The Frankfurt Declaration/Responding to Craig Carter

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:32

Well greetings and welcome to the dividing line we are in the big studio today, and I'm glad that we are because we have a big guest with us from overseas

00:43

I I'm glad we're doing this one while I'm home because I want to be able to put stuff up on the screen and Let you know what's what's going on overseas some of you will recall that I have mentioned a number of times on the program

01:01

The Relationship that I have developed over the years with some dear brothers over in Frankfurt Germany and it started

01:10

I forget what year it was but I was Routed through Frankfurt.

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I I Think I was on my way to Ukraine if I recall correctly, which is ironic these days given what's happened since then but and I There was a flight delay cancellation something and I was going to be at the

01:36

Frankfurt Airport for quite some time and So I just on a lark

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Somehow I had gotten Self service my phone was working or something and I tweeted as I recall that I was going to be stuck for a number of hours at the

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Frankfurt Airport and Someone Private messaged me on Twitter as I recall.

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It's amazing that I got it and It turned out there was one of the pastors there in Frankfurt and said

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I'm Only a matter of minutes from the airport would you know, could I come over and we can have lunch or whatever?

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and I Love now, let me think about let's go ahead and and and bring

02:29

Pastor Riemenschneider You you've seen you've seen the you've seen the the really funny

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Videos where they contrast German with all the other beautiful languages, right, you know, like like Ambulance and Hospital and ballpoint pen

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Everything else so I want to make sure to get your last name really

03:01

German ish there so that people know that you're you're the real deal, but You I don't think

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I don't think you were a part of that first meeting, right? No, no, right It was just Peter.

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Yeah, it was just it was just me and Peter. Yeah I just couldn't remember because I think that's what led to The next time that I was coming through town.

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We scheduled it so that I could actually be with you guys and speak at the church and we've done dinner and Shopping in a little where was what was the little town we went to?

03:41

Okay, and I still I still wear the the

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Turtleneck sweaters that I that I bought there amazingly enough and We've had some really interesting experiences.

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We've had some interesting people show up to the talks And but Really for a while there every year

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I was visiting you all in Frankfurt up through 2019 and then 2020 happened and I think that's the same year that I started that you all invited me to start teaching a

04:21

Church history class for you all using the same technology. We're using right now. In fact, you're sitting exactly where you always sit

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For the for the church history class and I do have to apologize We've been doing that.

04:35

I'm not sure how many sessions we've had But we've been doing that since 2020 and we haven't gotten to the

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Council of Nicaea yet, okay now that's That means well, we have talked about a few of the things in the process.

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Haven't we? We we did a little extra section section on Eastern Orthodoxy Because of what was happening with the war in Ukraine and and all the rest that kind of stuff

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But so for a while I was a regular and I have at least one picture of you translating for me and I'm wearing a coogee and I I sensed a little bit of jealousy, you know, maybe

05:20

I'm not sure You just you just went up a good bit and Rich's estimation because he was to know they're going yeah very little but So anyway, obviously you all have been facing a

05:39

Higher level of Governmental influence upon the church and its worship issues relating to vaccinations and masking and and all these other things

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Certainly some places in the United States have had similar situations But most of us not quite as much and I think one thing that I've mentioned to a lot of people

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That people don't know that I learned when I first started coming to Germany And initially

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I was going to Berlin and and teaching for the folks there

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Was the the fact that in in Germany You can't homeschool

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Right? Yes, it's illegal, right? And one of the one of the major things that's happened here in the

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United States as a result of the all the kovat stuff is

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The homeschool movement has exploded Absolutely exploded. I mean right right near us here right next door.

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There is a Homeschool supply place that has set up and It's just it's just busy all day long

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I've gone in there and gotten stuff from my grandkids and and it's just millions and millions of people have realized wow this this send it as Votia Balkan said if you if you send your children to Caesar all day don't be surprised and they come home as Romans and I've just said for a long time that's just meant that my

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Christian brothers and sisters in Germany have had to do double duty and they've had to you know be investing their time in Communicating Christian worldview issues to their kids

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After you know, the state's been doing its thing So it's been all sorts of you guys have really been up against the wall.

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We've been praying for you We've talked about a lot and but you guys have decided not to just sit there like bumps on a log

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I know that your church is very much involved in doing Street preaching street ministry street proclamation

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Just about a month or so ago. I believe you were preaching at a pride event

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There in the Frankfurt area and we were praying for you for that and evidently you survived your that or you've you've recovered well, well

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Yeah, but you did you did get some interesting experiences in all of that But you've also been trying to Call the

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Evangelical Church in Germany, which is a very different thing than saying the Evangelical Church in the United States I mean when

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I was first invited to go over to Berlin the the context of that was this is a secular nation and In fact where they were they were in former

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East Berlin. So they were on the other side of where the wall had been and and in fact, the first thing

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I was asked to address was secularism and The relevance of Christian Scripture in a secular society and and and and things related related to that and so for you all to try to get

09:13

The Because It's it's hard for people to understand that there's there's an evangelical believing church

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But we all know that there's you know, there's been state churches there's been

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You know German rationalism is is almost a word that's hissed

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Over here, you know German rationalism, you know tubing in and stuff like that So you're you're facing a

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Much more of an up uphill climb shall we say? Then we are here

09:48

But but tell us some of the things you've been trying to do because I want to look at Your most recent project here in a moment, but this isn't the first thing you all have all have done

09:59

No, no, yeah, you're right. So in Germany you have the two state churches the Roman Catholic Church and Evangelical Church, which is basically the

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Lutheran Church And and you only have very few really believing Bible believing churches, so it is an uphill battle for sure and We have some multiple things

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By the grace of God, whatever we could do we try to do so We already mentioned street preaching even at the gate gate pride parade in Frankfurt where there were thousands of people celebrating and We were

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Right in the middle of it and preaching the Word of God But especially when when when

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Cove it came all the restrictions came we we thought we have to address the public. So We issued two statements one in the beginning of 2021 and one at the end in December 2021 and Those were basically the first one was a response to a statement which was put out by put forth by By by leaders by more than 50 leaders of evangelical free churches.

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That's how we call them. If it's not this the state church And they were basically promoting all the

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Kovac stuff and telling Christians that they should not resist but comply and we thought it would be necessary to yeah to give a response a biblical response to that and And then in December 2021, we have the discussion here that basically every politician wanted to to introduce a general vaccine mandate for the entire population and we also

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Said said something about that. Yeah, we issued another statement and our main goal was to encourage faithful believers

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Because they were often left alone even in their own churches from their own pastors often Also believed everything complied with everything.

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So there were many Christians who just didn't yeah needed orientation And we try to provide that to them so that's what we did in to trade in 2021 and Now we are doing the next thing

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Right so When did you decide you wanted to put this together

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I mean When did you start to start work on this yes, so This this declaration

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We we drafted It was this was not our initiative but in March 2021.

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I was approached by a brother from the UK and He assembled a group of pastors from basically all over the world

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Canadians Africans Europeans and he wanted to he wanted us to work together to produce a declaration as a

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As a full response to what happened during kovat And this was still you know, it wasn't the peak of kovat basically and of the measures and we got together and started working on this

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But after after after some time we realized that not every everyone was going in the same direction so a small group split and That that was a pastor from South Africa Paul Hardwick and a well an

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American missionary of 40 years to France Stephen Lloyd and myself and and the three men the three brothers we

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Worked was continued working on this declaration and Finalized it a few days ago.

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And now we are going to publish it today So there will is there or will there be

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Very soon a website that people can go to to read and to Add their name

14:04

Yes support Yes, there is a website we wanted to launch it tomorrow but because I'm on the dividing line today we launched it today

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It's Frankfurt declaration dot -com one word Frankfurt declaration dot -com.

14:20

Well, that's pretty easy to remember I'm glad that was that was available at least until Google finds out what's going on and then that will send you off to you know, some website in Swahili someplace, but So you have initial signers

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People who have read the declaration are in support of it Who are who are some of the folks other than myself?

14:48

That that are our signatories to the to the declaration. Yeah, so I was really it was amazing

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I had never thought that we would get so many good brothers behind it. So As initial signers, we have

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John MacArthur and Phil Johnson Wally Borkum Joe boot Joe weapon

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Tim Conway. We have Tim Cantrell from South Africa He also published articles by him with who's gone

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James Coates and Tim Stephens to Canadian pastors who were in jail Because of COVID we have

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Jared Longshaw Ben Merkel a certain. Mr. Jeff Durbin and Two other guys named

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Douglas Wilson and James why yeah I think that's you and then other other faithful pastors from from the

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US and Canada and Africa and the UK and Europe and Australia But those names

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I just mentioned are probably the best known names and I think I think you might even have the troublemaker from Texas Oh, yes.

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Oh, yeah, we have him that we have him too. Is it allowed to say his name? I Understand so That's a that's a really good start.

