Road Trip DL: Asking Some Questions of Eric Conn, Reviewing the Debate with Tim Barber

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White. I think I hit all the buttons right there. Hey, I'm just gonna let you know right now,

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I can show you the radar thing. It's very colorful. Lots of pretty colors in the

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Denver area right now. Lots of oranges and yellows and greens and all sorts of things.

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Which means, you know, I'm not overly concerned about the I'm not sure what would happen if the park's electricity went out.

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I think it'd pretty much dump us, but I do have the batteries and stuff, so I'm not really sure.

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I've never seen that happen, so I don't know. But the thing that could take us out completely is

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I'm on Starlink. And so the new Starlink stuff, the receiver, transmitter, used to call it a dish.

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It's just a flat thing. You know, it now just lays on the ground, so not even on a stand. The old one we had, you know, was on a stand and so sort of up in the air and it moved and did stuff like that.

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This one just has a little fold -out thing and you just lay it on the ground. And I do have a weight on it to try to, but if a good gust of wind could send it into my neighbor's slot pretty easily,

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I have a feeling. So I don't know. That would take us out. That would be it.

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That would be the end of that. But anyways, welcome to the dividing line. Obviously a road trip dividing line.

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I'm still in Denver. We'll be talking about the debate we had on Friday. On Wednesday afternoon,

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I think it's to be around four o 'clock my time, I think. We've been moving it on Joshua Hames' webcast, and I will be putting out the link for that once I have it.

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I'll be debating Dr. Jared Longshore. We're going to be, you know, those of you who were listening last year from October, well,

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November through December, I did hours on the subject of the new covenant, the covenant in his blood, what it means to be a consistent, you know, be consistently reformed, you know.

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And when I mean reformed there, ultimate authority of scripture, sovereignty of God, salvation is completely the glory of God, and therefore the doctrines of grace, unconditional election, particular redemption.

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These are things that I think are biblical and vitally important. But I also think that they're fundamentally inconsistent with paedo -baptism.

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And I can talk about the historical issues, what brought that all up historically, if we want to do that, and that's perfectly fine.

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But my focus is going to be on Hebrews 7, 8, 9, and 10, because that's the longest extended passage in scripture that talks about the new covenant and relates it directly to the finished work of Christ.

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That's where you got to go. That's where you got to go. And so it's only two hours long.

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I've done, you know, probably eight hours on the subject. So two hours, that means only one hour.

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I can only say one eighth of what I've said before. So it might not actually end the controversy for some strange reason, but there you go.

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That'll be on Wednesday, and that'll sort of be in lieu of the dividing lines.

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We're going to do dividing line today, the debate on Wednesday, and then I will try to get a program in toward the end of the week, because I get home on the weekend from up here in Colorado, and got work to do in here.

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Rich has dreamed up all sorts of things to make it fast and simple for me to set up, and to have a second camera, to have what

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Rich feels is better lighting. I mean, I can look up there, and I can see that this side of my face is darker than this side of my face, and that bothers

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Rich. He's got a little of that, you know, ADHD, whatever it is, stuff going on.

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And so we'll be working on stuff like that. But also got to get that background thing done.

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I had a super cool idea as I was sitting here watching the clock counting down for something to put over the couch here, because up on the wall, you can't see it.

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I have the really nice, it's the Alpha and Omega logo. I mean, it's what the program starts with.

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That very logo is up on the wall up there, and you can have those made into like blankets and stuff.

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So I'm going to have a Alpha and Omega blanket printed up. They're not expensive, and lay that over the couch, and with the stone wall thing that we want to do.

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Not stone choir, believe you me. The stone wall image we want to use. That should look really, really neat.

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But again, I've never understood why anybody wants to look at me anyways. I'm an aging, fat, old

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Scotsman, and fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down. So there you go.

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Wow, okay. Thank you very much. Hopefully everything stays attached out there in the wind.

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It's really, it's really blowing. I love it. I love feeling the thing moving around, stuff like that, you know, until it starts rocking, and you're worried about tipping over.

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Then it's a little bit different. But right now, it's a lot of fun, and I, again, thank all of you who support us and allow me to do this.

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By the way, I was going to do it this time, but stuff got in the way. I'm going to, maybe on that one on the way home,

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I want to make specific mention of the local churches that I spoke at on this last trip, and thank their pastors, their elders, their deacons, their people.

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I think especially the last two that worked with the debates found out just how much work goes into that.

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It is not easily done. You really have to believe in what you're doing. So I'm very, very thankful.

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I've had the opportunity to make more contacts with local churches.

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I was talking with Pastor Aaron from New City Church yesterday at lunch. New City Church is sort of like my new connection here in Denver.

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We're talking about doing some bigger things next year, Lord willing, if Colorado and Arizona are still in the same country next year.

