Road Trip DL: Thomas' Theology, Then Quotations from Rosaria Butterfield's New Book

Alpha & Omega Ministries

Subscribe

Download

Share

10

Comments are disabled.

00:32

Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line.

00:34

It's good to have you with us.

00:35

I need to mute that thing.

00:37

There we go.

00:38

I have to do like four things all at once and I just don't have enough fingers.

00:42

And right as we were getting started, a train went by.

00:47

It's the song of the KOA.

00:49

The song of the KOA.

00:50

It's either semi-tractor trailers going by within 50 yards of you, which I've been to a lot of KOAs like that.

00:59

Or it's train tracks and we've got train tracks real nearby here and it's loud.

01:06

It was competing with the music.

01:10

Or airport and the Amarillo KOA, it's trains and airport.

01:15

The freeway is not close enough to hear any trucks.

01:18

So you have to trade things.

01:21

And I guess they set a record for the high temperature in September yesterday while I was setting up.

01:31

Perfect.

01:33

And today it's not going to be as hot, upper 90s, but I sort of feel like I'm at sea right now.

01:42

It'd be blowing, but it's blowing from the perfect direction.

01:46

And you might go, perfect direction? Yeah, it's coming in.

01:50

Basically, this is the front end.

01:52

So it's coming in this direction.

01:54

So the slide outs are over here.

01:56

So the toppers are protected mainly from the wind on that side.

02:00

But it's still pretty much coming from the front.

02:02

So yeah, we're rocking and rolling.

02:05

But if it was coming directly from the side, then we'd really be rocking and rolling.

02:09

It's just the RV life.

02:11

And so it's a road trip DL.

02:13

And that's the way things are.

02:16

And so there you go.

02:20

Try to get this set up for when I come out.

02:24

Come on, do the right thing for me, please.

02:26

Thank you.

02:28

And get two things.

02:31

Today on the program, well, real quickly, last night, really very enjoyable opportunity to get together with a bunch of folks here in Amarillo.

02:40

It's, as I said, after the event last night, you know, I come through here all the time.

02:47

I mean, this has got to be my sixth, seventh time, maybe eighth time here in Amarillo.

02:53

I posted a picture.

02:56

I looked out this window right here after checkout time because I'm staying here two nights and there's nothing.

03:04

It's post-apocalyptic nothing.

03:07

All the grass is dead.

03:10

There's nobody out there.

03:11

It just looks like everything got wiped out.

03:13

And so it's not the garden spot of the United States and not the garden spot of KOA's.

03:20

But hey, everything's always worked.

03:22

You know, there's always, I've never had any problems at this KOA.

03:26

All the electricity works and the water works and they have you all set up and that's all the best you can ask for.

03:34

Right.

03:35

So anyways, I come through here all the time and now it's nice to have a connection.

03:39

We're going to have dinner tonight with some of the elders and families from some of the churches and stuff.

03:43

I'm looking forward to that.

03:45

And so I'm still like, well, hey, if you guys want to do stuff, I-40, you're on the other side of New Mexico, which means literally, check it out sometime.

03:59

You're driving across I-40 in New Mexico and you cross the border and you go from getting bounced all over the place and dodging potholes and everything else to smooth roads.

04:13

It's just like you're in Texas now and they actually take care of their roads.

04:19

So I come through here all the time.

04:22

I said, you might get bored with me, but let's do stuff.

04:26

If the interest is here and there's folks here.

04:28

I had a lady, I asked the audience last night, I said, so anybody here know Sheologians? My daughter, Summer, in a program called Sheologians.

04:41

And a lady very excitedly was waving and I'm like, all right, great.

04:45

That's awesome.

04:46

She came up to me afterwards and I found out that she's a part of that church now because of Sheologians.

04:54

She had been in one of Summer's book club meetings.

04:58

They have this, they read these books and talk about them and stuff.

05:00

And somehow through that had been directed to the founders website to look for a church.

05:09

And that's how they found that church.

05:11

And they ended up moving just to be a part of that church.

05:15

And I was like, that's really cool.

05:18

It's amazing how connections get made and stuff like that.

05:24

I think it's awesome.

05:25

So like I said, good evening last evening, encouraging people about reliability of scripture presentation I've done many, many times.

05:33

Didn't get through all of it, but through enough to hopefully to be helpful to folks.

05:37

And so from here to Pennsylvania, it's just straight through.

05:43

I'm not speaking anywhere.

05:44

I'm just, I've just got fairly long days.

05:47

Got to get across the United States, the rest of the way across the United States and get settled in prior to events there in Mannheim and the debate coming up with Gregory Coles on a subject we'll be talking about today, which hopefully you can forgive me for that.

06:07

I mean, I don't do it as much now as I used to, but some of you old folks like Algo and everybody who wants to be Algo will remember that, for example, when preparing for the debate with Dr.