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That's that's a wide variety of folks and I think that's that that's really excellent

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Let's let's let folks know a little bit about it. So I have I have it on it's not

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It's not something it takes you 45 minutes to read It I think it's only three pages on on on my

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Thing yeah, well four pages on my screen So I'm trying to Scroll back to the start here and it wants to keep popping around here a little bit on me

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But you have an opening section That gives some of the background a few concerned pastors from different continents moved by an emergent totalitarianism of the state

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Overall realms of society in particular the church and this disregard of God -given and constitutionally guaranteed rights during the

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Kovan crisis joined in common cause to craft a solemn declaration which seeks to address these threats with the timeless truths of God's Word and so I've I've just found sadly that There are a lot of Christians who are just unwilling to really believe

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That there's anybody really in the world that Wants totalitarianism and I'm not sure

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How they can you know, maybe they're living in a lead mine? Maybe they I don't know

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They only get newspapers that were that were printed 30 years ago. I don't know but it's just so plain and obvious and yet When Kovan started that was considered almost radical to even think that something like this is coming and yet you've crafted this statement in the form as as often it is in the form of affirmations and denials, which is which is very helpful, but I understand how difficult it is to get

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Even a group of reform people on the same page When you're when you're using language

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And to do this type of thing So that is a that is a real challenge and I congratulate you on being able to to to get through all of that so the first article

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God the Creator as sovereign lawgiver and judge Every time that I scroll to that it does something wacky and crazy to me.

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So I'm gonna have to There we go Do something different to try to get to show up so you start

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Let's now zoom down to something a little bit on the small side, there we go

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God the Creator is sovereign lawgiver and judge so you have to start At the only place you can start and that is the the triune

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God Yes, you know it was important for us to Well to talk about what is the foundation of everything.

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The foundation of everything is that there is a God, a personal creator who created everything and who did not just create everything, but who is also the lawgiver, who also

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You know, who also established an unchangeable morality. Which is rooted in his own character and which applies to every man at all times and and and he will judge according to that.

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And so I think that that was the necessary foundation Because with state totalitarianism, that's exactly what the state believes he now is, the state now is

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Yeah, if you don't believe there is a God above you, then the state is the most powerful thing on earth.

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So the state begins to think that it is itself is God and it is that it is the ultimate lawgiver and the ultimate judge.

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Yes, as the Beatles saying, if only sky above there, there isn't there isn't much to take the place of what of the vacuum that that leads and I'm looking at it here and it and in the

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I mean, you have the affirmations and the denials the affirmation. Of course,

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I love the the citation of Acts 1731 as the lawgiver.

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God has appointed a day on which he will judge the world by the law of God. The world in righteousness by a man, the risen Lord Jesus Christ. I have

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I've commented a number of times over the past about year and a half about how that text just slapped me upside the head while driving actually was only about a year ago.

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And I think about it. I had always misunderstood it. I when it when it talked about and he is given evidence to everyone by raising him from the dead.

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As an apologist, I just automatically thought of evidence of the resurrection of the person of Christ on so forth.

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Actually, what it's saying is the resurrection is evidence of the fact that he will judge the living and the dead by this one whom he is appointed.

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The resurrection is proof of something else. And we normally don't think of that. We're always thinking of the resurrection as the ultimate thing you're trying to prove.

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But here the resurrection is proof of the fact there is a day of judgment. And if anything, helped to hold

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Western society in check in the main, not always, as we know, in World War Two, there was a situation where it didn't hold people in check, but in the main, it has been the reality of the fact that there is a day of judgment and that we as God's creatures will face that judgment.

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That is having lost that is, I think, one of the greatest that that losing that break, that that thing holding things back.

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That is what has allowed for just an incredible acceleration in the inevitable results of what secularism is all about to begin with.

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So you have to start there. And I think that's that's excellent. But we're also being a prophetic voice here.

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There is a function of the church to say to the magistrate, you will be judged someday.

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And there is a standard beyond you that you cannot change and you cannot legislate away.

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I'm sure this is common, more common in Germany, so much so that it wouldn't even cause comment on people.

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But last year, one of the leftist House of Representative members, after a

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Christian member of Congress brought God's law to bear on a moral issue, his response was,

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God has nothing to do with this assembly. And I just think back to the founding documents of our nation, and it's like, there's your revolution right there.

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I mean, I mean, there it is in stark contrast. So the positive statement to the to the state, there will be judgment.

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And then how dare you say this? We also have good grounds to question the modern state's ethical pronouncements and moral vision, since their secular humanism and relativistic ethics have no transcendent basis for human behavior and morality.

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You do realize this is not going to go over real well in France, right? Oh, okay.

23:32

I do realize that. I mean, I mean, it just seems in France, secular means good, secular means moral, secular means upright.

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And I'm doing a lot of, you know, I just did a thing with Jason Lyle up in Denver, and it was all about secularism as the greatest enemy that the cross has ever faced.

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And people think that's an overstatement. Well, that's, they haven't done enough reading on that. Yeah, I mean, they may end up living in history, and they may end up living through history, one way or the other.

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But yeah, you're, you're directly telling folks, we question your ethical pronouncements, because your secular humanism does not provide a transcendent basis for human behavior and morality.

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That's pretty radical. Yeah, probably. But I think it's true.

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Oh, yes. Yeah, you know, it's only based on, on, on man's imaginations, on man's thought.

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And yeah, I mean, you just said that, yeah, we can see with our own eyes where this leads to.

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And in Germany, that it would be the same as in France, people also believe that secularism is a great thing.

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And that it would even be a threat to their freedoms. If, if God's law came to bear, and if the church had to say anything about morality, which would be of any relevance to the politics.

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Yeah, but I think you mentioned that already, World War Two, and, and the

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Nazi regime. You know, we hope we had learned something from that, but seems we didn't.

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Well, it, you know, okay, that was 70 years ago, I would think we would have learned from the fall of the wall, and the

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Soviet Empire, and the millions of people who died. And of course, you've probably heard the, the example

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I use. Have you ever, I don't know if I've ever asked you this, have you ever toured the

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Stasi prison? No, I didn't. See, I have. That's interesting, because Christian Andersen took me to the

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Stasi prison there in former East Berlin. And I, I was changed by that.

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I mean, to walk through those hallways, to still see the traffic lights they used, to make sure that the only two human beings you ever saw in your life was your quote, unquote, counselor, who was a brain person trained to brainwash you and break you down, and one guard.

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Because they realized that if you could see another suffering human being who was suffering what you were, for even a second, if your eyes would meet, it could undo a month's worth of what they were doing to you.

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And so they had these, you were totally isolated. And, and, and you would never run into anybody else, because those lights that they use were still, were still there.

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And so, I mean, it's right there. It's, it, you know, people can go see it. There were, there were schoolchildren being taken through that stuff when

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I was there that day. But that was, it's almost like as if it was more than 10 years ago, it's ancient history.

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Now, we don't, we don't even think about it. And if we can see 120 million people killed by Stalin and Mao, in the last century, and we now have people running around our college campuses going, but we never really did it right.

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I'm just left going, wow, I don't, I don't even know what to say to our, to our society today.

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But we're going to go forever if I don't, if I don't pick the pace here. So, Article Two, God as the source of truth, and the role of science.

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Aren't, well, aren't you a science denier? Well, no, we are not.

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The first, the first paragraph, so our affirmations, we affirm science.

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So we say God is the truth. And yes, and we can, so objective truth exists.

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And we can seek to discover this truth, which God has, has laid into nature, into creation.

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So we believe in science, we endorse science. But science, which really uses the scientific method, and which uses debate, and what we've seen over the last two, two and a half years, well, also before that, but especially during COVID, that did not happen.

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It was just said, well, this is the scientific consensus, you have to believe it. If everyone, anyone questions it, no matter how, you know, how good his reputation is in this field as an expert or so, no matter how good his data is, we will just silence him.

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So we believe in science, but in science, that actually uses the scientific method and scientific debate.

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They cannot adequately and normatively address complex social realities, or prescribe policies that have ethical implications.

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I remember I asked you when I first read this, I was like, that's fantastic. Who translated this into English?

29:11

And you said, actually, it was written in English. So, so have you done the translation into German then?

29:18

Yes, I did. Yeah, so that would, what is, is there a specific

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German word for scientism? It's basically the same scientismus. Right.

29:31

Okay. So, but it does communicate to folks, the idea of the elevation of scientific conclusion to an ultimate authority and almost a,

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I don't know, it really is a religious type of characteristic to it.

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It really is. Yes, experts become priests, basically. And, you know, when we were drafting this, this declaration was interesting.

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I stumbled upon a quote by C .S. Lewis from 1958, 1958.

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And he said everything which we saw in the last two years. So that, that the state in order to, to be able to tell us what to do, he needs to back that up somehow.

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And he uses experts. Yeah. When we saw that during COVID, there's most, most countries,

30:24

I guess, at least the US and Germany, there was one expert. Yeah, it was Fauci in your country and Drosten in my country.

30:32

There's one expert, one virologist or so. And he just tells you what to do to, to fight the virus.

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And then it's done. And they don't really care about all the other aspects, all the other implications that will have to the entire life of men.

30:48

So, yeah, I found it was interesting to see that C .S. Lewis saw that coming many, many decades ago.

30:55

Yes, he, he did. A number of other people did. And it is a function of our own failed

31:02

Western educational system that we have people now who have advanced degrees, but they are so specialized that they can have an advanced degree in one area and be worse than a child in a related area.

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But because they have the advanced degrees, they're given authority in all areas. It is, it is where our educational system has truly failed in the

31:27

West to produce the historic Renaissance man who not only had knowledge in one area, but recognized how that knowledge was relevant in others, including morals and ethics and everything that goes, that goes with that.

