Pope Francis & Mary as Co-Redemptrix, Kyle James Howard Woke-Breaks Marriage, Jesus Wasn’t a Puppet

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Well, greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line on a Tuesday, and we're going to be doing this again,

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Lord willing, on Thursday. So we'll be doing three programs this week. Hopefully you will find those to be useful.

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We were in the big studio yesterday, did almost two hours, primarily on John chapter 1, but really

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John's entire testimony to the deity of Christ, and a few people said they enjoyed that kind of in -depth stuff.

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A friend of mine said that his, as he put it, the lady folk who were listening said, you know, might be worthwhile learning

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Greek. And I'm like, yes, we are accomplishing our purposes in life when you are getting people to be thinking about learning

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Greek. That's important. Last week, and I haven't commented on this yet, so everyone else beat me to the punch on this one that happens over and over again,

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I'm afraid. But last week, a very, very interesting article,

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March 24th. So that's ancient history, six days ago. People don't realize how much the world has changed.

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Six days, only a number of decades ago, was brand new news, would still be being communicated around the world.

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And now it's like, well, who even remembers that? Way too fast.

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The world's moving way too fast. But Pope Francis, a week ago tomorrow, said that Jesus entrusted the

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Virgin Mary to us as a mother, quote, not as a co -redeemer, end quote.

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Speaking at his general audience on March 24th, the Pope said that while Christians had always given Mary beautiful titles, it was important to remember that Christ is the only redeemer.

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He was addressing a theological debate about whether the church should issue a dogmatic definition declaring Mary co -redemptrix in honor of her role in humanity's salvation.

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Now let me just stop. It's very possible that many of you are not familiar with this entire movement.

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I should have grabbed the book, I apologize, I didn't. But Mark Miravalle at the University of Steubenville, back in the 1990s especially, was very strongly pushing the definition of Mary as co -redemptrix, co -mediatrix, and co -adjectrix.

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And the fact of the matter is, as we'll see here in a moment, those are titles that have been used by councils and popes of Mary.

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Not just by some priest someplace, I mean, if you want to go there, the terminology that has been used of Mary has included spouse of the

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Holy Spirit, okay? So all you have to do is read in Marian literature and there's almost nothing that hasn't been attributed to Mary by somebody at some point.

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But once again, there is a difference between doctrine and dogma within Roman Catholicism.

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You can have something taught as a doctrine. You can have something taught by a bishop of Rome as doctrine.

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But it's not a dogma unless it is defined to be of the faith, de fide, of faith.

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And in the late 90s, 1998 -99, I wrote a book on the subject of Mary and the co -redemptrix movement.

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And there was a tremendous amount of speculation at the time that John Paul II, in light of the turn of the millennium, the year 2000, and given the fact that, for example, his papal coat of arms said, totus tuus, totus tuus, totally yours.

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But that's directed to Mary, not to Christ, not to the Trinity. But his papal coat of arms, totus tuus sum

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Maria, was directed to Mary as the one to whom he was saying totally yours.

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So he had a very, very deep Marian devotion. And so there was a fair amount of speculation amongst

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Roman Catholics. I forget how many millions, at least five, six million signatures had been collected from the faithful around the world.

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And you might say, when did you fill out petitions to define theology?

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Well, the same, similar things, not obviously identical, but similar things had happened in the definition, for example, of bodily assumption in the 1950s and the immaculate conception in the 1850s.

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And so it is popular movement and popular piety that ends up driving these things, because they're very political, a lot of politics inside the

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Vatican determines what's going to happen. And so for Pope Francis, it didn't happen in the year 2000.

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John Paul II died without doing it. Nobody really expected Ratzinger to do

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Benedict XVI. Cardinal Ratzinger, who was very, very well known as a high -end

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Roman Catholic theologian, they did not expect him to do anything like this. Francis, you have to show a high level of Marian piety to be the

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Bishop of Rome one way or the other. That's just necessary to keep everybody going the same direction. But Francis, as we all know, is light years away from John Paul II and even

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Ratzinger on issues of theology, and is not nearly as conservative as either one of them.

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And so it's not overly surprising that he came out and said what he did here.

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Of course, he's the same guy who the next day will be coming out and talking about global warming and this kind of stuff, because he's a leftist.

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That's his politics, and his politics and his religion are very, very, very closely associated with one another.

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So I go back to the article. Jesus extended Mary's maternity to the entire church when he entrusted her to his beloved disciple shortly before dying on the cross, the

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Pope noted. This is John chapter 19. If you're a woman, behold your son, son, behold your mother, when he entrusts

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Mary to the care of John at the foot of the cross. And Roman Catholicism has interpreted that as some type of cosmic establishment of Mary as the mother of the church, with John representing the church.

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Of course, it had nothing to do with that, and that's something that, again, illustrates sola scriptura, because no one in the early church thought that either, and that develops hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years later, not based upon any kind of compulsion from the examination of the text of Scripture, the intention of the authors of Scripture, or the overall teaching of Scripture, anything like that at all.

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It derives from the rise of Marian devotion, much of which found its origin not in Scripture, but in other sources, such as the

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Protevangelium of James, a Gnostic -tinged document that was seen as having religious significance by certain people, and it ended up being very much part of the development of the concept of the perpetual virginity of Mary.

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Which I also argued in my book on Mary, which is on Kindle, if I recall correctly, which

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I argued in my book on Mary is fundamentally destructive of the doctrine of the incarnation, because within the dogma is the assertion that Mary's physical virginity was kept intact, which means that Jesus did not have a regular birth.

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Jesus beamed out, and when you read the Protevangelium of James, which we've done, put in Protevangelium of James into the search engine,

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AOMN .org, we had a story time with Uncle Jimmy where I read you the whole thing, so that you could hear what source had such impact in developing these things so long ago.

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But that's the concept, is that in John 19, those words where Jesus shows care for his mother in entrusting her to John is extended out to mean something that the original author certainly didn't intend, but they don't believe the original author had to intend it.

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So, once you deny sola scriptura, once you buy into the concept of the church as a living interpreter of tradition, and you allow tradition to be this nebulous, cloudy, vague thing, then the church can draw whatever the church wants to draw out of that tradition.

