Lots of Topics and Articles on Today's Dividing Line

So we're, we're actually on. Seriously? Really? IT. IS. LIVE!

Well, and how many hours, Rich, today have you been working on this? Hello, Rich?

Um, I don't know, I put about five minutes into it. Five hours?

Five, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, sounds like it. Seems like forever. Okay, yeah. Well, we're here.

We didn't expect to be here, but we're here. And so we're glad you're with us on the 23rd of December, 2015.

I'm not sure where that year went. Every year seems to go by just a little bit faster, to be honest with you.

But it is that time of year. Let me begin by saying thanks.

I didn't, someone, someone sent me real tea because they say my rooibos is not real tea.

And, uh, which, you know, on one level hurts. I'm not sure why this doesn't want to stay in my ear today.

On one level, it sort of hurts, you know? I mean, uh, telling people that the tea that they really like really isn't tea is sort of snobbish, you know?

But they made it better by sending me, uh, all this real tea.

The problem is it's in these big bags. I have no idea what to do with it.

Because the only way I know how to make tea is you boil water and you put a tea bag in.

I don't have any of the fancy stuff. There are tea making things. Tea balls.

Isn't it? I don't know. You get a little metal thing. It's got perforations in the bottom. It's a tea ball.

Is that what you do? And it's got a chain on it. You put a certain amount of raw tea in there and you dip it in and it's a whole nine yards.

I guess that's the next thing we need to put on the ministry resource list? Of course, us coffee drinkers would look at you and say, isn't by the very nature of drinking tea snobbish to begin with?

Well, but it just tastes so much better than that coffee stuff does. Anyway, uh, and this goes over real well in the

UK. But thank you for the tea. I'll eventually figure out if you want to drink, you might want to send some instructions.

Anyways, and then I mentioned this on Facebook and someone thankfully got it for me.

I love this shirt and someone sent one in. I don't know who. There wasn't a name attached.

If you see me collapse, pause my Garmin. You know what makes that shirt so cool is that that's pretty much how most cyclists think.

If you see me collapse on the bike and fall off, run over and pause my

Garmin so my time won't be messed up. Because as soon as I come to consciousness, I'm getting back on.

And that's especially for those of us who do Strava segments. And you know who you are.

Every one of you out there that does Strava, you know exactly what

I'm talking about. Once you regain consciousness, if you were that close, you had the

KOM in sight. It's going to keep going. I love that shirt.

That's great. I'm not sure that it will show up on the dividing line again, but I will definitely wear it.

That's great. Thank you very, very much for that. By the way, you haven't had time, but I wonder how the

Ministry Resource List is doing. Maybe you could let me know. I don't know how many years ago it was, the

Ministry Resource List took off. And man, that really helped a lot. And I put a couple of items back on the

Ministry Resource List. One of them actually is that set right there.

Except you go, why would you need two of those? Because we're going to send that set. You need to remind me. I need to walk out of the studio with that set in my hand.

Because we're sending it to you -know -who. And replacing it with a three -volume version of the same one.

So that's one of the things on the Ministry Resource List. So if you can look up the MRL on the website and assist us in that way, that's always very, very, very helpful as well.

Thank you for that. It's that time of year, my favorite time of the year. Someone finds my lack of Coogie disturbing.

I wore one last time. And I'm sort of wondering if there really wasn't any problem at all with the stream.

It's just there was an act of sabotage or Coogie -phobia on the other side of the screen.

Something like that. I don't know. Coogie -stage. Sabotage, Coogie -stage.

Sabotage, Coogie -stage. Okay. All right. I'm not sure if that works. By the way, there's one item left on the

Ministry Resource List. Only one? And that is the Integrated Encyclopedia of the Qur 'an, which is cha -ching.

But people are whittling away at it. Since we changed it to where you can actually -

Do portions of it instead of the whole thing. That helps. So we got to get that taken care of because that was in there.

Okay, good. One of the main reasons I'm not wearing a Coogie today is because I'm speaking at church tonight.

And the tradition at our church is you wear a tie. And I will have a festive

Christmassy bow tie on this evening. I just didn't put it on for the program, which maybe

I probably should have. I guess. But it's in the other room. Too late for that anyway. So that's why there is no

Coogie today. So I hope you can allow me to get past all of that.

