, oh, Lord, we want you to use this to your glory and all that.

01:51:32

That's fine. Has nothing to do with any type of serious holiness to the building.

01:51:42

Now, yesterday, I did see Phil Johnson's article, fairly lengthy article, where he got back in the office and he responded to,

01:51:54

I guess because he had been gone, all sorts of people were going, Lord, you're answering this and Lord, you're answering that.

01:52:01

And I'm awful sorry that either Phil Johnson or grace to you or John MacArthur or any of these other people have been dragged into this by Brandon House.

01:52:12

Brandon House just, well, if you saw the graphic that Phil used of the dumpster fire, then you get an idea.

01:52:23

I personally sort of get the idea that this is not the first time around the block for Phil and Brandon.

01:52:31

Evidently. See, the only thing I knew about Brandon House before he decided to attack me personally in the way that he did and continues to do was it was his network that Chris Pinto was on when the whole

01:52:50

Sinaiticus is a fake thing happened a few years ago. And I knew that a couple of guys that I have a lot of respect for were on his network.

01:53:03

It's all I knew about him. I didn't know that there had been any of this other stuff with Phil. I don't think

01:53:10

I could be wrong, but I have no recollection of ever having talked to Phil about Brandon House.

01:53:18

Phil's memory may be a lot better than mine. I don't remember that. So this comes along and I don't know how, well,

01:53:31

I do know people tried to drag MacArthur in on their side.

01:53:38

I have known for over a decade that from John MacArthur's perspective, they're not into debates because people had raised the question, hey, you know, you're in Southern California.

01:53:50

How about debating? They're not into debates. So even less so,

01:53:57

I would imagine, dialogues. And in the comments that Phil made, he pointed out, he said, here's one of the reasons we don't support the idea of these dialogues or debates is because of all the confusion of what

01:54:17

Yasir Qadhi did there. Well, the problem is the only reason there's confusion is either they didn't watch or they decided that whatever

01:54:25

Yasir Qadhi says is taqiyah and I'm just a liar too. So it really wouldn't matter what the context was.

01:54:31

There wasn't any confusion by the nature of the dialogue. We were very clear, very clear from the beginning.

01:54:39

It was deceptive misrepresentation on the part of those who have a perspective to sell.

01:54:47

And the key issue there is sell. That led to that, not the nature of the encounter.

01:54:54

So look, if a local body says we don't support debates, great.

01:55:01

If that's their conclusion, fine. We've never had any problem with that.

01:55:07

They've never had any problem with the fact that they've had me speak there a number of times and they know I do debates.

01:55:13

This is what adults do. You don't actually demand that everybody look like you, dress like you and everything else.

01:55:24

So I really appreciated the article and the description of the wild eyed lynch mob,

01:55:35

I think is the term used, dumpster fire. In fact, to be honest with you, Phil used a little more colorful language than I have on any of this.

01:55:46

Yes, world view weakened. That was just a typo.

01:55:54

Come on. It's not like Phil's an editor or anything. Come on. I've never seen a typo in anything

01:56:02

Phil Johnson's ever done. And by the way, however, I do need to refute him on one thing.

01:56:08

Did you see what he said? What he said about our IRC chat channel? Phil, do

01:56:19

I need to play wakarati .wave? I have absolute evidence of your complicit in the founding of that channel.

01:56:32

Now, I know you haven't been in it for years, but you did come in about two years ago. You still know how to get there.

01:56:38

You have hiding somewhere in the back of your Mac someplace, you know, it's there and you know, you have wakarati .wave

01:56:47

too. Some Erwin's going, what is wakarati .wave? I can't tell you.

01:56:53

And I don't think I should play it on the dividing line, but Phil knows what it is. You remember what it is too, don't you?

01:57:00

Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've got you, Phil. I've got you. I had that wakarati .wave

01:57:06

is the final evidence and I've got it and Brannon House does not.

01:57:12

Can you see Brannon House? We need wakarati .wave.

01:57:18

We've got to get this. He's not going to sleep for a week until he finds wakarati .wave.

01:57:26

Anyway, there is a little bit of levity there. You got to have some levity after all of this. It's the only way to do it.

01:57:33

So anyway, there you go. Wow. So many things today and we did do two hours, didn't we?

01:57:41

There you go. I sort of figured it would probably go that way, but we started with something other than the controversy.

01:57:49

And I just can't imagine. I just can't imagine how there could be almost anything else that would need to be said after all this time.

01:57:58

I mean, wow. I just don't know. I just don't know. But thank you for, if you have listened this long, thank you very much for doing it.

01:58:08

And by the way, did the phone still work? Okay.

01:58:14

Let me see here. Yeah. Cause I kept, yeah.

01:58:21

It looks like you've got a dial tone. Looks like I got a dial tone. So I don't know what happened to Jeff the

01:58:28

GK. He dropped off the face of the earth after that. There's no Twitter.

01:58:33

You know what? I just figured out what it is. I linked earlier.

01:58:39

Remember what I told you I linked to earlier? I found that really cool red Star Trek shirt. Oh, he got one.

01:58:44

I linked to it earlier. Jeff's a red shirt, some type of alien or something.

01:58:53

Got him. What? You forgot something. I forgot. Oh yes, I did. Yes. Yes, you did.

01:58:59

Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Okay. You would think with all of this brouhaha that has been going on that the whole world hates us.

01:59:14

The reality is the good folks just don't make as much noise as the other folks do.

01:59:21

And I have been getting the Facebook messages. Rich has been getting the phone calls, the emails.

01:59:32

We have been seeing, we do recognize that there are many, many, many people that do know the truth of this situation.

01:59:42

They see through the lies, they see through the misrepresentation and they are very thankful of the ministry of our desire to adorn the gospel with grace and want to see us continue doing these things.

01:59:59

And so we thank you for that. I do need to mention, we've got three weeks before I go to South Africa.

02:00:07

We're trying to work something out, both going and coming, if we can, in England along the way.

02:00:19

So if you want to see these types of things continuing, we need your support.

02:00:27

So we're going to press on. And if you want to come along, if this is how you feel it needs to be done, then please help to support us in that way.

02:00:38

But we thank you for the many encouraging communications that we've received.

02:00:44

I've certainly needed them. And I'm sure that Rich does too, because he's the one that gets all the crazy phone calls too.

02:00:53

So he's gotten a few, not overly encouraging ones, but we've certainly heard you.

02:00:59

We thank you very, very much for that. All right. With that, thank you very much for watching.