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I explained to him, I said, it's always been our insistence that Alpha Omega Ministries is not a church.

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We're not going to act like a church. We're here for the church. How things have turned out since COVID has thrilled my soul.

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I love doing this. I'm so thankful for a patient wife. People say, your wife's not with you.

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She's taking care of her mom. And I honor her for that. She works hard at that.

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Those of you who are caretakers know that's not easy. She's still working in the sense that at an age that I will not mention publicly, but it's only slightly less than my age.

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She's still teaching aerobics. She is in fantastic shape, such a strong woman and caring woman and just blessed for 42 plus years of marriage now to have her.

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But anyway, she did say this one, this unit is so nice looking and so functional that she could probably take some trips with me in it.

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But the other one's not so much. But anyway, I know

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I'm on the road a lot. I don't know what next year is going to bring, but I do hope and pray that I'll be able to continue to get into these churches, meet these wonderful men.

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They're real pastors. I'm not nothing against those of you who have big, large churches, but the pastors who work full -time shepherding a flock and everybody in the flock knows them.

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The smaller churches, the local churches, those are your real pastors.

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I love the fact that I will come and I will speak and I hope and pray that there'll be people here in the

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Denver area that will go visit New City Church or they went and visited with the debate or the little mini conference we did or whatever and find a church home there.

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Maybe you didn't know that there was a church that had this, because New City is so much like Apologia.

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We are very much on the exact same pages. And so I love when we go into churches and then six months later, a year later,

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I hear from a pastor, hey, you know, someone came when you were speaking for us and, you know, they're now vital members of our church and that's what we want to have happen.

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That's the whole reason to do it. And I'm so encouraged by meeting people like Pastor Aaron, Pastor James.

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It's very much an encouragement to me. And I need encouragement and they need encouragement right now.

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I'll be honest with you what's going on, but in general, it's very encouraging to me.

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Okay. There is so much going on right now.

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There's so many different topics. I mean, the United States of America is what $32 trillion in debt.

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75 % of the tax money that is collected goes directly to interest payments on the debt.

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We are living in a situation where, because we have ignored God's law, because we hate

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God's ways, because we murder unborn children and we mutilate born children and we dishonor marriage in every way possible and we will not submit to God's law and we are focused totally upon the fulfilling of our own lusts and desires.

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As a result of all of that, I'm watching the tree out there.

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It's like, okay, as long as it's still standing, I figure I will be too, but it's blowing good here. Because of all the things, all the rebellion this nation is guilty of, it's going to come tumbling down.

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We cannot sustain a $32 trillion debt.

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What has happened is we elect the people in Washington by their position of power, by giving government money to people.

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I mean, I saw something about an illegal alien, an invader, and that's what it is.

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There needs to be law. God's law established borders. God's law established the necessity of being able to identify nations and to be able to identify who is a part of this nation.

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That is not some anti -Christian thing to go, you know, it seems really stupid to let all sorts of military -age

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Chinese men into the United States and we don't know where they go. Yeah, we're going to pay for it. We're going to pay for it.

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But I saw a thing where an illegal alien on government subsidies left a receipt and they had over $14 ,000 in their

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EBT account. How many of us would like to have that? But they take from us to give to them.

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They're our enemies. The people in control are our enemies and they are robbing us blind and it is a horrific situation and it's all going to come tumbling down.

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The real question for us today is how do you remain faithful? How do you represent Christ in the midst of judgment?

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That's where we are. In the midst of judgment, how do you represent Christ? And that's where I think there's a lot different answers.

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I wish the discussions were less heated, but that's where we are.

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That's where we are. And so, you know, I just saw a clip that I do think someone had said the

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Trump campaign should put this on blast every day between now and the election so that every single person sees it 20 times.

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Kamala Harris is not a smart woman. She is on the real dull side of the intellectual spectrum.

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That is not an insult. Have you ever listened to her speak? Have you noticed she's not done a press conference?

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There's a reason. Now we knew the reason with Biden. In the 90s,

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Biden was a disgusting, vile, lying, plagiarizing jerk, but he could talk.

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He's the one that went after Clarence Thomas and, oh man, a lot. You're being highly insulting to ditzes everywhere.

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Well, ditzes generally don't know when you're insulting them anyway. So when

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Biden went after Clarence Thomas, and I imagine Clarence Thomas had to sit back and chuckle a few times at things that have happened, but Biden's argumentation was horrific.

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He was a vile, lying man, but he could speak. We knew once he became president, and some of you remember hearing me say,

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Algo will tell you I said it, I said, I can't believe in 2019 that he could even run for president.

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I could tell then the man was in great mental decline. So we know why he was a word salad.

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But she's not that old. This is the way she's always been. Every position she has held, she got it through political avenues, not because she ever earned any of it.

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And the world, our enemies, the United States enemies around the world are just going, please, please, how much more money can we send you to get her to be the president?