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It's not like the apostles actually ever taught it. It's not like there was an actual body of revelation that was delivered to the disciples and only a part of it got into scripture.

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And then the church then has the ability to draw on the rest of this stuff to come up with the clarity of such things as, you know, 1950 years after the birth of Jesus, oh,

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Mary was bodily assumed into heaven. That's what happens. I was just thinking, what would be a good term for a cloudy, nebulous thing?

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I look up and there's an astronomy calendar in the studio now.

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It wasn't there. In fact, it's almost up the ceiling. It's so big. But there's a nebula up there.

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So that would be a good example. Or then I thought about an original

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Star Trek episode that I saw recently. For some reason, I was flipping through the

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Star Trek episodes because a friend of mine has been watching Star Trek comes on, on I think

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Saturday nights. And I started noticing when he would ask me about these episodes, and I knew what their names were and what they were.

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All of a sudden, I was looking at my collection and I go, there's going straight through them in order. So I'm able to tell them, okay, next week it's going to be this and next week it's going to be that.

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And so I happened to notice this one where there was this episode, I don't know if you remember, where it's called

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Obsession, where Kirk wants to get this monster that had killed some of his crewmen, all wearing red shirts, never being down in a red shirt.

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I mean, no one survives except for Scotty. Um, but, um, there was, uh, you know, this is back in the sixties.

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And so there was this, at first they use like, like, uh, dry ice to just have a few little things, but then when it had to get big, it was pretty cheesy looking, you know, but it was this nebulous cloud type thing.

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You could shoot it with a phaser and it wouldn't do anything because it really wasn't there. Um, that's sort of what tradition is.

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And it has many of the same effects. It ends up killing people, uh, with, uh, with heresy at the same time.

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So we managed to tie Star Trek in there and, and, uh, uh, watch that, that episode.

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And, and I will never be able to watch it now without thinking about Roman Catholic concept of tradition, unfortunately.

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And neither were you, which is, which may ruin it, but that's okay. Anyway. So that's what he's talking about there from that moment on, we have all been gathered under her mantle is what the

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Pope says as depicted in certain medieval frescoes or paintings, even the first Latin, uh, antiphon, the

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Madonna who covers like a mother to whom Jesus entrusted us all of us, but as a mother, not as a goddess, not as co -redeemer as mother, he continued.

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It is true that Christian piety has always given her beautiful titles. The child gives his or her mama, uh, how many beautiful things children say about their mama whom they love so much, how many beautiful things.

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Um, but we need to be careful. Uh, Oh, I hate these advertisements, but we need to be careful.

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The things, the church, the saints say about her beautiful things about Mary subtract nothing from Christ's soul redemption.

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He is the only redeemer. There are expressions of love, like a child for his or her mama. Some are exaggerated, but love, as we know, always makes us exaggerate things, but out of love.

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Now what's interesting, um, is this, this line when he says, but as a mother, not as a goddess, not as co -redeemer as mother, because, uh,

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I interacted with many of the individuals who were promoting the concept of Mary as co -redemptrix back, uh, in the day.

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Um, and one of the immediate, uh, assertions that Protestants made was that this, this is, this is one of the main issues is that this elevates

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Mary to a position of, of almost deity. Well, Miravalli and the people promoting this, uh, at the

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University of Steubenville, especially had addressed this over and over again.

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Um, and it's so, it's, it's interesting that this kind of argumentation would be, uh, repeated, uh, by the

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Pope himself. And so, um, I wanted to just look at, um, a couple things here.

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Uh, for example, I don't know if any of you remember this. Let me see if I can, um, can you, um, grab that there?

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Um, yeah. Or you could just zoom in on the slide. That would, that would be, in fact,

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I can make the slide bigger. Hold on a second. Um, well,

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I thought I could get rid of that, but I guess I can't. Oh, anyway.

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Um, I haven't, I haven't shown this, uh, in, in a long, long time.

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Uh, this is, these are pictures from the former ugly duckling car building in,

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I think it was Clearwater, Florida. Uh, this is in the 1990s and there you go.

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Um, see Mary, do you see Mary in the building there? Mary in the window?

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Um, they built an altar and people would come and they'd, they'd have prayer services and there was a, uh, room down below where Mary would, would, uh, speak to people and a gift shop where you could buy

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Marian trinkets and just all sorts of stuff. And when I first went down to Florida, Michael Fallon took me by here and sort of told me the story.

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Uh, this was a used car lot building and there used to be a palm tree.

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See the palm tree over to the right there? Uh, there used to be a palm tree, uh, in front of that, uh, building that was, that would, you know, get rained on and, and, and stuff.

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And so the water would flow off of it in such a way that it created this flow against the, the sun tinted windows.

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And so some guy moved into that office and didn't want the shade from the palm tree anymore and had to cut down and lo and behold, there's

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Mary, but it's actually like a reconstituted water stain is what it is.

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And so this, somebody was at a gas station nearby and looked over and went, it's

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Mary. And pretty soon they couldn't even do business anymore for all the people wanting to show up and pray in front of Mary.

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And so ugly duckling had to get out of there and they sold the building for millions of dollars, this

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Marion group, uh, that took it over. And like I said, they, they put, you know, this room in and the gift shop and all the rest of this stuff.

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Well, as I recall, it's been a while now, but as I recall some enterprising fellow, um, with a slingshot, as I put it, demarionized building from long distance, put it.

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Yep. That's swayed. Ed, uh, shattered the window with a slingshot from, from long distance and yeah, it was wrist rocket is exactly the, those are probably illegal now too, but man, they were great in the day, weren't they?

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Um, and, uh, the whole thing fell apart cause you know, it,

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I remember back in the nineties, there was a yucca plant on 16th street here in Phoenix that put out a shoot that someone walking by went, look, it's

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Mary. And pretty soon you couldn't get through it on 16th street because everyone's stopping and taking pictures.

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And, and I haven't heard as much of it recently. Maybe it just doesn't make the news that way it used to, but you know, people finding

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Mary on tortillas and, and stuff like that. It was really, really common for a long time.