31:42

So no, no two question, no two ways about it. So article three, mankind is the image of God.

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Now, again, very much marking you out as, as going against the flow in our society today.

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But again, you can't avoid the fact that the Imago Dei is fundamental here.

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And once you don't have the Imago Dei, then you can treat man as the proverbial bag of fizzing chemicals.

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He is just simply something that is there to serve the state. And all of the moral and ethical catastrophes that we are very concerned about in the near future flow from that.

32:27

And so the totalitarian regime has to dehumanize mankind.

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If you're going to, for example, many of these people want to see a vastly reduced human population on the earth.

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And if you want to get rid of four billion people, you can't do that if they're image bearers of God.

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You have to, you have to come up with something, something else. So on the positive side, we have a biblical presentation.

32:55

You also included person -to -person relationships, vocational employments, important events of human life, comforting the sick and dying.

33:06

Obviously, you know, how many people were, I can't tell you how many people that I know in my own family and church who died alone,

33:16

I think, who were fundamentally killed because of the demand that the hospitals only do things one way.

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And that led, I think, to a lot of premature deaths. But anyways, marrying, fellowshipping, so on and so forth.

33:33

And you say, we also affirm the government should recognize each individual is responsible for their own bodily well -being and should protect the right to personal medical self -determination, which

33:43

I would assume. Let's be honest. You know who

33:50

Jokovic is, the tennis player, right? Yes. And he wasn't allowed to play in the

33:56

US Open. He's really the best tennis player in the world right now. And he could get the record if he could, if he would be allowed to play in the various places, but we didn't let him in.

34:07

And the whole reason for that is because if you look at the

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US Open right now, if you look at the advertising boards along the court, guess what one of the sponsors is?

34:21

Moderna. Oh, wow. So they're sponsored by Big Pharma.

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And so here's a guy, he's had COVID, he's recovered. Every study that we're coming up with these days says the same thing.

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He's in better shape than anybody who got vaxxed. He's facing far fewer complications from COVID than anybody who got vaxxed.

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And he has less chance of getting it than anybody who got vaxxed. But we still won't let him in unless he gets vaxxed.

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So the studies are overwhelming. The facts are overwhelming.

35:00

And yet you and I both know there's going to be people banging the drum for mandated vaccines, whether they're new ones.

35:09

Well, in fact, they're putting out new ones to the Omicron. And my government anyways, is allowing them to do it by skipping human testing.

35:20

They're just skipping it. It doesn't even bother anymore. Because once they did the document dumps that showed all the adverse reactions from the original tests, but they were still okayed, then who cares?

35:33

Everybody knows that's exactly what's going on. So here's the situation we're facing. And so the idea of personal medical self determination, hey, those of us who refused it are in much better shape right now than those who didn't.

35:49

And I think they're scared to death that people are going to grab hold of that and go, yeah,

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I'm not ever going to go that direction again. But anyways, what basis does anyone have outside of recognizing the inherent worth of man creating the image of God to resist the totalitarian impulse at this point?

36:10

There really isn't a strong basis for doing so. Exactly. And, you know, sadly, not not even the churches in Germany understand that anymore.

36:17

Because the Lutheran state church, evangelical state church, they even, you know, they even had, you know, they had, yeah, it was a vaccinate your neighbor as yourself.

36:32

So that's what they were doing. Yeah. It is. Yeah. I believe that is blessing.

36:41

Vaccinate your neighbor as yourself. Wow. Okay. All right.

36:46

But you also touched on other stuff that some people don't know much about.

36:52

You mentioned something that I know was new to me only a couple years ago.

36:58

Global trends toward transhumanism and technological surveillance control over human beings.

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We also oppose these things. That to me is what makes the situation we face now so unique and so challenging is that we are the first generation in the church to face the technological reality of pretty much 100 percent governmental observation of location and activity of all of its citizens.

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And that to me is, you know,

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I know that a culture built upon rebellion against God cannot last.

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But I just have to wonder how long this insanity will be extended because of the utilization of technology.

38:00

That to me is really one of the questions that has to be addressed. But transhumanism, genetic engineering, these horrific things, they are best responded to by the

38:18

Christian worldview that created Western society in the first place. I cannot see how liberal

38:25

Christianity, any type of progressivism can provide any kind of consistent and meaningful response at all.

38:34

They will probably embrace that. And, you know, I'm not sure. I probably had that in the US as well. But in Germany and in Europe, there were people who were getting chips implanted in their hands as a vaccine passport.

38:46

And our government even developed an app and wanted it was not a law, but they wanted everyone to have that app on your smartphone.

38:56

And this app would track if you get close to another man who also has the app.

39:04

And they would then send information if one of those guys probably was infected.

39:11

So they could basically track down to whom you came close. And that's really going very far.

39:21

Oh, yeah. Well, that's China. Let's just be honest. China's behind so much of this.

39:28

And again, we can look at this and we can either get really, really, really depressed and concerned, or we can do what

39:39

I'm trying to sort of teach myself to do and say, okay, let's say the West has run its course, we've sinned, we have spit in God's face, and China is in the ascension.

39:53

There's a Chinese church, and God can change China. And so let's pray that the

40:01

Chinese church will become strong and sound and grow. And China becomes a light to the world and start sending missionaries to the decadent, crumbling

40:12

West. And that we learn what we did wrong, how we sinned against our patrimony and our blessings that were given to us.

40:23

That's how I'm trying to look at it right now. Because it's just so easy to see what

40:29

China is doing to recognize how people in my own country have sold out to the

40:34

Chinese for a few bucks. The treason is astonishing.

40:40

And just get like, well, it's done. And then I go, wait a minute, you silly

40:46

Calvinist you. You don't think God cannot bring revival and a massive great awakening in a place that's never really experienced that before?

40:59

You don't think these people are sick and tired of the emptiness of secularism as well?

41:05

So yeah, I keep trying to tell myself along those lines, but I'm still trying to get rid of some of the eschatology of my youth, which is that and the fact that I'm Scottish.

41:20

So it's just sort of, you know, it's always raining and dreary in Scotland, so we tend to be rainy and dreary ourselves.

41:27

So it sort of works that way. That's also why we drafted the declaration, because we do have hope. Yes. Oh, yes.

41:33

We have to have that hope. Okay. Article 4, God -given mandates and limits of authority. Now you're getting really radical here.

41:42

Now you've got a deal. I haven't talked to you about this, but something tells me this was part of where challenges were to get everybody going the same direction, because this is certainly where we found, you know, like when

41:59

I preached on Romans and its discussion of governmental authority and stuff like that, this is where I got a lot of pushback from folks in the

42:11

United States during, you know, 2021 and things like that. And you have to be careful, because if you want this to have validity and usefulness across cultural boundaries, you can't get overly specific in regards to United States, Germany, South Africa, wherever people are.

42:33

That's a challenge as well. And so you recognize delegated authority, civil government.

42:43

You recognize that Luther's greatest fear was anarchy, that everything was just going to come flying apart, and that's why he took all the stances that he did.

42:55

But then you also give recognition to the authority of the family, which really,

43:02

I would think, especially in Germany, you know, like I said, with the homeschooling stuff and stuff like that, that's more of an issue than,

43:15

I mean, it's happening here in the United States as well, but that's a really big issue there.

43:24

So limits of authority. You talk about totalitarianism, statism, and civil recognition that if you just put a bunch of people together, all you're doing is you're putting a bunch of sinners, and you're multiplying the effect of their rebellion when you give them ultimate power.

43:47

Yes, right. So in the group who drafted this, it was really, you know,

43:54

I really believe that God was with us because there were no discussions. So we agreed basically on everything, but it is still difficult to put it into the right words, and I hope we did that.

44:10

But the thing which is really, you know, what we saw in Germany, and I guess in many other countries, is that even most

44:17

Christians believe that the state has much more power than the Bible actually grants to it.

44:22

So if you look at what the Bible actually says, what the authority of the state is, it is quite limited.

44:29

But what we are, in our thinking, we are statists.

44:35

We believe the state is so big and so powerful, and it can basically tell us almost everything, but that's not what the

44:42

Bible says, and I think it's important to strengthen the other spheres of authority, and especially the family.

44:50

And you know, we see it happening, you know, while we were writing this declaration, homeschooling was made illegal in France.

44:57

So it's becoming really difficult in Europe. It has been illegal in Germany almost forever, but it's getting worse.

45:09

Yeah, that's true. Yeah, I had heard about a move to do that in France. I didn't know it actually happened.

45:15

That's a shame. Article 5, Christ is the head of the church. You would think this would not be, you know, any area of disputation, but as you just said, many of our people come through the doors of the church, and they are statists.

45:31

That's what they've been taught. That's what they are comfortable with, and so we did see during 2020 a lot of this idea of a granting to the state a coercive and invasive power to tell us how we can worship, when we can have the

45:54

Lord's Supper, you know, all that type of stuff. And of course, you all were under much more pressure than we were along those lines, at least in my state.

46:03

My church never closed down. We never missed the Lord's Supper, but we were one of a handful of churches in our area that took that stance at that time and didn't have to really pay anything other than being looked at strangely by everybody who did shut down and was saying, you're just loving your neighbor, and so on and so forth.

