A Tribute to the Tanners then More Caner Shenanigans

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from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded

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Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the

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United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now, with today's topic, here is

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James White. Well, good morning, good afternoon. Welcome to The Dividing Line, a special Friday program, trying to get a book done, but struggling a bit in the process,

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I must confess, and so we move things to Friday morning here.

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And in fact, I was thinking Friday afternoon for some reason, all morning long, I guess because it was the

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Thursday show, it just moved to Friday, so I don't know, had that all wrong. And in fact, I put something on the blog at one point that was talking about the afternoon program, but my apologies for that.

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We will discuss the current situation that I just put on the blog in reference to the scheduled debate on October 16th at Thomas Road Baptist Church and whether that will or will not take place and the recent developments, very recent developments on that subject.

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All I can say is I've told you from the start, don't plan on being there. There were many people who said it would never happen and unless things change very quickly, basically within the next three hours, it will not.

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And we will be discussing that a little later on. But first, I did not want what

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I consider to be simply unbelievable behavior on the part of some to overshadow the previous entry on the blog that I put up last evening.

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Time for some little stories here, I guess, and for some reason, people like some of these stories.

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I believe it was 1983 or 84.

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I don't have my mini triple here to be able to look at it because that's always how I've been able to tell. It was,

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I believe, the October General Conference of the Mormon Church in May of that year.

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I think it was May of 83. Myself and the original co -founder of Alpha Omega Ministries, Mike Beliveau, had gone up to Salt Lake City.

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It was our first trip up there. We drove up there. We had dinner with some friends recently and my wife was going over with them my history of cars.

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We've never been the richest folks. I've had cars that my wife wanted to wear a bag over her head when she was in them.

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That's just your wife, pal. That truck you had wasn't exactly showroom condition, buddy.

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I was going to say, they didn't have to push it through a Motel 6 parking lot, but it did have to get towed off the freeway coming back one time.

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Exactly right. Watch it there. Mike and I went up to Salt Lake City.

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I don't remember if it was this trip or if it was another trip, but we were taking my 1964 Dodge Dart.

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My 1964 Dodge Dart did not have any two body panels that were the same color until I took it to Earl Scheib and had a $99 paint job done.

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You can imagine what that looked like. This had hood scoops and mags and glass packs.

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I didn't put those things on there. I just knew this car. I knew he'd put a lot of work into the engine and stuff.

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It was a pretty orange engine with the aluminum air cleaner and all that stuff.

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It was quite the little bug. It's chrome. Chrome? Yeah, chrome. Chrome makes cars go faster, you know.

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Well, you would know about things like that. I didn't at that time. It was still a 1964 Dodge Dart.

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All I remember is one of these trips up that Mike and I took, we were driving at night up near Page, Arizona.

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We stopped at the dam because we had to get in the trunk to try to find extra socks because there were so many holes in the floorboard of that car.

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It was so cold outside that as you're trying to drive, your feet are just freezing because the wind is blowing right on your feet.

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It was just one of those wonderful, interesting experiences that we went through. Anyway, somewhere back in 83, 84, we decided to take our first trip to the

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General Conference of the Mormon Church. It was Mike Beliveau, myself, the fellow who ran basically all the engineering for the television ministry at the church we were at the time, a fellow by the name of Alan Willis.

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There was a fellow who is, I don't remember what it was, maybe he was in one of the classes

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I was teaching, I don't know, but he just sort of right toward the end decided he wanted to go with us to Salt Lake City.

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Let's just say it was the only time he ever went. He never went back again because of what happened. We were young back then.

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We left Friday night. You know what?

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Alan didn't go. We took Alan's car. None of us had a car. I remember now. None of us had a car that was in good enough shape to make it.

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So we borrowed Alan Willis' Honda, was it the Prelude? Accord?

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Prelude? Something like that. Back then it was a really cool car. It was really nice. We took his Honda. That's what it was.

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There was actually three of us. Dave Warner was the other fellow's name. Dave Warner. Remember him? Okay. Yeah, I actually met Dave before I met you.

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That was when I was still a raving charismatic. And Dave was trying to get me to go up with you guys.

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Oh, that would have been great. And he's like, you've got to meet James White. God's providence. We're going to go do this. You'd be a

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Mormon today. That would have really impacted things.

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So anyway, basically what we do is for the first number of hours, Mike and I are just cramming with Dave, preparing him to talk to Mormons.