I saw an article on - Oh. Well, thank you,

Armin. That was Armin. I wondered - So, good.

There wasn't any name attached to it. And I - So I guess I went to the PO Box. Okay, that makes sense.

Yeah, we get things delivered to us without any return address or names on it. Right. We call the sheriff, get the bomb squad out, go through that protocol.

Blow them up and then what's left is given to us. So the shirt did fairly well. Yeah, it did pretty well given the explosion, yeah.

What was I saying? Oh, yes, there was an article. And Justin Brierley responded to my mentioning it.

Tuesday, December 22nd. That was yesterday. The writing could be on the wall for free speech if extremism disruption orders,

EDOs, are introduced next year. The Christian Institute and the National Secular Society have warned.

In a rare joint statement, Institute Director Colin Hart and the CEO of NSS, Keith Porteous Wood, highlighted the dangers of introducing overly broad legislation using vague definitions.

They warned that the plans could inadvertently turn millions of ordinary citizens into potential extremists virtually overnight.

The statement reads, the vital importance of free speech is an issue on which both our organizations have always agreed.

We have previously been able to see off an attempt to make it illegal to be annoying in public. How brilliant is that?

To pass a law where you can't be annoying in public. I find a large number of people in public to be annoying.

We got two. Wow. Very happy. You got two in this week.

Hmm. I'm not sure what two is. Two shirts? Anyway, bright shiny thing called

Twitter. We have prevented persecutions for mere insults by helping to secure changes to Section 5 of the

Public Order Act. So EDOs, Extremism Disruption Orders.

Well, thank God for the First Amendment, even though the brilliant students at Yale want to do away with it.

Anyway, over there in Europe, Extremism Disruption Orders. I've been trying.

I have been trying to tell. Especially.

The exuberant supporters of one particular current presidential candidate.

That granting to the

United States government. Extraordinary powers. Remember what happened with Palpatine?

I mean, come on. Don't you know your history? You'd think that this would be obvious, but granting to the government extraordinary powers.

Is given the nature of the United States government having become very thoroughly secularized.

And given that the natural man hates first and foremost, the gospel.

Is a really bad idea. And you might think, well, they're just going to go after the bad

Muslims. Yeah, well, not really. That's not what's going to happen.

So. I'm really, really concerned this is going to be happening over on our side of the pond.

And I just wonder how long. Because I, you know, I mentioned a little while ago,

I asked my audience in St. Louis a few weeks ago. We were talking about extremism, extremism.

Do y 'all realize that what I believe to a secularist is the height of extremism?

I'm an extremist to the secular. My first and foremost allegiance is not to the state.

It's to Jesus Christ. That's extremism right there. That could be defined as extremism.

My own happiness. And self comfort. Is not my first priority.

It's service to Christ. Extremism. I consider myself to have died and I'm living to Christ.

Extremism. I believe that my Lord. That someday every knee will bow, every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is

Lord, the glory of God, the father. I believe that absolute positively. 100 % extremism.

Absolute extremism right there. So. You may want to see those extremists.

Under government scrutiny and control and suppression and and what is this extremism disruption orders?

What happens when those extremism disruption orders make it illegal? Well, you've got the

Irish guy being put on trial for saying

Islam is satanic. And so that's what that's what secular governments do.

So what happens when it's no longer legal to say there is only one name given given under heaven, whereby we may be saved.

And as the name of Jesus Christ, what what that's extremism. That's. I guess nobody studies history anymore.

And hence, nobody is aware of what it was like back in the days of the

Roman Empire. When the

Romans found the Christians to be extremely offensive. Not just because of what they believed.

I mean, the idea of a crucified savior, they sort of figured that was extremely foolish and stupid. But what was most offensive was their rejection of the validity of other religious expressions.

It was that exclusive nature of the gospel message that was so offensive to the

Romans. Because, look, to make Rome work, everybody's got to get along. And so if you've got to get along.

Then. Everybody has to leave room. For the validity of other religious expressions.

And that's we're right back into second century Rome. That's that's where we are again.

And. So if that's where we are, we've got to learn to deal with that.

And. We can't. Well, I'll be perfectly honest with you, it's not like there's anything we can do about it.

But we certainly shouldn't be yelling and cheering. For demagogues.