46:32

But yeah, that's where it is, and now we have, then you went, and man, you just really want to make sure that everybody dislikes you.

46:41

It's almost like you listen to the dividing line or something. Lastly, we resist the trend of digital platforms in Christian worship and ministry to become substitutes for congregational and in -person ministry, which are essential to our faith.

46:53

You don't think that doing the Lord's Supper over Zoom has quite the same impact as in person?

47:01

You know, sadly, there are people who think it does, but no. Many believe that is a great step forward.

47:10

Now we can all have our church service and everything, and we don't even have to leave our home.

47:18

So many people embrace that and thought that that was great. And there were people who believed you can have the

47:24

Lord's Supper on the screen somehow. So we thought that was an important point to make.

47:31

Well, you know, I forget who I heard it from, but it's always easy to say

47:37

I love the brethren from the comfort of your recliner. It's when you actually have to live with them and deal with them and do life together.

47:53

That's when it gets much more challenging, and it becomes a little bit more in the way of true love.

48:00

So you finished with a call for respect, repentance, and this may not end up going on YouTube, resistance.

48:13

Wow, and there you are quoting from Daniel. Now, come on. Yeah, we think there are some parallels.

48:24

Yeah, yeah, there are. Yes, there definitely are. So how would you summarize what you're calling for at the end of the document?

48:35

Yeah, so we're basically calling on the authorities. Well, we express our gratitude to those authorities who respected their sphere of authority and who did not usurp other authorities.

48:51

And so we command them, but we also call those to repentance who did not and remind them that there is a judge and that they will stand before God one day and have to give accountants for what they did.

49:06

And we tell them that we will not comply if they demand anything from us which would require us to sin, which would be against the commandments of God.

49:17

We will and cannot comply. And then in the last paragraph, we turn to our brothers and sisters.

49:28

So the first paragraph addresses the state, the authorities, and then we turn to our brothers and sisters, and we want to encourage them to be strong and faithful, even if that results in persecution, as we have seen in Canada, for example, and then also in Germany and other countries.

49:47

And to stand together, to stand firm together, to support each other, to pray for each other.

49:54

We believe that that is important. And at the very end, we address our brothers and sisters who have lived under these conditions, who have lived under persecution and so on.

50:05

We ask them to pray for us because this is a new situation for us here in the

50:10

Western world. So we especially ask them to pray for us that God will also grant us the strength to be faithful as he did to them.

50:20

Yeah, there certainly have been many brothers and sisters are in North Korea, China, certain

50:28

Islamic nations that we do need their prayers because they know how to pray better because they've experienced these things already.

50:36

So the website, again, is frankfurtdeclaration .com.

50:45

And so if someone goes there, they're going to see the art. Obviously, it's going to be downloadable,

50:52

I would assume. And then there's a place where you can add your name.

50:57

How do you do that? Oh, there are many places all around to the website where you can just click sign now.

51:06

And then you just have to enter your first and last name, email address, and city and country.

51:14

And yeah, then you just submit it. And that will be used against you in a court of law in the future,

51:22

I'm sure. It surely will. There's no two ways about it. Hopefully, you didn't use any of the...

51:28

I'm so old, I remember when the internet first started. And we had this net387 .texas

51:38

.net, I think was our URL back then. And the big thing back then was flashing lights and buttons that, you know, on and off.

51:52

Sign here, sign. No, you know, the website was designed by...

51:59

Yeah, you're visitor number 2000. Yeah, you know. Oh, yeah. Oh, man. The website was designed by three brothers from your church, from Papagia Church.

52:09

Yes. And they did a great job. It is amazing how the

52:16

Lord hooks us all together. And so once again, our sincere thanks for the work that went into this.

52:27

I'm one of the initial signers. I want to keep this in front of people's minds.

52:34

And if you're on social media, share the link with other folks, post it on Twitter, Facebook.

52:42

And if you get banned, you get banned. They're probably not up to speed on it yet. So you'll probably be all right for now anyways.

52:49

But let others know about it. Let's make it more than just the small remnant that says, yes, this is what we believe, because this is a statement to the rulers and authorities.

53:08

This is the church prophetically speaking about what is true, what is right, what is honest. And so let's get it out there.

53:17

And Tobias, we know that you all are going to be facing a long winter there in Germany.

53:26

It is major news here in the United States. I saw numerous repetitions of the graph showing the price per kilowatt hour of electricity in Germany.

53:39

And so you all are going have your hands filled with seeking to minister to others.

53:48

I'm sure you're all probably thinking about what can we do as a church to try to reach out to people, make sure that people have the necessities they have.

53:59

And I think you probably feel the same way. We're not done with the oppressive totalitarian movement.

54:09

They're just retooling right now. I'll be honest with you. I think much of it is due to the midterm elections in the

54:17

United States. They got to keep the U .S. going the right direction. And so they're backing off, hoping that people's memories will fade enough that they can fool them into voting for the wrong people again.

54:31

And then once that's done, I think we're going to see more and more heading our direction.

54:37

And what you all have done here is provide us all with an excellent statement that we can stand together on.

54:46

And so you all know more than our audience does, but you all know how much your fellowship means to me.

54:56

And so we will pray for you all that you will be given an extraordinary amount of strength and grace.

55:04

And as I've said to you all, unity amongst yourselves, that's the greatest tool that the enemy has to is to cause division.

55:17

And so pray that you all will have a great love for one another. That's what we all need.

55:23

But especially in this situation, you mentioned Tim Cantrell down in South Africa.

55:30

How many times I've preached from the pulpit there, preached with you all, preached with brothers in the

55:38

United Kingdom, in Australia. And we may not see each other in the flesh again, but the unity that is ours is something that transcends that aspect anyways.

55:51

And so we again, thank you for this hard work and thank you for this and pray that the

55:57

Lord will be blessed and honored in what you all do there in his name there in Frankfurt.

56:03

Thank you so much. And I appreciate your prayers because also the COVID measures are not done within Germany. They continue in Germany and they already said there will be new measures again in the winter.

56:15

So we are having lots of problems here. So we appreciate your prayers and appreciate your love and just want to let you know that we are fully supporting you.

56:24

And I started watching the dividing line many years ago and it's such a great blessing, continues to be a great blessing.

56:32

So thank you for everything. And we also continue to pray for you. Thank you.

56:37

Thank you very much, brother. And we will see you for the next church history class, whenever that is.

56:44

We're going to get to the Council of Nicaea before the end of time.

56:51

Let's see about that. All right. Love you, brother. Thank you very much. God bless you.

56:57

Love you. Thank you for having me. Bye. Thank you. God bless. All right. That's excellent.

57:04

Rich is going to do whatever Rich has to do over there. And I will contact

57:10

Tobias later on and thank him for spending, I said 20 minutes to half an hour.

57:16

It was an hour. So there we go. That's just, that's pretty much what you would expect.

57:23

That's how things go. And I should have recognized that. All right.

57:30

So since, as I mentioned, we are uncertain.

57:38

And by the way, I want to mention to everyone, this is a fresh, just made, in the other room, drink of electrolytes and fizzy water and stuff like that.

57:52

It does not taste weird at all. And I just want everybody to know that I suffered no ill effects that I was aware of.

58:03

Anyways, from the month old stuff that I drank on the last program. Yeah.

58:13

Why men die before women, right? And I think that since the last program, yeah,

58:22

I was on CrossPolitik with the guys. And I honestly think if you look, if you listen to the dialogue

58:31

Rhett had with Chocolate Knox, if you listen to what Jeff Wright did with Chocolate Knox and listen to our

58:38

CrossPolitik thing, I don't know that there's anything more to be said. I think that that subject has been covered.

58:47

And I am thankful that we were able to demonstrate once again, and this just frustrates certain people, and that's fine.

58:58

Go ahead and be frustrated. I don't care. But we were able to demonstrate that you can have sincere disagreements and not have to go nuclear, shall we say.

59:12

And there was a real disagreement. And yet, we had the opportunity of addressing it and addressing it properly,

59:19

I think, in that context. And so I hope everyone found that useful. I'm going to close the document there and move a few other things over for utilization as we get to them.

59:36

So as I mentioned earlier, we are uncertain of what the rest of this week is going to look like.

59:46

As far as the dividing line is concerned, I have a feeling that if we do get to do it, it will probably be late in the evening.

59:56

Would that be a? Yeah, I don't think that would work real well.

01:00:06

But it's all Rich's fault, by the way, just so you know. It has nothing to do with me at all.

01:00:13

But we will see if Rich's schedule is going to allow him to be able to do stuff with us or not.

01:00:24

So in light of the possibility, we're going to be going long today.

01:00:30

We've done an hour and we're going to continue on. And I sort of need to.

01:00:37

I think it's important. Yesterday, I was informed by someone from the seminary about an article that appeared on the

01:00:52

Credo Magazine website. Now, the Credo Magazine is edited by Dr.

01:00:58

Barrett and therefore has become the primary force pushing the so -called great tradition resourcement movement,

01:01:11

Thomas Aquinas, Thomistic metaphysics, and a particularly extremely narrow reading of classical theism.

01:01:25

Everybody's classical theist, almost, who's in any way, shape, or form orthodox.

01:01:30

But from this group is now narrowing that down to a much finer point, shall we say.