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Mike and I are up to speed, and we've done some stuff now. We had gone up, like I said, in May and had passed out tracks.

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Salt Lake City, Mike and I had, and we had stood on both sides. Remember the members entrance on the north?

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They had one on the north and the east. It would be the northeast corner.

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Yeah, that's where the members entrance was back then anyway. That's how you got into the temple. We put ourselves, one person on each side, so whenever any of the members would come out, they'd have to pass one or two of us to pass out tracks.

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That was in May, and that's when we sort of realized, you know what? This would be a really cool thing to do during the conference because there would be lots of people up here.

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So it was that following October is when we decided to do this. We drove up through the night, the first number of hours, cramming with Dave, just role playing and Bible verses.

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Now I would tell everyone, that's not how to do it, okay? Bad idea, very, very bad.

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Take a totally newbie person and drag them to Salt Lake City General Conference. Anyways, that's what we did.

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So we're driving through the night, all right? We've been up all day. We've all had to work. We've been driving through the night.

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It's 12 hours or less depending on, you know, we got better at it as far as the route, and then we got faster at it as far as our bending

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Romans 13. I didn't ever do that, but other people did, and made some amazing trips.

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Yes, we found it very frustrating when you drove. Yeah, I know. I know. I still believe. So the plan was, all right, get

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James to nap. Get him in the back seat. So we can make some time here. Get him in the back seat, let him go to sleep.

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Yeah, there you go. So anyway, once you get up there, we're going to be standing all day long passing out tracks, and it would be nice to be able to, like, take a shower and get changed.

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And you know where we did that? We did that at 1350 Southwest Temple in the basement. And how would

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I know the exact address, 1350 Southwest Temple, and that there would be a basement instead of said home?

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Because that is the location that is in the picture on the blog right now of the Utah Lighthouse Ministry Bookstore, and that was the home of Gerald and Sandra Tanner.

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And I had gotten to know Gerald and Sandra just a little bit prior to that.

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I was devouring their material. And so they are more than happy to allow us to hit the basement there and get showered up and changed.

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And we went off and passed out tracks all day. And I guess I should finish that story before getting back to the

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Tanners. When we started doing this, the Mormons weren't used to it. Other people weren't doing it.

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And so it did not take very long until there was literally a line of people waiting to talk to each one of us.

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Now, I'm in hog heaven. I am just having a blast, and Mike Beliveau is having a blast, and we're holding our own, and all of a sudden

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I hear this, and I look over, and poor newbie

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Dave Warner is plastered against one of the marble columns at the gates of the – we're at the

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North Gate. We're not even at the South Gate. We're at the North Gate. He's plastered against it, and he's surrounded by feeding

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Mormons, just sort of like he fell into the Amazon and the piranha.

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We're just ripping the flesh off of him. And so I went wading into this group and answered all the questions, and the rest of the day

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I had Dave Warner in my hip pocket. He did not get more than six inches away from me the rest of that day.

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And like I said, that was the only time poor Dave went to Salt Lake City with us because I think he sort of got a little soured on that particular experience.

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That was his alpha and omega trip, the first and last trip he ever made. Very much so. So it was funny.

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And, of course, then we get into the car, and we have to now drive straight home.

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We have not slept yet. I said we were young. We did a few of those.

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Oh, man. And then we got smart because that was dangerous, and I think it was that first trip that we were in Kanab getting gas when the only other vehicle moving in Kanab at the same gas station tried to pull past us with a trailer and hit us.

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So we had to try to work out with this guy, with Alan, fixing his car. Oh, it was something else.

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So, anyway, that was our first general conference. We did many, many more over the next about 18 years before the

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King James only folks shut us down. But that's how we started. And I had the opportunity more than once of sitting in the front office there at the

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Utah Lighthouse Ministry Bookstore at 1350 Southwest Temple, which if you know Salt Lake City, that means you're a couple good stone throws away from downtown.

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I mean, it's just not that far away. And there you had Gerald and Sandra Tanner, and anyone who has studied

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Mormonism at all from a Christian perspective has owed so much of their insight and their understanding, their documentation, their leads to doing further research has been owed to the work of Gerald and Sandra Tanner.

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They've been there forever for a long, long time. Obviously, it was not easy for them to stay in Salt Lake City when they were converted to the

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Lord, both former Mormons from Mormon families, but they stayed there. It would have been so much easier for them to simply move away, but they stayed there.