Who say, hey, vote for me and we'll. Suppress these people over here.

Not realizing that that very same power will be used. Against you.

Inevitably, without question. The whole concept of what liberty means, the cost of liberty.

It's just. Done. Done. Every I'll be honest with every time

I turn on the radio and I listen to a discussion. Of the current.

State of affairs. In. Politics in the

United States. Well, what was yesterday? Franklin Graham said, I'm out. I'm out.

Well, I the thing is, everybody's going, oh, Franklin Graham left the Republican Party.

I left the Republican Party over a decade ago. And the reason I did is because they were giving money to pro abortion candidates.

I've been consistent on that one. So there's nobody as conservative as I am as far as political parties go.

But, OK, let me take that term back. I don't know what conservative means anymore, to be honest with you.

Because a lot of people I see call themselves conservatives. Don't really seem to have any earthy idea what the.

What's the Bill of Rights is about or all sorts of things like that. So I. I don't know.

I don't know. I just keep how many times I've read that one quote. Well, the founding fathers.

The Constitution is wholly insufficient for the governance of any nonreligious, immoral people, ungodly people.

It was designed for a certain kind of people, and that is not who we are. And. There you go.

There you go. So, like I said, I mentioned that to Justin Brierley and he immediately responded and hence was obviously aware of it.

So, you know, not like we don't need to be praying for ourselves, but you might want to pray for our brothers and sisters overseas.

I got I stood up a little bit of a hornet's nest a couple of days ago. There was a quote from.

The article was titled This one quote convinced me to convert to Catholicism. One quote.

Well. What was what was the what? This is the one quotation. It convinced me to become a

Catholic. Ignatius writes, quote, Make no mistake, my brothers. If anyone joins a schismatic.

He will not inherit God's kingdom. If anyone walks in the way of heresy, he is out of sympathy with the passion. Be careful then to observe a single

Eucharist. But there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ and one cup of his blood that makes us one and one altar.

Just as there is one bishop along with the Presbytery, the deacons, my fellow slaves. In that way, whatever you do is in line with God's will.

It says, Do you see why Ignatius was so utterly convincing? Now. I went back and I created.

I guess I need to reorganize it because I guess it didn't organize it by date somehow. But I need to.

Reorganize the. Playlist by create a playlist on my. Dr. Oakley. Oh, you can link to it.

Maybe you can fix the order, too. But anyways, twice I have engaged. One was back in like 2008.

Maybe even earlier than that. I have engaged rather fully. With Ignatius.

And with this particular quotation. And I've put it in its historical context.

We've dealt with. The abject lack of any historical basis.

For believing that Ignatius is talking about Eucharistic sacrifices and transubstantiation or any of that stuff.

We talk about the proto Gnostic background and put it in its context, but it's.

It's sad to read somebody. Who will buy into a system that is.

Nobody in Ignatius's day. Would have recognized modern Roman Catholicism.

As and especially its dogmatic definitions that have been made since that century. Especially the

Marian dogmas and the whole concept of the papacy. When Ignatius wrote to the Romans. He did not even mention the bishop of the church at Rome.

Because the church at Rome didn't have a single bishop in that day. It had a multiplicity of elders. Nobody at Rome thought it was.

The successor of Peter. But hey, you know. That one quote made me give it all up.

And bow the knee to the papacy. Well, what papacy?

There wasn't one back then. And who knows what the current Pope believes. But it just strikes me once again.

Just how much fluffy, shallow Roman Catholic apologetics there is out there.

And speaking of Roman Catholic apologists. Mark Shay.

I haven't heard that name in a while, have you? Oh no, I haven't heard. Mark Shay has been off doing his thing.

That is really good tea. It's really good tea. With my little smiley cup. I don't know, it's just sort of gadgety to have a little smiley cup.

You can't see the smileys until you put hot tea into it. And then they all show up. Thank you.

That was also a gift that was sent in. It's just good stuff. Anyway, Mark Shay is yet another

Roman Catholic apologist who has assiduously, but water is good too, assiduously avoided debating me.

And we've gone around and around and around with him many times over the years.

And he said he posted my article, my video on do

Christians and Muslims worship the same God. Now, I don't remember the exact.

Oh my goodness. I don't have my reading glasses on, but I wonder if it's.

