The MrX Debacle

Alpha & Omega Ministries

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

Comments are disabled.

00:15

of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. Give a defense for the hope that is within us.

00:24

Get to give that answer with gentleness at the

00:32

Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr.

00:38

White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the

00:43

United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. A full plate today may end up going a little extra distance today.

01:01

Just to make sure that we have sufficient time to fully document and discuss recent events that have taken place within, well

01:10

I would call it within the realm of Roman Catholic apologetics, but the fact of the matter is this really doesn't fall within the realm of Roman Catholic apologetics.

01:19

It at one point I guess did, but it doesn't really anymore. In the sense that we are going to be discussing allegations that have been made public by Catholic Apologetics International, the apostolate of Roberts and Jennus.

01:35

These are libelous and defamatory accusations made against William Webster, David King, Richard Pierce and Colin Smith and the late

01:46

Andy Anderson who unfortunately is not around to defend himself. Accusations of altering citations.

01:53

Citations interestingly enough that in the vast majority of instances are available for anyone to examine in already published works.

02:02

This is without a doubt in my opinion one of the most inane, ridiculous campaigns that has ever been launched by anyone in opposition to the truth.

02:13

This is absolutely a major league joke, but because it has been put out there we need to respond to it and document the many errors and falsehoods that are being pushed upon people because I certainly know that once rumors like this get started, no matter how absurd they are, no matter how unverified they are, no matter how they should never have seen the light of day, no matter how indicative of complete yellow journalism they are, tabloidism they are, they develop a life of their own.

02:49

There are people who are so desperate to continue to believe a lie that they will simply believe anything and as long as they've heard that someone did something, they will utilize that kind of information.

03:03

So I'm going to give a background to this situation first because we cannot assume that our listeners are familiar with everything that has gone on.

03:13

I don't claim to know everything that's gone on because obviously there has been stuff going on for quite some time and I don't sit around wondering about these things.

03:23

I often wonder about people who even dream these things up. I live a very, very full life and I have plenty of things to be doing outside of the realm of Roman Catholic apologetics or Mormon apologetics or whatever else it might be and so I just don't even understand the mindset of these kinds of people to be perfectly honest with you.

03:43

But I'm going to give some background so that the people listening who have not been in channel, who have not been following this saga on the web will have some background and then we will be joined by a number of the people who are a part of this situation, specifically by David King, William Webster, Rich Pierce is right across the studio, also known as my office, from me here and we will have questions for all of them, especially when we get to the specific allegations that have been made and the demonstration of just how completely ridiculous this whole situation really is.

04:21

But let's go back in time a little bit. Those of you who are not familiar with a chat channel, you hear me talking about it all the time and in this situation it is important.

04:31

Indeed Catholic Apologetics International has posted an article. It has now been removed but it was there for a number of days.

04:39

Many of us saved it of course on our hard drives to make sure that we would be able to document this information and in this article one of the statements that is made was that the three volume set

04:52

Holy Scripture written and published by William Webster and David King was written primarily in IRC chat channels and specifically our

05:02

IRC chat channel. There is an individual that was identified as Mr.

05:09

X. Now we immediately stop right there and just simply stop and go, excuse me, they posted material from an unnamed source called

05:18

Mr. X? Yes, and as we will discover they failed to verify any of Mr.

05:24

X's claims before making them. One of the most ridiculous activities you could ever have and I think reflects completely upon the methodology that Robertson Genesis has always used and that Catholic Apologetics International uses on a regular basis both in its historical and in its theological argumentations as well.

05:44

But Mr. X is the individual that was producing this information.

05:50

One of the things he said was this was written in an IRC chat channel. So we go to the subject of the

05:56

IRC chat channel first because what has taken place is an individual and we could tell as soon as we saw this article, an individual who was at one point a regular, an individual who was in our chat channel with sufficient regularity to become familiar with the regulars in channel and the regulars involved in this ministry.

06:16

Myself, Richard Pierce, the president of the ministry, people in channel such as Colin Smith.

06:22

CDS is his nick in channel. Colin Smith lives back east. He is a

06:28

British citizen working on becoming an American citizen. We sometimes call him silly

06:33

Brit. You've heard him on the program a number of times before. He's one of my students, a very fine Christian man, a scholar in his own right.

06:40

So also in our chat channel, especially over the past number of years, there would be discussions of when

06:47

I was going to be on various radio programs, including Andy Anderson's program back in New York.

06:53

And at times when that was available, you could listen if I was going to be on Janet Partial or if we were going to do something to where we actually webcast my portion when

07:03

I was going to be on a radio program. There have been a few times we've actually made that available to the folks in the channel to listen to while I was doing the interview on the program.

07:11

Obviously, Mr. X, whoever he was, was someone who was very familiar with these things because he provided details in this interview that Catholic Apologetics International posted wherein he spoke about people by name, made certain allegations by name.

07:29

And so we could tell very quickly it was someone who either was still in channel or who had been in channel at some point in the past.

07:36

And so we spent this. This article was posted last week. We spent some time thinking about this, try to figure out who it was.

07:42

Well, we have determined who this individual was, and this has been verified to us by the people at CAI.

07:50

And we are talking about an individual by the name of Michael Roberts. He first joined the channel according to my logs.

07:57

Now, again, let me explain that. When you're in an IRC chat channel, you can set your program to create a log, that is to record everything that is said in the chat channel.

08:07

And I do that automatically. I've been logging our IRC chat channel all the way back to about 96 or so.

08:13

I don't have all of them still. Some have been lost in hard drive crashes and things like that. But I have a pretty complete log file from about 98 onwards.

08:23

And a search of my log files shows that this individual who used the nick

08:28

RW came into our channel for the first time on September 2, 1999.

08:35

He joined the channel, asked about me, and then immediately changed his nick to KJV Thumper.

08:42

And he was claimed to be a King James only fundamentalist that had encountered my materials.

08:49

I talked to him about King James only issues, answered questions that he had on translation issues, things like that.

08:56

And he said he eventually abandoned the King James only position. He was very active in channel from about 1999 through 2001.

09:05

And according to my logs, the last time that RW was in our channel at all was in June of 2002 very briefly.

09:14

He was even made an operator. There are a certain number of people that can kick people out of channel or ban people or do things.

09:24

You'll have people come in and start advertising websites or use foul language or whatever.

09:30

And the operators are individuals who take care of situations like that. And he was even an op -in channel. And he was a very young man.

09:39

I think by my recollection, he was about 19 when he first joined the channel, which would make him around 23 now by my calculations.

09:48

And he was a very zealous young man. And he was what

09:54

I would call a text sponge. We had over the years,

10:00

I especially had over the years created a series of pop -ups. And a pop -up is a, you can utilize your mouse to bring up a certain menu and you can quote in channel particular things.

10:13

Maybe it's explanation of a Bible verse or in this case, especially he showed interest in the pop -ups

10:19

I had of quotations of early church fathers, especially on the subject of Sola Scriptura.

10:26

And so it was a very regular thing that I would pop up a quote from Basel or from Augustine.

10:34

And a few minutes later, he would pop it up as well. He had taken it, cut, pasted. He learned how to make pop -ups, put it into his

10:41

IRC setup and would then do the exact same thing. And it was during this period of time that David King, who is an operator in our channel, a very good friend of mine, was doing the biggest section of his research and writing on this project.

11:01

It was a many year project. He and Bill Webster worked on this for a long, long time.

11:07

And what David King, or as we call him in channel Skyman, would do, is as he was typing up citations, as he would be reading, and he read extensively, just so many volumes.

11:20

And I know he was doing this because we would discuss the books that he was purchasing, investing his own money in buying these things.

11:28

And he'd say, hey James, look at this book I found. And he'd give the

11:33

URL to the exact book on Amazon or Barnes & Noble or whatever it was that it was found.

11:39

And man, sometimes these were very expensive books. And sometimes they were just part of a series or something like that.

11:46

And not always, but many times I'd go ahead and pick up the same book myself from my own library.

11:53

And so as he'd be reading these works, he'd be typing these things up. And he always has, and anyone who has the

11:59

Holy Scripture series knows, there is a particular form of citation that he utilizes. Very, very regular.

12:05

It's a very good form of citation. Gives the name, the general dates, birth and death of the individual, the quotation, source, in a particular format.

12:14

And everyone who's been in channel, in Prosepolgion, for any period of time at all, from 99 onwards, is familiar with the

12:23

Skyman patristic flood. I mean, there were some times when he'd have a whole bunch of them and the channel would just be filled.