01:01:40

And the Credo Magazine, in fact, I haven't even finished responding to that one article in Credo Magazine.

01:01:46

I've dealt with a lot of it, but I still want to get to it eventually because it's worthwhile doing. But I was informed of an article that appeared on the 11th.

01:01:56

So it was a while back and no one had mentioned it to me. So I did not see it.

01:02:01

I don't read Credo Magazine. And it was written by Dr.

01:02:08

Craig A. Carter. Anyone who has watched the program knows that I have engaged many of Dr.

01:02:16

Carter's statements. I have, in fact, one of the programs, it's about a 90 -minute program on exegesis and great tradition, things like that.

01:02:27

We put quotations from Dr. Carter's book up on the screen.

01:02:34

We engaged these issues. I saw someone say this morning and I didn't see a response.

01:02:41

Did he say I've not read his book? It was in our chat thing.

01:02:48

I think the person posted that may have thought he was referring to somebody else.

01:02:55

In any case, I have often commented in reading

01:03:01

Dr. Carter's tweets that on any other issue, we seem to be like peas in a pod.

01:03:08

We make the exact same comments about what's going on in the world, politics, et cetera, et cetera.

01:03:16

And I said, hey, I imagine we'd get along just great and we'd be able to argue about this one particular narrow area, but it's still important.

01:03:28

And so what you do when you disagree with someone that you believe is a fellow

01:03:34

Christian scholar, fellow Christian Baptist minister, is you be careful about what you say, even when you're in disagreement.

01:03:47

And so you will notice how often we will put people's comments, their published works, they typed it out with their own fingers and we will put up on the screen here or in the other room when we're in the other place, other studio.

01:04:14

And for over three decades, well, sorry, coming up on four decades, next year, we have demonstrated over and over and over again a consistency in insisting upon accurate representation, even of people that you don't consider to be

01:04:36

Christians. And so we have taken heat for many years for not using a lot of the argumentation, for example, that was real popular against Mormonism back in the day.

01:04:46

You want your argumentation to be solid and to be able to be examined by the best the other side has to offer.

01:04:55

And we function on the idea that if you follow him who is the truth, that you need to be truthful.

01:05:03

It doesn't mean we haven't made mistakes. It doesn't mean that I couldn't misunderstand somebody, but you make the effort.

01:05:09

You document things. You provide references, you know, so that even, so if you do make a mistake, you at least know what caused the mistake and you are seeking to honor the truth.

01:05:26

And I had not seen any response by Dr. Carter, anything that we have said, since I probably mentioned

01:05:34

Dr. Carter first, I would assume in January of this year, might've been

01:05:40

December, but at least in January of this year, we started to engage with his works because they're being referenced by everyone.

01:05:53

Everyone in the movement would always point to his material on, you know, interpreting scripture in light of the great tradition and things like that.

01:06:03

And so instead of just simply taking what other people were saying, you buy the books or you get them on, you know,

01:06:16

I don't remember what format it was. I don't remember if it was in Audible or not. But if you buy it in Kindle, you convert to MP3, you listen.

01:06:25

That's how I do things given I travel. And so I have hours and hours and hours in the truck to listen to things and so on and so forth.

01:06:37

And so we did. And I have been very respectful of Dr. Carter. I have simply said,

01:06:46

I have serious problems with this idea and what it will inevitably, what it inevitably must lead to epistemologically and historically and theologically and things like that.

01:06:57

So I get this link to this article and I start looking through it.

01:07:04

And I have the article here in front of me. It's not overly long. It is a, it's titled the

01:07:09

Great Tradition Retrieval Project Correcting a Few Misunderstandings. Again, it was published. This actually comes from Dr.

01:07:18

Carter's Substack page, but it was published on the

01:07:24

Credo Magazine website on August 11th, 2022. So 19 days ago.

01:07:32

And I was, I saw the reason that it was sent to me was because of the fact that I am referenced in toward the end of the article.

01:07:50

And he's talking about people, he's moving into the theological realm and he's talking about the abandonment of Thomas Aquinas' influence.

01:08:05

And so you ended up, you end up with people like John Frame and Bruce Ware.

01:08:13

So he says, one of the alarm bells that went off in the late 20th century was a tendency of theologians such as John Frame and Bruce Ware to accept modifications to classical theism as they sought to refute open theism.

01:08:25

In fact, the very term classical theism came into common parlance in the early 20th century in order to distinguish the innovations of process theism from traditional theism.

01:08:34

Well, that seems to be the consensus understanding of where that particular phraseology came from.

01:08:41

Then we have a sentence that demonstrates that there was never any editing of this article.

01:08:48

Christianity always has been a theistic religion. Theism has been taught in scripture, the fathers, the medieval period and Protestant scholastics.

01:09:01

Really? See, this is why you need editors because the editor is going to mark that sentence and go, that is the biggest waste of bit space that I could ever imagine.

01:09:18

Christianity has always been a theistic religion. Yep, it's never been an atheistic religion.

01:09:26

Could have skipped that one. You know, this is why Google needs to have so much room to store things is because of sentences like that.

01:09:34

Anyway, goes on to talk about, for example,

01:09:40

R .T. Mullins who denies God's timelessness and things like that.

01:09:47

And then in the 20th century, evangelical theologians, now there's a bunch of stuff that I want to deal with at the beginning of this, but I'm not sure

01:09:56

I'm going to get to it today. We'll see. You know, it's a lot of the same stuff that was in the article earlier, so we'll see if it's worth doing so.

01:10:07

But the point is, I read the whole article. And I am convinced that I have read, that by writing,

01:10:19

I'm sorry, by reading this one article, I have now read far more, because I've read his books too, but just reading this one article,

01:10:27

I've read far more by Craig Carter than he's ever read by me. I spent more time reading this article than time he has ever spent in listening to anything said by me.

01:10:38

I'm convinced that what has happened, what happened yesterday was Dr. Carter made certain outlandish accusations against me without completely and totally on the basis of secondhand information.

01:10:54

He did not do what any scholar should do, and that is study.

01:11:00

Make sure of your sources, make sure the accuracy of your statement. And I think once I challenged him, because he said, you teach this and you teach that, and I go, show me where.

01:11:11

And he blocked me and then started attacking me. That's the reaction of someone who realizes I can't show him where because I don't have any idea what he actually believes.

01:11:20

I have no clue. And I'm not going to invest the time. I have been told this by other people.

01:11:27

I trusted them. Now this guy is pushing back, and so I'm just going to go nuclear. That's not how you should respond to things, but it's a common way that people do respond to things.

01:11:38

When they've made the error of going on secondary information.

01:11:48

And so my hope and prayer honestly is that someday Dr. Carter is going to contact me and the conversation is going to be somewhere along the lines of, you're right.

01:12:01

I did not check my sources. I believed what I was told. I was misled. I apologize.

01:12:07

Please forgive me. And I will be more than happy to extend that forgiveness because I'm sure that Dr.

01:12:16

Carter is a good Christian man. And despite the things that he says about me, despite the fact that he's warning people about me now, trying to cancel me, he's attacking me, and he will be held accountable for those things.

01:12:29

Don't get me wrong. My willingness to say, I gladly extend forgiveness does not change the fact that he will be accountable for the results of his slanderous misrepresentations.

01:12:41

We all are. That's why we need the blood of Christ is because when we make errors like that, we need forgiveness.

01:12:53

So that's my hope is that's what's going to come. So here's, there were a number of, again, this is a

01:13:05

Credo thing. And what Credo does is they will, they have these call -outs.

01:13:11

I'm not sure what the technical term is, but it's where, you know, the click to tweet.

01:13:17

So this is the stuff that they want you getting and they want you to promote to other people. So click to tweet all modifications of or departures from classical theism are really modifications of or departures from the

01:13:33

Protestant confessions. Okay. So they want, they want you to, to understand that they have a particular reading of the

01:13:42

Protestant confessions and there can be no other reading that despite the fact that everybody who knows history knows that the, at Westminster, there were people who wanted to say more, but they didn't get to say more because there were people in the group that wanted to say less.

01:14:08

Every confession is a compromise, not in the negative form, but in the positive form of we are trying to,

01:14:17

I just was talking with Tobias about, you know, putting together a statement.

01:14:22

When you put together a statement and you have more than one mind involved, compromise is going to be involved because no one thinks identically the same to somebody else.

01:14:35

And so the confessions specifically use language that allows unity to exist on the greatest foundation possible without being so specific that you end up with only one person who can sign the confession.

01:14:55

All right. This is how the Westminster work. This is how the Savoy, London, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

01:15:02

That is a historical fact. You can't deny it. That's the reality. And so what we have going on today is a group of people who have decided that's too broad or they will look at, now look,

01:15:15

I have been badly misrepresented over and over again by people who say that I teach eternal functional subordination, any of the acronyms that are used of some kind of concept of eternal subordination.

01:15:34

Anybody who knows me and knows the program knows that that is a slanderous lie. I have never taught these things.

01:15:42

You can go back to 2016 when the explosion took place and what you'll find me doing and where I take a minority view like Warfield in some of his.

01:15:54

Warfield's emphasis upon the sun as the aseity of the sun. Calvin's departure from post -Nicene orthodoxy in emphasizing the fact that the sun is autotheos, he has gotten of himself the aseity of the sun.