06:23

Price or with Bart Ehrman or John Dominic Crossan, we do entire programs on pretty esoteric, narrow topics that were part of the study that I was doing in preparation for those debates.

06:41

And so my mind right now has to be on the subject of homosexuality and side B arguments, gay Christianity, and the unique formulation that comes with the particular individual that I'll be debating, who identifies himself as a sexual minority, identifies himself as being part of the LGBTQ community as a gay Christian, as a person leading worship and speaking from the pulpit of evangelical churches.

07:19

And there's a lot that goes into that.

07:22

There's a lot of background to that.

07:23

And so that's where my mind is right now.

07:25

So I'm gonna have some comments about something else at the beginning.

07:29

And then what I want to do is I want to look at some of the things that I have marked in Rosaria Butterfield's new book, which comes out in four days.

07:40

And as normal, I'm behind the times.

07:47

Lo and behold, if you buy the book, you'll find an endorsement on it from my daughter who read it long before I did.

07:56

So yeah, I'm just getting used to being behind on things.

08:00

In fact, one of the topics I was just reading Rosaria's material, Intersectionality, and I have confessed more than once that I, when I first heard the term, had no idea what it was about.

08:11

And I found out from my daughter.

08:13

She had been dealing with it long before I had.

08:15

And oh, so that's, that's a weird idea.

08:19

So anyway, we'll talk about that toward the end.

08:23

But what I wanted to do, and just along these lines, and then after the conference there in Mannheim, and you can, the information is on our website, you can link on that if you want to attend.

08:43

There's a whole conference associated with that.

08:45

And you'd be welcome to, the Gospel at War is the title.

08:50

And you'd be more than welcome to be a part of that if you're in that particular area.

08:56

And then obviously after that, in fact, that Sunday, I preached that morning and then jumped straight back in the truck and head out because I made a mistake in looking at dates and stuff like that.

09:11

Thankfully, Chris Arntzen caught it for me.

09:13

And to get from Pennsylvania to Atlanta in time to be ready for the morning sessions on Wednesday, I thought it was Thursday.

09:24

I have to, that Sunday is going to be a long, long day.

09:29

I'll be driving with, with nice clothes on because as soon as I'm done preaching, it's like, thanks.

09:36

See you later.

09:37

Bye.

09:37

Could I have a sandwich as I'm going out the door? Because I've got to scoot that day to be able to get that far in, in only two days.

09:47

So anyway, heading to G3.

09:51

So the, Wednesday is the pre-conference sponsored by Grace Bible Theological Seminary.

10:00

And I'll be one of the speakers in that.

10:02

And then there'll be Q&A and there'll be a lot of discussion about eschatology and all sorts of things like that, I'm sure.

10:11

And then, I haven't mentioned this, but I saw someone on Twitter, by the way, was writing about the things that she intends, she's looking forward to at G3.

10:27

And one of the things was going to the AO Min booth and giving that guy fashion tips.

10:33

First of all, guys don't need fashion tips.

10:37

That's, that's, I'm not going to say that.

10:40

Nevermind.

10:44

We don't need fashion tips.

10:45

But one thing she said was meeting spouses, meeting the wives of some of the speakers and stuff.

10:54

And this will be the first G3 where my wife will be in attendance.

11:00

And so if you come by the AO Min booth, my intention is that my beloved will be with me.

11:09

We've been married for 41 years.

11:12

No, you do not get to ask her all sorts of questions about what it's like to be married to James White, but you will discover the truth of what I've said many, many times.

11:22

And that is, at some point in our history, she got me to sign an agreement where I do all the aging for the couple.

11:32

I've had many people who knew Kelly years and years ago, make the same comment.

11:39

She looks the same as she did years and years ago.

11:41

And it's true.

11:43

So that's all due to me because I'm the one that's fallen apart and she still looks great.

11:49

So anyways, she will be with me.

11:52

And so especially I think some of the ladies might want to greet her and say hello.

12:00

And the other thing you do is everybody wants to take pictures.

12:05

So if you want to take a picture with Kelly, you can say that you have taken a picture with Summer's mom.

12:13

So all the Sheologians fans, you can take pictures with Kelly and go, see, that's Summer's mom.

12:20

And there might be some value to that.

12:23

And she also is willing to sign my books.

12:28

I guess she figures, hey, I had to take care of stuff while he was writing all these things.

12:32

So I might as well sign them.

12:34

And it might be worth more on eBay someday than if you did it otherwise.

12:40

So yeah, that's possible.

12:43

So yeah, Kelly will be with me at G3 on Thursday and Friday.

12:51

I think she heads back on Saturday, if I recall correctly.

12:55

So looking forward to that.

12:58

And then I will be doing a mini conference, again, on the Reliability to Scripture on the way back in Louisiana as well.

13:06

But I've got to get back.

13:09

And then the following Friday or Saturday is when we have our big 40th anniversary celebration.

13:17

I don't know anything about what's happening at it.