12:33

And people got so used to it that if you were interested, you'd stop, you'd go back, you'd read all of them and go, wow, that's really cool.

12:39

And there'd be a discussion of it. But if you weren't, if it wasn't your thing, you just kept going. It's just like it was just a part of what it was to be in the channel at that time to see these citations.

12:50

And so these things would be appearing. And what would happen is RW would be collecting all these things.

12:57

And in fact, we have a number of citations. Some of the people in the channel yesterday, once we had confirmation that this

13:07

Mr. X source that CAI is saying has converted to Catholicism and is making all these accusations, was in fact

13:15

RW. We started looking through our logs and some of the stuff that came up was very, very, very interesting.

13:23

For example, Eric Nielsen found this one from May 9th of 2000.

13:29

I'm involved with it. I don't have this log myself. The reason being and reading it,

13:35

I saw this. The part that I'm going to read came from when I was at home and our home unit has since died and I lost all the logs

13:43

I had from home. Then I came back over to the office and I have the rest of this day's log identical with what

13:49

Mr. Nielsen has sent to me. There was a Catholic that came in channel and RW and Skyman began dialoguing with him and both of them began posting large portions of text concerning the early church fathers and I believe even materials about the

14:12

Apocrypha and things like that. We're talking a very large amount of text.

14:18

Even I made a comment about man, I'm getting dizzy here from all the pop -ups and so on and so forth. Then the time here,

14:26

Central Standard Time or this would be May, so this would be Central Daylight Time probably, 2026 which would be a little bit later in the day obviously.

14:39

RW says to me after I had made a comment about how many things were being posted, he says, this is

14:48

RW speaking to me, this is Mr. X. I'd make a first class plagiarist, eh?

14:55

To which I responded too late, you already are, RW. This is at 826

15:01

PM is the time on this particular time stamp and this particular log.

15:07

This is in the midst of posting all this stuff which very clearly RW had gotten from Skyman.

15:14

We found places where he's saying, hey did you send me that file? And Skyman responds, well I'm not holding out on you.

15:21

I've even got one here, this is from July 28th of 2001. RW messages me and I had made mention of something concerning the fact that I had done a

15:34

PowerPoint presentation of the Trinity. Actually I've done a very extensive PowerPoint presentation of the

15:39

Trinity. And so he messages me and he says, do you have a PowerPoint presentation of the Trinity or on the deity of Christ?

15:45

And I responded yes and he said, do you think I could ask if you email them to me?

15:51

I would really like to use one this week and one next week on my Sunday school class. And my response to him was,

15:57

I'm sure you can produce something quite nice yourself. No. And so by 2001

16:03

I have a very clear recollection of quite honestly being a little tired of the constant requests.

16:10

Could you send that to me? I just heard you just did that. Could you send me your debate notes? Could you send me that? Could you send me this? Constantly collecting all these things.

16:18

And we will, I hope to remember to, do we have, by the way those on the other side of the wall, do we have folks online yet or not?

16:26

We do have our guests online. Pastor King as well as Mr. Webster are online and you need to reconnect to the chat room.

16:34

Oh, I do? Yes, sir. Oh, okay. Well, we had some technical difficulties about five minutes into the webcast and those cleared up real quick, but you didn't come back.

16:45

Oh, well, that's nice. That's good to know. I wonder why. I just figured everybody was absolutely positively fascinated.

16:51

Absolutely riveted. I just thought everybody was absolutely riveted to what I was saying and that's why it had gone completely quiet in the chat channel was because of that.

17:00

That's good to know. Well, I was simply going to ask a question at this point just to verify and make sure that I was being accurate as I try to give this introduction.

17:12

But if you could bring David King up for just a moment. And I just want to verify,

17:18

David, in light of what I had sent things to Mr.

17:23

Roberts and you indicated that you had sent actually a number, multiple numbers of text files of patristic citations and materials you were working on to Mr.

17:34

Roberts as well. Is that correct? Hello. You got the.

17:41

Are you hung up on him? All right, let's let's get let's try to get Pastor King back in as soon as we do.

17:50

Okay, we got it. We got it. Okay. Got it. Got it in there. Okay, David, you there? Yes. Hey, David, I was just going to ask you real quickly as I'm trying to give this introduction.

17:58

I had mentioned that I had sent materials to Mr. Roberts that he was collecting stuff out of the chat channel and I just wanted to verify from you.

18:06

You also sent him a number of text files of patristic citations during the course of the time that we had contact with him in the chat channel.

18:16

Is that correct? Yes, James. That's correct. And that would include basically most of the stuff that you were posting bits and pieces in the chat channel.

18:26

The sources that you were pulling that from, you sent them to him, did you not? Yes. Okay. All right.

18:32

I just wanted to I just want to double check that what I'm doing here. I'm not sure the nature of the technical difficulties, but I'm just trying to give a background as to where all of this came.

18:40

And just very quickly, you had the opportunity a couple of times,

18:45

I think you said, to talk to Mr. Roberts on the phone. I think

18:52

I recall calling him to comfort him in the loss of his mother. Right. And then

18:57

I recall another time when his dad was seriously ill and I took time to send him an email and gave him some counsel with respect to that.

19:09

And he was at that time he responded to me very respectfully. Okay. All right.

19:15

Well, that was my understanding. I do not have any recollection of having spoken to Mr.

19:22

Roberts directly myself outside of the fact that during that period of time, he called the dividing line on a regular basis.

19:31

And those who want to take the time to go back into the archives can tell that there is a

19:37

Michael from New York who called very frequently. And he would almost always be asking questions on the subject of the papacy and Roman Catholicism, even if that was not the subject of the topic at the time.

19:57

And so there were times that I just quite honestly said this is when we were back on KPXQ. I would message or during a break,

20:04

I would say to the folks in the control room, look, let's take the ones that are on topic first. And if we can get to others, we'll get to others.

20:11

And maybe that was part of what caused a problem here. I don't know. We'll get back to Pastor King and to Bill Webster here in a moment.

20:18

Let me just finish giving this introduction so you all know why this has happened. Right before the publication of the

20:25

Holy Scripture series, the three volume series of books, I learned that RC Roman Catholic apologists were claiming to be already in possession of the text of the book in electronic format.

20:42

And I even remember being asked by either William Webster or David King, because I had been sent the book because I wrote a forward for the book, whether I still had that material if I had given it to anybody else.

20:54

And I remember digging through the material behind my desk, which during book writing seasons, shall we say, tends to grow and become bigger and bigger.

21:08

I remember looking through the materials behind my desk and finding the manuscript to make sure no one had snatched it when

21:15

I wasn't looking or something like that. And hence, I was the source of this material or something like that, and I still had it.

21:23

And so we didn't know where this material had come from, but I remember very clearly people claiming to have had it.

21:32

In the past week, I have discovered in talking to various Roman Catholics that this material was offered to them by RW.

21:40

And in fact, this material that I now am in possession of, the text file, is very clearly the work of David King.

21:50

It is a compilation of all the materials that have been sent to him over time, utilizing his exact citation methodology, etc.,

21:58

etc. And this was being sent by RW to Roman Catholic apologists.

22:05

And this is the first indication that we got, of course. We did not know this at the time. None of us,

22:11

I mean, when this whole story first broke, I was sitting here going, who could that be?

22:17

And this man's name and nick never crossed my mind at all.

22:22

Never. And so it was just absolutely amazing. So let's fast forward here because I want to bring my guests on real quickly.

22:30

A few weeks ago, I posted on our website an article I had written for an online journal a couple of years ago.

22:37

They had pulled it. They had taken it off for other reasons. And so some of you know that I posted a dialogue on Sola Scriptura on our website.

22:47

And a few weeks ago, I discovered that Jacob Michael, who is, as far as I can tell, one of the very few people who has stuck with Robert St.

22:58

Genes over the past year, as St. Genes has swung off into not only traditionalism, but also a number of other strange, offbeat beliefs, conspiracy theories, and so on and so forth.

23:09

So much so that even Dr. Art Sippo, who is without a doubt the most egregiously nasty

23:16

Roman Catholic apologist I have ever encountered in my life, has broken ranks with St.

23:22

Genes. And you go to St. Genes' website, and you can see Sippo and St. Genes going at each other, accusing each other of all the same things they used to accuse me of, which

23:32

I find, again, very, very interesting. And so he's gone off into all this stuff, and it seems that Jacob Michael is one of the few people that has stuck with St.

