Road Trip Dl From Colorado: PCUSA Worldview, Dositheus The Provisionist

Greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White. We're coming to you live.

From outside of Cortez, Colorado, where the radar shows the possibility of some more rain coming in. We got a good downpour a little while ago, and we had had a leak when we first got this unit, and they feel like they got hold of it, and so far, so good.

But I've been wanting some good downpours, just to test, just to look around, and so far, so good. So, I am pleased with that. Oh, sorry about that. It hadn't turned back on yet, but it would soon, and it would get very, very loud in here.

And it's only like 73 degrees outside, so hopefully it won't get too warm in here during the course of the program. So, yeah, heading up for Grand Junction tomorrow. I have not driven this road before, and I have certainly not pulled an RV from Grand Junction to Denver, which I'll be doing right at the weekend.

A little nervous about that, I'll admit. I'm a little confused. My RV planning trip program thinks I'm going to be climbing to 11 ,000 feet on the way to Denver, which I'm not. I do know the route from 70.

I've driven it many, many times. The only way I could do that is if they routed me up and over Loveland Pass, which would be absolute insanity. But there you go. So, could be interesting. Could be an interesting trip.

No two ways about it. A little excited about it, a little nervous about it, but I'm pretty certain it's our beastie truck, and this unit can handle it. So, anyway, heading there, and then over to Golden.

We'll be out in Aurora, and then down to the Springs, and then Bernalillo. I'm not sure how they pronounce it. New Mexico on the way home. So, I had a great time at Summit Lake Community Church yesterday.

Spoke on why we can trust the Bible. When you only have 45 minutes and no projector, it can be done. You know, we had just done a similar thing up in Prescott Valley, but, you know, with the whole presentation and manuscripts and stuff like that.

But you can do it in 45 minutes. In fact, I did it in 44 minutes. How's that? My joke was that we needed to get to the cafeteria before the Methodist did. That's sort of a dated joke, unfortunately. It doesn't really communicate the way it used to.

A lot of my jokes don't communicate the way they used to. Well, actually, what my jokes do now is they identify who the boomers in the audience are, because they're the only ones that laugh. So, yes, okay.

Such a boomer. Thank you very much. That did remind me to turn the phone to silent. Anyway, so we're on the road, and I just... something popped up on on X just a couple minutes before the program started, and you know how, you go look at it.

Back in high school, so I graduated high school in 1981, and yes, that was the last century. That was almost two decades before the end of the last century. And I was class valedictorian, and so I was in all the honors classes, and had to be, because you got more...

Back in those days, you were rewarded for being a good student. You know, I know they don't do that anymore, because they don't want to make anybody feel bad, that kind of stuff. But back then, I had to take the honors classes to get the full amount of points for the A that I would get in that class, and that's what determined the class ranking, and stuff like that.

And so, one of the books that was assigned my... pretty certain it was, yeah, it was my senior year. I've been thinking about a lot recently, and lo and behold, Up on X popped a post within the last hour, and it was about that book, and it reminded me of the name, called Camp of the Saints.

Camp of the Saints, and it was a dystopic look at the collapse of Europe, due to third world immigration. This is 1981, and it's talking about how the Europeans lost their willingness to be proud of their culture, their history, and therefore, just basically did away with borders.

And so, I'm waving at my hosts, they're... I can't move this thing. They're... They drove by, they know we're doing The Dividing Line. They've sat in on The Dividing Line, but we love this studio, but there's no place for a studio audience here.

They'd have to sit in the other room, and I'm not sure it'd be a whole lot of fun. Anyway, so they stood away with borders, and all these people come across the Mediterranean, and just invade, and take over, and they have no culture.

They have no respect for law. They just destroy everything in the process, and Europe disintegrates. This is 1981, and the article that was posted here, I haven't had a chance to read it, Prophetic Immigration Foresight or Banned Racist Black Pill, a look at Jean Raspail's Camp of the Saints.