01:16:10

I've held that position for decades. And again, nobody canceled me for any of that in the past, but today cancel culture is rife amongst the reformed.

01:16:21

Love of the reformed amongst the reformed is not real rife, but cancel culture is, sadly.

01:16:27

Anyway, so I have, when you emphasize the aseity of the sun, that he is autotheos as Calvin did because, and I agree a thousand percent with Calvin, I see a serious danger in asserting that the sun is not ase.

01:16:53

I don't see how you can avoid some type of form of subordinationism and what makes, what drives me, but what is not a part of the experience of many of the others involved in this discussion is

01:17:13

I take this outside of the community. I take this to unbelievers. I take this to people who oppose the

01:17:20

Christian faith. And the vast majority, vast, vast majority of those commenting on these subjects simply live in the ivory towers.

01:17:31

They don't take it outside of Facebook groups and things like that.

01:17:36

They don't look a Muslim in the eye and deal with the nature of sonship.

01:17:42

They just don't. That's just not part of their experience. And so I think that's an important,

01:17:48

I try to recognize that. I try to recognize that could produce imbalance on my part.

01:17:56

But at the same time, if all you do is your work within the academy, that can produce imbalance on your part.

01:18:04

And which imbalance is more dangerous? I can give an answer to that.

01:18:11

So with all that said, here's the section found in, right after that click to tweet that I just gave you.

01:18:24

Ironically, many quote, reformed Baptists, end quote. I'm not sure why it's in quotes there.

01:18:31

I don't, I don't, I don't know. But it's in quotes. Such as James White, who proclaimed their allegiance to the

01:18:37

Second London Confession of 1689, do not teach it faithfully. They appear not to understand what the confession means when it says that God is without body parts or passions.

01:18:47

This seems to be because they fail to understand the 17th century Protestant scholastic theology from which the confession arose.

01:18:55

They echo rationalistic modernists in denying divine simplicity because they do not see how important it is for safeguarding monotheism in Trinitarian theology.

01:19:06

They also show no sign of grasping the importance of speaking analogically about the attributes of God in order to maintain the oneness of God when speaking of the triune nature of God.

01:19:16

The category of mystery does not work in their theology, nor do they distinguish between what the fathers called theologia and economia, that is the imminent and economic trinity.

01:19:27

There is only one trinity, of course, but not everything can be said about the economic trinity can properly be said about the imminent or eternal trinity because the historical fact of the incarnation.

01:19:37

And then he goes on from there to talk about the 2016 explosion, you know,

01:19:43

Wayne Grudem and everything else that happened back then.

01:19:48

I remember very clearly the fact that I, in 2016, when

01:19:57

I rode the triple bypass ride, I rode with a pastor friend, we started together, and on the initial climb all the way up Juniper Pass, our conversation was on EFS.

01:20:13

And as we would either be past or being passing others, I was chuckling at the looks on the faces of the other cyclists as we were having this in -depth discussion of Trinitarian theology at the beginning of a 120 -mile bike ride in Colorado.

01:20:31

So I remember very well what year that was. So I made the comment, and I'm going to respond to the paragraph here in a moment.

01:20:43

First of all, let me just mention, there are no references. I went to, and see this is something that I do this out of respect for Dr.

01:20:51

Carter, but he doesn't do it out of disrespect to me. So there are many in the

01:20:58

Thomistic side that purposefully act in a disrespectful way toward anyone who does not embrace their position.

01:21:07

I'm not sure what it is about Thomism that engenders this, but the unkindness, the disrespect, the insults, they're just all over the place, and we've all seen it.

01:21:20

And a lot of people have commented, what's this all about? Why are you all doing this?

01:21:26

What does that all mean? I went to his Substack version of this article, and there are no references there either.

01:21:36

And so I guess some people said, well, you don't have to put, everybody just knows these things.

01:21:42

Yeah, that's baloney. If you're going to say that someone denies something, someone doesn't understand something, especially when that person has put your books and your words on that screen and walked through them accurately and carefully, it is truly shameful to then misrepresent them.

01:22:04

And not even try to give a reference. I mean, as a scholar, I would just, I would be ashamed at such horrific violation of the basic standards of behavior.

01:22:17

But there are no references. There are no references. And so I said,

01:22:23

I commented, I linked to this on Twitter, and I said,

01:22:28

I just found out about this. And so on the dividing line, we will be addressing this, and we will be correcting the many errors.

01:22:40

And the, you know, just the fact that this is a slanderous, I mean, you're saying that I do not teach it faithfully because I don't understand the way you do.

01:22:52

And you are saying you don't understand what body parts and passions meant.

01:22:58

You echo rationalistic modernist in denying divine simplicity.

01:23:03

I even linked him to my 2003 article in Table Talk where I presented simplicity, a biblical simplicity, not a philosophically speculative simplicity.

01:23:17

That's the problem. You don't believe in simplicity unless you believe it the way they believe it. That's the whole thing here.

01:23:23

Once you get these super confessionalist folks, there is only one way to understand this language.

01:23:29

See, these people could never produce another confession because they're not Catholic enough. They cannot allow the range of interpretation that the

01:23:41

Western Confession did allow for its own words. They can't do that. That's the problem.

01:23:47

And here's something else to keep in mind. Let me mention this before I forget it. This movement will turn in upon itself.

01:23:54

Mark it down, write it down, August 30th, 2022. James White said on the dividing line that eventually these people will turn on each other because see, no one can ever be as confessionalist as you are.

01:24:07

And once that becomes your goal in life, once you find some kind of super spiritual excitement in crossing every

01:24:21

T, dotting every I in the most narrow possible way, once you have finished reading every single word that was ever written by every framer of the

01:24:33

London Baptist Confession of Faith, you will turn on anybody who disagrees with you.

01:24:42

It creates a brittleness. I think that's where the nastiness comes from.

01:24:48

And they will turn on each other. They will turn on each other. Because see, right now, there's book contracts and there's lots of promotion and stuff like that to be found.

01:25:02

But that doesn't last forever. And to be honest with you, the vast majority of people, once they dig into this, even if they go, okay, all right.

01:25:11

So internally to God, ad intra, God sees his omniscience as being exactly the same thing as his love.

01:25:25

Okay. I get it. Because you buy

01:25:31

Thomas's metaphysics. And so if there's a distinction, then that becomes separate things and God becomes complex because he's made up of stuff.

01:25:37

And of course, I reject that. I think God's big enough to recognize the difference between his love and his omniscience without turning them into objects out of which he's made.

01:25:47

Okay. It is a belief that has zero, no impact whatsoever on the

01:25:56

Christian life. It doesn't. I've heard the guys trying, they're just desperate to convince people that without this, you'll end up denying the gospel.

01:26:06

I saw, I saw Reformed Baptists say, you don't believe in this doctrine of divine simplicity.

01:26:13

I believe in divine simplicity. Dr. Carter, I believe in divine simplicity. God has not made up of constituent parts.

01:26:20

I believe that, that it does not follow. And none of you can prove, and none of you can even try to prove that it follows that you must say that internally to God, he sees his omniscience the same as his love.

01:26:33

I think he's much bigger than that because we can tell a difference. I'm sure he can too. That doesn't turn them into parts about out of which he's made.

01:26:40

That is an absurd conclusion. You can believe it all you want. I have said this since December of last year.

01:26:47

If you want to believe, if it somehow helps you to believe that God in his own experience sees all of his attributes as one big attribute soup, and there is no distinction between them, more power to you.

01:27:06

God bless you. I'm not going to call you a heretic. I'm not going to cancel you. I'm not going to warn people about you, but you can't return the favor.

01:27:15

That's what's being proven. That's what's being shown over and over and over again. You can't return the favor. Now you can't, not a one of you, and I'll debate.

01:27:24

You want to get your big boys out? You want to get Barrett out? Dolezal out? I will debate. The apostles taught the extended definition of divine simplicity, and you won't do it.

01:27:34

You will not debate that, will you? You know why? Because you know it's not true.

01:27:42

You know that it is the result of extended discussion of natural theology.

01:27:50

You know you're dependent upon Aquinas. You know you're dependent upon a metaphysical construct that is a not a part of the experience of the apostles of Jesus Christ.

01:28:00

So you would never ever debate the idea that the apostles taught this because they didn't, and you know they didn't.

01:28:11

That does not make it something that is horrible and terrible. It just doesn't have any meaning.

01:28:18

It doesn't accomplish anything. No monotheism is not defended by it.

01:28:23

The trinity is not defended by it because every horrible thing that you say results from not going that far is clearly and completely kept from happening by the

01:28:38

Bible itself, by biblical truth. The Bible is actually enough. I don't need the rest of it.

01:28:45

The Bible is actually enough, and I'm starting to wonder. No, I'm not starting to wonder. There are a number of you who have already come to the conclusion.

01:28:52

You may not even realize you've come to this conclusion yet, but you don't believe the Bible's enough. You don't believe it's enough.

01:28:59

And you've said it. It just hasn't sunk in yet that you really have come to that conclusion, and that's the problem.

01:29:07

So there was the doctrine. There was the one thing that started all this, and then, I don't know, two, three months later, along comes inseparable operations.