23:42

Genes. I don't see very much anybody else really writing a lot there. And he started, he wrote a response to my fictional dialogue.

23:55

And I had said in my dialogue, I see you have not read Good, I'm speaking to a Roman Catholic here,

24:01

I see you have not read Good or Whitaker or Salmon or Webster and King, I said, smiling. Yes, I surely am, but I think it better if we begin with a biblical issue first.

24:09

You said the doctrine is unbiblical, correct? So I was making reference to works on the subject of solo scriptura.

24:16

And I made reference to historical works, Good, Whitaker, Salmon. And then I mentioned Webster and King, the modern set produced by our guest today.

24:25

Then he responded with these words. Yes, it is unbiblical, but before we get into that, is that the same

24:32

Webster and King whose historical research assistant recently converted to Catholicism and revealed that neither

24:38

Webster nor King even know Latin? Well, that's another issue, I guess. Let's go back to the part about solo scriptura being unbiblical.

24:47

Well, really, I had been a part of watching this work being produced over the years.

24:57

And I had watched, especially David King, with whom I had contact with on an almost daily basis through our chat channel, was doing this research.

25:06

And by the way, the only thing I really helped out with was, other than praying for them, encouraging them, was when there was something in Greek to look up, because I had the

25:17

TLG CD -ROM, the Thyros Lingua Greca CD -ROM. I had leased it, I don't know, back about 96, 97, somewhere around in there.

25:26

And so there would be times that SkyMan would say, James, could you look up this statement by Chrysostom, or something like that, if it was an early church father writing in Greek.

25:37

And I remember some times till late at night, and he lives a lot farther east than me, so it would be a lot later at night for him.

25:45

We'd be checking citations, an amazing thing to do, I realized. This may be difficult for a lot of Roman Catholic apologists to understand, but see,

25:54

Webster and King wanted to make sure that what they were finding was accurate, and so they were checking citations and sources.

26:02

And so I would try to help with that, and there would be some times I would suggest maybe a translational issue with the

26:08

Greek, or something like that. And so that was something that was ongoing. I knew nothing about a historical research assistant, let alone conversion.

26:18

And so this citation came out, and David King challenged

26:24

Jacob Michael about this, and that led to, well, all sorts of stuff.

26:31

So let's go ahead and bring our guests on now so we can talk about this all together. I'm joined by David King, we talked just briefly with David a few moments ago, and by William Webster.

26:40

Let's make sure we've got everybody there. David, can you hear me? Yes, thanks, James. Hi, Bill. Hi, David. Hi, James.

26:46

Hi, how are you doing? Boy, you guys sound great. I'm glad we have this new phone system. All right, so, Jacob Michael says

26:53

David King had a historical research assistant that converted. Was that the first time that either of you had heard anything about this at all?

27:04

It was the very first time I had ever been informed of a historical research assistant,

27:09

James. I have... every time I hear it, it's very difficult for me to keep from laughing.

27:19

I did have a historical research assistant. His name is Bill Webster. That's right.

27:25

No kidding. Yeah, it was news to me, too, James. I thought I knew David pretty well.

27:30

He must be hiding somebody in the closet I didn't know about. I thought I was his research assistant. There you go.

27:36

Yeah, this was totally news to us. Okay, so now, David, you had contact with Jacob Michael through Eric Spenson's web board, and so you challenged him.

27:48

How would you characterize his response to your challenge? Well, his response to my challenge was that basically

27:55

Mr. X said it, and we know what Mr. X... what he said is true, and therefore it must be true, and then you would very distinctly get the impression that the burden of proof then shifted upon me to disprove what

28:11

Mr. X has alleged. It's sort of like asking you to prove a negative.

28:17

How can you prove something that never was? Right, right. And so, basically, he would not step up to the plate.

28:24

Now, myself, Timothy Enlow, both of us pointed out the fact, and I believe,

28:30

Bill, you even came onto the web board, which is not your type of thing. In fact, Bill, have you ever been in our chat channel? No.

28:36

So, to say this book was written in IRC chat channels would mean you didn't have anything to do with Reddit.

28:41

No, that's right. So, Timothy Enlow and myself, we went on the board, and you actually signed onto the web board to also post a response to this, and Timothy and I both pointed out the same thing, and that is, well, let's for a moment, let's just for a second guess and say, okay, let's say there was a research assistant.

29:04

Exactly what is the apologetic value of this person's conversion? And what we're trying to get to is the fact that by mentioning this, their entire thrust has been to try to, in some way, to cast aspersions upon the quality and the nature of the set that you all have produced.

29:27

That's very clearly, is that not how you read it as well? It's certainly the way that I read it, because no one to this point in time has really engaged us in a responsible way on the subject of the book itself.

29:42

There are all these allegations out there and superficial dealings with things, but no one has ever taken a serious look at the book and what it really says and tried to deal with us in an honest way.

29:55

I just thought I'd mention in passing that Eric Svensson has just joined the chat channel, so we have everybody on board here all at once.

30:03

In essence, he basically would not reveal his sources. I wrote to him personally, this is

30:09

Jacob Michael, challenging him on this. He said, look, we can't tell who this is, and I'm like, how can you make this kind of accusation, make these kind of assertions?

30:21

By the way, in what I read, this source has revealed that you gentlemen are not

30:28

Latin scholars. Now, could you show me where in your three -volume set you all claim to be

30:34

Latin scholars? We've never made a claim to be Latin scholars. We've never made a claim that we could translate.

30:42

Obviously, if we're not Latin scholars, we can't translate. The interesting thing is, in the entirety of the work, except for the section that deals with the canon in volume two, there is only one quotation.

30:55

Well, no, let me put it this way. There is one quotation from Ambrose, from a patristic standpoint, that is a translation that we had done.

31:06

There are two from Hilary of Poitiers that deal with the canon. There's one from Isidore Seville that deals with the canon, and there's one from Pope Galatius that deals with the canon.

31:18

Those are all from the patristic age. Apart from those, and they were all done from legitimate translators from the

31:25

University of Notre Dame, there is no other Latin translation in the entirety of the work, except for that which deals with the canon, and that all deals with the

31:37

Middle Ages and the major theologians of the Middle Ages. They are not patristics.

31:42

Well, now, there is a, I'm aware of this, but not necessarily everyone else is.

31:50

David, your volume, you wrote volume one, and that deals primarily with what?

31:57

It deals primarily with the biblical case for Sola Scriptura. Now, it does contain some patristic citations, or does it not?

32:05

I think it has about 59, if our count is correct. I think that's right, Bill, 59 patristic citations 59

32:11

Latin patristic citations. You have Greek fathers, too. There may be an equal number from the Greek fathers.

32:17

Oh, yes, that's correct. But everything that you just mentioned, Bill, is in volume two, which you wrote on the historical issues.

32:24

That's right. Now, then, what would be the relevance of anything that Mr. X had to say, then, regarding any of this, unless he's saying that the

32:32

Notre Dame scholars don't know what they're doing? Well, he did not. He was apparently not aware that all of the translation work we had done came from the

32:40

University of Notre Dame. He makes the allegation that we were using someone from Emory University to do the translation work, and that we manipulated the translations because we found that the translations didn't agree with what we wanted them to say.

32:57

And we did not use anyone from Emory. And that would not be something that someone who merely had the quotations from the chat channel would have any knowledge of, is it?

33:10

Well, certainly not. And another thing involved in what Bill just mentioned, apparently

33:17

Mr. X claims he was privy to a conference call that revealed this cooked -up conspiracy.

33:27

But none of it's true. Yeah, I want to talk about that in just a few moments.

33:32

I want to get the rest of this accusation out, then we can take apart the details. So we've got,

33:40

David King writes Volume 1, it's on the biblical material. Volume 2 is on the historical material and in canon.

33:47

And Volume 3 is primarily a compilation of patristic sources, citations, both from Latin and Greek fathers and people like that.

33:54

Would that be a fair evaluation of just sort of an outline of what the set is all about, right? Right. All right, so let's go back to Jacob Michael.

34:04

He's challenged, who is this person? What's the apologetic value of this? Don't you realize this is pretty low stuff to use an unnamed source to basically attempt to attack a work, not on the basis of what it says, and you all did not even claim to be

34:22

Latin experts in the first place. Isn't this pretty much yellow journalism? His response wasn't overly positive.