So, I don't know what the conclusion they come to. It's from Christ overall, so I'd like to track it down, because I've thought of that book many times over the past decade, especially, as it did seem to be rather prophetic.

Now, at the time, it just seemed to me to be rather depressing. I mean, we weren't at that point, or at least not to a high school senior, not in Europe, did it seem like we were at that point. But there were a lot of books written back then that look to be absolutely prophetic now.

What they were, were just people doing what AI computers do now, which is model, follow trends, predict responses, and that's how AI looks like it's so smart. It's just doing what the human mind can do, given enough time and given enough data.

So, This Perfect Day, another dystopic novel from that time period, frightening to read, especially in 2021, 2022, with the forced vaccinations. It does amaze me to think about the fact that we sit here in 2026, and almost nobody cares about what happened in 2021 and 2022.

In fact, when people bring it up, people are like, that was then, this is now, I'm worried about what's going on now. And it's like, don't you realize that the people that were pushing that stuff then, they will be back in power.

They haven't gone anywhere. Hearts have not been changed. Minds have not been changed. That autocratic, technocratic cult is just waiting for their chance. And they're going to come roaring back and no one's been held accountable for the deaths.

There is no question in my mind whatsoever, this is not conspiracy theory stuff anymore. The number of studies and papers that have been published now, you can't even keep track of them. Turbo cancers and unexplained deaths and miscarriages and Pfizer and all these groups hiding data that they had.

They knew that these shots were going to do these things and they were perfectly fine with that. That was the plan from the beginning. I honestly, and this is going to sound crazy because you're not allowed to think like this, but I have a hard time not looking at Anthony Fauci in the same way as I look at Mengele.

It's the same motivation, the same arrogance, the same evil, and no one's going to be held accountable. Justice for all the people who died? I can think, I'm thinking of a man right now died during that.

It was said he died of COVID. No, he died of how the hospital forced him to be treated. It wasn't COVID that killed him. It was purposeful depopulation and nothing's going to happen. Not in this life.

If I was a secularist, if I was a materialist, I would be so depressed because these people will get away with it. They'll die fat, rich, and happy. That's just all there is to it. We live in a very strange day where we have the briefest memory.

It's so short. It does not last any time at all. You may be staring at a screen and that might explain why our attention span is so short. We do not view ourselves in the long term. Most Americans, even Americans who understand this, still take a much shorter term view of things than many other cultures.

The Chinese culture takes a very long term view of stuff. They will outlast us. They really will if we do not have a change of heart. That change of heart would require adoption of a worldview that would make sense.

Anyway, a couple things here. I had seen that. Then I had seen a LDS young lady post something. It was reposted by Lego Joseph Smith, I think. She had said, if you think the Bible has no contradictions, you might be an occult.

I thought about that. I thought about when I first started studying Mormonism and the perspectives that I brought to that study, the use of the term cult. I would not have had any basis for even understanding that assertion.

If you think the Bible has no contradictions, you might be in a cult. I asked her, I said, do you think Jesus believed as you? Do you think Jesus took that view? She said, I have been thinking about this for a solid three minutes.

I still cannot interpret what you mean by this sentence. I explained it a little bit better. I said, it is not that difficult. Do you think if someone had said to Jesus what you said to all the rest of the scriptures, the scriptures are self-contradictory, that he would have said, oh, yes, surely.

If so, could you possibly give us something from his own words that would support that idea? There have been a few responses, not from her, but the responses have been depressing. People just do not read well.

Reading comprehension, especially in social media, is bad. It really, really is. There was a statement made a few days ago by Dale Partridge. Dale has become, what has Dale become? I do not know. He is sort of the punching bag for the NXR little group, very little, tiny, loudmouth group.

He says things that I do not know if he will ever regret them. I do not know if he will ever get to the point of regretting the things he has said and done in the past. It would be nice to think he will, but I am really not certain that is going to happen.

He recently did this sermon series. It is sort of hard to call these things sermons. This sermon series on ham and the table of nations. It is the same stuff the Stone Choir goes on and on and on about, where the black race is inferior.