13:20

And that's been purposeful and that's fine with me.

13:23

All I know is I have to clean up my office before that weekend, which will be tough because honestly, I've got piles of books and no place to put them out of shelf space.

13:34

So I'm not sure what we're going to do about that.

13:37

But we'll figure something out to try to make it look at least semi-organized when people come traipsing through to check it out during the celebration.

13:47

So 40 years of God's faithfulness and putting up with us and using us in ways we could never, ever have imagined.

13:58

And this subject, the debate that I'm going to be doing.

14:01

Let me, let me guarantee you one thing.

14:07

When Kelly and I and Mike and Linda Beliveau got together in Kelly and I were living in my parents, we were so young, 19 and 18.

14:24

I was still in college and was making a tiny amount of money working at a radio station.

14:30

And we had, we made a little apartment out of the garage.

14:34

And that's where we started Alpha and Omega Ministries.

14:41

You know, I had, I had the Journal of Discourses, a really bad photocopied tract.

14:47

It was really bad.

14:49

And that's, that's where we started.

14:52

And if anybody had told us then that A, this was going to last for 40 years, this could be the main thing I would do.

15:02

B, it Durban, South Africa, or spending months in London and stuff like that.

15:15

Wouldn't have believed them.

15:17

But especially if they had told me that some of the major stuff we'd be doing 40 years down the road would have to do with transgenderism and gay Christianity.

15:32

I think it's good that the Lord doesn't let us know the future.

15:35

I think it's, I think it's good the Lord doesn't let us know what the future is going to be, because I don't know what I would have thought about that.

15:43

And I don't know then when you're younger that you have the maturity to go, the Lord will provide maturity, resources, everything you need when you need it, but not before.

15:56

And that's certainly what he has, what he has done.

15:59

So yeah, big trip, big trip.

16:04

I'll be honest with you, I'm glad I'm not driving in this.

16:07

Like I said, the wind is, she's a whipping right now.

16:11

And I've had good success with this unit.

16:17

The truck the Lord has provided is just bulletproof.

16:23

And everywhere I go, everywhere I go, I get compliments on that truck.

16:30

I really do.

16:31

It's just amazing.

16:31

I was walking into a pilot, a pilot, flying J pilot, you know, those folks, they very often have a RV lane.

16:42

And that's so much easier than using car lanes.

16:46

And in fact, probably tomorrow for the first time, I'm going to use one of the diesel lanes.

16:50

I just, it's just so much easier.

16:52

They've got DEF there.

16:54

DEF, for those of you who don't know, diesel exhaust fluid.

16:58

I didn't know anything about that until we got this truck either, but that's, that's one of the things you got to do.

17:04

And I was, I was walking into use the restroom while the truck's filling up.

17:11

And this trucker comes over to me.

17:14

I mean, he's, his, his rig is over there filling up.

17:18

And he comes over and starts asking me about, about my truck.

17:22

He says, man, I've been trying to find one of these things.

17:24

And tell me about this, tell me about that.

17:26

And everywhere I go, man, what a rig, what a rig.

17:29

That's just awesome.

17:30

And Lord provided it to us.

17:32

The whole story about it is pure providence.

17:34

It really is.

17:36

So thankful to the young man who on a dare, I found out later on, gave me his business card in Louisiana and said, if you ever need a truck.

17:46

And when we decided that we needed a diesel just simply for safety and everything else, he was there.

17:52

And that's, that's how we got, got the truck.

17:54

And a dear friend of the ministry is what made it possible because trucks today are not cheap.

18:00

And you may recall, we did not do a fundraiser for a truck.

18:04

We did a fundraiser for this unit and for this studio, but not for the truck because a dear, dear friend made that possible for us to be able to get that.

18:17

That truck and this unit fit each other perfectly and handles wind really well, but still you get a 40 mile an hour crosswind.

18:31

And let's just say it's, it's not restful driving.

18:35

You're, you're, you're exhausted by the time you get where you're going.

18:39

Especially if you have to pass people or if they're passing you, because some trucks are just doing this, this number and they're not staying in their lane.

18:49

And, and there goes the Southern Pacific now.

18:54

I don't know if you could hear that or not, but it's anyways, just, just part of RVing.

19:01

All right, let's get to the important stuff.

19:04

So again, one of the things I do while traveling is I listen to books and I listen to presentations.

19:10

And last week Reform Forum posted a discussion.

19:19

I'm thankful they limit how long their, their things are so you can actually get through them.

19:24

Posted a discussion with Lane Tipton.

19:26

He had just finished recording a class on Thomas Aquinas.

19:36

And so it was an hour long discussion of issues relating to Thomas Aquinas.

19:41

Okay, Lane Tipton's beautiful, beautiful, brilliant guy.

19:47

I don't know if I have to ask his wife if he's beautiful or not, but brilliant guy.

19:52

And I've, I've benefited a lot from the stuff that's been on Reform Forum and things like that.

