Road Trip Dividing Line: X Theology Responses

Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. We are doing a road trip Dividing Line here in St. Charles, Missouri.

Our 25th year traveling here to St. Charles. There have been a few, you know, the first year was in the summer and one year

I had to do it in January because of some physical stuff, but it's pretty much been the first weekend in, oh, that camera's somewhat leaning, here.

Now I feel bad, it's gonna bug me the whole time. Anyway, yeah, 25 years, the first weekend in December.

And this is the grand finale. I have told this wonderful church and the wonderful people of this church that they need to find someone younger, better looking and smarter than me after 25 years.

That's just all there is to it. And hopefully they will find someone. So I very much appreciate the 25 years we've had.

No other church has done that. Most of the churches I'm a member of don't wanna be there for 25 years. So it's been great.

Covenant of Grace Church, and we're gonna be talking about the doctrines of grace. This evening, starting this evening,

Naomi O 'Brien just sent me a picture of coming to hear me speak there in 2016, nine years ago, tonight, in fact.

And I was wearing a coogee. So that's this sort of, the coogees became a part of the tradition fairly early on, and especially on Friday and Saturdays, I normally wear a coogee.

So that's what we're doing. So we are doing a ex -theology dividing line today.

And what happened this morning is I was wondering, you know, which direction we wanted to go, things like that.

And I very quickly, in looking at my feed, ran across post after post after post.

It was like, that would be valuable to respond to. That would be good to respond to. So I just put a bunch of posts together.

And then a friend sent me some Facebook questions for a dialogue he has coming up.

And I hope, boy, let me see here.

Where did that go? Hmm, good question. I hope

I can find those. I thought they were on Facebook. I hate Facebook. I've always hated

Facebook. I'll be perfectly honest with you. But let's see, we need to mute that one for an hour.

There you go. So that the people can chatter away in the AO channel without my phone or my watch going ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

So I'll try to find that. The Messenger thing, they're getting rid of the

Messenger thing in Facebook. And so I'm trying to remember where that went here.

I'll have to look for that. It wasn't in messages, at least I don't think it was.

Oh, hey, I got a text before I jump into these. I got a text today from Brother John Cooper at Skillet.

And it's a picture of the band. And it says, Monster by Skillet hits one billion streams on Spotify, making it the most streamed

Christian song of all time. Now, there are

Skillet songs that have considerably more theological depths to them than Monster.

But Monster has been their biggest hit. It really, really has been. And I didn't really know it when it came out.

That wasn't part of my range of things. But congratulations to Skillet, to John and Corey and Seth and Jen.

One billion streams on Spotify, making it the most streamed Christian song of all time.

That's gonna make a lot of people really angry. Just wait till that hits social media and it's gonna be all over the place.

And there'll be all sorts of things that will... Hey, I found it. All sorts of things that were...

Okay, just, I don't want to go to the web and learn more things about messenger deprecation for Mac.

Fine, whatever. It's still here and I'm gonna use it. Go away. I hate

Facebook. Anyway, I am only on Facebook because everybody at Apologia uses it and Rich forced me to.

You know, I just put a gun to my head and said, you will use Facebook. So, he sort of likes it,

I guess, or at least he used to. I don't know if he does anymore. I haven't asked him about it. But you know, since this could disappear during the program, they might just pull the plug on it and it dies.

I don't know. I'm gonna go ahead and do these questions. Then we're gonna look at the stuff on X.

There's gonna be a bunch of topics today, just so you know. So there's a little bit of something for everybody. But sometimes it's just easier to respond to stuff like this than to sit there and type, type, type, type, type, type, forever in a day and hope that somebody hears it, reads it.

I mean, we live in a day where T -L semicolon D -R, too long, didn't read, is just sort of the watchword of the shallow thinking 21st century,

I don't know. So sometimes you wonder just how much value there is to sitting there and typing, typing, typing, typing.

So here, now, this fellow, I'm not gonna talk about the, he's gonna be doing a dialogue and stuff like that.

He's a great theologian, a great apologist and a solid theologian. So I'm sure he already has answers to all these stuff.

He's just asking, I'd be interested in your take on these because they touch on topics that I've dealt with a lot for a long time.

And hopefully it'll be helpful to you too. So here's the first question. If the

Bible does not tell us what books should be in the Bible. So in other words, if the canon is not included in the

Bible, how it could be, I've never understood how it could be. I suppose you could theorize that somehow at the end of a period of inspiration, there would be,

I'm gonna sneeze eventually here. You wanna learn about what it's like to get old?

When I was a kid, I'd hear my dad sneeze and I was like, man, dude.

I mean, does that hurt? I mean, that's so loud. I'll never do that. Let me tell you something, kids.

Let me tell you something. If you mock your parents about almost anything, you will end up doing it yourself.

It's just how God designed everything. So when

I sneeze now, sometimes, I mean, the cats run out of the room, the windows rattle.

It's just, woo -hoo, it's a life -affirming experience. Let's put it that way.

And Rich cannot mock me for this, and Rich knows why Rich cannot mock me for this. So there you go.