This is because of the curse of ham, which was not the curse of ham, it was the curse of Canaan. They have ways around all of it. It is this thing. He made some statement. Someone said, you are punching right.

He says, not punching right, just saying facts. Listen to this. Luther was just as intense on Zionism. Washington was more intense on race. Knox was a beast against feminism. Hitler was a world leader and you can always learn something from a world leader, but when it comes to these issues, others were better.

There were better people on Zionism, race, and feminism. The examples given are Martin Luther, George Washington, and the Scottish reformer, Knox. When I first read it, I am just like, is there ever an end to this?

Do these guys ever just stop and start laughing and go, okay, guys, we did not mean any of this. We are sorry. We have just been pulling your leg for years now. I do not think so. If you are wondering about Knox, when he wrote against female leadership, he embarrassed John Calvin.

When John Calvin read the Trumpet Blast, Knox's book, he was mortified. It went beyond John Calvin. Think about that. When John Calvin is going, chill your jets, dude. You are going to blow a gasket here.

When Calvin says that, might tell you a little something. There was no balance there. None whatsoever. NXR, that little cult group, that is how they get their few followers, is to eschew balance. We do not want to have balance.

No, no balance. The people we want clicking and beating our Patreon page and stuff like that, buying our coffee mugs or whatever it is they do, they do not want balance. They want extremes. We will give them what they want.

But the thing that just made me sit there and stare, Luther was just as intense on Zionism. I suppose there is a definition for Zionism today from certain forms of dispensationalism that turned the nation state of Israel into the fulfillment of the fig tree.

And therefore, you need to be in support of Israel because this is what the Bible says. And the people who go running over to Israel for that kind of stuff, okay, that is a form of Zionism. I am just like, yeah, that is crazy.

That is indefensible. Biblically, it is not balanced. It is horribly imbalanced. I mean, the state of Israel today, the nation of Israel, is a royal mess spiritually. And to think that this is somehow fulfillment of biblical prophecy.

I know there are people who believe it and they are still Christians, but I just look at it and go, you have to be kidding me. This secular state is prophetic fulfillment? I reject that. I just find it incomprehensible completely.

You have got to have other reasons to come to those conclusions. But there was no state of Israel in Luther's day. So, he would be in a completely different context than what you have today. What Luther was intense on should just break your heart.

I remember sitting in the church in Eisleben, which is where Luther was born and where he died. He has never lived there. And I was looking at the content of his last sermons that he had preached while he was there right before his death.

He was clearly having cardiac issues and he definitely needed a bypass or something like that, but they did not do stuff like that back then. So, he passed away. And the last sermons that he preached were not encouraging.

They were filled with diatribes against the Jews. When you look at the young Luther and then you look at the older Luther, the pre -1525 Luther and the post -1525 Luther, it is sad to see the change that took place there.

And the irony for me, I mean, other than the sadness of reading this stuff, was the fact that his greatest enemy, Johann Eck, a brilliant man in his own right, from the Roman Catholic side, he saw that Luther was going to be a problem from the beginning.

Tried to get Rome to deal with him fatally from the start and failed to do so. Eck was the worst of the Roman Catholic anti-Semites, anti-Jews. He wrote probably the most notorious, infamous book against the Jews.

I'm a little surprised, to be honest with you, maybe I shouldn't be suggesting this, but I'm a little surprised that the NXR ilk of people, the Stone Choir ilk of people, it's sort of hard to tell the difference between them anymore, haven't been quoting from Eck yet.

Because his book was much larger than Luther's, The Jews and Their Lies, and much more vitriolic. And so here's a man who is Luther's worst enemy, and yet he joins with him in this campaign, which had the full backing of the papacy.

Rome's history with the Jews is not a pretty picture. You know, modern popesplainers may try to minimize things, but it just doesn't do any good. And so it was by far the majority view at that time to hate Jews, to call for the burning of synagogues, the burning of the scrolls, the burning of the Talmud.