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And their research, their books, Mormonism's Shadow of Reality is still one of the best books on Mormon history that you can never get hold of.

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And Mormon PhDs in history are still shaking their boots when they have to try to deal with what

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Gerald and Sandra Tanner have collected and put together. And they're much, much more happy when people just simply ignore them.

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They don't want to have to deal with what they have put out. Of course, Mormonism's Shadow of Reality is not the only thing they've put out.

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They've put out dozens and dozens of titles. VeloBound, and I've seen...

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Did you ever go upstairs there? Did you ever see how they did that? I'm not sure if you were with me any of those times. I think the only time

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I was able to go up there, we stayed downstairs. You and Mike were going all over the place with Sandra, but there were so many of us in that visit.

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I think it was like 14 or 15 of us, and it wasn't that big of a house. That's right, that's right.

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Well, upstairs was this room, and you'd love this, filled with shelves. But they were thin shelves.

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I mean, you couldn't put a book in there. And what they would do is they would run this book on a photocopier.

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They'd run each individual page with a photocopier. This is sounding familiar to me. And then they would put these stacks into these shelves, and every copy of Mormonism's Shadow of Reality was hand collated.

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Page, page, page, make a stack, velo bind it together. That, and then they put a hard cover on it.

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I mean, that was how they did it. It's just absolutely incredible the amount of time and the dedication that Gerald and Sandra put into this, and they did not have much of a staff at all.

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And certainly, in fact, I remember very clearly an Elder Fox, as I recall, or Elder Fox was involved with this group at that time.

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I remember we were so desperately poor at that time. I was talking to these Mormon missionaries, and I remember at one point,

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I don't think it was Elder Fox, it was someone he knew, I bought a copy of Shadow of Reality with my own money, which

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I didn't have, to give to these elders.

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And I found out later they burned the books in the backyard of their apartment.

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And I just couldn't help thinking of all the work that had gone into that, and the money and everything, and just how sad it was that here's this gold mine of information, and they just put it in the backyard and burned it and never read anything like that.

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So anyway, on the blog today, of course, I have the announcement of the passing of Gerald Tanner.

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He had been suffering from Alzheimer's for quite some time, and so he passed away recently.

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I'm a little sad that it took me this long to get the information, but I've been somewhat distracted and focused upon other things.

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But we, of course, want to pray for Sandra. Some of you have seen Sandra. She was in the first Godmakers film.

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Sandra can talk, let me tell you. I think we've had her on the Dividing Line in the past, in years past, and she just knows her stuff up one side and down the other.

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And so we want to pray for her and the continued need of the ministry of ULM.

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There's a link to the announcement there, and so I would encourage you to take a look at that.

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Obviously, I honestly don't know of anyone who witnesses

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Mormons and studies the field of Mormonism in any serious way at all that does not know all about Gerald and Sandra Tanner, and probably almost none that haven't talked with Sandra and know about their work and know a lot of the stories that I just shared, in fact.

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And so we want to pray for the Utah Lighthouse Ministry, especially Sandra at this time, and, of course, for the continuation of that information and the distribution of it and the whole ministry that goes on there right there in Salt Lake City itself.

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They have certainly seen Mormonism change a lot over the years since they began,

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I think in the early 60s, right around the time of my birth, to minister to Mormons.

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And who knows where it's going from here? That's a whole other subject.

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But we made mention of that on the blog, and I wanted to begin with that because that happens to be of great importance and of eternal import, and silly behavior on the part of people who should know better, honestly, is not as important, and that's why

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I put that in the first place. So, with that, on to less edifying things to discuss, and that is,

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I felt constrained. In fact, I've left my cell phone out with Rich, hoping that it may ring during the course of the program.

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I am attempting to voice communicate with Dr. Tom Askell, who is speaking at the

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FIEL conference. It's not in Sao Paulo, you fly into Sao Paulo, it's about two, two and a half hours outside of Sao Paulo, a little resort town out there.

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They have, well, two years ago when I spoke at the FIEL conference, there was about 11 ,000 pastors there.

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And it was just a wonderful opportunity, great warm people, had a great time, spoke with translation,

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Eros Pasquini did the translation, and I think we started the blog right after I got back from that, now that I think about it, because I have a picture of Eros and I, and I'll never forget when we first walked up to the podium, everybody started laughing.

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And that's not how you normally want to start your speaking, is you walk up to the podium, and the audience starts laughing at you, and Eros and I sort of look at each other, and then we realized why they're laughing, is that he has a little bit of hair, but is primarily bald, and of course

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I shaved my head, and we're built, we're about the same height, we both have goatees, and we look like twins.