If the Bible does not tell us what books should be in the Bible. So I guess you could hypothesize that at the end of a period of revelation, there needs to be this golden index that comes down from heaven that says, this is what

I've given you, this isn't. That didn't happen with the Old Testament, did it? No, there was no golden index that came down from heaven, and yet Jesus held man accountable to the scriptures as word of God.

But there was no, there was no counsel. You know, people talk about the

Council of Jamia. That took place later, and that really wasn't relevant. There just wasn't anything that gave you a, quote -unquote, infallible definition of the canon of what we call the

Old Testament, the Tanakh, the Torah, the Nevi 'im, Ketuvim. It developed in the consciousness of God's people over time.

And of course, I would recommend everybody as an introduction to this whole subject of the canon of scripture.

The G3 presentation that Dr. Michael Kruger and I did in 2018,

I believe, excuse me. And we talked about the canon as theology rather than as a historical inquiry.

You can inquire into what certain people believed at certain periods of time, but the canon is not determined by historical research because it's a theological entity.

So it has to be understood in that context, first and foremost. So we know that that's not what happened with the scriptures.

So you can hypothesize that, but it's just a, it has nothing to do with the Christian scriptures. If the

Bible does not tell us what books should be in the Bible, doesn't that mean that tradition gave us the Bible? No. No, you're introducing a whole new concept now.

Tradition, some nebulous, whose tradition? What tradition? Found where? Came from what source?

There are all sorts of differing traditions. There are all sorts of differing views. And when you do have, especially because of the rise of Gnosticism, discussion of what the canon of scripture is, the church isn't saying, well, we have the authority to define these things.

Everybody said that they had apostolic authority. But to say, well, the apostles said this, the apostles said that, that's such an easy claim to make.

It's much harder to prove it. It's much harder to give any type of historical basis for that.

The first people that started doing the apostles thing were the Gnostics. And Christians responded by making apostolic claims too, but the only solid apostolic claim you can make is what's in scripture.

That's what the apostles gave us. So that's all you've got. Does that mean that tradition gave us the

Bible, thus making tradition the ultimate authority rather than the Bible itself? So this question shows tremendous confusion as to the nature of inspiration, and what inspiration is, and how inspiration is related to the canon of scripture.

The canon of scripture is simply that which God infallibly knows He gave. He gave these books that are theanostos.

So God knows exactly which books are theanostos and exactly which books are not. And as much as He wants the church to have what

He gives is the amount of effort that He puts into getting the people of God to recognize what is theanostos.

Now, are there questions at the fringes? Hebrews, Revelation, the smaller epistles.

Yes, there are questions at the fringes. Some of them take time to become recognized. One of the main reasons for that is, of course, in those days, you didn't have fax machines, you didn't have the internet.

150 years after the writing of 3 John, there would be a lot of people that never saw 3 John. So how could they be involved in the recognition of its canonicity or inspiration and things like that?

So part of it was just simply the context in which people were living.

So no, tradition is not the source. And you'd have to point to, well, who's claiming that?

The Gnostics did, sure. The Gnostics claimed secret knowledge. But is that tradition traceable?

The earliest use of the term apostolic tradition is by Irenaeus, and it's about Jesus being over 50 years old when he was crucified.

And almost nobody believes that. So that's something to be kept in mind. Um, let's see here.

Number two. Okay, I rarely get stuff like this. Oh, okay.

Yeah, this is interesting. I happen to have this up. Jason Wallace, I had said on the last program that we ought to have him on to talk about the filioque and what's going on with Rome and the fact that there really seems to be a strong, ecumenical movement between East and West right now.

It seems like the Patriarch of Constantinople is sort of on the liberal side of things, and hence might be willing to make compromises.

That could end up creating some interesting schisms within orthodoxy as well.

But yeah, we'll be talking about that. Second question.

Why doesn't God save everyone if he loves everyone? Because God's love is not limited like human love.

Well, okay, maybe I shouldn't have put it that way. Even human love admits of different kinds of love.

So my love for my wife is different than my love for a lady across the street, or a lady in the shopping center, or something like that.

My love for my children is different than my love for any other children. My love for my grandchildren is different than my love for any other people's grandchildren.

And so we make proper distinctions in how we love, who we love, how we prioritize our loves.

This has been given to us by God, and so God obviously has the capacity to do the same thing.

When the general concept of God's benevolence toward the world, the fact that he's not destroyed it with another flood, the fact that he extends grace and mercy to people, and does not destroy them immediately, that general benevolence is very different than the specific love he has for his people.

Over and over again, the scriptures tell us that God's love for Israel is different than his love for any other nation, that he chose them, not because of who they were at all, but because of his mercy and grace.

So the assumption in the question is that if he loves everyone, that that's redemptive love.

And what it doesn't recognize is that, why doesn't

God save everyone if he loves everyone? Now, I don't think this person believes God has the ability to do that.

In fact, given this, not the person who's asking these questions, the person who's asking him these questions, who is not a

Christian, that individual, their

God can't save everyone anyways. It's outside of his capacity. He's incapable of that.

So even asking the question is a little bit begging the question because his

God can't do any of that stuff to begin with. But assuming, the question is assuming

God has the ability to save everyone, then what goes along with that? Well, the rest of the biblical revelation is that God has in history, demonstrate his glory through the destruction of godless rebel sinners.