20:04

There was a specific point that he made that I want to focus on that was a point that I have made repeatedly.

20:13

And it's good to hear somebody else emphasizing this.

20:16

That's what I want to focus on.

20:18

But before the positive, I, I just have to, I have to say something unfortunately that's, that's negative.

20:34

And so I will take the personal, when we talk about personal things, I can know.

20:44

At least once, maybe twice during the conversation, Dr.

20:51

Tipton made reference to Biblicist Sosinians.

21:00

This is a, this is phraseology that we've been hearing a lot of for a while.

21:11

And it was extremely disappointing.

21:18

I do not understand why men that are committed to Sola Scriptura and to biblical sufficiency, why so many are willing to immediately embrace a definition of Biblicism that is so wildly negative, wildly inaccurate when applied to almost anybody.

21:51

It just, it would seem to me that they would want to be the first ones to step up and say, hey, there is a good and proper understanding of Biblicism.

22:04

And we're not talking about people out under a tree by themselves, their Bible and thinking that they can, you know, the Spirit of God has not been active for 2000 years in the church until they came along and they can't learn anything from people who came before them.

22:18

By the way, half the time what you learn from reading, for example, Early Church Fathers is what to avoid, not necessarily what to do.

22:29

There's just, there's so much stuff.

22:33

I mean, I read on the Dividing Line, I read the sort of numerology where the, uh, combined with all great men die on the day they were conceived, uh, mythology and things like that.

22:50

This is, you, you learn that someone from whom you can still learn so much, like an Augustine, was really wrong about a lot of things.

23:01

And from that, you learn why we should do similar things or why we should make sure that we're not, uh, embracing some kind of, well, it's a given.

23:13

We all know that, that, uh, people, uh, die, the great men die on the day they were conceived.

23:21

Why do we know this? And we have to make sure that we haven't bought into, uh, silly things like that, that we think are givens.

23:33

Well, everybody knows that.

23:35

Really? Why does everybody know that? So you can learn a lot of these types of things.

23:39

Um, but back to this biblicism stuff.

23:44

Uh, I don't understand, uh, why people would adopt the most negative, uh, definition of what could be and what should be and what is a very positive term.

24:03

I mean, it, we literally have really smart people saying we need to be biblical.

24:10

We need to be, um, uh, we need to affirm the sufficiency of the Bible.

24:21

But then when you slightly change the utilization of the term, we can't be biblicists.

24:29

You can be biblical, but not a biblicist.

24:32

What's this silly? Where did this come from? I don't get it.

24:37

I don't get it at all.

24:38

And I think one of the reasons I respond so much to it is that, you know, I'm regularly dealing with Roman Catholicism and regularly dealing with people who deny biblical sufficiency and add external sources to scripture as necessary to be able to properly understand scripture.

24:57

Um, I won't go into some of the stuff going on in Twitter right now on that very issue.

25:02

Um, but maybe it's because I've seen and dealt with so many people who've been moving away from a trust in the sufficiency of holy scripture that I'm really sensitive to why people would do this.

25:21

Maybe it's because so many of these really smart guys, they just don't get out much and they don't, they don't get their hands dirty with this kind of thing.

25:31

There's been more than once in scholarly settings, people said, yeah, James, you, you, you go get those and then fill in the blank.

25:37

The Muslims, the Mormons, the King James only as the Unitarians, whatever.

25:41

We're right behind you.

25:42

Ha ha ha ha ha.

25:43

Which is their nice way of saying, yeah, you're a weirdo, but Hey, go do your thing.

25:48

Uh, maybe it's part of all that.

25:51

I don't know, but that mystifies me and it offends me, but much worse is associating the term Biblicist with Sosinian.

26:06

If you know anything about the history of Sosinianism, if you know anything about the, the books that made real, real impact, uh, the catechism that, that was passed around by Sosinians and the fact that for a long time, Sosinian and Unitarian were used interchangeably in the 18, 1800s, 1900s in English speaking, in English speaking West, Sosinian and Unitarian were, were, were synonymous.

26:48

So when you're calling someone a Sosinian, I realize the really smart guys think that what they're doing is, well, the Sosinians were Biblicist.

26:57

You see, they were, they, they, they said you should only express things in Biblical language.

27:01

That's not actually true.

27:03

It wasn't actually true about the Aryans either.

27:07

Um, there was in Sosinianism, there was a right reason.

27:13

And that right reason began with a fundamental rejection of the possibility of the triune nature of God.

27:22

But it was right reason.

27:23

If you'd read the scripture with right reason.

27:27

And so almost all the cult groups and heterodox groups that want to make room for some new perspective or reviving an ancient perspective, or something like they'll come up with new scriptures, Mormonism, new authorities, Watchtower, Ramblin' with Jack Society.

27:46

And in their case, then you, you had to have, you had to use right reason in the interpretation of the Bible.