If I can find it here. I'm pretty close.

Yeah. Section 841.

Universal Catechism of the Catholic Church. Section 841. The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the creator.

In the first place amongst whom are the Muslims. These profess to hold the faith of Abraham and together with us, they adore the one merciful

God, mankind's judge on the last day. Well, I guess that's what it means to listen to the church in Mark Shay's idea.

And he says, here's what he put on Facebook. Dear Catholic, when you ignore the church and choose to listen to arguments like this, which is me, do bear in mind that such people also frequently like James White, say that you do not worship the same

God as Christians either. So when people like Rick Santorum and Donald Trump recommends repealing the

First Amendment for Muslims, remember that you're next. And if you cheered for it for Muslims, you deserve to have it done to you.

The measure you use will be measured to you. Now, what's really interesting is that on that level, isn't that what

I've been saying? Mark Shay's doesn't listen to this program,

I doubt. And hence wouldn't know how much effort I've put in to try to being fair and contextualizing things and making proper category distinctions and stuff like that.

But someone was asking me, the email was asking me, and I hope the person who sent the email or Facebook or whatever it was here is listening.

And by the way, you know, I'm so far behind on email. It's not even funny.

And sometimes people will, you know, sometimes I'll respond to an email.

And then because I respond to an email, now someone has my personal email account. And now they think that I'm just going to be there to be able to answer every question they've ever wanted to ask in a personal fashion.

I'm sorry, I can't do it. I don't have a secretary, folks. There would be two people in this ministry, me and me.

Thank you. Real slow sometimes on the...

He was just sitting there looking at me like, yeah? It's like, what if people are just listening? Anyway, and you...

Now, he does filter what comes through the contact page. And it's tough to get through them.

But he ain't answering these things. Once they come through to me, you know, it's up to me. And I'm way behind on stuff right now, and I'm sorry about that.

I'm doing the best I can. And it's sort of hard to keep up with all the reading and stuff, and then do all the rest of that stuff.

So if I sent you a note or something, and then you've written back a four -paged tome, or you want me to be an online bibliography source for you, do your research for you, teach you how to use

Google, you wouldn't believe the stuff. I'm sorry, I can't do that. It just doesn't work, you know?

It just doesn't work. So I can't keep up with all that stuff. So I don't know who sent this to me, but I hope this is a sufficient response for you.

And basically he was asking, do you say that? So I'm going to try to wrap a couple things together here.

Wrap a couple things up here together. Let's talk about categories here, all right?

I did a whole video on why the answer to the question, is a yes and no question.

It's a yes on a historical surface level, shallow level, but on any level where the word worship, or to use the term of the

Catholic catechism, adore. And in fact, I wonder if Turretinfan is listening.

If somebody in channel is listening and could access the

Latin of the catechism of the Catholic church, which I do not have in front of me,

I'd be interested in the verb. Is it adoremus that is used?

Or another term that's used in section 841 in the official version of the catechism of the

Catholic church. I would be interested in knowing that. I'll try to keep an eye on whether someone can provide me that information.

But I pointed out that it's a yes and a no, depending on how deep you want to get and how meaningful you want to be.

So in other words, the yes answer isn't overly meaningful. The no answer requires you to understand the centrality of Tawhid, the meaning of Shirk, the centrality of the

Trinity, God's self -revelation, Jesus Christ. It requires you to know a lot more about both religions for that answer to have meaning.

So what happened was I got a Twitter question. I don't know,

I think within about 12 hours. And the person said, so how about Jews?

Do Christians and Jews worship the same God? And I thought about doing a video reply, but it's just as good to do it here,

I guess. The answer has to be right along the exact same lines, consistent with what we said in regards to Islam.

But obviously there's differences here. You do not have a book of scripture coming after the

Jewish -Christian interaction that is the New Testament period and the disruption that takes place after that.

And so you don't have claims of prophethood, you don't have all that kind of stuff to go in there.

But fundamentally, the issue remains the same. What I said in the video was, if God has revealed himself, if this amazing thing has happened, which we're going to celebrate in two days, if this amazing thing has happened called the

Incarnation, then could there have been a period of time before people came to know what

God had done that that kind of worship would still be accepted? Sure, I understand that, but we're long past that.