God was glorified in the destruction of the firstborn in Egypt. So Christians have always had to deal with the reality that you have to put together the entire picture and not just allow one element of the picture to drive everything else out.

So it is a biblical reality that God purposefully brought

Israel into Egypt so as to bring about the Exodus and to establish the

Passover. And this becomes a constant theme that is repeated over and over again.

And so that has to be, Christian theology has always had to struggle with these things.

In modern days, you have movements like open theism, the fellow asking these questions doesn't have any type of classical theistic viewpoint at all.

In fact, I would argue doesn't have an actual theistic understanding of God. Is God's an exalted man?

So that gives you an idea of where this is coming. So the question doesn't have a lot of meaning given the person asking it, but in the more general sense, the answer to the question is because God has different kinds of love and his redemptive love is different than his preserving love or his beneficence and things like that, and that God has a purpose.

And the Bible tells us over and over again that God has a purpose and he's accomplishing that purpose to his own glory.

Last question, if the apostles could teach infallibly, why couldn't their successors?

Now, this is a good question. And you can see it has wider application than just the context in which it's being asked.

And what it helps us to focus on is that what's, and this is really good, especially in dealing with Roman Catholicism.

There's a textual variant in the New Testament. When Peter is describing the inspiration of scripture, in the

King James Version, it says, holy men spoke from God as they were carried along, as they were moved, not carried along, moved by the

Holy Spirit. Much better reading and translation is, men spoke from God as they were carried along by the

Holy Spirit. And so where the term holy goes, and there's a variant there, the authority and nature of scripture is not based upon the men who gave it.

As Paul said, all scripture is theodonostos, not all scripture writers. Now we, part of this is our own fault, in the sense that we use the term inspired.

You know, it's a Latin term and it's not, we can read things into it that we shouldn't read into it.

And so we say that Paul was inspired to use this term. No, the term was inspired.

That's the biblical use, is the term is God breathed. The mechanics of how

Paul speaks that, and yet it's the word of God, is the real question.

That's the real rub. And you know, people come up and they just assume certain things and automatic writing and stuff like that.

That's not how it works. God's sovereignty and providence is of such a character that he can know his creatures before they exist so well that he can use them in that circumstance to give us exactly what he wants to give us in scripture.

So, you know, when Paul says to Timothy, bring the cloaks and the parchments, it's because he wants to write and he's cold, but God knew it was gonna be cold because he's sovereign over time.

And he knew that he would need the parchments to be able to write. And he knew that Paul would know that Timothy had them and therefore, so God is so sovereign over time.

It's not some surface level mechanical type thing. It is much, much deeper than that.

And you know, when we see how deep and complex life itself is, and God created that himself, obviously he's far deeper than all of that.

So it says, if the apostles could teach infallibly, well, no, the apostles were used by God to give us infallible teaching in scripture.

And you might say, well, but when they were teaching, okay, but what did they teach?

The only thing that God has chosen to preserve for us that we know is infallible is what's in scripture.

And you can sit there and go, yeah, but you know, you had a period of time before all that was in scripture, it was a relatively short period of time, but there was a period of time there.

And so what about that? Well, you don't live that. And I think I had this conversation with actually the person asking these questions on a street corner in Mesa a couple of years ago.

But that's what they're trying to do is, in fact, I'm quite certain we did. They're trying to do what

Roman, they're borrowing Roman Catholic apologetics. And it makes sense. Rome makes authority claims.

This church makes, Mormonism makes authority claims. So why not borrow them? Sure, Mormonism never thought of it.

It is sort of funny that you have to borrow from the people that you already say. I mean, look up priesthood in the

Journal of Discourses and what early Mormons said about Rome's claim to holding the priesthood in comparison to them.

Pretty strong stuff. But anyway, so you steal it from the

Roman Catholics and you're using it yourself. But what you're really doing in this context is you're theorizing about a period of time that doesn't exist anymore.

And that's what Rome does. Well, what about during that time period? It's like, you mean like when apostles are still alive?

Are there any apostles alive today? This guy would say yes, because there have been 90 or 100 some odd apostles.

And there's apostles living today and all the rest of this stuff. All that kind of stuff in Mormonism. But for a

Roman Catholic, no, there aren't apostles. That was a unique period of time. And so that would mean that in dealing with Mormonism, you have to deal with the concept of apostleship, what that actually means.

They were eyewitnesses to the resurrection of Christ. They try to get around that by saying, well, all the Mormon apostles are eyewitnesses of Jesus and they've seen visions of them and stuff like that, which has nothing to do with what the early church thought about these things.

The chasm that exists between the theology of Mormonism and the early church is unbridgeable.

It is impassable. So they're trying to use this kind of stuff is really inappropriate along those lines.

So it's not that the apostles had a charism of infallibility that's

Roman Catholic theology. It's that the apostles were men who spoke from God as they were carried along by the

Holy Spirit. And the idea that they had successors, just their own writings don't say that.

There were 12. There are 12 foundations in the

New Jerusalem, not 100 or 120 or 134, whatever you would count those things to be.

So yeah, there you go. Okay, next one.

I probably spent a lot of time on that. Okay, one of the standard internet, and of course it was true before the internet, arguments to go back and forth between Roman Catholics and non -Roman

Catholics. Sort of goes, a lady said there's a passage where Jesus talks about being the door, but I'm not going to go around thinking he is an actual door.