27:55

But they were not Biblicists like I would be a Biblicist.

28:02

Um, they were Unitarians.

28:04

They were anti-Trinitarians and I'm sorry, I find it highly offensive and absolutely destructive of anyone's credibility.

28:15

Um, to look at me and, and use the term Sosinian.

28:21

Now, I don't know that Lane Tipton had me in mind.

28:23

I certainly hope not.

28:25

That'd be just as bad as when other smart people have done the same thing.

28:28

And they did have me in mind.

28:30

Um, but it, it is just, it's lazy.

28:38

It's lazy language.

28:40

It's a lazy way for smart people to dismiss others without investing the energy to be specific in what the criticisms are.

28:51

And so I would just like to, once again, highly recommend, um, to the smart people, don't use insulting, slanderous language that just allows you to be lazy.

29:07

Just stop it.

29:09

Be accurate.

29:10

And if you're going to name, if you're going to go after certain people, name names.

29:14

That would be a wise thing to do.

29:17

So, um, with that said, what I definitely appreciated, um, in the discussion was that Dr.

29:30

Tipton strongly asserted what I have repeatedly said over the past year and a half of the great Reformed Baptist Thomistic controversy, whatever else we want to call it.

29:50

And what is that? He said that if you, if you understand Thomas's theology and the interrelatedness of his concepts and the, the consistency of his worldview, which would include the consistency of a deep influence upon his theology and philosophy, not only of Aristotle, but of a number of medieval concepts that none of us would accept today.

30:35

And some people would say, we, maybe we should, we should go back to certain medieval concepts.

30:43

If you, if you recognize how interconnected and consistent Thomas's entire theology is, then you recognize that his theology proper doctrine of God is intimately connected with and cannot be separated from his ecclesiology and especially his sacramentology.

31:15

I have said this from the start.

31:18

There have been many who have said, oh, you can, we can, you know, you'll agree with 81% or what was it? 86%, 81%.

31:30

I don't forget what, was that Craig Kerner? I forget who it was, came up with that number.

31:36

You'll agree with this percentage of, of Thomas Aquinas and blah, blah, blah, blah.

31:45

And I am no expert on Thomas and I, I would be crushed if God ever called me to engage in such a thing.

31:54

He's been merciful to me.

31:57

I find reading Thomas Aquinas a soul shriveling and drying experience.

32:03

Okay.

32:03

I just don't find anything.

32:08

His, the whole style, the whole approach just bores me to tears and I, I get nothing of a benefit out of it.

32:21

So I have no desire to do any of those things, but you have to read certain amounts of things to graduate from certain programs and schools and so on and so forth.

32:33

And in that process, it was very obvious to me that the first person who would have objected to the idea of, well, we can do this with Thomas on the doctrine of God while we just completely ignore the absolute centrality of the sacrament of the mass transubstantiation to his, not only his experience, but his entire system of thought.

33:09

He would have sent the Dominicans after you, which in those days was a really bad thing.

33:18

If anyone even suggested that that would be an appropriate thing to do.

33:22

And yet that's what all these new big fans of Thomas are saying we can do.

33:28

You don't have to worry about that stuff.

33:30

Who cares all the mystical stuff? And who cares when you read his commentaries, how often, you know, Mary will pop in or, you know, when we looked at, at Romans four, where he just completely misses the clear, obvious presentation of justification by faith by importing Rome's definitions of sin and mortal sin and venial sin, all the rest of this kind of stuff.

33:55

People say, who cares about any of that? None of that matters.

34:00

We can, we can just do the theology proper thing.

34:04

And Thomas would have had to burn the stake for making such an argument because he would go, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, don't, don't you see the interconnectedness there? And so when I heard Dr.

34:15

Tipton talking about if you're going to be honest with Thomas, then you're going to have to be honest with all of Thomas.

34:25

I'm just like, yeah, that's true.

34:30

That's, that's what you got to do.

34:33

And I don't, thankfully don't hear these guys saying, you know, we really ought to, we, we really ought to look at our Protestant or let's be more specific, Reformed Baptist doctrine of the supper.

34:55

And we should try to enrich our understanding in light of Thomas's deep insights.

35:07

And I simply say, why aren't you saying that? What's the logical reason why you would just be so excited about theology, about theology proper from Thomas, but not sacramentology proper from Thomas? Why? And the reason is obvious.

35:31

It's because you're acting like a Biblicalist.

35:35

You are, you are testing what he says in that area.

35:40

And you think the scripture is clear enough to speak to those areas.

35:47

Meanwhile, the Dominicans are licking their chops going, you just keep on reading and we'll get as many of our scholars books into your, into your Baptist seminaries as possible, because we know what the result eventually will be.

36:06

And we will welcome those young men into our midst with open arms.

36:12

And they already are.

36:16

And there'll be at least one person out here going, I told you so.

36:21

I tried to warn you.