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This same time period, basically there was sort of a resurgence of Marianism, uh, at that particular point in time.

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Um, but, um, yeah, there, there you go. That it was that it was that time period. And, uh, so, um, let me see, how do

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I get to the next slide? Thank you.

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So notice this is what, um, Lumen Gentium, Vatican II.

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Okay. This is that this, this is the council itself. This isn't a Pope, but in Lumen Gentium, which is a part of Vatican II, we have these words by her maternal charity.

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She cares for the brethren of her son who still journey on earth, surrounded by dangers and difficulties until they are led into their blessed home.

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Therefore the blessed virgin is invoked in the church under the titles of advocate, helper, benefit trick, benefictress and mediatrix.

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Mediatrix means co -redemptrix. That's actually co -mediator. Sorry about that. Um, this, however, is so understood that it either takes away anything from, nor adds anything to, the dignity and efficacy of Christ, the one mediator.

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So they use advocate, helper, benefictress, and mediatrix.

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Mediatrix are the terms that are used here. But then along comes

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John Paul II, um, his personal motto, totus tutus sum

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Maria, Mary, I'm totally yours. In his encyclical, Redemptoris, Matris says, before the text goes on, taken up to heaven, she had not laid aside the saving role, saving role, but by her manifold acts of intercession continues to win for us gifts of eternal salvation.

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With this character of intercession first manifested at Canaan, Galilee, Mary's mediation continues in the history of the church in the world.

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We read that Mary, by her maternal charity, cares for the brother and her son who still journey on earth, surrounded by dangers and difficulties until they're led to their happy homeland.

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And this way, Mary's motherhood continues unceasingly in the church as the mediation, which intercedes.

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And the church expresses her faith in this truth by invoking Mary under the titles of advocate, auxiliatrix, adjectrix, and mediatrix.

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In this regard, I would like to, and then it's interesting that John Paul II, likewise, made reference to people such as, this is a quote from him, in this regard,

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I would like to recall among the many witnesses and teachers of spirituality, the figure of St. Louis Marie Grignion de

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Montfort, who proposes consecration to Christ at the hands of Mary as an effective means for Christians to live faithfully their baptismal commitments.

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I am pleased to note that in our time too, new manifestations of spirituality and devotion are not lacking.

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But notice de Montfort, here's something de Montfort wrote. In a word, God wishes that his holy mother should be at present more known, more loved, more honored than she has ever been.

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This no doubt will take place if the predestined enter with the grace and light of the Holy Ghost into the interior and perfect practice, which

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I will disclose to them shortly. Then they will see how clearly, as far as faith allows, that beautiful star of the sea, they will arrive happily in harbor following its guidance, in spite of the tempests and the pirates.

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They will know the grandeur of that queen and will consecrate themselves entirely to her service as subjects and slaves of love.

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They will experience her sweetnesses and her maternal goodnesses. And they will love her tenderly like well -beloved children.

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They will know the mercies of which she is full and the need they have of her succor. And they will have recourse to her in all things as their dear advocate and mediatrix with Jesus Christ.

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They will know what is the most sure, the most easy, the most short, and the most perfect means by which to go to Jesus Christ. And they will deliver themselves to Mary, body and soul, without reserve, that they may thus be all for Jesus Christ."

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So notice, even de Montfort is saying, delivering yourself body and soul to Mary without reserve is how you can be all for Jesus Christ.

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So the promoters of this view, which, as I documented in the book, attempts to parallel in Mary all the unique offices of Jesus, really does.

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I mean, Christ rises bodily from the dead, Mary's bodily assumed into heaven, Jesus is mediator, she's mediator between us and Jesus, etc.,

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etc. But this idea that they're presenting, they're trying to say it doesn't subtract anything from Jesus.

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And this has been their Roman Catholic argument all along. Well, sure, you can pray to saints and angels and things like that, but you're not detracting from the one office of Jesus in so doing.

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And we've always said, well, actually, I think you are. Pope John Paul II described

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Maximilian Kolb as the apostle of the new Marian era, and has said that he has appeared in our times as a prophet and apostle of that new

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Marian era. Pope Paul VI described him as among the great saints and clairvoyant minds that have understood, venerated, and sung the mystery of Mary.

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And yet, here's what he said, still their union is so inexpressible, this is, he's speaking about Mary here, and so perfect, the

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Holy Spirit acts only by the Immaculata, his spouse. Immaculata is a term for the

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Immaculate One, that is Mary. So, Mary is his spouse, the third person of the Blessed Trinity never took flesh.

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Still, our human word spouse is far too weak to express the reality of the relationship between the Immaculata and the

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Holy Spirit. We can affirm that she is, in a certain sense, the incarnation of the

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Holy Spirit. And so, the development of Marian doctrine and dogma goes back,

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I haven't read this for a while, but let me just give you an example. Oh, wow, look at that.

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Oh, I did not know that was there. Blow this up. I'm going to go ahead and tell this story.

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It's been forever. Wow. You know who that is?

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WEZE Radio, Boston, Massachusetts. Those two young men sitting there, that's a female talk show host.

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Look at the TV. That'll tell you how long ago that was. There were no flat screens yet. And look at the old style phone over on the side.

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Not rotary, but it's still the old style phone. Yeah, that's me. I'm in the suit jacket and tie across the way.

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And skinny guy. This was 1993, I believe.

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And on this side is Jerry Matitix, equally skinny.

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He always has been. Something I have to work on. He just is that way naturally.

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And this is the Janine Graff show. And Jerry and I were going to be doing two debates at Boston College, which we did.

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We did Justification by Faith, and we did The Apocrypha.

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The Apocrypha ended up being a more fiery debate than the other one, if you can believe that.

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Because it got to some more foundational issues, really, when you think about it. We got into the subject of Scripture and authority of Scripture and authority realm, things like that.

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But what happened in that room, because now remember, my memory is looking from the other direction. What happened in that room, and I remember having to look through the microphone arms to be able to see

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Jerry. And I don't remember exactly what brought the subject up, but I had been working as a hospital chaplain at that point in time.