Jesus talked in metaphors frequently. Well, of course. And the argument the

Protestants make in regards to, especially John 6, is that Jesus did use metaphors and to press them into literal meaning doesn't make any sense.

So a Roman Catholic responds, does she think this is smart? When Jesus said, I am the door, nobody got up and left him.

Oh, you sure about that? I mean, we're not told that specifically, but when he said,

I am the vine, nobody left him. Well, that was only spoken to the apostles, by the way. And there are a lot of people that did.

In fact, the reason he used parables was to hide things from people. But when he said, eat my body six times in seven verses, his own disciples got up and left, claiming they're even remotely similar is asinine.

Well, okay, this is not one of the better Roman Catholic guys out there. Mr. Casey 62 is his name.

But you need to be ready for John 6. And we have spent huge amounts of time.

The very first book that I had published called The Fate of Law has an entire section on reading

John 6 in the context of John 6. And reading John 6 in such a way as to recognize the flow of the argument, the flow of the thought, and to follow

Jesus' words. Rome doesn't believe the first part of John 6, at least in the synagogue in Capernaum.

Not in Tridentine theology, anyways. So to take the central part out where Jesus has already defined, before he ever says, eat my flesh and drink my blood, he says, he who hungers, let him come to me.

He who thirsts, let him come to me. And he's talking about coming in faith.

He's talking about feeding on him in faith and having eternal life. So he already established the literal parameters in this text right from the beginning.

Roman Catholics just simply ignore it. They just reject it. They have to.

Their church has told them this is what this is about. What it would have meant to the

Jews in Capernaum is irrelevant. But once you embrace sola ecclesia, all the rest of it becomes irrelevant.

The church has said, this is it. That's it. You don't need to do ex Jesus. You don't need to learn biblical languages or context or be fair with the text or, the fact you're not even allowed to ask questions like what would the

Jews have believed about this when they first heard it? And by the way, the 12 did not leave, though one of them was a devil.

Where we go, you have the words of eternal life. But what actually caused them to go, the disciples, the would -be disciples, the people that had come across the lake and they'd seen the miracle and they wanted to get more bread and fish and stuff like that, called disciples.

They left not because of the flesh and blood, but Jesus' statement.

Read it. Read it in John 6, about 65 or so. Read it. He said, no one can come to me unless the

Father enables them. And that is what made them walk away. That's what made them go.

And that had been at the beginning of the presentation, it was at the end of the presentation. And those are the words they found to be hard and so they went away.

And Rome doesn't believe those words either and go away. They do the same thing the disciples back then did.

Unfortunately though, in my experience, in most of the online interactions, you can try to get people to open the

Bible and get into John 6 and read the context and things like that.

But you'll often be disappointed. Now look, I'm not saying that there's not a reason to do that. I've said many, many times when we'd go out to Mesa, to the

Easter pageant, I knew the people I was talking to didn't have ears to hear. But I also knew there were people standing around us that were listening.

And so very often, my concern was those people. And very often when I've responded to Bishop Jacksy on the last program on X, yeah,

I don't get the feeling this guy's really listening. So you might say, well, you're wasting your time. Not necessarily.

There are lots of people who read our interactions. I don't know how many of my followers on X are bots.

I don't know how anybody could ever find out, to be honest with you. But the fact remains, wow, it is only 63 degrees in here.

And this turtleneck, I'm gonna get rid of it before I leave to go speak tonight because I'm ready to die in it.

It's sort of choking me here. There are people listening. And those are the people that I'm hoping will be benefited by spending a lengthy period of time responding to somebody or something like that.

So that's what I'm thinking. Good old Steven Anderson. He's still out there.

Hey, I wonder if Steven Anderson, pastor of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Phoenix, Arizona.

Still out there. They've led him back on social media. That's interesting. He has a video here.

I'm not gonna play. I'm just gonna read this from yesterday. People who are

KJV only actually believe the Bible has been preserved. The people behind the modern versions believe the Bible has been corrupted and that it needs to be restored.

The traditional texts, the word of God, and the modern versions are trash. Well, you know, for Steven Anderson, that's really moderated language.

It really is. I mean, okay, I'm not gonna play the, I didn't play the video.

It may go much crazier than that. And I'm noticing, you know, maybe he was speaking someplace else, but if that is the church, the church has changed a lot over the past few years.

That's actually a meaningful looking pulpit and stuff like that. So I don't know.

And I've been told that he was meeting with some Reformed Baptist guys or sort of Reformed Baptist guys.

That isn't, okay, cool. But this kind of rhetoric is the standard rhetoric.

If you're KJV only, you believe the Bible's been preserved. Okay, that's easy to say.

I'm not KJV only. I believe the Bible's been preserved. It is the mechanism of preservation that is the issue.

And it's the mechanism of preservation that can be defended without spinning in circles and assuming your conclusion.

And that's what King James onlyism does. It's always a vicious tight circle.

You start with your conclusion and then you argue from that back to where you started. That's all

King James onlyism can do. So when someone says the Bible's been corrupted, what they mean is they're textual variants.

And that's a fact of history. That's all corruption means, is that every single document passed down through history in written form has been corrupted.