36:23

I tried to explain these things.

36:28

Yeah.

36:28

So there you go.

36:29

All right.

36:31

Shifting gears here.

36:34

I mentioned the top of the program.

36:38

I am reading a book that's not out yet, but it will be soon.

36:42

And I hope you've already put it on pre-order so that it will, it could, I don't know, maybe they're already starting to arrive and we're talking about the eighth and it's due out on the 12th.

36:53

But it is Rosario Butterfield's new book, Five Lies.

36:58

And Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age is what it's called.

37:05

And as I mentioned, Summer got to it before I did, and I think wrote an endorsement for it.

37:13

So I'm working through it for the obvious reason that when Jeff Neal and I wrote Same Sex Controversy in 2000, 2001, much of the current language being used, side A, side B, affirming, much of the language of gender identity had yet to be fully developed or just wasn't in wide use at that time.

37:51

I know that Jeff included material in some of his chapters and in an appendix that, looking backwards now, was anticipating a lot of this kind of thought.

38:09

But I remember thinking at the time, the number of books that were coming out, that I had to read in preparation for the writing of that book, and then they just kept coming out during the writing of the book.

38:22

And then I tried to keep up for a while.

38:25

I've read, I've read more books from the other side on this subject than almost any other topic.

38:30

It's depressing, I'll admit.

38:35

You can't keep up with it all.

38:36

I don't think anybody could read it all.

38:38

It would be incredibly spiritually damaging if you tried.

38:44

There's only so much of this that you can really deal with, I think, and survive.

38:52

So M.D.

38:55

Perkins, his books, Dangerous Affirmation, one of them from AFA, been very helpful.

39:02

And I have requested, I think Cumberland Valley Bible Bookstore is going to be providing books, a book table there.

39:11

And I've asked that they would have, I hope they'll be able to have Rosaria's new book and those books by Brother Perkins for people to have something to take with them.

39:24

Because I would imagine Dr.

39:26

Coles will have their books there as well.

39:30

And so it's been helpful to be able to read people who are in this field and have been keeping up with the developments more than I've been able to keep up with developments and specifically the people.

39:48

Because there's been just a plethora of organizations and people that have popped up.

40:00

And in my experience, look at what happened with Brandon Robertson.

40:06

You may recall when Jeff Neal and I did a program recently with Brandon Robertson.

40:11

And I had started talking about Robertson when he first hit the, and he was very young, early twenties when he first popped up.

40:22

And I heard him speaking and I said to myself then, and I said on the dividing line, he's not going to remain orthodox given what he's saying.

40:35

He's not going to remain orthodox.

40:36

I can just tell.

40:38

I haven't used the transcript function yet at aomin.org to see when I first addressed that.

40:44

I should do that because I'd like to know when it was.

40:50

But the problem is that you'll get these people that will start off trying to be orthodox and trying to remain orthodox.

41:02

And then they don't stay there.

41:04

I mean, look at Matthew Vines has developed.

41:07

In other words, moved left.

41:11

Brandon Robertson has moved so far left that if he was an airplane, he'd have two left wings.

41:21

So you can spend the time to figure out where somebody is in 2018.

41:30

And by 2021, there's someplace completely else.

41:35

And this has also happened to some of these organizations.

41:38

They start off with certain affirmations and certain positions, and then they don't tend to go right.

41:46

They tend to go left over time and things like that.

41:51

So it's tough to keep up.

41:53

I certainly would never fault anyone for going, well, I don't know the difference between Justin Lee and Brandon Robertson and Gregory Coles and Preston Sprinkle and all these other folks that are with one ministry for a while and then they're with another ministry.

42:13

And it's definitely moving targets everywhere is the problem.

42:21

So anyway, I got in touch with Rosaria and she told me about her book.

42:32

And I was able to start reading it in PDF format.

42:37

Not my favorite way of doing things, but it's also convenient, especially when traveling and things like that.

42:43

I want to just look at some of the things that I have outlined, just make some comments about them because again, this is just what I'm reading and may be useful.

42:58

Sorry, when you hear noise sound like they're right outside your door, you got to sort of check and I can't see what that noise is, but it's going to bother me, but I will try to ignore it for now.

43:22

Wow, that sounds like someone's trying to cut off the back of my unit or something like that here.

43:29

That's, never heard that sound before.

43:31

It literally sounds like a saw.

43:33

So I'm not sure what's going on outside, but we'll just press on.

43:38

It's live folks.

43:39

That's the only way we can do it is it's live.

43:46

The five lies that she lists, let me go through those with you first.

43:52

Lie number one, homosexuality is normal.

43:56

Homosexuality is normal.

43:58

That is the first lie that she makes reference to.

44:03

Lie number two, being a spiritual person is kinder than being a biblical Christian.

44:12

Lie number two, being a spiritual person is kinder than being a biblical Christian.

44:19

Lie number three, feminism is good for the world and the church.