34:28

And as I understand, he was kicked off of the web board that is run by Eric Svensson.

34:36

Is that correct? Yes, that's correct, James. Okay, all right. So that was, what, about two or three weeks ago.

34:44

Nothing happens in between time. And then, Bill, when did I call you this week, or last week? Was it

34:49

Wednesday or Tuesday? It was the same day that David, you went away. I was gone two or three days on vacation.

34:57

It was probably on Tuesday, I think. Okay. I come into Channel, and Eric Nielsen very quickly gave me a

35:04

URL, and I went to the Catholic International, Catholic Apologetics International website, and that is where I read, coming soon,

35:14

The Lion King, L -Y -I -N apostrophe, or David King and the Deformation Deception.

35:21

Now, you can still see that title, at least at the time that this program began.

35:27

You can still see that title on the front page, but if you click on it, it just takes you back to the front page, because this has been pulled.

35:36

And here, Jacob Michael, this is dated April 22, 2004, promises the posting of a full -length interview sometime on Sunday.

35:50

And this is the article in which Mr. X is quoted.

35:56

Now, I'm going to pretty much ignore some of the silliness at the beginning of this article that talks about the

36:03

NTRMIN web forum and things like that, because I think it's sort of silly.

36:09

He mentions that I emailed him, that I hinted, threatened is probably too strong of a word, and that he was going to dedicate an upcoming episode of his radio program,

36:20

The Dividing Line, to this very issue, supposedly to expose another in a long line of examples of deceitful Catholic apologetics.

36:26

Well, that's exactly what's ended up happening. Again, I refused to reveal anything more than I was allowed to reveal.

36:32

So, he then posts a section saying to Mr. King that you owe him an apology now, where he is allegedly dialoguing with Mr.

36:42

X. And Mr. X, let me just give some of the specifics of what he says here, because this is no longer on the

36:52

CatholicInternational .com website. Mr.

36:58

Michael says, I know what you mean. Can I ask a few preliminary questions now to give our readers an idea of what's coming this

37:03

Sunday? Mr. X, sure can. Mr. Michael, okay, did you work directly with William Webster or David King or both?

37:10

Mr. X, I worked mostly through David King. I met with David King often. Let me stop right there.

37:17

Have you ever met Mr. X, David?

37:24

Well, at the time, I didn't know who Mr. X was, so I didn't know. I had no idea who

37:30

I'd been meeting with often, but when this person's name was revealed, I'm certain that I have never met with him face -to -face.

37:38

Okay, that would be Michael Roberts. Okay, we continue. Mr. Michael, interesting. And this is a little bit confusing because it's

37:45

Jacob Michael and Michael Roberts, so that's why I'm using Mr. X so we don't lose track of who's who here.

37:52

Jacob Michael, interesting. He has denied having worked with any kind of a research assistant. Mr. X, interesting.

37:57

Mr. Michael, how extensive was your involvement in your opinion? Here's an interesting one. Mr. X, I would be given a list of books to find.

38:04

I would find them, read certain areas, et cetera. I did some editing work. I also funded an extensive amount of this project as well.

38:14

You can't keep from laughing here or there, David. It's difficult. It is hard. Mr. Michael, how many hours would you say you put in per week?

38:22

Mr. X, 20 or more. Mr. Michael, for how many weeks or months? Mr. X, I'd say about seven months.

38:28

Actually, I would say I worked on the book for almost a year because I sent Scott Windsor, Stephen Ray, and a few others around 200 pages of quotes that I put together.

38:37

Now, let's stop right there. First of all, Mr. Roberts is approximately 23 years of age, and how would he be able to work many hours for you without getting paid and then also fund an extensive amount of this project as well?

38:58

Now, he will later make a claim concerning the amount of the funding that he provided.

39:04

Let me skip down to that here. He said, if you would like a copy of cash checks

39:09

I sent William Webster and David King, I can send you the bank copies. I sent two $5 ,000 checks and many other checks in the sum of several thousand dollars each.

39:20

And then he later says, I probably sent about $18 ,000 to these two. Now, gentlemen, $18 ,000, what is your response to that kind of assertion?

39:31

My response is a wisty head. Bill? My response is

39:37

I have never received one single check from this individual. I've never had a check forwarded to me from David King in any amount relative to what this individual supposedly had sent to him to help fund this project.

39:54

These checks that he mentions that have been cashed and that he can provide, I challenge

40:00

Catholics, Apologetics International to make them forthcoming because I don't have them.

40:09

They were never cashed. We haven't received one penny from this individual. Hey, gentlemen, this is

40:16

Rich Pierce. I have a suggestion. I have his address. Let's send him a bill. Yeah. Really?

40:22

Yeah, no kidding. In an offhanded remark to you the other day, I mentioned, you know, I would love to have the money because I need a new car.

40:28

There you go. There you go. We never know. Seriously, we have received bills.

40:33

Did anyone help either one of you at all with any of your costs whatsoever?

40:40

There was one individual who, help me to remember,

40:46

David, there's one individual. His name was Hendrick. Okay, yeah, it was I think $400. That was all.

40:53

That's all we've ever received from anyone. That was to help us with some of the Latin translations we were doing for the

41:00

Canon. Right, and because those folks at Notre Dame didn't work for free? No, they didn't.

41:05

Oh, come on. I mean, they work at Notre Dame. You'd think they'd want to translate Latin. They love translating

41:11

Latin. They'd love even more to get paid for what they do. No, unlike Mr. X, they did not want to pay us to work for it.

41:18

Okay, all right. Let me say one other thing too, James, and it's this fact.

41:23

If I had indeed received this money from this individual, I would have nothing to gain by denying it.

41:32

I would readily accept it, admit it, and say, yes, this individual did, but it's just the whole thing is so bizarre and absurd that my first response to all of this was just shock.

41:48

Yeah, well, see, you weren't there, and so I'm the one who informed

41:54

William Webster of this. I called you, Bill, and said, have you seen this? Seen what? Well, then

41:59

I read it to you, and your response was very similar to David's right now. A couple of times you just broke out in laughter because you just couldn't believe what was being said.

42:11

Let's continue with some of the things in the text here. Mr. Michael says, any idea why

42:16

Mr. King would be denying any assistance on your part? Now, Mr. X's response is very interesting.

42:22

Maybe because he was the first person I told I was converting. When was the last time you had any contact that you're aware of,

42:31

David, with Michael Roberts? I think I checked my e -mails, and the last time that I had e -mail contact with him, and I think that was probably the last time

42:43

I ever had any contact with him, it was dated June the 10th of last year.

42:49

June of 2002. Yeah, my last contact from my logs was June of 2002 as well.

42:55

And he did not inform you he was converting? No, not a word. Michael Roberts has never indicated to me that he was converting to Rome.

43:06

Okay. Now, Mr. Michael asked him, can your work as a research assistant be substantiated?

43:13

Mr. X, I have documents all over my hard drive, discussions in IRC where we discussed where we were placing what, etc.

43:21

Now, I don't have any doubt whatsoever because my logs show him receiving files, and my logs show him copying things that you've posted to the channel.

43:30

Your posts come first, his come second. That's not exactly consistent with this assertion, but I don't doubt that he has all sorts of documents all over his hard drive, but discussions in IRC where we were placing what, as if he was in on the organization of the text of the book itself.

43:54

Yeah, see, well, that's just completely untrue. Okay. Mr. Michael says, very interesting.

44:01

Now, here's something for Bill. I probably sent, here's Mr. X, I probably sent about 18 ,000 to these two.

44:09

I thought it was funny how King and Webster said Webster would be the primary source, but after all was said and done with,

44:14

Webster was quoted in a newsletter from Reformation Press as having paid every penny of the 26 ,000 out of his pocket.

44:23

I also have receipts from Colgate Divinity where I did my daily research. Now, that's one of the first things that made you think of Michael Roberts, was it not,

44:34

David? Yes, it was. Well, I saw the connection with Colgate because I know that he had attended

44:40

Colgate and had informed me he had been dismissed from the school. And he had been dismissed for, in essence, arguing with the professor and being disrespectful in class.

44:50

I think some conflict with the professor. Right. Now, Bill, you were quoted.

44:57

Do you have any knowledge of a Reformation Press newsletter or anything where you're quoted discussing the costs of your book?

45:07

Absolutely none. I didn't know Reformation Press had a newsletter. I didn't either. By the way, can

45:12

I ask a question of Bill while we have him here? I'd like to know where this figure of $26 ,000 came from.