And we've had people doing that. The Ogden guys were talking about doing that, burning the Talmud. That was the majority view. It wasn't the cool thing to do back then. It was what everybody believed.

And so, you know, Rome today is like, oh, Rome swung completely the other direction. And now what you have with Rome is basically, hey, you know what? The Jews will be just fine without Jesus. The universalism and inclusivism of the Roman leadership post-Vatican II has led most of their leaders to go, you know, as long as they worship in the best way that they can, that's the same thing as believing in Jesus.

Because that's what inclusivism is. Inclusivism is the idea that any faith move toward God is a faith move toward Jesus, even if you don't know who Jesus is. So an inclusivist would literally say that, you know, the Bushmen somewhere in a remote island in the South Pacific that honestly worships his idol and tries to be a good person is actually worshiping Jesus and will go to heaven as a result.

So that's not universalism, which doesn't really require any kind of faith move toward any God at all. But inclusivism allows you to at least be somewhat religious along the way. So anyway, you know, so Rome has swung all over the place and it's almost painful to watch defenders of Romanism try to pretend that they haven't, because they most assuredly and clearly have.

So anyway, watching Dale Partridge literally saying Luther was just as intense on Zionism. No, no, there was no Zionism as we have it today back then. And what he was intense on was anti-Jewish violent rhetoric that led to the death of many, many Jews, not to the promulgation of the gospel.

And, you know, does Dale Partridge know that? He has so completely destroyed all of his credibility that it's just... Let me see if I can find this here. I thought I had it somewhere, but I had a statement.

Where did it go? I had it queued up. At least I thought I had it queued up. Maybe I don't have it queued up anymore. Doesn't look like it's appearing here anyplace. It was from X, and I thought I maybe saved it in my bookmarks.

Man, there's a lot of weird stuff in my bookmarks. There really, really is. But it's not... Oh, well, no, that's not it. Huh, that's interesting, because I thought for sure that I had kept this one. Basically, it was the idol killer, Warren McGrew, trying to make the argument against...

Let's see if I don't have it here. I hate to mention it. But he was making the argument that God changed in the Incarnation. And it's a very common argument by Unitarians, for example, by Muslims. And for Warren McGrew, it doesn't matter who came up with the argument, who's using it.

As long as it's opposed to any form of orthodoxy, he'll be good with it. But it just demonstrated, again, such an animosity on his part toward basic Christian truths. I heard that he said recently that I was running from something because of some comments I made about open theism in regards to Layton Flowers.

And I remember back when I first started engaging him years ago, he was saying, I'm not an open theist. And he had this other dynamic some phrase that he used. And then he interviewed a leading open theist, who I've debated, Dr. Sanders.

And Dr. Sanders, he described his position to Dr. Sanders. And Dr. Sanders was like, that's open theism. That's open theism. Yep, that's the same thing. And it was sort of embarrassing and funny. But anyway, when you find people who are willing to fundamentally assert, because remember, once you embrace open theism, where do you draw lines after that?

I mean, seriously, if you've gotten to the point where you're willing to sacrifice prophecy, because every open theist has to. They have no foundation for prophecy. If God does not exhaustively know future events on the time of creation, there can be no messianic prophecy.

There can be no prophecy at all. You can't just sit there and say, well, sure, he can make sure that the big stuff happens. He can make sure that the Messiah comes and he can make sure that this nation does that thing.

Don't you understand? Every event in history is the result of hundreds of thousands, not millions, of human choices. And if the big thing is God will never violate the human will, then God cannot know the future.

So real open theists recognize, you know, on September 10th, 2001, God knew there was a real possibility something was going to happen, but he didn't know exactly what it was going to be. He knew what the plans were.

He didn't know if they'd succeed. So he didn't know who was going to die, who was going to live. And as John Sanders said in our debate, when Christ died, he and the father and the spirit had no idea whether any of us living today would ever exist.