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And one of my jobs was to swing through the little chapel that we had at the hospital, which is now three times the size it was back then.

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But to swing through there, and because the Jehovah's Witnesses would always sneak in and leave watchtowers in there, and my job was to collect them.

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And we ended up with a pile, literally, that high of watchtower magazines that we rescued from the chapel.

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One day I went in there, and I found this little booklet, got in the other room, still have it.

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I could probably go find it in a matter of moments. And I remember sitting down in the chapel and reading this little booklet and being blown away by what

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I read. I was like, who really believes this? And I was already studying Roman Catholicism. That started in the late 80s on Fidonet, the old

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BBS system where I was engaging Roman Catholics. This is pre -internet.

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Some of you are like, wow. But here is the prayer that I read that day in that little booklet.

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And I'll tie it back to the picture here in a second. Oh, mother of perpetual help, thou art the dispenser of all the goods which

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God grants to us miserable sinners. And for this reason, he has made thee so powerful, so rich, and so bountiful that thou mayest help us in our misery.

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Thou art the advocate of the most wretched and abandoned sinners who have recourse to thee. Come then to my help, dearest mother, for I recommend myself to thee.

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In thy hands I place my eternal salvation, and to thee do I entrust my soul. Count me among thy most devoted servants.

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Take me under thy protection, and it is enough for me. For if thou protect me, I fear nothing, not from my sins, because thou wilt obtain for me the pardon of them, nor from the devils, because thou art more powerful than all hell together, nor even from Jesus, my judge himself, because by one prayer from thee, he will be appeased."

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So notice the three things that this person will not be afraid of by fleeing to Mary.

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My sins, the devils, and Jesus. Okay? Those are the three things you will not be afraid of.

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But one thing I fear, that in the hour of temptation I may neglect to call on thee, and thus perish miserably. Obtain for me then the pardon of my sins, love for Jesus, final perseverance, and the grace always to have recourse to thee, oh mother of perpetual help.

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Now, I started listening to, so this is 93, so I had first debated

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Jerry Madetik's in 1990. So I've been listening to him for a long time now on something called a cassette tape.

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And so, well, cassette tapes, I had many of them still do in boxes all over the place that will end up in landfills eventually.

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And so, I knew Jerry was a convert to Roman Catholicism.

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He was an apostate. He was the first ordained PCA minister to convert to Roman Catholicism.

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And so, he and Scott Hahn at that time were very, very good at making

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Roman Catholicism sound, they'd bend Roman Catholicism as far toward Protestantism as possible.

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So if you bend Protestantism this way, the gap you'd have to jump over wouldn't be quite so big.

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And so, back to here, Jerry's doing this.

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And so, I happened before I had flown to Boston, and that was one of the first long distance flights

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I had done, actually. Hadn't been doing much traveling up until that point in time.

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But before I left, on a whim, I had seen that little booklet out of the corner of my eye.

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I said, I'm going to take that with. Something like this might come up. And so, it was in my book bag.

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It was on my right hand side. And so, I reached down there and pulled that out. And I read on the air,

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I wish we had a recording of this. It would be great. But that was unusual to do back then.

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I read to Jerry that prayer. Now, here was my assumption.

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My assumption was that Mary was going to go, Oh, James, James, James, Mr. White, Mr.

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White, Mr. White. You cannot hold the Roman Catholic Church accountable for the odd and strange things that are found in booklets stuck in seats in chapels at hospitals.

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You've got to go with what's been officially defined and da -da -da -da -da -da -da. And so,

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I read that whole prayer. And even the hostess was sort of like, Whoa. You know, because I always read it.

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So, you hear very clearly, check me from three things, my sins, the devils, and Jesus, my judge himself.

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And if I had my fuller Marian presentation up here, I'd read you a bunch of quotes from, you know,

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I didn't put them in here. But fuller quotes that would lay out from, like the book,

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The Glories of Mary, this constant theme of Jesus as judge,

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Mary is his mother. And therefore, Mary is the loving person to come to, to keep your judge from being too harsh against you.

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And so, we need a mediator with the mediator. That's literally what it said.

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We need a mediator with the mediator, and none better can be found than the Virgin Mary. So, I read this, and I put the booklet down.

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And I remember this to this day, because I expected that response, and I was wrong.

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Because Jerry looked through those, the arms of those microphones there, and right on the air said,

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James, someday, my prayer is that someday, you will be able to pray that prayer with me.

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So, there was a situation where I, I was taken aback, because I don't know if he would have done that three years earlier.

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Because Jerry's already left Catholic Answers at this point, and he's already moving much more toward what is called the

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Sedevacantist position, a more radical position. And so, maybe that would have changed in that time period.

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I don't know. But that's what happened right there. Now, the second thing,

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I wasn't going to do this, but hey, I didn't realize I had this picture in here.

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The next thing to remember is, this was, I think, on, like,

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Thursday or Friday. We debated Friday night and Saturday night.

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And at this point, we were scheduled to come back for a reprise on Monday to the studio.

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But then we got word, our side got word, and in hindsight,

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I wonder how this happened. But we were told that had been canceled.

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And we're out in a, I think it's called

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Sturbridge, if I recall. Something like that. So, we're 45 minutes to an hour outside of Boston.

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And so, I was staying with George and Aline Bonneau. And I told you George passed recently, right?

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Yeah. George Bonneau passed a couple months ago. And so,

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I was staying with George and Aline at their home. And if you've never heard of them, they started

37:38

Crown Publications, and Crown did my first few books. If you've been blessed by Fatal Flaw, Answers to Catholic Claims, Little White Book on Justification, God's Sovereign Grace, Drawn by the

37:51

Father, and Letters to a Mormon Elder. They were all done by Crown initially. Bethany House picked up Letters to a

37:57

Mormon Elder. What? Yeah, they're on Kindle. And so, George and Aline started that company that allowed that to happen.

38:06

We were, for some reason, we were out in the car, and we turned on WEZE, and there's

38:12

Janine and Jerry going, we don't know where James is. So, we bang a

38:19

Yui, get back to the house, call in, and did the rest of the show, sitting on the side of a bed.