01:29:16

However, that's defined. And this new idea that the only way you can distinguish

01:29:22

Father, Son, and Spirit is not by anything they do, because they're all doing it at the same time, but by the internal relations, begettal, spiration.

01:29:31

That's the only way you can distinguish the divine person. And again, I've actually, sadly, heard some people try to preach in light of that, and the resultant mishmash must have left the people in their pews going, what on earth is he talking about?

01:29:51

If that's what I need to understand, I'll never understand Scripture. I'm not going to bother to try, because I need this priest class to tell me what to believe.

01:30:02

So anyway, so I said, I'm going to talk about this particular item, and I'm going to refute it on the dividing line.

01:30:20

And so I linked him so that he would know. And so here's his rants condemning me as a papist and false teacher are ludicrous.

01:30:36

Now, I'm not even sure that he recognized who was writing to him, to be honest with you, because he says his, but I'm the one that wrote to him.

01:30:44

So you'd have to say your. His rants condemning me as a papist and false teacher are ludicrous. Anyone who has read me can see he does not understand my books.

01:30:51

He denies the theology of the confession he supposedly holds and is not to be trusted. Well, okay.

01:30:59

So let's just remember what the context here is. Dr. Carter has put into print words about my beliefs that are false, and he gives no references.

01:31:15

And so I say publicly, I'm going to respond to this and demonstrate that Dr.

01:31:20

Carter is an error. His response is his rants condemning me as a papist and false teacher are ludicrous.

01:31:30

Notice this was, this was my tweet. I cannot help but point out I have placed entire pages of Craig A.

01:31:36

Carter's published works and statements on the screen and interacted with him. He responds by representing me without a single citation anyone can read.

01:31:42

Not even Thomas would have done that. Smiley face. Okay. I didn't call for his cancellation.

01:31:50

I didn't call for, I'm going to warn everybody about Craig Carter. That's, I'm leaving that to them.

01:31:58

That's, that's their shtick. They're, they're the, you know, they're getting into the medieval period. So they want to be the

01:32:03

Reformed Baptist Inquisition, all yours. Go for it. There's some really funny

01:32:10

Monty Python skits you might want to check out that would make you a little bit more enjoyable to be around. But that's what

01:32:17

I said. And so his, his rants condemning me as a papist.

01:32:24

And so I responded, I think I have, let me grab it here.

01:32:30

Oops. Did I minimize? Oh, I maximized that. Okay. I basically responded by saying, please show me where I've ever called you a papist.

01:32:45

I'll wait. Please show me wherever called you a false teacher.

01:32:51

I'll wait. Then I said,

01:32:58

I do not deny the theology of the confession that I uphold. And I will wait for you to document that accusation as well.

01:33:10

He responded by blocking me. And by saying, and here's, here's the other one.

01:33:19

Here it is. Oh, why would that work? Why would that?

01:33:27

Okay. There's more than two ways to do this. I have no intention of debating you on tea.

01:33:33

You would like that. You show no interest in learning or finding the truth, just cheap debating tricks, but it isn't high school anymore.

01:33:41

You think you know it all, but you don't. I will continue to others about you. Blocked. Wow. Wow.

01:33:49

So think about that. You publish, you go to print, misrepresenting someone who's a published author, an ordained minister, decades of ministry experience.

01:34:09

And he says, you're wrong. Back up what you said. You, you'd want me to debate you.

01:34:16

This isn't high school. So, so asking a scholar to back up his publicly made assertions about another minister is high school.

01:34:32

There's only one way to explain that. He got caught. He got caught trusting what he was told by other people.

01:34:41

There are other people I'm sure over the past number of months, somebody don't know who said, oh,

01:34:48

James White said you're a papist. Now that means that someone could have misled

01:34:54

Dr. Carter. There may have been someone who, because I, for example, in discussion of his great tradition exegesis statement,

01:35:07

I pointed out that the fundamental language that he uses in his book is derived specifically from Roman Catholic theology because it is, and he admits it.

01:35:24

That's just the next paragraph in the book shows he knows it.

01:35:33

So I've read a lot of Roman Catholic theology. I've never seen Dr. Carter debating any

01:35:38

Roman Catholics. I don't know that he's written any books on the subject, but I have. And so I know

01:35:44

Roman Catholic theology. And so I'm like, this is originating from Roman Catholic terminology.

01:35:51

Terminology. And that's why it sounds so strange to us.

01:36:00

If you can't tell the difference between identifying the origin and source of the language of published material with simply calling someone a papist, you shouldn't be involved in scholarship.

01:36:10

You don't know how to do it. You're not doing it. And so maybe someone that he trusts, he shouldn't be trusting.

01:36:19

I don't know. But I simply did the proper thing.

01:36:25

I demanded, because if you're going to go, if you're going to name names, this is the standard

01:36:32

I live by. I'm showing you his own words, right? I'm not just reading them to you.

01:36:38

I'm showing you his own words. And when I interacted with his definition of great tradition exegesis,

01:36:45

I put it on the screen. We walked through it carefully. And I said to him, if you say I've misrepresented you, show me.

01:36:54

Document it. And that's his response. It's a childish explosion of projection, because everything he's saying that I'm doing is what he's doing.

01:37:04

He's acting like a high schooler here. He's the one doing bluster when he's been caught misrepresenting somebody else, and he can't back up what he said.

01:37:16

He just can't do it, because it's not true. It's falsehood. We've all been there.

01:37:24

We've all gotten caught in stuff like that, haven't we? That's why I'm willing to say, hey, I'm looking forward to the day when

01:37:30

Dr. Carr says, I blew it. I am sorry. Please forgive me.

01:37:35

I look forward to that. But that's exactly the situation.

01:37:41

He's trusting people he shouldn't be trusting. And what this means is what we're experiencing is this cancellation.

01:37:48

I have people that I've known for decades. And they don't know this, but other people will send me stuff from message boards and Facebook groups and whatever.

01:38:02

People have known me for decades, now just completely misrepresenting me. And they've never contacted me.

01:38:09

They don't show any evidence of having listened to anything that has been said on this program. Is that enjoyable?

01:38:15

No, it's not. It really does make you go, wow.

01:38:23

I thought we had more respect for one another.

01:38:30

There was something about the brotherhood that you wouldn't just turn around and just start ripping and shredding on people because of something.

01:38:38

You heard someone say something, and now you're repeating it. And then it gets repeated by somebody else, gets repeated by somebody else.

01:38:44

That's why God identifies gossip and slander as sins that will be judged by him.

01:38:55

And the ease with which we can engage in speech using our fingers has made us significantly more liable to the sin of gossip and slander.

01:39:16

There's no question about it. And that's what we have here. And it ends up impacting things.

01:39:23

You know how many churches are closed to me now? That I could have benefited them, that I may have gifts that would be exactly what they need in their context, but they won't have it now because they believed a lie.

01:39:38

They believed slander, they believed gossip, they believed imbalanced statements. Again, that's in God's hands.

01:39:51

And those responsible for it will be judged. And if they're Christians, it's under the blood of Christ, but they still need to recognize the sin that they've engaged in.

01:40:08

And so, when all this first started, you know, I tried to avoid any names, anything, because I did not want to see any division developing.

01:40:18

That was a short -lived hope. That's for sure. Now, we're very careful.

01:40:25

Quote them. Quote it directly. Quote it openly. Respond to it in an honest and biblical fashion.

01:40:36

And that's the only way to do it. Otherwise, you're just doing the gossip and slander thing.

01:40:45

So, Dr. Carter says, I am not to be trusted. Who is accurately represented on the other side?

01:40:50

I have always accurately represented him. All he did was misrepresent me. Who's to be trusted? Who's to be trusted?

01:40:57

What's the standard upon which you are to judge who's to be trusted? I think that is very, very clear.

01:41:04

So, these specific statements, let me wrap this up. We've gone nearly two hours. This has been central to this whole discussion.

01:41:20

The assertion is, if you can demonstrate that there were people involved in the writing of the

01:41:28

London Baptist Confession that would have understood parts in an extended fashion with the add intra, add extra thing, then that means that is the only possible meaning of the

01:41:42

Second London Confession. And if you don't go there, then you're not teaching it faithfully. You can teach 99 .999

01:41:48

% of it. And 99 .99999 % of Reformed Baptists have lived and died without ever having a clue what the difference between add intra and add extra cogitations on God's part here would have to do with anything.

01:42:08

But you're not teaching it faithfully. That's why I said this becomes brittle. You eventually turn on each other, and it will blow up in your faces.

01:42:17

I've been telling you that for a while, and I'm not sure I'm going to live long enough to see it all come to fruition, but I have a feeling

01:42:23

I will. That's what it means to not teach it faithfully. Now, could

01:42:29

I turn around and put Carter's statement about great tradition exegesis up there and compare it with the first chapter of the

01:42:38

London Baptist Confession and what it says about the perspective of scripture and say, you, sir, are in contradiction to that. I think

01:42:44

I could make a strong argument that would be the case. Make a strong argument. Which is more important, a doctrine that 99 .999

01:42:51

% of Reformed Baptists will never even think about, or the sufficiency of scripture? Which one outweighs the other?

01:42:57

I'll let you answer that question. They appear, like I said, not to understand what the confession means.