That is, we did not have photocopiers before 1949. That's all it's saying.

And no early church father, no Reformer, nobody would have argued with the statement that any written or printed document experiences corruption.

So there've been all sorts of editions of the King James Version. There had to be alterations and changes.

There were printer errors. There was the adulterous Bible. There was an early edition of the

King James where the printer, the king's printer, who got himself chucked into jail for this, by the way, the king's printer forgot the word not in the commandment, one of the renditions of the commandment, thou shalt not commit adultery.

So it literally was printed, thou shalt commit adultery. And it was from the king's press.

That's why the guy got chucked in the hoose cow for it. That's called corruption.

That King James Bible was corrupted. And all it means is written communication can contain errors.

That's all it means. It doesn't mean that we can't understand what the original was or anything like that.

All the early, there was constant discussion of corrupted manuscripts and variants in the early church because that's how literature existed in that time period.

So it's so easy in the modern time, post 1949, to get people to think that, oh, well, having a perfect copy, it's just, didn't exist.

Didn't exist until 1949. And believe you me, I'm old enough to remember mimeograph machines and stuff like that, and photocopiers that the drums were old on and stuff like that.

So even then, I'm sure more than one textual variant arose from bad photocopies and toner cartridges and stuff like that too.

So there you go. And so it says, and that it needs to be restored.

In other words, you need to do what the King James translators did, what

Erasmus did. Beza, Stephanos, they examined manuscripts.

They made decisions. And Erasmus used many, almost all of the same principles of modern textual criticism in his creation of his

Novum Instrumentum in 1516. That's a fact. TR only guys,

King James only guys can stand their head, spin, scream, preach till they're red in the face. Doesn't matter. That's the fact.

That's history. And if your text originated from a

Roman Catholic priest studying manuscripts and making decisions on textual variants, live with it.

That's reality. What that means is you can't make stupid statements like this. It says the traditional text is the word of God and the modern versions are trash.

Okay, that is childish. That shows either a complete contempt for doing any serious study or just pure dishonesty.

Because he should know, and I think he does know, there is no single traditional text.

There is no single TR. There are many TRs. There are variants between the TRs.

He should know that. So if he's using it in some big general, well, you know, just the general

TR family, well, which one? The TR published by the

Trinitarian Bible Society is based upon the King James translation itself. It's a Greek text based upon an

English text. So is that the traditional text?

When did it become the traditional text? That particular

TR represents a particular later

Western Byzantine text, but there are earlier Byzantine texts. The TR behind the

King James doesn't read like Codex Washingtonianus, which is one of the earliest exemplars we have of the Byzantine text.

How do you determine the variants? How do you make a decision? You have to engage in textual criticism. That's corruption and restoration.

The very stuff that you say never takes place. So I've said before, the TR only guys, you know, the

Dr. Riddle and those type of guys, they're King James onlyists with a twist. They come to the same conclusions.

They make the same arguments. And it's erroneous all the way around.

Steven Anderson, you know, he does it by jumping up on the pulpit and screaming at you, or at least he used to.

Maybe he doesn't anymore. He might be getting older and it's harder to jump up on pulpits. I suppose there was a time many, many years ago,

I could have jumped up on a pulpit or something, but probably would be really dangerous now and would end up on YouTube for all the wrong reasons.

Okay. Bishop Jacksey gets in here and it's part of the, he was responding to me.

Bishop Jacksey had responded to redeemed Zumer. Now, redeemed

Zumer, reformed Zumer, all these guys, sorry, basically you use the term

Zumer and I'm just automatically go, you don't know what you're talking about because they make such inane statements.

So redeemed Zumer had responded to Nathaniel Jolly who had quoted something

Johnny Mac. And this is what redeemed Zumer said. He said, this proves that MacArthur is a heretic.

Now, I don't even remember what it was about and I don't care. Since Johnny Mac's gone, well, even before Johnny Mac died, there were just all sorts of people who wouldn't understand the term long -term ministry and faithfulness because they haven't lived long enough to have long -term ministry or faithfulness.

And they just love to make a name for themselves by shooting at people like Johnny Mac.

He was a dispensationalist. Dispensationalism is this, that, and the other thing. Okay, look. I'm not a dispensationalist.

I was raised a dispensationalist. I reject dispensational hermeneutics. I reject the elevation of certain eschatological perspectives to the point of dogma, all that kind of stuff.

But some of the most evangelistic, solid, unmovable dudes

I know are dispensationalists. And we disagree. And sometimes

I wonder, how did you get there, bro? And for me,

I would say, hey, especially if you recognize Reformed theology, just apply the same hermeneutics.

You're not gonna come to those conclusions. But the point is, these guys are just looking for clicks.

And now that Johnny Mac's gone, there's a good name to take some shots at and get a little more interest in your post, shall we say, which

I find disgusting. So anyways, Redeem Zuber said, this proves that MacArthur is a heretic. So is

Nathaniel. And anyone who agrees with this statement, they literally denounce, oh, okay. Theotokos, not just the language, mark and avoid them all.

Well, okay, I had forgotten that that was there. Now, I would normally pronounce it

Theotokos, but given the ecclesiastical usage in Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy, I've just decided it's easier to go with the modern use and I'll deal with the pronunciation issues later.