45:20

That comes out of the air. I have no idea. He's quoting Mike Rotolo there in Reformation Press, so I don't know.

45:26

Interesting. I've never spoken to Mike Rotolo about these volumes, other than after,

45:35

I believe, they were actually published. I need to get hold of Mr. Rotolo and see if he can shed any light on this, too, because I'm sure he would be very interested to discover that he's been cited by this individual.

45:46

Now, here comes the fun part. Mr. Michael, now, in the course of this research, King and Webster must have come across several patristic citations that refuted their thesis, correct?

45:57

Mr. X, it's hard to stay on topic here, David. I'm not a dispensationalist, you know.

46:06

I remember a conference call. A little inside joke there, folks. I remember a conference call.

46:12

Now, here's the conference call issue, and we'll go ahead and get Mr. Pierce involved here, because he's going to become a part of this.

46:19

Here's the conference call. I remember a conference call in which King told Webster that the translations from Emory University did not say what they wanted them to say, and Webster came back with,

46:32

Use ellipses and change a few words. If we are caught, we will blame it on Emory University.

46:39

Mr. Michael, I'm speechless. Mr. X, there were three other people on the line when he said that.

46:45

Mr. Michael, who were they? Mr. X, one was a radio show out of New York. His name escapes me at the moment.

46:51

Dr. White was often on his show. Mr. Michael, Andy Anderson? Mr. X, yes, that's the name.

46:57

Mr. X, Mr. Pierce from Alpha and Omega was also on the line, as well as another person who was working on Webster's side.

47:05

We were discussing promoting the book, etc. Jay Michael. We will skip my alleged non -involvement.

47:12

This book was basically written in Internet chat rooms. Mr. Michael, keep in mind that King denies having any research help, and he told me it was impossible that Webster might be using someone he didn't know about.

47:27

So he denied having any help at all. Mr. X, no, King knew everything, and he also had help from Colin Smith, who did spell -checking grammar and actually wrote a few arguments in the book,

47:39

Smith also took out the bad words. Mr. Michael, bad words? Mr.

47:44

X, yes, we use that as a term when there were words that didn't agree with what we said, we would either change them or take them out or add ellipses.

47:54

Mr. Michael, and those were the bad words? Mr. X, yes. So here is this alleged conference call, and the people involved here, as I'm looking very closely at it,

48:08

Andy Anderson, you two, and Rich Pierce, and a guy working on Webster's side, and Mr.

48:17

Michael Roberts. Now, we've already talked about this, but let's go ahead and make it clear, any conference calls like that?

48:27

Absolutely not. That never, ever happened. Have you ever been,

48:33

I'll start with Bill, have you ever been on a conference call with Andy Anderson?

48:40

The only call I've ever been on with Andy Anderson is when he's interviewed me for his radio program. But never off the air?

48:46

Never off the air, never on a conference call. David? Especially the kind that this man is alleging.

48:53

David? No, we never had any such conference call, and today is the first day that I've ever spoken with Rich Pierce on the phone.

49:01

And so, before today, you never spoke with Rich Pierce. Rich, you out there? Yes, I'm right here, James. Have you been off in your office out there, engaged in grand conspiracies, and on conference calls with folks like Andy Anderson?

49:15

Yes, as a matter of fact, the conspiratorialists have returned to the scene of the crime. Here we are again.

49:22

No. Okay. You know, there is an element of humor in all this that we have to resort to in order to keep our sanity in all this.

49:35

I've personally never spoken with Andy Anderson. Even in setting up interviews that you've done, where we've live streamed them through here,

49:44

I spoke with the people in the control room. I never had any interaction with Andy Anderson whatsoever.

49:51

As Pastor King just said, this is, in fact, today when I screened his call when he came in, was the first time he and I have ever spoken to each other in any form other than in a chat room.

50:03

And the only thing that I've ever talked with Bill Webster about regarding these books is purchasing them for our stock.

50:12

Right. And so, the fact that I would be mentioned in this...

50:17

Implicated Rich. Implicated in this, what boils down to nothing short of a really bad joke, it just floors me.

50:29

It absolutely floors me. Well, you know, we've always suspected your dog Zeke as a

50:34

Jesuit infiltrator, so that may have something to do with it. Well, he's relieved that the real

50:40

Mr. X has finally stood up and he has been exonerated. That's good.

50:46

Alright, well, okay, so this conference call, now a conference call that would include that many people would not only require a special system to be able to do it, but obviously this would be long -distance and hence it would be very easy to document the initiation of these long -distance phone calls to these various numbers.

51:07

And it's interesting, Mistress and Janice, who is now desperately, and the term desperation is really not even a good term to describe his current condition, is desperately trying to defend this kind of stuff, has made the assertion that, well, you know, you attack the one thing that would be the hardest to prove, a conference call.

51:27

Bologna, that would be the easiest to prove. Well, if that's the case, then why did he raise it? Yeah, well, very good question.

51:35

And which it wouldn't be that difficult for Michael Roberts, who lives in, is it New Jersey or New York?

51:41

New York. New York, to show a phone bill where if he is working with Pastor King in this matter, he's going to have several long -distance calls,

51:51

I'm sure, to that phone number at David King's house.

51:56

Indeed. And so he should be able to easily produce those kinds of calls and that interaction.

52:03

Yeah. Very, very much so. Very much so. Well, this is, at the end of this brief snippet, this teaser, that was posted on the 22nd, we have, that's all for now.

52:16

Stay tuned this Sunday for a full -length interview. Jacob Michael, Catholic Apologetics International, April 22nd, 2004.

52:26

Now, during, obviously, the period of time after this, all of us have spoken.

52:32

I immediately called you, David, but you weren't there. I left a message for you. Great. You only found out about this, what, on Saturday?

52:39

I found out about it Saturday morning when I returned home from vacation. Saturday morning.

52:45

Bill, you called me a couple times in between time. We talked about a few things. I sent you some stuff. I started asking some folks in IRC.

52:54

One thing that struck me was, since Scott Windsor was mentioned in the article, and in fact, one of the things that has concerned me all along, and I do need to say this, one of the things that is said in that article that I didn't read,

53:09

I should bring it back up here, this man says that his conversion to Catholicism was due to those kinds of conference calls where you were saying to alter citations, which, of course, by the way, we should mention, and if you too would like to comment on this, would be absolute suicide.

53:29

It would be the dumbest thing you could ever do because this is documented information.

53:34

Anyone who goes to it can show exactly where you've doctored the citations.

53:40

It would be absolute suicide. Let me make a comment on that, James. He makes the allegation here that we are doctoring translations in Latin, from Latin, that were given to us by those that we utilized at Emory.

53:54

We did not utilize anyone from Emory. If you go through these volumes, as I mentioned a little while ago, there are no translations that relate directly to Sola Scriptura in the entirety of these volumes that was done by anyone.

54:13

They are all taken from major scholarly works, such as the anti -Nicene fathers, the

54:20

Nicene, post -Nicene fathers, the Fathers of the Church, the John Rotel series on Augustine.

54:26

In fact, I'll just give you some statistics real quick. In David King's volume on the Latin fathers, there's 59 citations.

54:33

53 out of the 59 come from the anti -Nicene fathers, the Nicene, post -Nicene fathers, the

54:39

Fathers of the Church series, which is a Roman Catholic series, and John Rotel, who is also a Roman Catholic. 53 out of the 59 come from those series.

54:48

The other six are two from the ancient Christian commentary on Scripture, one from the reading and preaching of Scripture in the worship of the

54:58

Christian Church from a scholar who translated, two from the Institutes of Atlantic Theology of Francis Turretin, also translated by a well -known scholar, and then one quotation from Augustine by William Goode.

55:14

That's it. And so all of those would be completely verifiable to any non -specialist who simply has access to a library.

55:22

A good library would have most of these works where you can go and check out the quotations.

55:28

Yes, and that's Latin fathers, too. And, of course, the only thing in question here, I guess, is Latin fathers.

55:33

I did cite some Greek fathers as well, but again, they were by other translators.

55:40

We didn't translate anything ourselves. Right. Okay, so this man who says he's converting to Catholicism says he's converted because of conversations that never took place, and then he said that he's converting because of the dividing line encounter between myself and Scott Windsor.