And the Jewish worship is now thoroughly based upon a rejection.

It has taken in knowledge of what the Christian claim is, knowledge of the claim of Christ is, and has rejected it.

Has rejected it. And so once again, you look at a text that I have preached on over and over again in the context of what

I would want to communicate to Muslims about Jesus, John chapter 8. And Jesus said, to the

Jews, unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins.

And that I am phrase, then by the end of the chapter, then

I'm going to say, I go, I me before Abraham was, I am. And what do they do? They pick up stones to stone him.

And so there is a revelation that is made. It is rejected. The revelation is clearly about who

Jesus really, really is in his person. There is a rejection of that. And Jesus says, you will die in your sins.

That same author, you know, highest probability, same author, 1st

John in 1st John says, well, in John chapter 5, Jesus himself says, honor the son, even as you honor the father.

And then in the epistle, you don't have the son. Then you don't have the father either.

So, yes, there is a, a consistency here. The Jewish worship of Yahweh was in, was in God's will, as long as it was based upon the revelation that God had made.

But God made a revelation, the person of Jesus Christ and the outpouring of the Holy spirit.

And that has been rejected. That has been rejected. So I would say that even a

Jewish person, if they were being consistent and I would say the more conservative, conservative means something in Jewish denominational, the more believing the

Jewish person is, the more likely they would be to agree with me here in the same way that the more focused the

Muslim is upon the centrality of Tawheed, the more likely they're going to agree with what

I said. And that is the absolute monotheistic, monotheistic, unitarian monotheistic

Jew. And the absolute unitarian monotheistic Muslim is going to find the

Trinitarian worship of Revelation chapter five to be unacceptable.

That's, that's not, that's not their God. And so I think even they would agree. No, we're, we're not worshiping the same

God. And certainly from the Christian perspective, God has made that revelation.

There is no way, there is no way to roll that back or to say, well, that's one valid way now, but there are other valid ways.

Now, of course, Rome has said I'm wrong. Great, fine. It's real obvious to me that Rome's recent statements on Judaism and the covenants and things demonstrate just how utterly disconnected the

Roman hierarchy has become from anything even remotely connected to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I think that if people would look at that, they would see that and they would recognize that and they would be rather amazed by that.

So in answer to that second question, do Jews and Christians worship the same

God? The answer would be no. And so now we go to this question.

Have you said what Mark Shea said? And now a whole new category here.

And I cannot put Roman Catholicism in the same category as Judaism or Islam.

And unfortunately, some folks who utilize this program and who may even utilize some of my information struggle with this because they have the idea that, well, as long as it's wrong, then it's wrong.

But there are different categories of what makes something wrong. There is no question in my mind that functionally, many

Roman Catholics in the world divide their worship of God between God and Mary.

I believe that the Marian dogmas are idolatry. They're idolatrous.

The prayers to the saints, the dulya of the saints, that's no excuse.

When you stand before God someday, you try to pull the latria dulya excuse and it's going to get vaporized and you're going to know it.

Maybe along with you. But the point is, we've debated this.

We've gone over this a thousand times already. Those distinctions simply do not hold.

So there's no question that the Marian dogmas result in idolatry.

But what that doesn't result in, and this is where a lot of conservative Christians, I think, need to rein themselves in and think, be consistent, that does not mean that Roman Catholics have a quadernity.

Even the Muslims say, well, if you're going to call Mary the mother of God, that means you have four gods.

No, it doesn't. First of all, the term theotokos, in its original context, was not about Mary.

It was about Christ. It was about who Christ was and what his nature was at the very time of his birth.

And so it wasn't about Mary. Later, she's exalted. And later, that is a term that is used to exalt her.

I got that. I get it. But at the time, it was not. And so confessing that Mary is theotokos is an orthodox thing.

It doesn't mean that Mary gave birth to the Trinity. That's a misunderstanding of what the original use of that term was.

And I explained all this in Mary, Another Redeemer, which came out in what, 1998, 1999, something like that.

It's still available electronically in some... Huh? It may be on Kindle. Yeah. So that means that Roman Catholics are confessionally

Trinitarian, even if they are not overly experientially Trinitarian.

So you must distinguish between the official teaching of the church, which denies that Mary is a deity, denies that Mary is worshipped.