Theotokos is the modern pronunciation, means god bearer.

And as I've explained many times before, there is a perfectly Orthodox context for the use of that term.

Because initially, it was a Christological title. It said something about Jesus.

It wasn't about Mary. It was about her status. It wasn't about exaltation, power, intercession.

No, that's not. What it was saying was that Jesus was not adopted.

He wasn't just a human being who was adopted and the Son of God descended upon him. From the moment of his conception, he was the

God -man. And so when he was born by Mary, and I would insist that he was actually born by Mary, didn't just beam out of Mary like you have in perpetual virginity.

When he's born of Mary, he is truly the God -man at the time of birth and therefore she is the bearer of God.

She doesn't give birth to God. That wasn't what it was about by any stretch of the imagination.

So Theotokos as a Christological title, as an affirmation of the fact of the hypostatic union is perfectly

Orthodox. And you can use that term. But since it entered into general usage, especially after the

Council of Chalcedon, but before them too, it has changed.

It has become a title of Mary. The vast majority of Roman Catholics that use the talk about the mother of God, aren't thinking about the hypostatic union at all.

Does not even enter their mind. So that use is completely inappropriate.

It's a historical. It's a perversion of the historical reality.

And so we have to be able to make those distinctions. So I don't know what it was that Nathaniel Jolly or John MacArthur said at that particular point in time.

But Bishop Jacksy quoted that thing from Redeemed Zuma and said, such love, such little chaos, much wow.

So he's on this big, the whole Protestant world is in chaos thing.

And I responded to him on the last program, pointed out his categorical errors, pointed out the hypocrisy, pointed out what's really going on in Rome.

He doesn't care about any of that. He's one of those guys that will sit there all this stuff documentable about what's going on in his own church.

And it's like, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. And then you go, and you're misrepresenting us.

You're making Gnostics. Well, they're all Protestants. It's just childish foolishness.

It really is. But if it gives the opportunity to again, demonstrate how shallow this kind of Roman Catholic apologetics is, maybe it might help somebody.

Somebody else may pick it up. So I responded to him.

And I said, Protestants are constantly misrepresenting the Pope and not quoting actually infallible statements and teachings, exclamation point.

And Zoomers on X actually represent all of Protestantism. So I was just simply pointing out what this guy does is he'll have one standard for his church.

If you're going to criticize the Pope, then you need to criticize the Pope giving infallible teachings, official teachings.

You've got to quote things in context, stuff like that. Obvious duh stuff, which hey, some non -Catholics will misrepresent the

Pope, sure. I've seen many Catholics misrepresent the prophet of Mormonism.

Okay, yeah, that's sort of the nature of X, happens. But to make someone like redeemed

Zoomer represent all of Protestantism is just childish and foolish.

And Bishop Jackson has been corrected so many times now that he's just proving that he's childish and foolish.

That's just his nature. And he evidently can't break out of it. Maybe he'll grow up and mature at some point.

No, no, right now it just means he's not really an honest interlocutor. He shouldn't be wasting too much time.

But again, it's the categories here that help. That's why I'm dealing with. He says, so he responds to me and says, in Protestantism, everyone represents

Protestantism because there is no binding normative authority above the individual. That is just, it's hard for me to express the stupidity of this man's thinking.

I mean, so that means, okay, I could just simply say in Roman Catholicism, everyone represents

Catholicism because the supposedly binding normative authority above the individual constantly contradicts itself and never makes corrections, right?

Where is the Pope in correcting the Catholics on X who are still saying that it's appropriate to use the terminology of co -redemptrix and co -mediatrix?

They're quoting Popes. They're quoting Popes. Mark Miravalli made a strong argument for years based upon the statements of the

Popes, the teachings of the Popes for what, 150 years?

A century and a half of consistent papal theology.

That's what's on their side. So where's the Pope? Is he on, could you show me where he's on X correcting these people?

Because Bishop Jackson, you're living in a fantasy world. You're living in a fantasy world.

You truly are. You can ignore fiduciary supplicants all you want. It created massive confusion and you can't give me its official interpretation.

You don't, you're not authorized to do so and the people who wrote it because they're liberation theologians can't give you clear answers on anything.

Now you can ignore that. You can pretend it doesn't exist. Just, that's what you're doing.

You know, my mom used to tell me years and years ago and I remember the incident.

At about age three, I decided I was gonna go visit my friend down the road without asking permission.

And I decided the fastest way to get there was this big, wide, black thing called County Road 15.

And my mom sees me heading down the driveway and she comes after me telling you, you get back here right now.

You know what I did? I stuck my fingers in my ears and I started running. And so she's chasing me down County Road 15 and it was on a curve.

I remember what the curve looked like. Somebody could have come around that thing and I would have been history. But my excuse, what did

I think? I can't hear you. I've got my fingers in my ears.

Boy, did I get my bottom tanned. I never tried that again. And I see so many kids in Walmart or Target that they need to get their bottom tanned too.

And they'd stop behaving that way. But that's Bishop Jackson. He's acting like a theological three -year -old.

He's got his fingers in his ears and I don't care that my criticisms of you actually disprove my position.

I'm just gonna keep doing this because it's how I get interaction. It's how I get attention. That's how I demonstrate that I'm very immature.