56:05

Now, Bill, I doubt you've heard that. I have not heard that at all. You know, this man,

56:12

Michael Roberts, is a total mystery to me. I've never spoken with him. The first I'd ever heard is when they started posting at the

56:20

CAI site. Now, David, you did hear that encounter. Yes, and with all due respect to Mr.

56:27

Windsor, I don't believe that he came out very convincingly from that dialogue.

56:32

Well, not only that, I got a lot of complaints from Roman Catholics that I was basically picking on non -specialists, and it did not go well for him.

56:42

Very, very clearly, anyone who listens to that, I would invite anyone to go back. We still make this stuff available. We have nothing to hide.

56:48

Go back and look. That, together with the connection of Andy Anderson, who,

56:54

Andy Anderson passed away about three months ago. He died of cancer, and I have spoken,

57:00

I knew Andy Anderson. I have spoken with Chris Arnzen, who knew Andy Anderson very well, and Chris has confirmed my statement, and that is, it is absolutely, positively absurd that Andy Anderson would have even any interest in this subject.

57:16

It just, that was, I mean, that was not Andy's thing. He'd have, the fact that he, his name was included, that that contact with Scott Windsor and that program was included, the rather strange reference to Reformation Press.

57:31

There are only two conclusions I've been able to come to, and I'd like to get your opinions on this as well. One, Mr.

57:38

X has basically lost his noodle. Something has happened, something radical has happened.

57:45

He has truly lost his balance, and he is absolutely making up the most outrageous stories simply to gain something from Roman Catholics to whom he's now joined himself, or, and this is something that everyone, everyone the chat channel can confirm,

58:02

Rich Pierce can confirm, I've mentioned this to everybody, one of the things that has concerned me from the very beginning is this story is so absurd, and it would appeal only to a very limited realm of people who are desperate to defend a false system.

58:23

It is so absurd that I have to keep over the possibility of the idea that this is a massive joke being placed, being played on Catholic Apologetics International, so as to show them to be disreputable, show them to be willing to post information that is unverified and unverifiable, to be engaged in tabloidism and yellow journalism, a massive joke being played by a non -Catholic who is playing as if he is a convert.

58:59

Now, if that were the case, and I don't know if it is, we have tried to contact Michael Roberts, we found out, in fact,

59:07

Tim Dudek and channel, Sunday afternoon, made an offhand comment.

59:14

He said, you know, I just took him off of my buddy list because his away messages were profane, and I immediately asked him, you mean, you mean

59:23

R .W.? You mean Michael Roberts? And he says, yeah. And I said, what was the screen name?

59:29

And so he gave me the screen name, and I started watching. And, David, you were involved with this, Sunday afternoon, that screen name came on AOL Instant Messenger.

59:40

So you, myself, and Tim Dudek, we all attempted to instant message that screen name.

59:46

We wanted to talk to him. We wanted to go, what in the world are you talking about? And, did you get a response?

59:53

He never responded to me. I mean, if this fellow was such a close friend, I can't imagine why he wouldn't speak to me.

01:00:01

I had no knowledge of him since June, and I certainly had no knowledge of him having converted, if indeed he has, to Roman Catholicism.

01:00:12

Well, he didn't respond to you. He didn't respond, Mr. Dudek. He didn't respond to me. And then he signed off.

01:00:18

Now, the reason I know, beyond all question, that this is Michael Roberts, is that a few minutes later,

01:00:25

Michael, or Jacob Michael, comes into our chat channel and instant messages me at a screen name no one else knows.

01:00:32

So it was given to him by Michael Roberts. And he instant messages me.

01:00:38

We tried to talk with Mr. Jacob Michael in our channel. He eventually stopped responding. But he and I had a long discussion in AOL Instant Messenger about all of this stuff.

01:00:47

And he confirmed it was it was Michael Roberts. And given what happened, then, he didn't even need to have to.

01:00:53

It was very obvious that it was. So here you have an individual we've tried to contact, and we don't know what he's doing.

01:00:59

But my point is that I've wanted to make very clearly, and I realize we're at the top of the hour, we're just going to go as long as we need to be able to make this work.

01:01:07

I want to make as clear as possible to anyone who's listening, that if this is a joke, if this

01:01:15

Mr. X story is a joke, and it is meant to discredit Catholic Apologetics International, etc.,

01:01:22

etc., or any Roman Catholic Apologetics Ministries, because remember, this file that contained your work,

01:01:27

David, was sent to Scott Windsor and Stephen Ray and Scott Butler. In fact, that's what I first heard about.

01:01:33

Wasn't it from you, Bill? Didn't Scott Butler? Scott Butler called me and let me know that they had a significant amount of the text.

01:01:42

He didn't mention how much, but he said that we have your book. And I thought, you're crazy.

01:01:48

You don't have my book. So that's the only thing I could figure out. I just called you because I'd sent you a manuscript of the book, because you're going to do the foreword.

01:01:58

So I just said, well, forget it. I'm not going to worry about it. The book's coming out soon enough.

01:02:03

Right. So when exactly did the book come out? It came out in September of 2001.

01:02:11

Well, I think October might be the date in the book. I can't recall specifically.

01:02:17

Somewhere September, October. Okay, so right around that period of time, even before that, when

01:02:23

Michael Roberts is still active in the channel, he has been offering this to Scott Windsor and others who did not trust him, because they knew that he was an op in our channel, and they didn't even trust him.

01:02:39

So here's an individual, and if this is a joke, I rebuke anyone who would do something like this.

01:02:46

It is not something that should be done. It is not something we would ever dream of doing. And if it's a joke, it's wrong.

01:02:52

Now, it's a joke that's already been played. I mean, Catholic Apologetics International has already put, they've already done the damage.

01:03:00

Whether they post the rest of this interview or not, they've already put it out there. They've already done the deed. They may try, you know, they didn't post the rest of that interview.

01:03:10

That was supposed to be Sunday night. It is now Tuesday morning, and I, you know, reading the stuff, and in fact, we were just sent a note by, it's been forwarded to us, the writings of Robert St.

01:03:26

Genes. He, well, first line, dealing with a bunch of desperate and dishonest

01:03:33

Protestant apologists who will stop at nothing to make up false statements about the Fathers of the Church. That's what St.

01:03:38

Genes says. So, he has made his bed. He will not draw back.

01:03:47

He's ready to, they're going to post something, whether they go with this story of Mr.

01:03:53

X or abandon it, they're going to come up with something. They simply will not accept correction.

01:04:00

They do not seem to realize this is pure yellow journalism. It's tabloidism, and I want to make an announcement, and I've already told

01:04:08

Mr. St. Genes this. He did not respond, but I've already told him that. Mr. St. Genes and I have done our last debate.

01:04:14

I will not debate this man again. I will not give this man the time of day in the sense of engaging in public dispute with him.

01:04:25

He had already marginalized himself tremendously. I was told by a leading Catholic apologist only a few months ago,

01:04:32

Bob has gone over the edge, quote unquote, and anyone who goes to his website sees him attacking all the other

01:04:41

Roman Catholic apologists out there, and so therefore, debating him is making those debates pretty much irrelevant, because they're only for a small group of people.

01:04:51

There's only a small number of people who would find them to be relevant. He no longer represents the mainstream of Catholic apologetics in any way, shape, or form, but this kind of behavior is absolutely positively unforgivable.

01:05:07

It is reprehensible. It demonstrates that he cares nothing about the quality of the information, and he will repeat to others, and so there will be no more debates with Roberts and Genes.

01:05:18

I wish there hadn't been one only a few weeks ago, but there was, and we have to, by contractual agreement, make that available, and we will.

01:05:28

It didn't have anything to do with this, but that's it. There's going to be no more of that because Mistress and Genes has proved himself to be utterly without any integrity in this matter, and if he does not post a complete and abject apology to both of you, for giving...

01:05:46

Me too. I want one too.

01:05:53

I want an apology, and I want a retraction. A retraction and apology to everyone involved, including

01:05:58

Colin Smith, for Colin Smith, the poor man, is now known as the person who removes bad words.

01:06:05

I mean, come on. The bad word conspiracy. It's incredible. If that is not posted on the

01:06:11

CIA website, I would encourage every honest Roman Catholic out there to contact them and say, what in the world are you people doing?

01:06:21

This is just simply the most unbelievable stuff I've ever encountered, and it proves to me that it is the material in the book that is the problem for them.

01:06:31

They can't deal with the argumentation. That is the true issue. Would you agree with that?