44:24

Feminism is good for the world and for the church.

44:28

Number four, there it is.

44:33

Transgenderism is normal, at least for some people.

44:37

Transgenderism is normal, at least for some people.

44:44

And where did number five go? Number five, modesty is an outdated burden that serves male dominance and holds women back.

44:56

That's a pretty wide range of assertions and topics there, to be sure.

45:04

The first lie, this is what I have marked.

45:09

I'll read it to you.

45:12

Included in this lie is the belief that homosexual orientation is true and immutable, fixed and never changing.

45:20

Homosexual orientation, a 19th century Freudian invention, Sigmund Freud, 1856 to 1939, is an unbiblical category of personhood and an antagonist to the creation ordinance because it redefines sinful desire as something that defines who you are rather than how you feel.

45:43

Lie number one claims that the word of God doesn't apply to homosexual orientation because homosexual orientation represents a person's core truth.

45:53

Some professing Christians believe that homosexual orientation is fixed, immutable, meaning unchangeable, and part of God's creational and eternal plan.

46:04

Did you catch that? Some believe that it's part of God's creational and eternal plan.

46:10

Some people believe that homosexuality is embedded in a person's identity.

46:17

Well this is central, sorry, this is central to the thesis of Dr.

46:26

Cole's position as well.

46:30

So obviously Rosaria Butterfield is saying the foundation of the gay Christian movement, which includes homosexual orientation, it's being innate, immutable, can't be changed.

46:50

This is one of the lies that is being told in our day and I think that's vitally important.

46:59

At the end of that section she says, but if you exchange the creator for the creature you impose God's attributes on man.

47:09

When we hear homosexual orientation is fixed and immutable it never changes.

47:14

This is only imaginable in a world that has already exchanged the worship of the creator for the worship of the creature of God for an idol.

47:22

Gay Christians, an oxymoron if there ever was one, teach that you can't repent of who you are, how you feel, or even what you desire.

47:34

They believe that homosexual orientation is morally neutral, separate from one's sin nature, cannot be repented of, and rarely changes over a person's lifetime.

47:46

This is a lie.

47:50

Well that gives you an idea of how this book would be, is exceptionally relevant to the topic of the debate.

48:03

After she lists them she has a section called lies I believed even as a Christian.

48:10

I want to confess right at the outset that I believed all of these lies as an unbeliever but I continue to believe some of them for years into my Christian life.

48:20

Because I know how sneaky and seductive each of these lies is, I needed to write this book.

48:25

I woke up to realize that I was on the field running the ball in the wrong direction and wearing the wrong team colors.

48:34

So in other words Rosaria is admitting that there were, and she says in this book, there's a point where she quotes something that she wrote in nine years ago and says this is one of the most deceived things I ever said as a Christian.

48:55

So here she's saying I'm still growing, I'm still learning, and you know just because I was a gender studies professor, lesbian, so on and so forth that doesn't make me an expert in everything and I still need to learn that there were aspects that even after salvation continued to impact me.

49:23

And I appreciate that honesty.

49:28

She says for example, and this was something that we did discuss on this program a number of years ago because a certain well-known individual was attacking her and trying to warn about her and so on and so forth and I contacted her, talked with her about these things and she had made this switch already at that point in time.

49:57

Gender dysphoria versus transgenderism and the pronoun question.

50:03

For years even as a Christian I used and defended what is called preferred pronouns.

50:08

This means that for those who were diagnosed as gender dysphoric or those who viewed themselves as transgendered, I willingly used the pronoun she to refer to a biological man and the pronoun he to refer to a biological female.

50:23

I falsely believed that this would aid and abet my ability to bring the gospel to bear on these people's lives.

50:30

I failed to distinguish between an illness, gender dysphoria, and an ideology, transgenderism.

50:37

I falsely believed that this would be missional, there's a new term, new in the sense of the past what 15 years maybe, I falsely believed this would be missional, exemplifying a gracious willingness to meet a person where she was, step into her shoes, and do nothing to escalate the anxiety of an emotionally unstable person.

51:03

And perhaps before preferred pronouns were coded into federal law the danger and clarity of the situation wasn't as evident.

51:12

Well I remember a long conversation we had on the phone that is reflected in what comes after this.

51:21

My reason for changing my mind can be stated in two words, Obergefell and Bostock.

51:28

Because of these two landmark Supreme Court cases, the former establishing gay marriage and the latter LGBTQ plus civil rights, we are no longer discussing terminology or vocabulary, rather we are talking about ideology and idolatry, which must be confronted in the case the former and killed in the latter.

51:51

After Bostock we have hundreds of pediatric gender clinics in the U.S.

51:56

when we used to have one.

51:58

After Bostock we have government schools putting LGBTQ plus propaganda into anti-bullying programs, where parents cannot exercise authority over their child by removing the child from them, that is those programs.

52:11

After Bostock we have ROGD, Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, and nothing short of mass hysteria capturing the minds of our teenage girls.