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And so the first things that I said to the brother in there in Brazil was, look,

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I travel all the way to Brazil just to find my twin brother. And it was funny because that was the first experience

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I had with what it's like to tell a joke by translation, because there were about 100 to 200 pastors there who could speak

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English well enough to get the joke. And so what happens is as soon as I would say it, you'd get a little ha ha ha from the one or two hundred, and then

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Eros translated it, and everybody else starts laughing after that. And that's sort of how it works when you try to speak with translation, especially if you're expecting something you say to get a response, you have to realize there's going to be two levels to the response.

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And it was, like I said many times, speaking with translation is extremely difficult, extremely challenging.

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It really, really is. And so I had to laugh. I went to founders .org

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the other day and saw the picture of Tom with Eros standing behind him. Oh, I didn't even see that.

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And I just laughed to myself because I saw the picture first, and it looked like Tom was speaking, and you were standing next to him.

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Oh, really? And that just absolutely amazed me. And then I realized, oh, he's down in Brazil. I know who that guy is.

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How did I miss that? It's over on the Founders blog. Well, see,

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I read the RSS thing, and so sometimes it doesn't give me all the pictures. Yep, there it is.

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That's Eros. Oh, good. Excellent. And it looks like the exact same setup we had, too.

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And it really does. It looks like you and Tom are down in Brazil speaking. Yeah, yeah. Well, the thing I loved about Eros, and I sent

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Tom a picture of me and Eros side by side because I lent him one of my super loud ties.

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So on one of the evening sessions, we both wore a dark blue jacket, bright red tie, and everybody, we got almost standing ovation from everybody when we walked up there.

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But Eros is by far the best translator I have ever had in any context.

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He even, notice how Tom has his hands like this and Eros has his hands together.

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I can guarantee you when Tom stopped and Eros translated what he did, he did the same hand movements that Tom did with the same inflection.

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I mean, he's that good. It's truly a privilege to get to speak with Eros Pasquini as your translator.

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I hope I get a chance to go to Fiel again. That was extremely, extremely excellent.

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I just wonder why it didn't come up. Sometimes the pictures come up on my RSS feed, sometimes they don't. Anyway, that's good, and I'm hoping that I will be hearing from Tom.

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He is down there speaking and doing what needs to be done down there in Fiel, and that, of course, is much more important than anything else going on back here.

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But I do wish to speak to him about what is going on in regards to the debate on October 16th.

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As I mentioned, I've had many people over the past number of years, number of years, a number of months, say this is never going to happen.

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They don't want to debate. They've gotten themselves into a situation, and something is going to happen right before the debate, and it's all going to come apart.

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It's all going to come apart, and I have tried. I have now been completely disabused of this feeling, but I have tried from the start.

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We have documented from the start to keep a positive attitude, to hope and to pray that men who identify themselves as Christians will act in that fashion.

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We have arranged five dozen moderated public theological debates of the past 16 years, and we have debated

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Roman Catholics. We have debated Church of Christ ministers. We have debated

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Mormons. We have debated Jehovah's Witnesses. We have debated Oneness Pentecostals.

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We have debated King James Only advocates. We have debated Muslims. We have debated

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Jesus seminar scholars. I don't know of anyone who has as wide a resume of moderated scholarly public debate as yours truly, and in all of that time,

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I have never been treated with the cavalier disrespect and the immaturity that I have been treated in attempting to arrange a debate at the

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Thomas Road Baptist Church and Liberty University on the subject of the doctrines of grace.

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Never, no one has ever treated me. I suppose if you threw Peter Ruckman in there,

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I guess he would take the cake, but that never happened. That's a close one. But we expect that.

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At least they didn't use foul language. That's right. We can give them the credit there. That's never been an issue. But outside of that,

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I have never, ever, ever experienced anything like this in my entire life. It is absolutely beyond all bounds of acceptable and trustworthy behavior.

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The experience up until July is well known to everyone because all of the correspondence that took place is on the web, and anyone who wants to read them, the links are still on the blog.

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You search Cantor on my blog, and easy to come up with, very, very, very easy. And then things got quiet because it got to the point where the behavior was so outrageous that Tom Askell said, forget it,

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I'm not going to play this game, and I fully support him in that. And I said,

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I'll take both of them on. That's fine with me. No problem. I can take both these guys on. Whatever.