Okay, that's the official teaching. Now we can say you functionally end up denying at least the worship part, but that doesn't mean you're exalting her to the status of godhood either.

I recognize that. It's still idolatry. But it's not the same thing as the

Mormons, who will literally say there are an unlimited number of deities. And if you can't make that distinction in your mind, again, you're never going to be able to communicate with anybody.

You're not going to be able to do so accurately. And so, in answer to...

I would assume that what Mark Shea is talking about is my rejection of ecumenical compromise, and especially joint prayers, as if the gospel does not define whether we are in right relationship with God or not.

And that's where the distinction is. You can't even talk about that when you're talking about Judaism or Islam, because they don't have a gospel to compare it with.

Once you're dealing with Roman Catholicism, you're dealing with a faith that claims to be the actual full expression of the

Christian faith, that all other churches are not true churches. Well, at least my church isn't a true church.

They'll see a few that they'll accept. But it's a completely different context.

It is a false claim to being the true successors of Christ and a false gospel.

And so now you're dealing with the Pseudo -Delphoi, the false brethren of Galatians chapter 2.

The Muslims aren't the false brethren. The Jews aren't the false brethren, though they may have been

Jewish in that context, they're probably Judaizers, but they claimed to be

Christians. So the issue that we're dealing with there changes to where you're dealing with people who claim to be

Christian, claim to represent Christ, but are preaching false doctrine. And then there's a whole other category in there that you'd have to put the

Mormons in. Because the Mormons claim to be Christians, but have a completely different God.

And at least the old -time Mormons knew it and said it and admitted it and defended it.

And to be honest with you, it was a whole lot easier to respect them than the new, mealy -mouthed, emotional, let's not talk doctrine, let's just sing kumbaya

Mormons that just are as impossible to talk to as your liberal

Presbyterian is. Once it's liberal, it's just nailing jello to a wall.

There's nothing there to talk to. So I would not make the statement about Roman Catholicism in the way that I make the statement about Judaism and Islam.

It's a matter of category things. Getting a huge number of messages here all of a sudden.

Well, I guess this certain individual doesn't realize I'm on the air right now and is not talking about what

I'm saying on the air right now. So I'll do the DL.

Yes, sir? Well, I was saying the other day regarding Islam and I was thinking about Wael's introduction, his greeting.

They always seem to start off these debates with a greeting and it's always in the name of Allah and they go through this.

And I thought to myself, how would it be received by the Muslims if you were to start off,

I greet you in the name of Jesus who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation and then continue to quote verses 16 and 17 and 18 in Colossians 1.

Oh, I've done that actually. I did that in one debate. I want to do it more often. But I think that all by itself shows that's not a confession they receive well,

I'm sure. Well, they're certainly not going to accept it as representing them, but I don't think they would object to my doing it because they do it from their own perspective.

But what it means is we don't believe the same things. There's no question about it. No question about it. So by the way, while we're on the subject, someone in Twitter asked, did you see

Robert Jeffers message to his church? Yeah, that's what we talked about for the first half hour of the last program.

So need to go back there and take a look at that. Taco and Channel says, too much nuance.

Yeah, I know. In a day when emotions and a lack of thought has become, unfortunately, the watchword, not only of the society, but of many

Christians as well, trying to remain accurate and to recognize categories. Not very popular, not very popular, but I don't see what else

I can do about it. Did you all see that if you would like to have a plenary indulgence, all you gotta do is walk through a door?

Yeah, yeah. I saw this story last year and now it's happened.

Pope opens the doors, the church's holy doors before 50 ,000 people in the

Vatican. Pope Francis opened the holy doors of St.

Peter's Basilica on Tuesday, performing a ritual that has been part of the Catholic Church since the 1500s. A lot of stuff.

Holy doors are only open during a special year designated by a pope called a Jubilee year.

The iteration will be a Jubilee of Mercy. This iteration will be a Jubilee of Mercy. The last Jubilee year was in 2000.

More than 50 ,000 people attend the ceremony, including Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, Italian President Sergio Mattarella, and members of the

Belgian royal family. Francis' predecessor, Pope Emeritus Benedict, Pope Emeritus.

There's a term that... We are the only generation that has said that. That is alive.

I don't know if you saw the picture that was just posted on Twitter. When threatened, the pope can spray venom up to 25 feet, blinding his victims.