38:30

And I'm wondering if I don't have a picture of that, too. Seriously. I have a recollection of that.

38:39

And why would I be telling you this part? Because that's where the white question came from.

38:46

And if you have followed our work on Roman Catholicism down through the years, then you know what the white question is.

38:53

I was sitting on the side of that bed, on the phone. Jerry is still in debate mode.

39:01

Jerry is never not in debate mode. I don't know how you ever live with Jerry. But when

39:08

I get done with the debate, I move on. There are a lot of people who do not, and Jerry's one of them.

39:15

So, he is still just on it on Monday.

39:23

And at one point, I had never thought this question before. It was not written down. I had never used it before.

39:31

I had not heard anyone else say it. But something that Jerry said in light of the debate we'd had on Saturday, which was on the apocryphal books, caused me to ask

39:47

Jerry what's known today as the white question. What's the white question?

39:53

I said, Jerry, how did the believing Jewish man know 50 years before Christ that Isaiah and 2

40:07

Chronicles were Scripture? Now, he had been baying away on, you can't know what

40:17

Scripture is without the authority of the church. But the fact of the matter is,

40:23

Jesus held men accountable for knowing what Scripture was before there was anything that could even be remotely, even by them, claimed to be the

40:29

Roman Catholic Church. And of course, we can make the argument that Rome's current canon from 1546,

40:38

April of 1546, contradicts what the Jews would have believed 50 years before Christ, and it does.

40:47

So, that sort of flushes the whole idea. But he was emphasizing, you have to have an infallible definition of what

40:55

Scripture is before Scripture can function as Scripture. So, okay, then how did the believing

41:01

Jew know that Isaiah and 2 Chronicles were Scripture 50 years before Jesus?

41:09

And it got silent. Now, no radio host wants silence.

41:17

That is the terrible, horrible sin of dead air. Because the natural, what any human being does is when the radio goes silent, you start looking for another station.

41:31

You figure they've gone off the air, something's gone wrong, and you're not going to sit there and wait. People start tuning out.

41:37

You don't want dead air. So, she jumps in and says, well, that's a good question.

41:45

We'll be right back after this with the answer, and rescues Jerry. And so,

41:52

I'm sitting there going, well, this will be interesting to see what he says. In my mind,

41:57

I'm running through, well, what are the options? What can he say? And over the years, there have been some pretty wild options.

42:05

I thought the best one, because you can either say, well, they couldn't know, which means

42:12

Jesus could not hold anyone accountable to Scripture, and since he did, that doesn't work. You could refer to the infallible

42:18

Jewish magisterium, but Jerry already knew he couldn't do that, because he knows that I can make a very strong case that the

42:26

Jews rejected the books that he says should be considered canonical, because we had just debated that on Saturday night.

42:33

So, he's not going to go there. The most ingenious answer I ever heard over the years was the

42:39

Urim and the Thummim. And you're going, the Humim and the Humim? Hummus?

42:45

I don't like hummus. No, the Urim and the Thummim, the stones on the breastplate of the high priest that could be used for divination.

42:56

So, you could literally cast lots and go,

43:02

Isaiah, snake eyes! You know, that's how you do the canon of Scripture.

43:11

And that was, hey, you got to give whoever came up with that one some props for having come up with it.

43:18

So, we come back on, and she repeats the question. And it's still quiet.

43:28

Jerry has never been hit with this. He has never thought this through. So, I, of course, pressed the issue.

43:37

And she eventually moved us off that topic, because she could tell that was going to get him no place.

43:45

And you are in Boston. There is a few Roman Catholics in Boston. But yeah, this was the event right there.

43:55

I had forgotten that I had found this and had done a quick, I need to find this picture again and get a better scan of it.

44:02

Well, that was obviously taken by either George or Aline through the window. You know, it's probably 640x480 resolution at best.

44:14

And yeah, so that was 1993. I think that was in the fall.

44:21

I had started writing in May. Remember, I just dumped weight. You recall that.

44:29

My office was in your house at that time. And yeah, there you go.

44:37

What? No, no, we were at the house.

44:43

Yeah, I remember that very clearly. We were at the house by then. So, there's a little background story I did not expect to be spending time on today, but that gives you a lot of the information.

44:54

The point is, of course, that I can go back into encyclicals from popes that identify

45:06

Mary as co -mediatrix and co -redemptrix with Christ.

45:12

Now you read, and of course, let's jump to after Francis's pontificate, okay?

45:23

He's no longer pope. Let's say he's resigned and there's some new guy.

45:33

And the question is brought up, what are we to believe about Mary's role as intercessor?

45:43

Because I can show you quotations about Mary being the neck through which the grace of God flows and turns the head and just all sorts of stuff like this.

45:59

Well, you got this pope said this in an encyclical. Francis said this in a devotional, not an encyclical.

46:09

An encyclical outweighs comments made at the regular Wednesday chat.

46:18

And so, what are you supposed to believe? For years and years and years,

46:24

Roman Catholics have been telling me, sola scriptura, blueprint for anarchy. We can go the pope.

46:32

Well, first of all, no, you can't. Try it. It's not going to work.

46:39

But even if you say, well, theoretically, we have someone today who can give us an infallible interpretation of scripture.

46:45

Okay. How are you going to know that it's infallible interpretation of scripture? You're not going to know until he's dead.

46:52

Just go back and look at Honorius. Look what happened with him. There's so many examples of this.

46:57

And now look at this situation. Do you get to weigh which pope?

47:03

Well, this pope gets this many points, and it was in an encyclical.

47:09

And this pope, Francis, everybody knew he was on the board game. He's almost negative points if you land on his square.

47:20

And he just made these comments off the cuff at a... I mean, that's just...

47:26

Who gets to weigh these things? That's the problem of denying sola scriptura.

47:33

Sola ecclesia doesn't work. And this form really doesn't work at all.

47:39

So don't get me wrong. I'm glad to hear Pope Francis saying what he said.

47:48

He's still completely wrong about Mary. He still has a completely false set of dogmas and doctrines that he's now interpreting in a very liberation theology style, even at that.