So there can be no personal atonement. There can be no union of the elect with Christ because God had no earthly idea that any of us would exist. And when God created, he had no idea that anyone other than Adam would exist.

So you can't have anything personal in all that stuff. That's the cost of your vaunted human freedom is you're left with a God who just can't know things, at least perfectly. And so anyway, if you're willing to get rid of prophecy, and prophecy, of course, was the first thing that Jesus says to the disciples after his resurrection, Luke chapter 24, why didn't you believe?

He opens their minds to understand the scriptures, to see how from Moses through all the prophets, they testified of him, and he upbraids them for their unbelief. That doesn't happen in an open theist universe.

God's not upbraiding anyone because as John Sanders did when we, the last time that we encountered each other on the unbelievable radio broadcast in London a number of years ago, he did the open theist thing and started promoting the idea of false prophecy in the Bible.

And so open theists will sacrifice anything for their ultimate goal. So a changing God sure. And most people struggle. I've had honest questions from students in seminary classes in years past. Well, how can it not be that God's being changed in the incarnation?

And I think in a later thing, McGrew was like, does God know what it means to sin experientially? Ask all these types of questions, all to try to open the door to mutability, to try to bring God down.

That's why they just loathe the decree of God. They loathe the idea that from the beginning, God intended to do these things and to accomplish these things and that his decree gives a very form to time itself and actually is what gives meaning to the actions of human beings.

And that's why they loathe that stuff. And so they want to basically say that God does not have the capacity to enter into time without fundamentally changing himself. Now they don't understand eternity.

I don't think any of us can fully understand eternity at all. We're time-bound beings. Our language, past, present, future, we think in those categories. We have no way around it. And so to try to limit God in that way, to say, no, that's beyond God's capacity.

He has to change to be able to do this. All so that you can make man's vaunted will, the final authority and all things. These folks will sacrifice anything. They will absolutely sacrifice anything on the altar of their final authority.

Okay. I have a little thing here. And if I haven't put Rich to sleep, which I probably have, I want to just play this for you. Then we'll get back to Decithius. I forgot to put the top back on my drink.

I left it sitting in the other room. When I put it down, the thought crossed our mind, you'll walk past this. And you go back and forget it. How can you think you're going to do that? And then go ahead and do it.

I don't know. I shouldn't confess these things. Here is just a reminder that redeemed Zuma, young fellow in the PCUSA, likes to accuse all the rest of us of being schismatics. If we're not a part of apostate denominations, as if those apostate denominations actually define the church and divine orthodoxy.

And the funny thing is, every Presbyterian denomination that has ever existed is the result of splits from other Presbyterian denominations. I mean, why one becomes the standard and then others, well, you can't split off from that.

It doesn't make any sense. The kid is just imbalanced. There's just absolutely no way. I don't know why anyone even engages him as far as wanting to know why he believes what he believes. It's just weird.

I haven't figured that part out. But anyway, he likes to tell everybody that the PCUSA, you can't split off from it. He's going to bring it back. Well, my feed every day is filled with the wild-eyed heretics of the PCUSA.

And unlike him, who holds no clerical position in the PCUSA, they all hold ordained positions in PCUSA. So he's just a member, but he doesn't hold any position. All these people do. And when you see a female wearing a stole, standing behind a pulpit in a PCUSA church, there is a 99 .99995 chance that what she's going to be saying is pure diabolical heresy.

And here's an example of this. I want to play this because she seems like a nice little Asian girl. And I'm sure she's wonderful to talk to. But you need to understand, this is what seminaries in the United States are producing.

The seminary I graduated from. Now, when I graduated from it, it was considerably more conservative as now. But I can assure you that this young lady would do wonderfully well at Fuller Theological Seminary.

She really would. And I tell audiences this. I tell evangelical believing Christians this. And they just look at me like, why? Really? It's that bad? Why do they believe these things? So, this is actually, I think it's, yeah, it's five minutes long.

That's a lot. But I want you to listen and be thinking. Let's say you were invited to this church. You're talking to a friend and say, oh, you just need to hear the speaker. She's going to be great. You decide, okay, yeah, fine.