52:22

Once again if you haven't read it, irreparable damage, need to read the book, especially if you're a father.

52:31

ROGD, Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, brought on by public schooling, YouTube, TikTok, and the like.

52:42

Christians must read the times.

52:44

The gospel has been on a collision course with homosexual orientation and gender identity for about a decade, and the collision made impact in 2015 and 2020.

52:54

During war, borders close.

52:57

One border that must be closed to actual Christians is using people's preferred pronouns.

53:05

She says, I have sinned in using transgender pronouns and claiming it as hospitable.

53:13

Well, you can see how unpopular she's going to be with a large swath.

53:20

I mentioned to you before, and you can, you can do it.

53:25

Watch the exact same interview.

53:29

If you put Gregory Coles with an s, interview.

53:35

One of the first ones that will come up is an interview from fairly recently from a church, I believe in California.

53:47

It drove me crazy because the pastor, there's no pushback, there's no critical thought, nothing.

53:58

But anyway, uh, listen to that interview and you will see exactly what Rosario is talking about and exactly why she's willing to make herself unpopular.

54:14

She says, I have sinned in using gender pronouns and transgender pronouns and claiming it as hospitable.

54:20

I have come to see my use of preferred pronouns today as sin, pure and simple.

54:25

Not only is it lying to people who are already being lied to by the world, but it also falsifies the gospel imperative of the creation ordinance with its eternal binary of being created in the image of God as male and female and the command to live out that image bearing and to live out that image bearing within God assigned sexual roles.

54:53

So what have we said from the start here is the, the, from the first time that we address this issue and I played, uh, Albury's, uh, comments about this and gospel hospitality and that kind of stuff.

55:17

What was, what was our first assertion from the very beginning? Our language has to be based in God's world.

55:26

God created this world, God created language.

55:29

And what we're experiencing is a fundamental attack upon language itself, the ability to communicate, the ability to have any type of objective meaning within language.

55:39

Now, look, uh, I've studied six, seven different languages.

55:47

And so I know for example, that our English language is not nearly as specific as many of the languages.

55:57

There are lots of languages in the West and elsewhere where gender specificity is, you can't get rid of it.

56:07

You'd have to completely change the language more so than just going from he, him to ze, zur, because verbs are, uh, verbs and participles and gender can be assigned and be indicated in various languages in various ways.

56:28

It's just, it's built into the system.

56:30

You can't get, you can't get away from it.

56:33

And so I know that it's not so as simple as just going, well, it's the English language.

56:39

We can't change the English language.

56:40

And someone goes, well, the English language has changed a great deal.

56:44

It's changed a great deal in my lifetime.

56:47

Well, there's truth to that, but we're talking about making statements about what reality is.

56:58

And so you look at Bruce Jenner, uh, you look at the Admiral, uh, in the Biden regime, you look at the former army helicopter pilot guy that was on the Dr.

57:16

Drew show with me.

57:17

And then a few weeks later with Ben Shapiro and threatened to beat him up in a nice deep manly voice.

57:24

Um, you look at someone like that and you give into their, uh, demands.

57:34

You are fundamentally denying the objective reality of what language is, is pointing us to.

57:40

And you can excuse that by saying, Oh, I'm just being, you know, I'm being gospel hospitable.

57:48

I'm just not trying to put an extra burden in someone's way.

57:51

What you're doing is you're affirming them in their self-deception and you are offending the God who made them as a male or a female.

58:02

Um, and that's what Rosaria is saying here.

58:05

She said, I, I, I sinned in doing that.

58:08

And I would agree, uh, with the conclusion she has come to now and would say that to all of us today.

58:20

And I don't say that to people who just simply have animus in their hearts and they, they want to express that animus in that way.

58:28

That's, that's not the idea.

58:30

The idea is there is a reason to not give into the pronoun madness.

58:40

Um, and when we think through those issues and that's what Rosaria is trying to help us to do, um, that's going to help us a great deal in standing firm because once it's going to cost you your job and many of you watching this, it already would.

58:59

You're already in that situation.

59:01

Most of us not.

59:04

Uh, but when it's going to cost you, then you have to have something other than animus to animate you to remain faithful.

59:14

But if you understand the foundation, if you understand why this is important, um, then you'll be willing to, to do what's right.

59:23

And, uh, that's, that's what we need to be thinking of and doing.

59:27

So there you go.

59:30

Um, we're going to wrap these things up and I'm going to go look outside and hope that no one was chopping off a part of my unit there for a while and just ran off with it.

59:41

I have no idea what that was.

59:42

Very, very strange.

59:43

And again, uh, I would say to you, please remember, um, watch the app to know when we're going to be able to do a program again, because it's all a matter of travel and all that stuff.

01:00:00

And we'll just let you know through the app.

01:00:03

Thanks for watching the program today.

01:00:05

We will see you next time.