48:06

But I have wanted to dig in and find out what are they saying at the

48:14

University of Steubenville? Or has that movement died out there? I can't imagine it has, but what about those people who only 20 years ago were excitedly hoping that the pope would define the final

48:31

Marian dogma? And they had reason to be hopeful. I mean, 1854, 1950, why not?

48:40

Well, it didn't happen. Here's the problem. Still could. Still could.

48:47

You don't know who the next pope's going to be. The next pope could, would have the authority to define and pronounce and proclaim

48:59

Mary as co -redemptrix with Christ. In the Roman Catholic system, he can do that. And the

49:05

Roman Catholic would be bound to accept it, despite the fact that that would put that pope in contradiction to another pope.

49:14

Eh! That's what happens when you have an ultimate authority that changes.

49:20

Has to change, just like the high priests changed under the old covenant. Got the same situation here.

49:27

Interesting. Interesting. Let's talk a little bit about when woke gets broke.

49:38

I wrote an article, Apologia Meets in the

49:45

Afternoon. So Sunday mornings, you don't have to be running around like a chicken with your head cut off like most people do trying to get to church.

49:54

And so I wrote an article, a brief little thing, put on the Theology Matters blog called

50:03

Keeping the High Ground. And I just focused in on one of the fundamental realities of critical theory.

50:11

And man, it would be fascinating to look at a, what's it called, a

50:17

LexisNexis thing that looks at the internet and can tell you when the first reference to something was, and then how many more references, and you can just sort of see it explode over time.

50:31

It'd be fascinating to watch the slow crawl of critical theory. And then over the past two years, the explosion to where it's, and the term woke, is now everywhere.

50:46

Every other tweet. Because the current regime is as woke as it can be, and is shoving wokeness down our throats.

50:57

Wokeness is fundamentally opposed to the American understanding, the historic American understanding of humanity, law, culture, everything.

51:11

And obviously in the church. So what I did is I talked about the fact that, and I've said this before, you take critical theory, you've got critical legal theory, you've got critical gender theory, you've got critical race theory, that's a big one.

51:26

But you name it, you can have critical historical theory, how you do history, that's where all the colonization stuff comes from, and that kind of jazz.

51:37

You can have any, you can put any element of human endeavor, epistemology, whatever, between the

51:46

C and the T. And it's, since I did a

51:51

Star Trek illustration earlier, it's a little bit like the episode where you had the two planets that had been at war for like 500 years, but they computerized it all and made it nice and clean.

52:03

And so you just, if you got killed in the attack from the other planet, you had to report to the disintegrator and you just walked in and the door closed, and you hear ring, ring, and the door opens and there's nobody there because you got disintegrated.

52:18

That's what CT is. Okay. You take something, you put it in, the door closes, and it opens up and it's gone.

52:28

That's how critical theory works. It's to break stuff up. It's to disintegrate things.

52:34

Its fundamental assumption is that we have allowed harmony to exist where harmony cannot exist, given the worldview out of which critical theory is derived, which is a non -Christian, non -theistic, naturalistic worldview.

52:55

So what I was pointing out is in Colossians chapter one, when Christ describes the creator of all things is, in him, all things is the

53:05

Greek term. They hold together. I actually have a shirt. I think I might have one here at the office.

53:12

I really like this. I liked it anyways, but it was a Mandelbrot Fractal.

53:19

If you know what the Mandelbrot Fractal is, it's fascinating. If you haven't looked at that, go listen to Jason Lyle's presentation on the

53:27

Mandelbrot Fractals. It's awesome. But it's the Mandelbrot Fractal with Soenestekin underneath it.

53:33

And the whole idea is, in him, all things hold together. Even the mathematical realm, the beauty that is found in fractal art, which

53:41

I've been doing since late 80s, early 90s, all found in the fact that he holds all things together.

53:50

So the Christian faith has the basis for seeing unity and harmony and consistency with things together.

53:58

Critical theory has to break all that apart. They are absolutely opposed to one another. Absolutely opposed to one another on a worldview basis.

54:09

And so I posted that on Sunday morning. I must realize that is absolutely the worst time in the world to post anything.

54:16

Nobody saw it. So I reposted it yesterday, and a number of people said, yeah, I didn't see that.

54:22

Thanks. I'm glad to read that, et cetera, et cetera. So I have to keep that in mind. But right along those lines, over the weekend, so on March 23rd, so this was a week ago, a good old

54:38

Kyle James Howard. Now, if you don't know who Kyle James Howard is, back in 2018,

54:46

Kyle James Howard blocked me on Twitter and said that he was afraid as a black man to be alone with me in a room.

54:59

This was when he was doing his, he's getting all his trauma stuff lined out.

55:04

And now Kyle James Howard is traumatized by many things. Kyle James Howard is a very traumatized individual.

55:14

When you make it your life to be traumatized and to traumatize everybody else, it sort of happens. He has become such a racist in the sinful biblical definition, the old style,

55:28

I'm one color, you're a different color, therefore you're a bad person because of the color you are, racism. It's horrible.

55:34

It's just astonishing to watch. It really is. If you want an example, here you go.

55:41

Someone asked him the question, if someone divorces their partner on the grounds of them being a white supremacist, would you consider this a biblical divorce?

55:50

Now let's think for a second. White supremacy. You saw, we saw back around Christmas time, the elderly

56:05

Asian man, a huge black man runs across the street and bulls him over and kills him.

56:13

Two days ago, or maybe it was just yesterday. The video appears of a

56:22

Asian woman, 65 year old Asian woman. I mean, these men are just so brave, just so brave picking on people that are 50 years older than them.

56:32

65 year old Asian woman is walking to church. This big, huge black man kicks her to the ground and stomps on her head.

56:43

And there are at least one or two security guards watching it happen. And they closed the door on her.

56:50

I mean, it was just cowardice on a level that just makes you want to spew something.

56:58

So you have this sudden explosion of anti -Asian violence.

57:05

And so what happened after the older guy got killed back around Christmas? They started having marches.

57:11

And what are they carrying? Signs that say we must stomp out what? White supremacy.