Listen to what she says. And I'll tell you what I'm going to do. It's getting really warm in here for some reason, even though it's not warm outside. It's getting quite hot. Rich, when I fire this up, drop the mic.

I'm going to kick the AC on for a few minutes because I'm getting a little sweaty in here. So, let's listen to what she has to say, and then I'll comment on it afterwards. Ready to go there? All right, here we go.

Last week, I promised to get more into the exegesis of John 14, and especially around the verses six through eight, which says, Jesus said, I'm the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

A while back, I think it was last summer, one of you requested a sermon to address these verses, saying, how exclusive is this? Many of us know and love people of other faiths or no faith, whose lives bear wisdom, compassion, and spiritual depth.

And many of us care about interreligious respect and humility over claiming that Christianity has all the answers, and it has an exclusive claim on truth. So, I can see why this was a bothersome verse.

And so, to better understand these verses, it's important to zoom out. It's important to ask what the gospel was trying to accomplish, and in what context. So, when we read John, remember, remember the worldview within which this gospel was written, and also remember that it was written for a community under pressure and conflict.

And it was, it was important for them to distinguish themselves, to separate themselves. And the gospel writer wants you to make a choice, light or darkness, children of God or children of the devil, truth or lies, choose Jesus or the world.

So, when we read this text, we have a choice. We can just accept it. Yeah, that's how the world is. Or we can slow down a little and get curious. When we label light as always good and darkness as always evil, what is the impact of that?

And when we think Jesus is the only way to know God and assume that people who hold different beliefs have no real knowledge of God, how does that affect the way we relate with those who do not identify as Christian?

You don't take care of them, or you think they're projects that need to be converted or destroyed. So, you get the gist. When we read the gospel of John today, we need to discern the differences between our context and the impact of our reading.

Today, Christianity is not a persecuted minority religion. Christians have enormous cultural, political, and institutional power. So, when we insist that Christ is the only way and that everyone else has to get in line, we're not a frightened minority huddled in an upper room trying to survive the Roman Empire.

We are the empire. I do think that we have reasons to feel frightened, too. I think we can connect to some of the fears of the disciples. I don't think a lot of our fears is about whether Jesus is the only way, but our fears are about strategic voter suppression, the rise of white Christian nationalism, the rounding up of our neighbors and immigrants and tearing apart of families and constant threat against the LGBTQIA plus community, weakening of public health and gutting of scientific and medical research, dismantling of environmental protections, to name a few.

These are enough to discourage us into despair, to paralyze us into fear. In the gospel of John, for all of its sharp edges, contrasts, and seemingly exclusive claims, the synoptic gospels offer us a vision of what Jesus wanted for his disciples and what his life and story meant.

In John 13, Jesus says,. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. In John 14, the arc of the chapter is not, everyone who doesn't believe in me is going to hell.

The gist of the message is, do not let your hearts be troubled. In my Father's house are many rooms. Be curious about these many rooms. Build relationships across differences. Remember, you're braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, smarter than you think.

You got this. You know the way. I am the way.

Amazing, or is that amazing? Let me drop that down there. Okay, so it ended up with, what was that name of that guy? I think he was on Saturday Night Live that had the sweater, you know, and you're good enough and you're, you know, it's the self-motivational type thing.

That's what you ended up with that at the end. That's what John 14 is about. Don't be afraid. You got this. Yeah, that's the arc of the chapter. John chapter 13 is the, you know, John chapter 12 is the end of the public ministry.

John chapter 13, personal ministry of the disciples. Establishment of the supper. Betrayal is about to take place. Jesus is going back to the Father. The Spirit's going to be coming. That's what the arc is.

That's the one sent by the Father is about to give his life. It has nothing to do with your feeling brave, but this is what's taught in seminaries. This is how these texts are handled, and at least when I was in seminary, I could raise these issues, and I could say, hey, and at least there was still, and for five or six of my theology and biblical background classes, I had a PCUSA professor.