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I said, I mean, Taiwan might as well just put their hands up and surrender if this woman is elected.

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I cannot even begin to imagine the degradation of a nation that would have that woman as a for dog catcher, let alone president, let alone president.

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It is utterly astonishing. I don't know how anyone can sit there and go, wow, God must really have it out for us.

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Yes, he does. And there's a good reason for that. And there's a good reason for that. So the big challenge is how do we faithfully testify of God's truth in a nation that hates

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God's truth? Well, it probably will not make us popular. I get that. I get that.

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All right. So with all that stuff going on, the economic stuff, the stock market.

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Once again, when I think of how difficult and challenging things are going to be in the future, you know, we probably won't be able to continue doing this.

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And there's a lot of things that we won't be able to do. And we'll be working a whole lot harder just to have enough food to where we're all going to be in the same boat.

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And you know what? If we spend my sermon, folks at New City will tell you,

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I mentioned it in my sermon on Sunday. If we don't right now make a firm commitment to not love the things in this world, to have our affections focused upon what scripture directs those affections to.

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If we don't do that, we're going to suffer right along with the world. I mean, we will suffer the external stuff, but the point is we are supposed to have joy.

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We're supposed to have joy. And where does that come from? That comes from recognizing what

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Christ has done for us, the depth of our sin that has been forgiven, the joy of the fellowship of the saints.

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We've taken so many things for granted and we have been kings and queens for so long in food and clothing and everything else.

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While this stuff goes away, we'll find out who's truly committed to Christ and to his ways.

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We really, really, really will. So I'll keep preaching that message as we can.

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All right. So amazing things are happening around the world.

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Ireland, Belfast. I've only been there once or twice.

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I really enjoyed my time there. Not sure what the Christians are doing there, but this

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Marxist leftist rejection of biblical law.

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It's biblical law. You need to apply God's law in a society.

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You need to know who the citizens of your society are. That means you need borders, you need laws, you need things like that.

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No question about it. No question about it. And given rebelling against that, we see what's happening.

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The violence. And of course, we see the governments will not restrain the non -citizens with weapons, but they will attack the citizens who don't have weapons.

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It's in Ireland, it's in Europe, it's here in the United States. We've been taken over by our own enemies.

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And you may go, well, why? Again, it goes back to judgment that is coming upon the

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West for what it has done. And it's a matter of sin. As unpopular as that term is among secular humanists, we have to not be embarrassed to say it's sin.

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So with all that going on, we've run into this strange situation.

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And I'm going to, I'm only going to spend so much time on this. And then I want to talk about the debate on Friday night on open theism, but I'm learning things.

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I'm going to admit, there were other people who sniffed this stuff out long before I did.

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There have been times over the past couple of years, I've seen people say things and I'm like, I'm going to try to read that in a friendly manner.

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But boy, you know, that could be read as having some pretty sinister stuff in the

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And I didn't know about it. Anybody who watched the last two programs,

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I've talked about people defending Hitler and all this incredible stuff that has been going on in reform circles.

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And I would have to assume it's happening elsewhere as well, but it seems to be finding a particular home in reform circles, which makes me go, why, what's going on here?

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And so I was, you know,

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Twitter X, whatever, I prefer Twitter is a primary way in which

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I communicate with other people and DMs and things like that. I don't like Facebook. I've never done

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Instagram. I don't do TikTok. I'm not a communist. I'm not a Chinese communist. And so that's where I see a lot of stuff.

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And so I, it simply came up in my feed, a quote from Eric Kahn.

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Now, Eric is the CEO and founder of New Christendom Press, host at Hard Men Podcast, co -host at the

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King's Hall. That's from his own description, his own bio on Twitter.

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So I see a lot of his stuff. My understanding is he's sort of a part of what we would call the

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Ogden Group. And so I had asked a question.

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I had asked, what is with this dark red with blue eyes theme that I'm seeing all over the place?

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A bunch of the people that I blocked last week, their picture, dark red with this blue stuff in it.

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And you start seeing it over and over again. Andrew Torba has it. A number of people have it.

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And like I said, a number of people I blocked had it. And so I'm like, what is it? So I'm just like, okay,

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I don't know. I'll ask. And I got a number of different answers.

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Generally some type of based MAGA, something. Some people said it's a couple of years old.

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Other people said it's primarily started after the assassination attempt of President Trump.

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I can guarantee you, I ain't going to be using those colors in any way, shape or form. But Andrew Torba, who has a long history of saying things that show a tremendous immaturity.

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I first heard of him, Gab, during when we were all figuring we're all going to get kicked off of Facebook and Twitter and we're not going to be able to talk to each other and stuff like that.

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And that was when I first found out about him. But then sort of watched him going off into some really strange stuff.

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But he posted a article on Philia from Aristotle.