57:20

And everybody keeps posting memes. Here's the victim, Asian guy. Who got him?

57:25

Black guy. It is black violence against Asians almost entirely, almost completely.

57:35

And it's racism. It is. It is. And remember, you've been telling this community for decades now they can't be racists.

57:45

That's the best way to produce racism ever designed by man. Good thinking. And so you've got this explosion of racism, but it's white supremacy because everything's white supremacy.

57:59

So I knew as soon as I pointed out, someone would say, well, yes, that is white supremacy. Yes, that is a black man stomping on an

58:06

Asian woman's face, but it's due to white supremacy because everything is due to white supremacy.

58:13

Global warming is due to white supremacy. COVID is due to white supremacy.

58:19

Everything in the economy is due to white supremacy. Every disease is due to white supremacy is a new name for Satan.

58:25

Satan did it. Remember what was that SNL? The church lady. That's what the devil.

58:31

She say Satan did it or maybe it was Satan. Yeah. Okay. That's been replaced.

58:37

Maybe it was white supremacy. That's what it is now. And no one can tell you what it is.

58:43

You can't define it. You can't put under a microscope. It's just this vague thing you use to just throw acid on everybody.

58:51

That's just all there is to it. So when someone says, if someone divorces their partner on the grounds of them being a white supremacist,

59:00

I'm sitting here thinking about these theologians who have sat there going, yeah, in light of this new definition, where you're a white supremacist, even though you never knew it.

59:17

And it's just all implicit bias. And you just got to be educated about it.

59:23

And you are a racist. And we're just going to educate you about your racism, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So you're going to, you're going to break up marriages now on that basis.

59:34

Well, what does Kyle James Howard say? I'd say an unrepentant white supremacist should be treated as an unbeliever and excommunicated from the church.

59:46

First off, from there, if we're talking about white and white, I'd say not biblical grounds.

59:54

If it is an interracial marriage, I would say it's grounds based on abandonment, based on abandonment.

01:00:07

Now, I'm very thankful for the fact that the internet came down on top of Kyle James Howard for having said this.

01:00:17

Not that he will care. But a lot of people did. But many people did not.

01:00:25

I didn't see certain people that I'd like to ask the question of, um, you buy this?

01:00:31

I'd like to ask the Beatty on your wheelie, do you buy that? You want to bring in the modern definition of white supremacist, which is just simply being white.

01:00:45

It's not even being white, it's being not a currently designed person of color.

01:00:54

Because those of us who are white know that there's all sorts of differences between us. And that if you know anything about history, you know that being

01:01:03

Irish in this country meant one thing, being Polish in this country meant another thing.

01:01:08

You young folks don't even realize when I was in sixth grade, you know what the most popular jokes were?

01:01:16

They're Polack jokes. Oh, yeah. Do you remember that? Oh, sure.

01:01:22

Sure. Most people don't even know what you're all Caucasians. Why are you picking on each other?

01:01:29

See, it's that's what that's the stupidity of this white supremacy garbage.

01:01:34

And the Italians had to fight and the Scots had to fight. And, and just, that's just been the story of history.

01:01:44

But history isn't doesn't really matter anymore. But an unrepentant white supremacist, what's a repentant white supremacist from Kyle James Howard's perspective, someone who simply accepts the narrative of critical theory, intersectionality, identity politics, that's a way you can be repentant.

01:02:04

None of those things any apostle ever dreamed about, but that's the only way to be repentant.

01:02:10

And Kyle James Howard says, if you're an unrepentant white supremacist, so what's he saying is, membership in the church should be determined by your acceptance of Neo Marxism.

01:02:23

Kick everybody else out of the church. Remember when Salva started saying, yeah, this is going to lead to real division.

01:02:31

Yep. Yep. It does because of the radical nature of the claims that are being made.

01:02:41

If, if you're in a church where the leadership of your church would not recognize that what

01:02:48

Kyle James Howard said there was absolutely and horrifically wrong and racist, you need to get out of that church.

01:02:58

You need to get out of that church. And if they don't have the guts to say it, well, they need to get out of church again.

01:03:08

One last thing before we take a break before the program on Thursday.

01:03:17

I happened to just run across this graphic from Layton Flowers this morning, and I went ahead and grabbed it.

01:03:29

And it's a puppeteer. He's doing his thing with a puppet there. When a

01:03:35

Calvinist objects to comparing their system to puppetry, ask them this. Okay, ready,

01:03:40

Calvinists? Ready? Because here's a former Calvinist.

01:03:45

That's what he likes to keep saying over and over and over. Even everybody that I've ever talked to who knew him at that time goes he was about as much a

01:03:53

Calvinist as my left shoe. But there you go. Here's what you are to be asked, according to Dr.

01:04:03

Layton Flowers. In what specific manner are puppets different in relation to the puppet master than clay pots are in relation to the potter on the

01:04:16

Calvinistic interpretation of that biblical analogy? Now, that's a good question.

01:04:27

I'm thankful that the very question itself recognizes that one of them is a biblical analogy.

01:04:38

So, God uses the pot and the potter. And one of those uses in Isaiah of the pot and the potter is where God says, you've turned things upside down.

01:04:54

You thought that the potter was like under the clay. So, to think that the potter's experience is to be defined in the same categories as the clays is rebuked biblically by the prophet

01:05:14

Isaiah himself. I would argue that is exactly what Layton Flowers does. That's what he demands in your viewing of God, his experience of time, his constant mockery of the idea that there is a divine decree that God is accomplishing in this world.

01:05:33

I saw a video of something happened with his internet. That happens.

01:05:40

The internet is not yet perfect. Some of us are old enough to remember what a 1200 baud modem sounded like when it was hooking up over a phone line.

01:05:52

So, you young folks have absolutely no reason to be complaining about anything on the internet today.

01:05:58

But he was having internet problems and he said, well, obviously

01:06:04

God decreed that too, right? So, it's always the mockery. Man, I would not want to have to answer for that someday.