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Well, about a week, week and a half after that, we were contacted, and we were asked, what do we need to do to make this happen?

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And at that point, I allowed Tom to take the lead in talking with Emir Cantor in pressing the primary issues that we had been attempting to get discussion on from the beginning, and that is if you're going to travel across the

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United States, and if you're going to put all the effort into this, you need to be able to speak for a little more than half an hour.

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And if you have a two -hour, a two -hour, 15 -minute, even a two -and -a -half -hour debate, that's all you've got.

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We wanted minimum of three hours, and we said, look, that is still not enough to truly develop this issue.

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But that's our minimum. That's the minimum to make this worthwhile. We likewise said, we're not using a thesis statement that makes no sense in the

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English language, and no one can explain what it means. That's just not negotiable.

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And so we came to an agreement. And in September, even though it had been quiet for a while,

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Tom Askell sent an email to Ergin and Emir Cantor and myself, and said,

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I've gone through the original outline that Ergin Cantor sent, and I have adjusted the time frames to fit a three -hour debate, which they had agreed to.

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And likewise, I have made it just one side starts, then the next side, one side, all the way through, so that you see in a normal scholastic debate, in a collegiate -style debate, when one side is having to prove a point, all the other side has to do is deny it.

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They don't have to prove anything. The affirmative normally goes both first and last in a collegiate -style debate, because they're the only ones that have a burden of proof.

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Now, when the thesis statement was dumped, and there was no affirmative or negative any longer, then obviously having somebody go first becomes an advantage to them, and someone go last is an advantage to them.

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So obviously, what we agreed to was whoever got to go first would continue to go first, the other side would go second, all the way through, so that one side gets first word, one side gets last word, everything's even,

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Stephen, as far as that's concerned. So in September, on September 13th, to be specific,

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Tom Askell sent an email to Ergin and Emir Cantor with that schedule in it.

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Three -hour debate, three hours of presentation, so go a little bit longer than that, but remember, when it was first said to us, it was going to start at 7 o 'clock.

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It's been moved back to 6. I'm sorry, but anyone who's been to Long Island and attended the great debates know, there are times we've gotten out there at 1 a .m.

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in the morning. Getting down at 9 .20 or 9 .30 at night is no big deal, okay?

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No question about that. Now, Tom sent that to the

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Cantors on the 13th. We didn't hear anything for a while. So Tom, once again, had to send another email.

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Are we agreed to this? And on the 27th of September, Emir Cantor sent an email to us.

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We are agreed. It is as you say. Okay, so everything's set.

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Tom's going to be involved. We've got a vague topic, Baptist and Calvinism, okay, fine, whatever.

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I think we should have been able to reason our way to a meaningful thesis statement, but we couldn't do it.

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So we've got just this general thing, and we're just going to go back and forth, and it's not quite as much cross -examination as I'd like, but fine, whatever.

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It's still going to be an opportunity to give testimony to the doctrines of grace.

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All's well. Until Wednesday of this week. And on Wednesday of this week,

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I get an email from Dr. Brett O'Donnell. Now, Dr. O'Donnell is the head of debate.

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Some of you may have seen him on the Colbert Report, and I thought it was sort of funny. I thought he did a fine job there.

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I had originally raised his name simply in the context of the fact that, for some reason, at that point in the rather rancorous discussions, we couldn't get anyone to agree that you need a thesis statement.

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And so I thought, well, you know, they do debate there. Whoever's in charge has got to know something about it, and that's how

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Dr. O'Donnell got involved. But as you know, if you've read the documentation, we couldn't get

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Dr. O'Donnell to respond to almost anything we said to him, sometimes for a very, very, very, very, very, very, very long time.

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And so from the very start, I've been extremely disappointed because, you know, we weren't we weren't quite being treated overly fairly right from the start.

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You know, I I sort of think about if if the roles reversed. And this debate was taking place on, quote unquote, my home turf.

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And an employee of mine was doing the moderation. I can guarantee you there never, ever, ever would come a time when the other side would write with valid, fair concerns about the format and substance of the debate.

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And I would allow that person to put them on ignore for weeks and weeks on end.

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It never happened. Just it would not happen. So you don't treat people that way. Tom and I have been treated that way consistently from the start.

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Consistently. I got an email from Dr. O'Donnell.

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And the email had two main parts to it that immediately caused me to really struggle to continue working on the book.