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And Eric Kahn reposted it and said, Aristotle was right. So here's what he posted.

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Aristotelian concept signifying Philia. Aristotelian concept signifying friendship, ethno -cultural consensus between members of the same city.

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Now remember, cities in Aristotle's day were significantly smaller than cities today.

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Most nations in Aristotle's day did not have as many citizens or people in it as Phoenix has today, by a long shot.

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Phoenix is the fifth largest city in the United States. Millions and millions of people. So no, far fewer people on earth back then.

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So you're talking about almost, almost talking about neighborhoods.

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I mean, that's how much smaller things would be. Rome, okay, was fairly large eventually.

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Aristotle's day was not huge. But anyway, so here's what's been outlined.

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For Aristotle, democracy is possible. Remember, democracy. Not representative, constitutional representative type stuff.

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But for Aristotle, democracy is possible only within homogenous ethnic groups, while despots have always reigned over highly fragmented societies.

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Now again, in that day, how highly fragmented could you be?

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You can't have people flying in from this side of the planet. You can't.

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Now you've got all sorts of different ethnic groups that can be in very small areas, relatively speaking.

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I think of Paul mentioning the Scythians in Colossians.

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And you go back in history, and all sorts of wars, all sorts of ethnic strife, but within a relatively small area.

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I mean, from our perspective, within the area of a medium to large size state in the

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United States, like Arizona, it's fairly, lots of land, and you could have all sorts of different ethnicities within just that one area in the ancient world.

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So despots have always reigned over highly fragmented societies.

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A multi, and this is in bold, a multi -ethnic society is thus necessarily anti -democratic and chaotic.

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This is according to Aristotle, for it lacks philia, this profound flesh and blood fraternity of citizens.

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Tyrants and despots divide and rule. They want the city divided by ethnic rivalries, the indispensable condition for ensuring a people's sovereignty accordingly resides in its unity.

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Ethnic chaos prevents all philia from developing. A citizenry is formed on the basis of proximity or it is not formed at all.

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Okay? All right. There are elements of truth in almost everything.

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And let's use an example. There was a relatively brief period of philia across the

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United States, starting on September 12th of 2001. And what happens is when a nation is attacked, there will be a drawing together, a laying aside of differences.

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But I said at the time, unless this is connected with a heartfelt repentance and change in the parts of people, it's not going to last.

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It's going to be gone in a matter of months. And it was. It was. And again, the people in a nation, we are a divided nation.

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We are a divided nation. And some of it is ethnic.

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The left has utilized ignorance and just sheer stupidity to divide us along those lines.

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But that's not where all of this, the vast majority of my fundamental enemies, the traitors in this country look like me.

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White Anglo -Saxons, they look like me. The vast majority.

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And they've sold their soul and they've sold this country for money. They're greedy. That's all there is to it.

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It's greed. That's where it comes from. And so, you know, you do have to question just how far you can take

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Aristotle's stuff because he could not have imagined nations as large as Russia, China, United States, Brazil, India.

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And obviously, all of those nations have ethnic divisions.

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I mean, look at what's happened in Russia, Kazakhstan, and all those divisions down there.

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And of course, the Uyghurs and China and every nation has that. There's divisions along those lines all the time.

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And the wonderful thing was, the United States, when it was closest to its founding principles, overcame so much of that.

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There was a unity. Even during the Civil War, you could have men from the

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North and the South meet during a lull in the battle, and there's almost no difference between them.

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And so, a common commitment to a high view of mankind,

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God, God's law, can overcome so much of that. But that was abandoned.

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That really started being abandoned, I think, especially in the 1920s, post -World

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War I. World War I changed Europe much more than it changed us, but a lot of those ideas came this direction as well.

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And so, here's my concern. When I see something about Philia here,

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I go, what's that supposed to communicate?

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I could see how this could be abused, because Aristotle did not have a

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Christian understanding of man. He's just talking on a general basis, and on a general basis, you can talk about how a city -state with 40 ,000 people in it can remain unified.

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But from a Christian perspective, what we're dealing with today is having to deal with a secular society that believes that we're highly evolved animals.

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And the secular society has no basis for even addressing man. And Aristotle did not have what we have.

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We have Christian revelation. We have Romans 1. Aristotle didn't. And Romans 1 is, in and of itself, a light that is 10 ,000 times brighter than anything that Aristotle could ever offer.

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Sorry, all you Thomists, but it's true. Live with it.

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And so, why would we go there?

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That's what I asked Eric. I said, but we have so much more. And he's talking about tiny little city -states that would barely be a small -sized city in our world.

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And he's talking about direct democracy. We don't have direct democracy. The founders specifically rejected it.

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So, what's the connection? And I, unfortunately, I'm sure he's busy doing other things.

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And I have not seen a response from him.