Well, at least, well, one guy who was really good, and he was really honest about how far the PCUSA had moved. I mean, I remember one class where we were talking about 2 Timothy 3 .16, and this was the professor.

He was PCUSA, ordained, and he explained how the PCUSA had adopted an interpretation of that text that did not require you to believe that Scripture is actually theanostos, that it's God-breathed. They came up with a new interpretation, and he and I had gone back and forth, not in a disrespectful fashion.

I respected him. I listened to him. I learned a lot from him, but I didn't back down, and I think I've told you before, at least back then, he didn't punish me for coming to different conclusions. I don't think that would be the case any longer, not for him, but just the seminary itself, and so after that class, when we took a break, we were walking over to where there was a snack bar thing, and we met at Grand Canyon, at that time, and Grand Canyon University.

It may have been college at that time. Anyway, I had a bunch of other students come up to me. Man, thank you for saying what you said. That's where I am, but I just feel so alone here, you know, but thank you for standing up.

So there were more of them that were seeing and feeling the same things that I was, but I'll never forget this one guy, nice guy, really nice guy. He went, same time period I was there, graduated with a Master's of Divinity degree in Confusion.

He started off understanding what he believed, graduated uncertain of anything. It happens a lot in seminaries. It happens a lot in seminaries, so I'm probably driving Rich insane right now. I just sort of necessary right now.

All right, let's get back to something here. Spend at least a few minutes on it. Can't hear it at all. Good. I just now saw this. Okay. Let's see here. Where did this go? Well, I had it open. Too many little windows down here.

No, I do not want my spreadsheet. We are done with the spreadsheet. I don't want that one or that one. Oh, come on. Sorry, folks. There it is. Once those icons get so stinking small, there's just not much I can do about it.

Slideshow. Yeah, that looks pretty good. All right. Let's back out the truck a second. Let's remind ourselves where we are. We are looking at the result of the Synod of Jerusalem in 1672 in Eastern Orthodoxy.

Now, half of you just tuned out, but I hope you will tune back in. And we started looking at the Confession of Dositheus. Can't hear it. Oh, okay. Do I put it up? Well, I'm giving the background once I start reading it.

Yeah, put it up. Out of the Synod of Jerusalem, and I read to you the last time, a Synod that is official in Eastern Orthodoxy. All the autocephalous churches view it as an official statement of Orthodox theology.

It's binding in that sense. The Confession of Dositheus is extremely important for how we understand the relationship between, and I hate to use the broad term Protestants because it doesn't really describe anything.

That doesn't actually describe a theological system, but non-Roman Catholic, non-Orthodox. And Eastern Orthodoxy is in flux right now. The ortho bros online take one perspective, but there are other perspectives that are out there.

There have been other perspectives over the centuries. Most of the Orthodox with whom I've spoken tend to adopt the idea, which is understandable, that their understanding is the understanding, and can often react negatively to when you point out that there have been people who said other things in the past.

All right. With that said, we started looking at, we looked at the first couple of sections of the Confession of Dositheus from 1672. Now we're on decree number three, so let's go ahead and look at that.

And I wanted to have it so that we could have both the original language and the decree itself. Now, also remember that we went through Cyril Lucaris' Confession, and this is the response to that. This is responding to Cyril Lucaris.

And so that is the background. So we're in a better position to understand why certain things are being emphasized in the way that they are. Unfortunately, let's just be honest, on social media, most of the people discussing these things will not be looking at it the way we're looking at it.

We're looking at it in context. We're looking at it in its historical context, original language. That's not the kind of thing you get on X very often. So now, listen to this first sentence. It's a compound sentence, but listen to it.

We believe the most good God to have from eternity predestined Protmeridzo, which is what Paul uses in Ephesians 1, unto glory those whom he has chosen, eclegemai, again, Pauline language, and to have consigned unto condemnation those whom he has rejected, but not so that he would justify the one and consign and condemn the other without cause.