01:06:39

Everyone? Anyone? Yes, absolutely. You know, the thing is,

01:06:44

I look at the fact that my name is up there, and it just absolutely flabbergasts me, but we are men of goodwill, and that is something that you look at what has been put together.

01:06:57

This is not just a fabrication of, well, you know, you skipped over this stuff because you didn't like what it said or something like that.

01:07:10

What is depicted in this scenario is fraud. We are being charged publicly with fraud by these people, and I wrote a note to Mr.

01:07:23

Syngenis personally yesterday. No, actually, I did sign it to the President of Alpha and Omega Ministries. I was actually referenced there as of Alpha and Omega Ministries, and I told him,

01:07:37

I demand a retraction and an apology, because I believe what you did, you failed even the most basic test of verification that any newspaper is required to, that their lawyers, unless you work for the

01:07:53

Inquirer, which their lawyers are, well, hey, you know, high paid, and they get a lot of money doing what they do, because they get sued a lot.

01:07:59

But they are supposed to follow the absent malice rule, and I don't believe they did that here.

01:08:09

I believe that what they put out there, what they got their hands on seemed so juicy that they just had to run with it, and it is still so juicy, they have to hold on to it.

01:08:24

They can't let it go. Before I let Bill and David both give their thoughts, I would like to make sure folks know, this is a live program, and if Robert Syngenis or Michael Roberts, or Jacob Michael told me last night that he's going to be in meetings all day, so he's not going to be available and cannot be listening, but if you all would like to call, this isn't just, we're going to present our side and sit around and do nothing, and not allow you to do anything.

01:08:53

If you think, you know, Mr. Roberts, I would assume if he has the ability, he's listening.

01:09:00

RW, we don't know what happened to you. I don't know what's happened in your life, but I have my logs, and we know what really happened.

01:09:09

877 -753 -3341. 877 -753 -3341.

01:09:16

It's toll free. Call. And if you, I saw earlier,

01:09:22

I need to scroll down here to see if he's still around. Yeah. Eric Svensson's in channel. Eric, if you'd like to call and make a comment on this.

01:09:30

Some of you who've been in channel for years, and you have some relevant information you'd like to share, feel free.

01:09:38

877 -753 -3341. We'll go for another, if you guys can hang around. If you can't, another 21 minutes.

01:09:44

We'll go for the full 90 minutes today. Give us a call, and that'll cause us to lose

01:09:51

Rich, but give us a call, and toll free all across the United States.

01:09:56

We'd love to have you on there. Bill, your thoughts? Well, I'm appalled, number one, that this would be made public.

01:10:07

No one ever called me to, just out of courtesy, to say Bill, you know, we've got these charges.

01:10:15

These are very serious. Is there any truth to this? And of course, you know, they're going to paint, apparently, the worst picture possible.

01:10:22

It wouldn't matter what I said. I'm condemned before any verifiable facts are really put out there.

01:10:32

The allegations are put out there without substantiation. That's clear from the questions that are asked.

01:10:40

Jacob Michael is asking, Mr. Rex, can you substantiate what you are saying?

01:10:46

And he says, yeah, I've got the bank checks and all of this. It's clear if you just take some of these statements about Emory University and our manipulation of text with respect to translations within the books, you can look and see there's nothing there from Emory.

01:11:03

If you just go and check the quotes, it's very obvious we haven't changed anything. We would never do that.

01:11:11

As you put it, it would be suicide. We are not trying to manipulate anything.

01:11:16

We don't have to. These statements of these fathers are so overwhelming, it speaks for itself.

01:11:23

I don't have to do anything except let them speak for themselves. The other thing is that he claims to have these bank checks that have been cashed.

01:11:32

They would have my endorsement and David King's endorsement on the back. There would be a stamp from my bank verifying that they were indeed cashed.

01:11:44

They are non -existent. They could very easily verify this. They didn't do that. They've let these allegations be put out in the public accusing us of fraud, of having a research assistant that we don't have.

01:12:01

All of this is libelous. It definitely is. It is so much though.

01:12:08

It's so standard for the Roman Catholic apologetics organizations that I've dealt with. I'm not trying to paint with a broad brush there.

01:12:14

I know of Roman Catholic apologists who would never do this. Unfortunately, a larger portion of them would and would not.

01:12:22

The idea being some sort of genetic fallacy that if you had a research assistant, that means that this isn't any good.

01:12:32

There is such desperation looking for anything to find a way around this simply documented fact that the glib statements of Roman Catholic apologists about, well the church has believed this for 2 ,000 years, just simply isn't the truth.

01:12:50

It just does not hold up to any level of meaningful examination. It's much more complex than that.

01:12:56

There were many views expressed by early church fathers on many different subjects and they just aren't comfortable with that.

01:13:02

David, what about you? What are your thoughts? Well, the fact is that all of these allegations were brought forward without ever having been substantiated based upon the testimony of Mr.

01:13:16

X. It's rather interesting to me that Jacob Michael was willing to take the ball and run with this and throw it up on the web before any of this had been confirmed he's acting solely on the basis of the words of an individual that he can't even reveal.

01:13:35

I think that if the shoe were on the other foot, I wonder how he would regard it if I suddenly made these allegations against him of some nature and I said, well,

01:13:48

I have proof of this and it's based upon Mr. X, whose identity I cannot reveal to you.

01:13:55

And then all of these absurd claims about money, about private phone conferences, it's all this cloak and dagger stuff.

01:14:07

This is surely the stuff that you read about in National Inquirer. This is tabloid apologetics.

01:14:13

I'm strictly appalled. And yet, never once have these people sought to address our work, the substance thereof, in any kind of meaningful way.

01:14:26

Well, it certainly is an amazing example and I think David and I at least know of a couple people that we've talked to briefly and channeled who are

01:14:37

Roman Catholics and who are likewise appalled at this kind of behavior.

01:14:43

And I'm certainly hopeful that they will press this issue and that they will press others to basically have nothing to do with these individuals as long as they continue in this kind of pattern of behavior.

01:14:58

It cannot in any way, shape or form aid or assist in the discussion of the truth to engage in this kind of behavior, deal with the issues.

01:15:07

It'd be very simple for me to say, I think that Tim Dudek wrote all of Robert St.

01:15:14

Genes' books and I dare him to disprove it. I mean, what kind of argument is that?

01:15:21

It is so ridiculous on many levels, especially when you know Brother Dudek.

01:15:26

You realize it's distinctly possible that Robert St. Genes could be a member of the Trilateral Commission.

01:15:32

Well, see, there you go. I mean, there's no end. I just about died coughing there.

01:15:40

There's no end to where you can go with this, but it's not apologetics and it's not honoring to anyone.

01:15:47

It's not honoring to truth, to honesty, to engage in this kind of thing. If you don't like the arguments, then obviously the only meaningful way that you could respond to the materials produced by Bill Webster and David King is to say, look, all right, the fathers had a tremendously high view of scripture and the fathers made the scripture the norm.

01:16:10

However, let's look at what they said about tradition. Honestly, deal with what you guys said about the nature of tradition and try to make an argument that from that point onward, tradition has a nature that you just simply aren't willing to accept and that it's there in an implicit fashion.

01:16:30

I mean, I can see someone at least trying to make that kind of argument. It doesn't require them to accuse you of all sorts of strange, weird things along the way.

01:16:41

Would you agree? Well, that's what I would hope that someone who's responsible and honest would seek to do.

01:16:50

I mean, this is the worst form of ad hominem argument. Rather than deal with the substance of the book, you're going to attack the authors to try to discredit them any way you can so that somehow that will color the book in people's minds.

01:17:06

You know, if they find quotations that they think, and there are some ellipses, there's no doubt about that, and the reason is, especially in the volume that I wrote, there are hundreds of citations.

01:17:18

There's a point where you have to realize, and they're in very small font if you look in the appendices, that for the sake of the largeness of the book, you have to get the meat of what an individual is saying and any work is going to have ellipses.

01:17:35

That's not the issue. You can check out the quotes. They're there for anyone who wants to take the post -Nicene fathers and start looking.

01:17:44

See where we have, if you think we have somehow missed something, let me know.

01:17:49

I'd be more than happy to dialogue with someone over there. If I've made a mistake somewhere, point it out.

01:17:56

We'll correct it. That's great. Let me know. I'm not purposely sitting here manipulating things to make them say what

01:18:03

I want them to say. Deal with me in an intellectual way, in an honest way, with the substance of what is there.