01:43:05

No, we understand. Fine. Again, I see no evidence. I have no evidence. I have no references. I have no footnotes and nothing in the words to tell me that Dr.

01:43:13

Carter has ever actually listened to anything I've said, and I'm getting the feeling for a lot of these guys, they want to keep it that way because that's their way of showing disrespect.

01:43:25

You're not worthy of being listened to. Here's your problem, guys. Your students are listening.

01:43:32

Your students are listening, as well they should, as well they should. So, if you want to keep your nose firmly planted at a 45 degree elevation above the horizontal, it's up to you.

01:43:48

This seems to be because they fail to understand the 17th century Protestant scholastic theology from which confession arose.

01:43:57

No, don't fail to understand it at all. I've read church and nobody said. I'm just the dumb guy that takes this stuff out into the real world.

01:44:09

So, it has to be defensible. It has to be biblical. Yeah, I'm a reformed biblicist, and I know that you just find that horrible.

01:44:19

They echo rationalistic modernists in denying divine simplicity. The only thing

01:44:24

I can figure there is when I shocked everybody by agreeing with William Lane Craig that this idea of mono attributional sameness is biblically indefensible.

01:44:37

It doesn't mean that I agree with William Lane Craig on almost anything else, but that's the only thing

01:44:43

I guess they can figure. And so, once again, a real scholar who's serious about the craft would differentiate between what

01:44:51

I said and what William Lane Craig said, because anybody can tell there's a rather vast difference between where we're coming from, but no differentiation made because this isn't serious scholarship.

01:45:03

This is projection. This is just warning. Don't listen to these people.

01:45:08

They're bad, bad people, so we're just going to say what we want about them, and we won't make any. We get to make all the distinctions in the world about our position.

01:45:15

When we have to come up with new terminology that we're using to try to find a way to make things fit, we distinguish, but you don't get to distinguish.

01:45:24

No, that's only for us. Because they do not see how important it is for safeguarding monotheism in Trinitarian theology.

01:45:34

Again, the strongest mechanism for maintaining monotheism in Trinitarian theology is biblical.

01:45:44

It's biblical. What is it? Father, Son, and Spirit are identified as Yahweh. There's one divine name, and yet the

01:45:52

New Testament writers identify Jesus, the Son, as Yahweh. John does it. Paul does it.

01:45:59

Luke does it. So, there's no way that you can become a polytheist.

01:46:06

Polytheism is fundamentally opposed to basic biblical revelation. I don't need

01:46:12

Aquinas's theology to maintain monotheism. Neither did the early church, and if you say the

01:46:23

Bible is so inept and incapable of defending monotheism without that metaphysical area, and I think

01:46:31

Carter goes there, you know, got to become a Christian Platonist, right? Then you see why a lot of us are going,

01:46:39

I don't think you people actually believe in sola scriptura. Do you realize you keep going that direction?

01:46:47

What that means? Hmm, strange. Huh, well, anyway. They also show no sign of grasping.

01:46:56

Notice how all this, and this is constant with Thomas. This is constant. Thomas believed they are smarter than everybody else because they read

01:47:04

Thomas Aquinas. The condescension and arrogance that Thomism breeds is famous.

01:47:13

I just never expected to see it amongst our own ilk, but you criticize

01:47:19

Thomas about anything, and it's just because you hadn't read enough, you know, and so I'll quote

01:47:26

Thomas. I'll read an entire section of Thomas. This is his point. Silence.

01:47:34

You just, what they're really saying is you need to be saying all the time reading the scholars of Thomas, not

01:47:40

Thomas, but then again there are different schools of Thomistic interpretation, and they come to very different conclusions, and that just doesn't really work.

01:47:49

Yeah, it works for us. They also show no sign of grasping the importance of speaking analogically about the attributes of God in order to maintain the oneness of God when speaking of the triune nature of God.

01:48:06

Anybody who has spent any time at all listening to lectures, reading materials on Van Til, analogical language.

01:48:19

Now again, Dr. Carter doesn't have any idea of what I've actually taught on any of this stuff, so he's just shooting from the hip out of ignorance.

01:48:28

That's all it is. Well, you can't complain. You just said that they say that you're ignorant, and now you just said he's ignorant.

01:48:36

Yeah, about me. That's a different subject. I'm not a big subject.

01:48:42

It wouldn't be all that. There are people in our little private chat channel that have listened to everything that I've said on this subject, and they know what

01:48:50

I believe, and it didn't require a PhD to come up with those conclusions. Pretty straightforward.

01:48:56

I see no evidence. There's no references, no quotes. I can say

01:49:03

I know what Craig Carter says because I quote him. Where's he ever quoted me? Show me. Once. One place.

01:49:10

One place. I didn't read this one, but notice this one down here. I've been too patient with this guy for too long.

01:49:18

I've been too patient with this guy for too long. He's never quoted me.

01:49:26

Where's he ever quoted me? Even once. Someone show me. I've never seen it. I would have responded gladly.

01:49:34

It's not there. So, patient? Okay. I think most people would say my response is patient, not his.

01:49:48

The category of mystery does not work in their theology. I don't know what kind of application he's making there.

01:49:55

I really don't. Nor do they distinguish between what the Fathers called theologia and economia.

01:50:02

That is, the imminent and the economic trinity, except that probably the majority of people in this audience know the difference between those terms because I've taught it to you.

01:50:13

So, again, pure ignorance. Hasn't read the forgotten trinity. Doesn't know what he's talking about, but doesn't seem to slow him down.

01:50:22

There's only one trinity, of course, but not everything that can be said about the economic trinity can probably be said about the imminent or eternal trinity because the historical fact of the incarnation.

01:50:30

Well, all that's true. All that's true. Has nothing to do with my position, but that didn't stop him from putting this into print.

01:50:42

And so, as I said, Dr. Carter has decided that I'm not to be trusted and that I will continue to warn others about you.

01:50:51

Blocked. So, I will continue to quote

01:51:01

Craig A. Carter accurately. I will interact with his published works. And when they lead us to things like his great tradition exegesis,

01:51:09

I will point that out and warn people about it. But I will do so as a Christian. I will do so truthfully.

01:51:16

And I will back up my citations with references. And if he insists on continuing to slander me, to lie about me, and to not use references, that just says everything that needs to be said.

01:51:28

Right? So, one side will do it right. One side will do it the way that they've decided to do it.

01:51:35

And we'll go from there. We'll go from there. So, there you go.

01:51:42

Like I said, we will see what the rest of the week looks like.

01:51:50

If things get busy for Rich, then we'll find other ways of communicating.

01:51:57

And then I leave on Tuesday. So, I hit the road again a week from today.

01:52:05

And this is going to be a long one. Your support obviously needed.

01:52:13

Prayers for safe travel. It looks like Chris Arnzen is this close to scheduling a debate in Pennsylvania.

01:52:28

Oh, he contacted you? Because he tried calling me. And I'm like, yeah, but Chris just calls everybody.

01:52:36

Yeah, I said, Chris Arnzen. I'm like, sorry, bro. I'm sort of busy. Yeah. Oh, no.

01:52:46

Oh, no. Okay. Sorry, Matt. Sorry. Sorry about that. Anyway.

01:52:55

So, we'll let you know as soon as we have that. It would be on either the

01:53:01

King James -only -ism or TR -only -ism. Be on a textual critical issue. And this would be sort of around the

01:53:09

Harrisburg area in Pennsylvania, if you know that area. Because I'm going to be staying in the

01:53:14

Harrisburg, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Virginia area. Because I've got to get into Washington, D .C. Not looking forward to that at all.

01:53:21

Seriously considering Ubering in. But I'll be in that area for a period of time.

01:53:29

And then we'll be at G3. And that, of course, would be on the reliability of Scripture and its history and things like that.

01:53:37

And then, as you know, well, on the 10th, I will be at Covenant of Grace Church in St.

01:53:43

Charles. That one evening. It's a one -night thing. I mean, I'm going to be driving in that day. And we're going to do the very enjoyable talk that I do.

01:53:52

It's always different each time. But an evening with ancient Christians where I just draw from some of the early church history stuff and make application.

01:54:03

And it's always enjoyable. That's on the 10th. But then early church history,

01:54:09

Grace Bible Theological Seminary in Conway on the way back. And it will be a full 30 nights.

01:54:16

So more than four weeks on the road. So prayers for safety for me, for my wife, and all the things that I'm going to have to do when

01:54:27

I get back after all these long trips. Weeds and all sorts of neat, fun stuff like that.

01:54:34

But that's coming up. And we'll start again next week. And so we'll have on the road programs, which means the timing will be when

01:54:44

I can get in, get set up, get electricity, and get something to eat.

01:54:50

And we do the program. So that's how it works.

01:54:55

We've appreciated all of you who stuck with us while we're doing this way. And there seems to be a lot of folks who actually do appreciate the fact that we're getting out into the churches.

01:55:07

We're getting out into places that a lot of folks just aren't willing to go.

01:55:13

And it's not so much willing to go. It's just how I'm traveling. When I look, when I take any time at all to read the nightmare stories coming out of air travel today.

01:55:24

Oh goodness. It's scary. Glad not having to do that. But I do have to, you know, like fix a flat once in a while.

01:55:32

So that's how it goes. Thanks for watching the program today. Like I said, watch the app to know when we're going to be back on the air again.