So it is. The Protestant system is a theological free -for -all.

There is no Protestant system. There is none. Identify it. What is it? What's its confession of faith?

What's its creed? You don't know, because there isn't one. You're making things up. You're dishonest. You're a very dishonest individual.

A cacophony of competing Bible interpretations and mutually contradicting voices all claiming the Holy Spirit. Well, there may be those things.

There were in the early church too. That didn't mean that there was not one clear divine teaching.

And you hold to a system that covers that teaching in the traditions of men, and you cannot examine it because you lack the foundation.

But that's not what the quote -unquote Protestant system is anyways. All he's saying is, we have an authoritarian system.

We don't really practice it. The popes are changing things by their practice, and they're not enforcing things.

And yeah, the Catholic Church today is very, very different than it was 200 years ago, but I'm just gonna ignore all that. And I'm just gonna focus on stuff that isn't even related.

I'm gonna throw the Gnostics out there, and the Mormons out there, and you're all just a bunch of Protestants, and it's just pure foolishness.

So Dr. White can insist the Zoomers don't represent Protestantism, but by Protestant principles, why wouldn't they?

What Protestant principles? You can't give me any. You can't give me any.

You're making this up. This is pure fiction. You're a fiction writer. They have the same

Bible, he does, and the same appeal to the spirit. His disagreement is just another voice in the Protestant noise. No, it's not.

If that were true, why don't I lose every debate against Roman Catholics? Why don't you listen,

Bishop Jacksy? Why don't you go find the cross -examination I did of Father Peter Stravinskas, two

PhDs, editor of the Catholic Answer on 1 Corinthians chapter three.

How about we do it this way, Bishop Jacksy? How about you come on the dividing line? And we'll do 1

Corinthians chapter three, and we'll see if I'm just simply, if we have the same Bible and the same appeal to spirit, and his disagreement is just another voice in the

Protestant noise. Bishop Jacksy, you know, you know, you could not sit there and survive that cross -examination.

Tim Staples couldn't. Peter Stravinskas couldn't. You know that.

So what's the difference? Some of us actually take scripture seriously. And you know what's funny?

You're stuck with the drone Bible commentary. Do you own it? I do. I didn't bring it on this trip.

It's sort of heavy. I'd like to get it in electronic form, actually. But you're stuck with the drone

Bible commentary. Imprimatur, nihil abstat, forward by Pope Francis.

You will find the kind of exegesis in there to not only not represent historical, the best historical

Roman Catholic exegetical traditions on certain topics, but actually there's a number of places they don't even look at 1

Corinthians 3 as having anything to do with Purgatory. They don't even do it. Are they Protestant?

Are they just a noise? See, you are so inconsistent, and you don't care.

And if you don't care about consistency, you're not a truthful person. You're not honest. You're dishonest. You're a liar. If you don't care about consistency, you're going to lie.

That's all there is. All there is to it. So there's good old Bishop Jacksy demonstrating things like that.

Okay, last one here. This one is sort of sad, and I've only got a few minutes.

It's from Josh N, Josh N -A -A -2 -G -E -Z.

I don't know what this is. Dear Christians, it's as simple as this. God has directly answered my prayers using

Latter -day Saint scriptures. After hours of prayer, he illuminated a scripture reference in my mind as clear as day, and when

I turned to those verses previously unknown to me, they provided a direct answer to my prayer. And those

Latter -day Saint scriptures have continued to be a source of strength and revelation in my life. He also has many times wrapped his arms around me and filled me with pure love while I engage and serve in the

Latter -day Saint religion. You know those born -again experiences you so often hear Christians report from when they gave their lives to Jesus?

Yeah, believe it or not, I relate. I've felt the same thing. Okay, so here is someone talking about the

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints as everything it claims to be and holds the true priesthood and authority, or priesthood and authority doesn't matter, and God is totally fine with me being a

Latter -day Saint. Either way, I am a disciple of Jesus Christ. That is what I care about most. Now, this is postmodern, emotional, heart -tugging apologetics.

But notice it is ugly and coherent. It cannot survive cross -examination.

And what do I mean? Simple, priesthood authority, that is a claim.

It can be examined. One of the absolute weakest planks of LDS authority claims is the priesthood, not only historically.

I mean, it didn't exist when the church was founded. Look, read David Whitmer's An Address to All Believers in Christ. The whole story was made up.

The LDS scriptures demonstrate it. Look at the changes between the 1833

Book of Commandments and 1835 Doctrine and Covenants. The changes demonstrate that when the

LDS church was founded in 1830, April 6th, 1830, that was not a part of the claim.

The claims of the priesthood were added later, much later. And it was even said that the power of godliness would not be manifest to men outside of the priesthood.

When did Joseph Smith see God the Father and God the Son? Allegedly, long before he allegedly received the priesthood in 1829.

So there's just all sorts of historical, it's just a historical mishmash. It's the result of the evolving theology.

That's why I said many times, if Joseph Smith had not been murdered in the

Carthage Jail in 1844, there would be no Mormonism today. If they had given him just two more years, three more years, there'd be no

Mormonism today because it was changing so fast that eventually no one would be able to make heads or tails out of any of it.