01:18:11

This other garbage is just that. Well, you know, it's interesting. It is the appearance of ellipses that Mr.

01:18:20

St. Genes is now focusing on, seemingly hoping to avoid the reality that he is guilty of posting unverified libel and slander or defamation on the web.

01:18:33

He says he's going through these infamous ellipses and says that the world is going to be shaking their heads for months over what he and his cohorts deliberately and maliciously eliminated in those ellipses.

01:18:48

I can tell you what's going to happen. Because I've experienced this myself. I've been on the receiving end of Robert St.

01:18:56

Genes' wild and wacky interpretation of patristic sources. Remember that Bob is now in a magisterium of one.

01:19:03

He has no one who has any... Wait a minute now, James. You said the world would be listening.

01:19:09

Oh yeah, that's what he says. I guess he thinks the world is hitting his website. But he is a magisterium of one.

01:19:18

No one can correct him any longer and I don't think ever really could even before he became Roman Catholic. He called himself

01:19:24

Bible Bob. So if anyone goes on our website they can see interaction that I had with him over certain patristic citations back in 1999.

01:19:35

And the ability he has to read things into words that have nothing to do with what he's thinking is absolutely incredible.

01:19:43

So I'm going to make a prediction right now, Bill that what you're going to see in a few weeks is a huge file where at least 10 or 15 citations will be given as you gave them and then the material that was not relevant to the point you were making is going to be cited and the most amazing, incredible and irrelevant interpretations of that ellipsed material the material you didn't quote is going to be provided Ah, see, here's what the conference call was talking about which is not what the conference call was talking about the conference call was talking about changing the actual translations which you didn't have anyway.

01:20:24

So he's going to do his best he can to come up with something that will at least satisfy that small cadre of traditionalists who are still following what it is that he has to say.

01:20:37

Well, he will have an interesting time actually posting that at that time given the fact that I also informed him in my note yesterday that if he doesn't print that retraction and apology by the end of the week

01:20:53

I will file a grievance with his ISP which I've already looked at their policies and guess what they'll take him down.

01:21:03

Well, I don't know if that's the case or not because in the sense of what they'll do the problem is you may not know the language that you need to file the complaint in your

01:21:15

Arabic may not be good enough to communicate with some ISP providers today to be able to communicate to them anything what they mean but I think that's what's going to come out from this is going to be a presentation of that kind of material because that's what

01:21:31

I've experienced in the past and I just simply recommend to people first of all,

01:21:37

I can confirm exactly what you just said Bill because I remember hearing David in channel and in private communication over and over again saying well,

01:21:47

I don't think Bill's going to use this because he says it's just getting too big and it's going to cost too much to produce and we're squishing the fonts again and I don't know if anyone's going to be able to read this and you had 1100 pages that's not easy to produce let alone sell and I saw long before I saw the books the concern about the size of this project there's no two ways about that you were very concerned about it, weren't you?

01:22:26

We had hoped to have all of this in one volume and it became very obvious very quickly that was not possible so we thought, well, we'll put volumes 1 and 2 in one volume and then we'll have a second volume of just the quotes from the

01:22:41

Church Fathers for anyone who's interested well, it became pretty obvious pretty soon because as I got more and more involved with the canon and wanting to do the translation work on the theologians of the

01:22:52

Middle Ages there's a lot there and even with small fonts it's a lot of pages so I ended up determining that what we would do is just put it in three volumes and make it available to people and it worked out better that way

01:23:09

Well, I know there was that concern and because you have to do that it would be very easy for anyone of us to go through Robert St.

01:23:17

Janice's books and I'm going to say something straight up here Robert St. Janice's books are three times larger than they need to be they were not professionally edited there are entire footnotes that are repeated verbatim more than once in the book if these were actually published by a major publisher they would be much smaller than they are and your books are just the opposite in the sense that they are busting at the seams and you had to squish things to get in there but despite all that you could go through Robert St.

01:23:47

Janice's books, find ellipses and if you wanted to come up with some wild and wacky way of dealing with those things even the way he quotes me you won't see me wasting my time doing that there are more important things to do in life than to waste that kind of time unless you don't have the truth

01:24:06

It is a legitimate argument on one hand that you can leave out pertinent information which is detrimental to your argument if you're using ellipses that is a possibility so if he wants to engage me on that basis anyone, that's fine that I don't mind that's a legitimate concern and where there are ellipses people need to check it out and see if there's information there

01:24:34

I went through David's volume the other day and I was looking for ellipses and in all the Latin citations he has there are two citations that have ellipses both come from Augustine and as I checked it out there is no pertinent information that's left out of the point that he's making from which he's quoting

01:24:53

Augustine and the ellipses Bill, were in the translations that we had quoted well there are a couple there that I put in because in doing the editing

01:25:05

I noted that we didn't need that particular because he's embellishing on a point he's already made and we don't need the information there because the point's already made and the quote that's given but one of William Goode's translations has ellipses now that's not something we did that's something he did in his translation and we give the verbatim translation that he gives which have the ellipses but that is something that he was responsible for Right, exactly and we can't exactly go back and talk to him much anymore but well gentlemen

01:25:37

I really appreciate your joining us on the program today like I said I'm not trying to wax prophetic but that is going to be the nature of the material it's not going to be a meaningful interaction with ellipses it is going to be the fact that they exist and anything that is that could be stretched beyond the realm of imagination is going to be presented and it's all going to be aimed to try to do damage control and to cover up what is the real issue here and that is the posting of libelous material from a source that has simply demonstrated itself to be completely unreliable and you'll notice we opened the phones we certainly would have allowed

01:26:29

Mr. St. Janice or Mr. Roberts or Mr. Michael though as I mentioned he said he would not be available today to call in and to do whatever they would want to do and no one has and we certainly informed them that we were going to be doing this program there are a number of people in channel listening there are a number of people

01:26:50

I know are coming in through another interesting way we have into our channel that we don't know there's a number of unusual folks in channel right now that are listening in and I have a feeling

01:27:00

I know who some of them are but be that as it may, we've been very open about this I appreciate you joining me for the program today

01:27:07

I am very thankful for the work that you've done on this I know that there are many people who have been greatly blessed by them their faith has been increased in the sufficiency of the scriptures, they've been given an answer to give to those who ask them a reason for the hope that's within them it's a very timely work

01:27:27

I would like to see it much more widely distributed than it is and I would like to invite especially those

01:27:33

Roman Catholics that are listening right now and I know there are a number of them and who will be listening to the archive of this program which we will put up immediately afterwards we will make this archive available very very quickly because there are many other people who want to listen as well

01:27:47

I would invite all the Roman Catholics that are listening obtain these volumes and read them with an open mind consider the kind of apologetic that you have heard which constantly takes as a given as an assumption the idea that sola scriptura is a theological novum that the scriptures are not sufficient outside of some extra biblical concept and extra biblical authority listen to what the arguments are see that they fairly and accurately interact with the assertions of men including

01:28:25

Robert Syngenis who if I recall David wasn't there something on his website for many months right after the books came out promising a full refutation of you all's argumentation well

01:28:38

I saw that it was there for a few months and then suddenly it disappeared so I don't know what became of the intention but there was never any article posted not to my knowledge not to mine either you all fairly dealt with the arguments of those that you were disagreeing with you didn't have to use this kind of argumentation so I would invite

01:29:06

Roman Catholics to consider this and to take the time to examine these works and to really struggle with why it is that it is the fundamental element of Roman Catholic epistemology to deny the sufficiency of the

01:29:24

God breathed scriptures and gentlemen I really appreciate your being on the program today any quick final thoughts we've got about 30 seconds before the music comes up I'd just like to say

01:29:34

James that after the publish in Not By Scripture Alone the constant cry from the

01:29:42

Roman Catholic side of the table was when is someone going to produce an answer to this work well we spent some six years and we didn't have to resort to these sort of tactics we spent six years of hard work of pouring blood and sweat into it and many many hours and we didn't have to resort to these tactics

01:30:06

I just might add too that you'll find in these volumes not only the patristic citations but we back up our conclusions with the conclusions of legitimate scholars and historians both volumes are just full of the documentation from well known historians be it

01:30:29

Orthodox, Protestant or Roman Catholic because we we are not pretending to be those who are patristic scholars but we do the reading and we back up our conclusions with the scholarly opinion and we truly appreciate that thank you both for being with us

01:30:46

God bless, see you next time on The Dividing Line 5 p .m.