Take a look at it. His cow blew up. It's like one of those...

One of the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. That's what you get for wearing funny stuff.

Francis' predecessor, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, followed him through the holy doors of St. Peter's Basilica.

The 88 -year -old, rarely seen in public since his resignation in 2013, walked with a cane and the help of a long -time aide.

It's hard for me not to sit here and go... Remember how many memes were made of Benedict and Palpatine because they did bear a rather uncanny resemblance?

He has not been seen in public because he's training further Sith. And who walks...

Remember, we know somebody else that walked with a cane, too. Named Yoda. And then remember that fight scene where he drops the cane and...

Yeah, yeah. Couldn't avoid that. Salvation is offered to every human, to every people, without exception to each of us,

Pope Francis said during the ceremony. None of us can say, I am holy, I am perfect,

I am already saved. Well, there's theology mattering for you. You have an implicit universalism, a denial of election, and then a denial of our being able to know that we've actually come to have peace with God, having been justified by faith in Jesus Christ.

That's a man who does not know the gospel. It's sad, but there is a man who doesn't know the gospel.

And the very fact that he's opening doors. The article goes on to say, traditionally, there are holy doors only in the four basilicas of Rome.

St. Peter's, St. John Lateran, St. Mary Major, and St. Paul outside the walls. Well, Paul's outside the walls in more ways than one.

But Pope Francis has rewritten the rules and said that every Catholic cathedral in the world may designate a holy door to be open for a year, so that even those who can't come to Rome can participate in the church's jubilee year of mercy by walking through the doors.

Well, isn't that special? Walking through doors will get you indulgences, will get you a deposit from the treasury of merit.

I don't know. I really doubt that Francis believes in the thesaurus meritorum.

I really don't. I think if he was pressed, he would talk about it in the sense of a, you know, a pious tradition.

Not like it really exists. But it was very, very important.

Very, very important. Real quickly, did you notice that, wow, time's going fast.

Did you notice that Brunei and Somalia both banned

Christmas? Brunei and Somalia both banned

Christmas. In reading the articles, both commented, both made the same point.

I'm not sure that people caught it. The reason that both of these

Muslim nations banned Christmas is because too many

Muslims enjoyed the holiday. In other words, it's dangerous to let people think about who

Jesus might have been. Now that tells me a lot about Islam.

It tells me a lot about the Islam in those nations. That it's weak. That it's incapable of defense.

And so you have to outlaw Now the

Christians are still allowed to celebrate Christmas inside their own homes. Inside their own churches. But they can't put any decorations outside.

Can't greet anybody. Can't say Merry Christmas. It's sort of like how

Democrats want things in the United States. Keep your religion inside your house, inside your brain, and inside your church.

So Somalia and Brunei can't do that stuff. Well the reasons

I think really is because they recognize that's dangerous for them. Remember Wajdi Akhadi?

I did a whole response to Wajdi a few years ago. And he became famous. Young guy.

Young firebrand Salafi. And he became famous for a video that he posted a couple years ago where he said that wishing someone

Merry Christmas was worse than murder. It's a form of shirk. And oh man.

What a nasty guy he is. He's terrible. He's horrible.

Actually he's just being consistent with his presuppositions. If shirk is an unforgivable sin and if the categories of shirk that have been laid down well certainly by Ibn Taymiyyah and hence in Wahhab and coming into the

Salafi movement from those sources he's right. He's right.

Most people don't understand what those sources are, what they're saying, what the issues are. But anyway.

So there you have the banning of Christmas. Now a good brother back east who

I will not mention A good brother back east sent in a

Facebook message. Now the only Facebook messages

I see are from my friends. And I only have, I think I have 123? I think it's total.

I keep my friends list to people I know. And I think that's a good thing and some people think that I should just friend everybody and I'm sorry it just doesn't work.

151 friends. But one of those 151 that narrows it down asked and I'm not sure if he's listening

Listening to the DL James will you be commenting at all on the recent article by John Piper on self defense and firearms?

Well most people in the world think I did. Because I could not believe how many people linked to my

July 1st 2008 fairly brief response to John Piper.

Now I cannot comment on what

John Piper said because I only read a few paragraphs of it. Sorry. It was long. And I'm going to be out of town most of January.