And the priesthood was one of those issues. Biblically, the priesthood is indefensible.

Utterly indefensible. I would love to see, I don't know if, Brother Wallace will listen, if Jason will listen to this program, if he'll catch up with it, but that would be a great topic for a debate in Salt Lake City next week, next year, would be the claims of the priesthood,

LDS priesthood. Because biblically, the idea of Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthoods,

Joseph Smith was clueless about what the New Testament teaches about the Melchizedek priesthood, the end of the

Aaronic priesthood, the whole priesthood system, its fulfillment in Christ, all of that stuff.

Just, he was clueless. And so, there are a few things, I mean, doctrine of God, yeah.

Vastly different than the New Testament. But the concept of priesthood authority is indefensible from any type of historical and biblical position.

You have to assume it at your start, just like Rome has to assume its ultimate authority, so does

Mormonism. So, you can talk about how warm you feel about it. I feel warmly about the priesthood.

Doesn't change what scripture says about it, doesn't change the fact that historically, it developed at a later point in time in Mormon history, doesn't change any of that.

So, all your warm feelings for a lie doesn't change the fact that it's a lie. There are people that have warm feelings about the

Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, but you believe the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society to be an error, right? You have to if you're a

Mormon. So, you're incoherent. You do not have a concept of truth. And I would hope that someday, the

Lord would show that to you. And that was to, again, to Josh N.

on X. Okay, all right. So, I have an hour and a half before I will be at Covenant Grace Church in St.

Charles, and we're gonna be looking at the Doctrines of Grace tonight and then tomorrow morning, tomorrow afternoon, tomorrow evening, those

Saturdays are long days. Last one, I just gotta survive one more time.

And then preaching Sunday morning, doing Sunday school. Don't yet know on what, but I've got some ideas.

And celebrating 25 years of this poor church being afflicted with me on an annual basis.

So, there you go. Wow, what is this thing doing here?

X just went crazy on me. It just started scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, like all sorts of craziness. I don't know when we'll be getting back together again.

Might try, we'll see. I'm on my way back across the U .S. next week.

I hope it's not quite as cold as the way out. It was 12 degrees here this morning,

I think. And the unit's doing pretty well. It's got a big furnace in it, but I had to go get propane today because you burn it.

When you're 40 feet long, that's a lot of area to warm. And so, yeah.

There's a travel fund link at aon .org. It's that time of year.

And I'll just say, in passing, we don't wanna take up a lot of time, but we're supported by the listeners of this program, primarily.

I would say, minimally 90 % of the people that support this ministry and keep us on the road, keep us having houses and stuff like that, keep a roof over our heads and the electricity on,

I think 90 % of those people listen to this program. I think there are some that aren't really big into webcasts or things like that.

They enjoy the debates and stuff. But I'd say 90 % listen to this program.

And so, that's one of the reasons we do this. I'm in the back of the RV here, and I've got the camera over there and the lights up there and the

ATEM over here and the microphone that I couldn't put on this sweater anywhere today.

And that's why we do what we do and how we do it. So, if you wanna help us continue to do this, this is the unit that I'll be taking to Dallas at the end of January.

And I need to, I apologize, I keep forgetting to, I need to get,

I have put out on social media the link for the Islam conference at the end of January.

And I need to probably link that in one of these Dividing Line blogs too, so that people can get hold of it.

But on January 29th, dialogue with Yasir Qadhi, and then the 30th, 31st, and the 1st,

I think, I'll be at the church. And that's the weekend before the big gospel truth debate stuff.

My debate's on Friday. I'm not gonna be able to be at the debates on Saturday because I'm doing a quick shot down to Livingston, Louisiana to preach at the new

Reformed Baptist Church down there that is formed after the rebellion of the deacons and the taking positions of authority they do not possess and do not have biblically.

And I'll just say to that church and those deacons that did that, why don't you contact David Allen and see if you've had me debate at your church.

I've debated Roman Catholics in church. I debated King James only as your church. I proved at your church that I can do that.

Contact him, see if he'd debate me at your church on the things he said at your church. He won't do it.

Ask yourself why. There's a clear answer as to why, but you won't do it and he won't either.

Guarantee it. So anyway, so it is the end of the year and you're getting hit with 10 ,000 end of year giving things.

You don't get stuff like that from us, okay? This is sort of the only appeal we do is just let people know we don't have the big guys in the background.

And to be honest with you, whenever big guys have shown up, they almost always had a demand as to what kind of access they wanted to purchase with any type of large donation.

Vast majority of our funding comes from just regular folks, small donations, and that's the way it should be.

So yeah, it's the season for giving. And if you'd like to keep us on the road, travel fund, the general fund needs to be supported as well because Rich ain't moving in here with me, that's for sure.

So, and when we get back, we've got some repairs, the electrical heater we put in the front and back units.

Why it's not working, but it could be cold in Dallas. I mean, remember that ice storm last year? Yeah, so got some repairs to do before we head back out on the road again.

So if you wanna help support us, keep us going, really appreciate it. Hope it was a benefit to you. And like I said, we'll see you sometime next week.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's, stop, sir. Hit the right button, it's called outro, there you go.

All right. I knew I'd make a mistake toward the end, that's how it goes. We'll see you next time,