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I got responses from everybody else. But it's like, is your name

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Eric Kahn? So maybe he'll respond later. I don't know. But I was concerned because I also saw a pinned tweet on Eric Kahn's Twitter thing.

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And just checking to see if someone's trying to tell me something here.

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Oh, yeah, okay. The pinned tweet from October 25th, 2023 on Eric Kahn's thing says, sad reality,

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Christians today have been catechized to disdain their cultural heritage.

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We're told Constantine wasn't great. The Crusades and Christendom were evil. The Dark Ages were real.

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All lies. We have been taught a false history of discouragement and disenchantment.

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Well, it was called Constantine the Great. But history would tell us.

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And by the way, there was so much embarrassment about this that fake documents were created hundreds of years later to change this narrative.

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But the fact of the matter is, Constantine was a politician. And Constantine was primarily concerned about the unity of the empire.

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And Constantine was not baptized as a Christian until right before his death.

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Now, that was not uncommon in that day. And that's something everybody needs to be reminded of a fact.

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And that is, there were a lot of different views of baptism in that day. Infant baptism was not apostolic.

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It did not develop in the emergency baptism.

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It wasn't the norm. And when it did start becoming the norm, it was for all the wrong reasons, etc.,

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etc. But delay of baptism was common because of the development of a bad theology that baptism washed all your sins away.

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And therefore, you want to get as many of your sins washed away as you can. So you delay it until right before you die.

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But of course, people died of heart attack back then. And then he was baptized by an

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Aryan bishop, Eusebius of Nicomedia. And that's what they tried to change.

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They tried to change the history on that and hide that. Because everybody knew Eusebius was an

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Aryan. He was a heretic. And Constantine did not uphold the

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Orthodox faith of Nicaea. So exactly why was he great again?

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Oh, well, he ended the persecution against Christians. Yeah, he did. It was a political move and a useful one.

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And we can be thankful for that. But I don't know what you mean. We're told Constantine wasn't great. Oh, I don't think

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Aryanism is great. So what's that supposed to mean?

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So maybe I can ask Eric, what makes Constantine great? What is it that you feel is disenchanting of people, to be honest, about the history of Constantine?

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Then we're told the Crusades and Christendom were evil. Yeah, they were.

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I've taught about the Crusades. Do you know what the Children's Crusade was? All those children that were slaved out?

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Have you listened to the sermons? Do you know what the purposes were? Do you understand how indulgences got into all this?

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Are we really thinking that painting a cross on your armor as you go to slaughter the

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Muslims was a good thing? It's a great thing? No, I'm not saying rolling over and playing dead to the

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Muslims would be a good thing either. But you've got to put it in context.

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You're crying out loud. I thought we were reformed. I thought we believe what the Bible says. I thought we believe that you even examine the theology of every generation of people

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Christians by the higher authority that we're about. That's what I thought. That's what I've been doing all this time. I sometimes think

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I'm almost alone out here doing it anymore, but that's what I thought. I just want to go, what do you mean that when one of the

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Crusades hung a left sack, Constantinople weakened it all just simply for the money because of all the political stuff in Italy between all the little city states there.

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This is great. I mean, it certainly had an impact on Europe, helped with the rise of the middle class between that and then the

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Black Death and stuff like that. You have the middle class. It certainly had impacts, but how does that make that great?

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I don't get it. In Christendom? Okay. When Luther visited

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Rome in 1510 and he saw the Pope riding through the streets of Rome on a horse in armor and was scandalized, was

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Luther wrong? Was that a good thing? I'd like to know why.

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I'd like to know.

41:10

The dark ages were real. Well, okay.

41:17

Sometimes that's exaggerated, but at the same time, it is true that during that period, the average human being born anywhere in Europe never traveled more than seven miles in any one direction from the place of their birth.

41:40

They suffered from anachronism. They thought that things had always been the same. Literacy did collapse, even amongst the clergy.

41:51

If the dark ages weren't real, then what are you saying wasn't real? Are you saying that literacy was as high during the medieval period as it was during the

42:00

Roman period before that? Are you saying there's many schools? Are you saying there's as much travel, libraries, learning?

42:10

What are you saying? I don't know. I don't know. It might just be a reaction against some kind of imbalance somewhere, but it doesn't mean that there isn't a true recognition that there was a real dark period in European history.

42:34

What's that all about? I don't know. I don't know how for a Christian having an honest view of Constantine, the

42:43

Crusades, formalized Christianity that didn't have a gospel, how is all of that discouraging?

42:56

Or disenchanting? I don't understand. I don't get it.

43:05

So, yeah. I don't know what to say about all that stuff. All right.

43:11

Let's shift gears. And it looks like the worst of storms of looking at the radar.

43:20

That's an amazing thing to be able to sit here and look at a screen and see these massive storms going off into past Denver out into the wide open plains of Kansas.