I'm going to be teaching at RTS in Charlotte elsewhere in Charlotte and then I go from there to the

G3 conference. I'm doing a pre -conference by the way a pre -conference seminar on Wednesday night before the

G3 starts on Thursday I think it starts on Thursday I think it's

Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Saturday morning. We're doing something unusual. There's normally not something about the conference on Wednesday but I'm flying in and I'm speaking on Roman Catholicism both

Wednesday night and then in Sunday school Sunday morning at the church there where the

G3 is hosted Cray Mills. So lots of stuff coming up.

And so the Piper thing really just didn't fit into the list of all the books

I need to be going through. Now I'm getting absolutely buried by someone on Twitter. Nice fellow but when he writes to me it just fills the screen.

I mean there's one, two, three, four, five, six in the past thirty seconds or so. One minute.

Yeah, I know. Anyway what

I looked at. I can only go on what

I looked at and here's what I would say. I went back and I did because I saw it being linked so many times.

I did go back and read what I wrote back in 2008. Like I said it was short.

Much shorter than the current post from John Piper. And my recollection was that what

Piper had said then was about personal self -defense in the home.

Defending your wife, your daughter, your children. And I said

I think we have a responsibility before God to engage in the defense of our loved ones against evil people in those situations.

And so as I read this next statement from Piper it started off not talking about that.

It started off actually talking about something that I am very concerned about myself.

And that is the the flippancy of the attitude of many

Christians in social media to the death primarily of Muslim people.

The flippancy well what Pastor Jeffrey said bomb the bleep out of ISIS.

Okay, go on go online, go to a news source overnight for us, daytime over there major Russian air raid many non -ISIS civilians men, women, and children dead.

Now war is hell as they say and you might just sit there and say well, hey that's what happens when you let

ISIS in. I'm not sure most of these people quote unquote let ISIS in but the point is as a

Christian I am concerned when I don't sense any disturbance on the part of people's hearts that these are individuals who have been given a false hope and a false gospel and are going into a

Christless eternity and are going to face a holy God without the righteousness of Jesus Christ. I don't get any sense that there is any recognition on their part that this is a bad thing.

And so it seemed to me now again I only start right at the start it seemed to me and if this continued then this would make all the difference in the world but it seemed to me that what he was saying is we as Christians should not have ever have a flippant attitude toward the taking of a human life.

Whether it's 7 ,000 miles from here or 7 meters shouldn't make any difference and I fully understand that.

It does not change the fact that if an

ISIS fighter is manning a .50 caliber machine gun and a rocket takes him out he made the choice to do that.

He made the choice to engage in that militaristic activity and those choices have ramifications.

In the same way if I'm awoken in the middle of night to someone bashing in the bedroom window with a bat as I said back in 2008 and this has not changed if you make that decision to attack someone's home with a weapon you will be dispatched to eternity and I will feel badly that evil has won in that person's life but I will not feel badly that I did something wrong because that's my responsibility.

I would feel very badly if I did not live up to my responsibilities. So I don't know if he said anything,

I mean he stood against it, he said I'll never have a weapon. Well, I disagree on that level but I don't know that he got into that later on.

I didn't have time to read all of it. But and I hope you realize if you did read my response that was to something back in 2008 not to whatever it is that he commented on yesterday that I simply have not yet had the time to actually read all of it because it seemed like it was a fairly lengthy statement but if it went from that feeling that I've had recently a lot of Christians are like well we'll show them what for the

John Wayne thing, sorry, I don't see how that's defensible.

But if it moved from there to an even more extreme position of saying we should never defend ourselves or if there was to be a jihadist attack, so on and so forth that's a totally different thing and what

I said back in 2008 would remain valid in regards to that as well. Next time we get together we need to continue, we have so many things going on I do want to at some point talk about rapper

Jahaziel never heard of him before but he's renounced Christianity and I would like to look at his reasons for doing so and we need to continue responding to Wael Ibrahim, we need to continue looking at I know

I've got two other series and I'm bad about doing this, you know, it's rabbit trails I know,

I know, but we do our best I do hope and pray you will have a blessed time if you observe the holiday with your family, remembering what

God has done in Jesus Christ and next week, Lord willing, we'll be back, we'll see you then,