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Let's put it that way. First thing that we needed to deal with was the fact that when we do debates.

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We generally videotape them ourselves. Now, we've we've had problems in the past with other people videotaping them or, you know, things like that.

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And so we have, especially after the

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Barry Lynn debacle, we had a legal document drawn up.

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The Alliance Defense Fund helped us with it. And so after that particular situation, we have a contract that no one's ever had any problems with.

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I have watched John Dominick cross and sign it. I've watched Douglas Wilson sign it.

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I've watched Marcus Borg sign it. I've watched Mitch Pack was sign it.

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I've watched. Well, everybody I've debated in the past five years has signed the same same agreement.

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And it says that both sides have equal rights to the full distribution of the audio and video recordings.

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And no one can make claim on on the other side. If you don't want to distribute it, fine.

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If you do, fine. It's up to you. It protects both sides.

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It's eminently fair. Well, in the very first email that was sent to us from Byron Cantor back in March.

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One of the things that Dr. Falwell said, according to Dr. Cantor, was that.

34:21

This would not be an issue that all four people would have equal rights, distribution, et cetera, et cetera. Well, the first thing in the email from Dr.

34:29

O'Donnell is Liberty is doing this. So Liberty owns it and no one else can sell it. And you're like, what?

34:37

Excuse me. And so immediately, Rich Pierce started trying to get hold of Dr. O'Donnell. And has

34:43

Dr. O'Donnell ever called you, Rich? No. How many times have we asked him to call you? At least four or five. OK, thank you.

34:50

Has ever actually responded directly to you? I think once or twice.

34:55

But it was after I had to get involved, right? Yes, absolutely. So my initial emails were were not responded to until after you started responding to him.

35:05

And then I got a email. I got a response to my first email basically saying we're looking and we're looking into this.

35:12

Please stand by. So I stood by. Yeah. And then I got an email saying, well, where were you ever told that you were going to have these rights?

35:18

And I had to go back to the PDF that has been posted online for months and dig out

35:25

Jerry Falwell's own words. To document that, no, we weren't making this up.

35:34

We've been trying to deal with this for a long time. This has been a regular part of the conversation. But evidently,

35:40

Dr. O'Donnell hasn't bothered to read all of that particular encounter that has been going on for quite some time.

35:48

But then the next thing is now, remember, starting back in July, between July and September, there is this going back and forth and there is this discussion, a very amiable, calm, collected discussion between Eamier Canner and Tom Askell.

36:03

Bring about an agreement that Eamier Canner on September 27th finally gives us in written form.

36:09

Agreed this is how we're going to do it. The email shows no knowledge of this and basically throws out the entirety of the agreement, the entirety of the agreement.

36:26

The Dr. O'Donnell email. Yeah, Dr. O'Donnell writes and he basically cuts the time frames back to not only even the time frame that we had, that we rejected, and that Tom had said, you know, forget it, not going to be involved, but even shorter than that.

36:59

Then, for some reason, all of a sudden, out of the blue, the

37:05

Canners have become the affirmative position. And so they are given by Dr. O'Donnell both first and last speaking opportunity.

37:15

Because that's how you do it in collegiate debate. So the resolution would be Baptist and Calvinism affirmative?

37:22

Don't ask me. I mean, if you were even going to try to assign an affirmative to this thesis statement, it would be us, the

37:29

Baptists and Calvinists. That's right. But remember, Dr. O'Donnell hasn't asked us about this. Dr.

37:34

O'Donnell claims to be in charge because he's the moderator. And therefore, what we've agreed is irrelevant.

37:40

What the Canners have agreed to is irrelevant. He's in charge, he's large, and he's going to do it the way that he wants to do it.

37:47

I wonder if he had anything to do with Alexander Haig saying, as of now, I'm in charge. I don't know. I don't know. We don't want to go there.

37:53

I don't know. So I write back and I'm like, oh, excuse me, but we have an agreement with Ergin and Emer Canner.

38:06

Of course, all of these emails I'm sending to Tom Askell, Ergin Canner, Emer Canner, Brett O'Donnell and Rich Pierce.

38:17

OK, so there's five people on the list. Aside from myself, that's total six people involved this conversation.

38:23

So we have an agreement and you you you you are in charge.

38:29

I realize that he thinks that since he's a debate coach and he's dealing with college freshmen, that they do what he says, but we aren't college freshmen.

38:38

And that's not how the moderator works in theological debates out here in in the postgraduate world.