43:35

I'm going to tell you, eastern Colorado and western Kansas, man, there just ain't much there.

43:44

You can grow a lot of cool stuff there, but if you like mountains, no, that ain't going to help you that much.

43:50

So, Friday night, Tim Barber and I had a debate, and man, it's been, it's been, well,

43:59

I've gotten used to it. When you have a debate, and there's a certain, there's small little cliques of people that represent your side that you were debating, you're going to see all sorts of weird stuff on the social media, and people get strange.

44:19

But Tim Barber is a really nice guy in person. He's got a wonderful wife, great kids.

44:26

We had lunch with Pastor Aaron and, you know, shot the breeze, and I talked about getting old and stuff like that.

44:40

But, and I had said from after the week before the debate with Alex, I said, well,

44:47

I really hope that both debates are going to be similar in the sense of, you know, want to be able to do things in the future, you know, be really useful as far as the debates are concerned, that kind of stuff.

45:03

Well, it didn't turn out that way. And I said on Twitter, and oh, you know, let me just say, if you've never done a debate in your life,

45:20

I don't know why you think you can engage me on having a discussion about debates.

45:28

I've, I've done a few. I've got a little experience, actually, decades of experience now.

45:37

30, it was August. Oh, yeah, here we go again. August of 1990.

45:43

So 34 years ago, I did my first debate.

45:48

I've learned a little something over the years about it. And so some of you who sit there, you, you, you, you can't even debate the guy at the

45:59

Jack in the Box drive -thru. And yet you're going to get all huffy tuffy about something that was said.

46:06

I'm sorry, I ain't listening. You got no standing. I said on Twitter, I'm going to make,

46:15

I'm going to make a rule for any future debates that I do.

46:23

If you want to read, and if you need to read your opening statement, fine.

46:31

Read your opening statement. No, no, no problem. I've read opening statements in the past.

46:38

I generally don't do that. But, okay, fine.

46:45

Read your opening statement. But rebuttals, there's, there's a meaning to the word rebuttal.

46:54

And rebuttal does not mean prophesy. Because if you do what

47:01

Leighton Flowers does, what Jimmy Akin does, and what Tim Barber did, you're pretending to be a prophet.

47:10

That is, they had their rebuttals written out. They had their closing statements written.

47:17

So what you're doing is you are prophesying as to what the content of the debate is going to be.

47:23

Now, do I listen as carefully as I can?

47:28

I bought and listened to, well, no, I bought the book, but he provided, because I couldn't get hold of the audio.

47:37

So Tim was nice enough to get me the audio so I could listen to it. So I listened to his book.

47:43

And I listened to his videos, at least the ones that seem to be relevant to our topic.

47:50

Because yes, I want to know where my opponent's going. And I am not in any way, shape, or form complaining about crafting your presentation to refute what the other guy is going to say before he even gets a chance to say it.

48:09

If you're going first. Done it many, many times. No problem at all. But that's not rebuttal.

48:17

That's not your closing statement. A rebuttal. And, you know,

48:23

I'm not talking about the collegiate debate stuff where you just have to, you talk as fast as you possibly can.

48:30

And that's how you get points. That's worthless, utterly worthless. What I'm talking about here is in meaningful debate, where you are seeking to honor the subject, honor the person you're debating, and more importantly, honor the audience that's there that night or day, or is going to be watching in the future via the old days videotapes and now on YouTube.

49:06

If you want to honor them, then what you do when you do your rebuttal, you rebut what your opponent said.

49:16

Not what you expected them to say. Not what you hoped them to say. You rebut them.

49:24

We are buffering here. Everything looks good over on this end. So I'm not sure. I've got no cache whatsoever.

49:31

So it looks perfectly fine on this end.

49:36

So anyway, I'm going to press on because if it says cache okay, that means we're good.

49:45

I'll put signal up here so I can see you more clearly. And you tell me if it clears up on your end or if it could be on your end or whatever else it might be.

49:56

Rich says we're having some issues, but the screen here says we're perfectly fine.

50:01

So anyway, so a rebuttal should be focused upon the presentation that the other person just made.

50:17

If there's more than one rebuttal, same thing. Technically, you are not supposed to be bringing up new material in the rebuttals or in the closing statements.

50:29

That's not supposed to be happening. So my rule is going to be if we're going to debate in the future, if you want to read your opening statement, fine.

50:42

Rebuttals and closing statements should not be written out beforehand. You shouldn't be wasting everybody's time putting stuff up on the screen or whatever else.

50:52

If you're going to have, if we're going to do the PowerPoint thing and all this stuff, opening statements, fine and dandy, but not later on in the debate because that's not what the debate is.

51:03

You're not actually interacting with the subject anymore. And so that's what

51:08

I found just so utterly, totally frustrating. The first time debated

51:14

Layton Flowers, he had everything, including his rebuttals and closing statements already printed out, blah, blah, blah.