01:06:13

But they would say he should never have to answer for it if it's part of the decree because the decree cannot include the idea of God actually interacting with his creatures in time because their

01:06:25

God can't do that. So, it can't include it. But that's also relevant to here because what

01:06:32

I want you to understand as you see this graphic, who is the second

01:06:39

Adam? Jesus took on flesh.

01:06:44

Remember yesterday we went through John 1 .14. The word became flesh. Dwelt among us who beheld his glory.

01:06:50

The glories of the only begotten Father full of grace and truth. We touched him. We handled him.

01:06:57

Jesus entered into what we call the temporal realm, the realm of creatureliness, of the experience of time, the progression of time, daytime, nighttime, daytime, nighttime, seasons.

01:07:14

He entered into all of that because he took on flesh. And I have said, and I've never heard a response to this, but that's because I do not listen for three hours to Leighton Flowers.

01:07:30

But that's why I've insisted that this utilization of the puppet master thing is a fundamental attack.

01:07:41

It shows a fundamental ignorance of the incarnation and its importance in biblical theology.

01:07:48

It comes from people who divide their theology up into different parts, and so they've got their doctrine of the

01:07:54

Trinity and incarnation. That's way over there. This is soteriology 101, right? And so this is soteriology.

01:08:00

So we're over here, and we don't have to worry about that incarnation stuff. But the reality is

01:08:08

Jesus lived in time. He did not become a puppet.

01:08:13

He did not become a robot. He did affirm clearly that his coming was at the command and decree of God the

01:08:27

Father. It's timing. He said, it's absolutely necessary that I go to Jerusalem.

01:08:36

And of course, it was necessary prophetically. I've never really brought this up, but think about this for a second.

01:08:46

Our understanding of Jesus as a prophet, pretty important.

01:08:55

Most Christians that I know of would struggle to defend

01:09:03

Jesus's role as a prophet, partly because of their eschatology. The early church, the primary thing they pointed to to demonstrate that Jesus was a true prophet in the role of a prophet, as in forth telling the future, was that he prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem by the

01:09:25

Romans in AD 70. And it happened exactly as he said that it would. What would you point to if you don't believe that the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 is what

01:09:38

Jesus was actually talking about in Matthew chapter 24? But leave that to the side for a second.

01:09:46

In AD 70, there's something else that's important in that. Daniel. Daniel and the time frame in which the

01:09:57

Messiah must come. And Daniel talks about the destruction of the temple, of a rebuilt temple, which is the second temple, which was destroyed in AD 70.

01:10:10

So you have a situation here where if you want to start playing

01:10:15

Mr. Open Theist guy and saying that God can have a million different ways to make things work, you just have to go to another option, then another option, another option.

01:10:28

Once you've prophesied, once you've done the Daniel thing, you actually have to do it within the time frame that Daniel says.

01:10:37

Right? Or now you've turned Daniel into a false prophet. And Jesus into a false prophet as well.

01:10:46

Jesus says it is necessary that I go to Jerusalem. I'd be betrayed, I'd be crucified, buried, rise again the third day.

01:10:56

And that's exactly what happened. Not because he was simply looking to the future and seeing it. This was the reality of God's decree.

01:11:04

Jesus lives under that decree. And yet he lives as a man.

01:11:12

He teaches, he interacts. What the incarnation demonstrates is that it is the eternal decree of God that is the foundation of the reality and meaningfulness of what happens in time.

01:11:28

This movement, as I've said many times before, has a very shallow view of God. They flatten them out two dimensions.

01:11:37

God's experience has to be like my experience or I will not feel like I can commune with this

01:11:45

God because his ways are not my ways. Oh, wait a minute. Thoughts are not my thoughts. Oh, let's not go there.

01:11:55

So in what specific manner are puppets different in relation to the puppet master? That's simple. And the picture is good for that.

01:12:04

That's a little wooden man. He's not real. He's not a person. Jesus was a person and so are we.

01:12:12

And so you have persons in time interacting with other persons in time and interacting with God in time in the way he decrees in eternity.

01:12:25

And that's where they go, I can't understand it. And I say, that's because you're a creature. Stop dragging

01:12:30

God down to your level. Let all of the scripture speak.

01:12:39

He's bigger than you. And I truly,

01:12:44

I really wonder about people who want to have a God who's nothing more than a turbocharged version of themselves.

01:12:56

Secondly, the potter forms the clay into what he wants to form the clay into to do what?

01:13:05

To demonstrate his own attributes. That's what you have in Romans 9.

01:13:12

The potter determines who the vessels of honor are. The potter determines who the vessels of dishonor are.

01:13:19

And all of this is so that his name might be made known and his power might be demonstrated.

01:13:24

And that's really the problem. Because these folks have not been subjected to God at that point.

01:13:31

I don't, no, I'm not going to go there. I'm not going to, I don't want a God like that.

01:13:37

I agree. You don't. That's the problem. So the potter forms the pots in such a fashion that he himself will be glorified in the demonstration of his wrath, his power, his might, his love, his mercy, and his grace.

01:14:03

And he does so in making actual creatures in his image who work together to bring about the final result.

01:14:13

And that is the praise of his glorious grace. And there's nothing in the puppet analogy, it even comes close.

01:14:19

Therefore, anyone raising this does so either dishonestly or out of utter ignorance.

01:14:26

Only possible way to conclude the question. So there you go.

01:14:32

So it's a nicely done graphic. It just demonstrates that, again, the creature really ends up making a fool of himself when he tries to mock the sovereign creator of scripture.

01:14:49

It's amazing. Okay, well, it wasn't two hours.

01:14:57

We kept it a little bit shorter than that. That's not too bad. And I didn't get into too much stuff. I was thinking at the beginning about all these

01:15:05

COVID passports and stuff. Maybe we'll do something about that next time around. Because remember, yeah, we called it, we've been talking about this for a long, long time.

01:15:18

And now we finally got some people, I mean, some big names coming out going, wait a minute, if you do this, it's the end.

01:15:29

This is China. You are done. Sort of like, yeah, thank you.

01:15:36

We were saying that a while back. But oh, well, nice to have some other people saying it now as well.

01:15:42

Probably get into some of that on Thursday, assuming we're still here, given all the politically incorrect things that we were saying even now.