51:24

And Jimmy Akin didn't even debate. He came there to do a presentation in his cowboy hat in a church, which

51:33

I found extremely disrespectful. Would never even think about doing that if the roles were reversed.

51:40

And then when I would challenge him to start interacting with me, it's like, well,

51:48

I'm not going to argue about words. The Bible tells us not to argue about words. That was one of the most inane, silly, foolish statements

51:57

I've ever heard in my life. It really, really was. And that's why never again.

52:03

Not interested in that. That's not debating. You can do whatever you want. Same thing with Layton Flowers.

52:08

Never talk about debating Layton Flowers again. Just punch me in the face. So both of them did it to me twice.

52:15

Tim Barber only got to do it to me once because he had everything written out. And he goes into his rebuttal, and I don't know how many minutes

52:24

I didn't, and I'm not going to take the time to go back and listen to it. I don't think there'd be any benefit of that.

52:32

But he spent a bunch of time in his rebuttal talking about metaphor and anthropomorphism.

52:38

And he was representing it as if I had used that terminology.

52:47

And I didn't. I asked him during the Q &A, did

52:52

I ever use those terms? And he couldn't show where I had. So that's confusing to the audience.

52:59

The audience is sitting there hearing this guy rebutting something, and they're sitting there going, did

53:06

I miss where he did that? I must have missed where he did that because he wouldn't be doing this if he hadn't already done that. And I'm like, but I never even raised these issues.

53:17

And then in his closing statement, he's reading his closing statement where he claims to have rebutted all the texts that I, to have refuted completely and fully every text

53:30

I brought up. And I'm like, you didn't even try. I mean, yeah, he knew

53:37

I'd be in Isaiah. Where else would you go? And when we got into the cross -examination,

53:43

I think the most telling part of the debate was when I demonstrated from Isaiah 4310 that he takes the monotheism statement, there's only one

53:56

God universally all over the place. He takes that as being universal, true for all time, everything else.

54:09

But the verse before, or even the sentence before, where God talks about creating and then knowing the future, he limits that to that particular application, say what the context was at that time.

54:24

And this was the other frustrating thing as well, by the way. And I'll get back to the other thing he did in the closing statement. There is no one open theism.

54:33

What we're discovering now, at least when I debated John Sanders, there was a fairly well -established definition of open theism.

54:50

You understood where it was coming from. You understood why the open theists were saying what they were saying.

54:58

God cannot know what free creatures are going to do. Therefore, God could not know that any of us would ever exist.

55:04

And that's not what you got from Tim Barber. He is not a Dr. Sanders -style open theist.

55:12

And evidently now with social media, every open theist is just whatever he wants open theism to be.

55:23

So Rich says we're off the air. That's shocking to me, because everything here says fine.

55:35

So I'm going to finish it up and we'll get it set up. But let me at least finish here.

55:46

So you've got all this different stuff going on.

55:54

This is open theism. That's why I called it mutant open theism. And that way you can sort of dodge stuff, because there's certain aspects of open theism.

56:02

Real open theism destroys biblical prophecy. He recognizes that's a fatality. And so he tries to find a way around it.

56:10

Very, very strange that that would happen that way. And that came about when I demonstrated stuff in Isaiah.

56:18

He just didn't have an answer. He really struggled with that. But he never touched

56:24

Psalm 33. He never touched Daniel 4. He didn't even come close.

56:34

And so in just the last moment here, before we sign off, I just want to point out that in Psalm 33,

56:43

Yahweh looks from heaven. He sees all the sons of men from the place of his habitation. He gazes on all the inhabitants of the earth.

56:50

He who forms the hearts of them all, he who understands all their works.

56:55

One of his big arguments is, well, look, he didn't know if Abraham was going to offer Isaac. And he didn't really know until it happened and all the rest of this stuff.

57:04

And I'm like, but the Bible says over and over, God searches the hearts. He knows mankind better than man knows himself.

57:10

It's said over and over and over again. You're taking an implication and you're not allowing this text to exist within the whole spectrum of scripture.

57:19

And it's interesting, the one, he who forms the hearts, that Hebrew phrase can be translated the potter, the one forming.

57:30

And in fact, when I looked it up, I was interested to, and I hadn't realized this before, the exact same form and the exact same spelling and everything is used in Isaiah 29, 16, which is one of my favorite texts to deal with the

57:43

Mormons. You turn things around. Shall the potter, same term, the one who forms, be considered as equal with the clay, that what is made would say to his maker, he did not make me or what is formed say to him who formed it, he has no understanding.

58:02

This is what Mormonism does by turning God into a man. And this is where open theism goes as well.

58:08

Open theists want a God who's just an exalted version of themselves, exists in time, makes mistakes, learns things.

58:17

That's what open theism is all about. That's why it's an unorthodox position is they want to flatten it all out.

58:28

There's no eternal God. There's no existing in eternity. It's all in time.

58:34

Looks like a man, big man, long living man, but that's what open theism does.

58:42

And that's why we debated it. We'll, not sure if we'll continue to do that because unfortunately a lot of open theists,

58:49

I mean, there are certain open theists I could mention their names right now that are just, just redefine the term nasty.

58:58

They really, really do. So we'll see, but, but yeah, look at Isaiah 29, 16, and he never, he never dealt with Psalm 33 deal with Daniel four, never going to answer.

59:11

He didn't refute any of those things, but since he had typed it out, he's prophesying. He's, he's actually claimed to be able to do what his

59:17

God can't do. And that is know what a free creature is going to do in the future, which is really strange.

59:23

So future, future debate rule, future debate rule.

59:29

Yeah. I don't know what's wrong with you, Rich. I think it was all on your end, buddy. All I can tell you is we've gone a little bit over time, but all

59:36

I can tell you is never had a cash, never had anything on this end. So maybe something with Starlink or something, you know, on the other end of stuff could have happened.

59:46

I don't know, but it worked fine on this end. And we'll, we'll go from there, but rule for the future is going to be, go ahead and read your opening statement if you, if you have to, but when we get into rebuttals, we get into closing statements, make it flow from the debate.

01:00:06

And that's what I loved about Alex. That's why we'll happily do things with Alex again in the future. The guy sitting over there and he's working, he's doing exactly what

01:00:15

I'm doing. When he's speaking, I'm writing feverishly and I'm organizing what

01:00:21

I'm going to respond to and all the rest of that stuff. And I look over at Alex and what's Alex, he's got his notes and he's working through stuff and he's writing this stuff down.

01:00:30

He's trying to get that piece of paper over there. He's working, not just sitting there going, I already have all this typed out.

01:00:37

That's not debating. So if you all want to do your debates that way, fine. You know what?

01:00:43

I don't need to debate anyone ever again. If I don't want to, I do it for the benefit of the church.

01:00:51

And I don't think debates where one side is just sitting there making a presentation and not even interacting with the other side in a meaningful fashion, because they've already typed it all out anyways, is doing a debate.

01:01:01

So if you all want to go do that type of stuff, fine. Be my guest. I don't have to do that.

01:01:08

I don't have to do that. And I'm not going to. So there you go. So anyway, all right.

01:01:13

So and I can guarantee you that Wednesday, even though it's only a two hour debate on Wednesday, Jared and I, Jared is not going to have that.

01:01:23

I would be stunned if Jared had stuff already. I mean, outside of an opening statement type thing.

01:01:29

I would really be stunned if there was anything more because, you know, we're going to interact. We're going to we're going to talk. That's how that's how people do things,

01:01:37

I guess. So I'll post something. Hold on a second here real quick.

01:01:46

So. All right.

01:01:51

So the debate will be. Two to four p .m. Pacific Daylight Time.

01:02:01

What? So that would be. Five to six Eastern. Right.

01:02:08

I have a bad. I have a bad feeling about this. But yeah, two to four, it was going to be three to five.

01:02:18

But he has something that he's got to get to. So we've moved up an hour, two to four p .m.

01:02:23

Pacific Daylight Time. I had to explain to them, guys, there's a difference between daylight time and standard time.

01:02:30

And the only people who know this live in Arizona. And we shouldn't have to because we don't play with our clocks.

01:02:35

But the rest of you just don't understand. Anyway. So that's what it's going to be on Wednesday. And I'm looking forward to it.

01:02:42

And by the way, I have made I've mistakenly said. That the debate.

01:02:53

I think I saved this, so let me. Is this it here?

01:03:02

The debate. No, it's not it. In October, October 26.

01:03:10

Will be the debate in. And I had said Birmingham. It's not Birmingham. It's Mobile.

01:03:16

Mobile, Alabama. Is where the debate on the Eucharist is going to be.

01:03:22

And I thought I saved that thing, but I can't find it right now. So I'll post later.

01:03:29

But October 26. Mobile, Alabama, not

01:03:34

Birmingham. So I had that wrong. It's down the road, multiple trips.

01:03:40

Sorry about that. So for those of you in that area, that's when the debate on the

01:03:46

Roman Catholic doctrine of. Eucharist as a. Repetitory sacrifice.

01:03:53

Literally, the statement is he's going to defend this is the only acceptable way of worshiping

01:03:59

God. OK, he's willing to do that. That's great. I appreciate someone who's willing to do that.

01:04:05

OK, there you go. I think I covered everything. Had a few. Things in the way that we had to work around, but that's perfectly fine.

01:04:16

That's what road trip deals are all about. Thanks for watching the program. We will see you next time.