38:45

And I said, you don't have the right to simply change what's been agreed to. Now, the past three days now.

38:56

All the conversation. There have only been three people involved in the written conversation so far.

39:01

I'm sorry for four. Tom Askell is in Brazil for crying out loud.

39:08

And in Brazil, and I know where he is and I know how spotty his access has to be.

39:16

Tom Askell has been involved. Rich Pierce has been involved. The two primary people have been

39:22

Brett O'Donnell, myself, and we've been going back and forth. I lose track of how many how many emails so far, but it's been a lot to this point.

39:32

This started Wednesday night. It is Friday morning. Well, it's actually Friday, almost noon. So back there, it's getting toward Friday late afternoon.

39:40

In the East Coast. So far, all

39:46

I know, the only input that the Cantors have had that I have ever seen.

39:52

In fact, I have not seen any. But I know that Tom Askell called

39:57

Ymir Cantor from Brazil for crying out loud. And Ymir Cantor's response was,

40:04

I don't know what's going on. I'll look into it. Every single one of these emails has been sent to Ymir Cantor and to Ergen Cantor.

40:16

They have not said a word in writing in response to the complete abrogation, rejection of their own agreement to the form of the debate and the time of the debate.

40:34

Not a word. I'm sitting here right now and I have set up remote desktop and I am watching the inbox on my desk computer in the other room.

40:47

So that I can see if something comes in. But for three days now,

40:55

I have been going toe to toe with Brett O'Donnell. And the

41:01

Cantors have said nothing, nothing.

41:08

I cannot understand this. I, I, this would no more happen if the roles were reversed.

41:20

I cannot begin to conceive of this kind of behavior.

41:28

Twelve days out. That's when the first email arrived. Twelve days out. Oh, you think you have an agreement?

41:34

Nope. I'm in charge. We're going to do it our way. That's it. All your agreement is thrown out.

41:41

I'm going to arbitrarily give the Cantors, the home team, first and last word.

41:46

We're going to cut this thing back in time. Limit how much time. Oh, by the way, we're taking out the cross -examination you put in.

41:54

And this is how it's going to be done. And if you don't like it, tough. That's what we're up against.

42:05

Now, you can theorize all you want about who's behind this and motivations.

42:13

I honestly, at this point, could care less. I have given the

42:20

Cantors till five o 'clock Eastern Time, which if I'm looking at correctly is two hours and 19 minutes from now.

42:29

Two hours and 19 minutes from now. I've given them till five o 'clock this afternoon to break their silence and start treating us with a little bit of at least basic human respect and say something about what's going on.

42:47

Say something about how Brett O'Donnell can knowingly look at their agreement and go,

42:56

I don't care. We ain't doing it that way. We're doing it my way. It has been well said that this would be like some guy from Fox News or CNN walking onto the stage of one of the presidential debates.

43:13

And this is this is especially applicable to Dr. O'Donnell because he was involved in the presidential debates, walking on the stage of presidential debates.

43:20

You know what? I know that the two sides, the Republicans and Democrats, you all have been working on the format and everything else for months.

43:30

But you know what? I'm the moderator. I'm in charge. And we're going to do it completely differently than what we said.

43:37

Sorry, that ain't happening. And the other reason it's not happening, and I don't believe anyone could possibly dispute this statement.

43:49

If you cannot trust the agreement that exists two weeks before the debate, if that is not worth anything, it can just simply be torn up and ignored and thrown out arbitrarily without any consultation with you at all.

44:08

Then who is going to promise me that 20 minutes before the debate?

44:16

Someone's not going to walk up to me and say, you know what? We actually need to be out of here earlier. So we're cutting the we're cutting things back here.

44:25

We're not going to we don't want this discussed. Oh, and the videotape thing. No, we're not going to do that.

44:32

We've decided that we're going to who's who can promise me. I cannot trust people who 12 days out go, oh, you had an agreement.

44:42

Well, I'm sorry, I wasn't informed about it. And so I'm just going to change everything. You can't trust people like that.

44:50

And folks, we've been through this before. And it took a lot of time, a lot of time to work through the

45:00

Barry Lynn situation. Now, in hindsight, that's been wonderful for us. That's great. That's fine.

45:05

That's wonderful. But it still took a lot of time. It was very distracting. And we want to avoid that in the future.

45:12

You don't do debates with people you can't trust as far as you can throw them. Now, when it comes to theological debates, there's one side that can prove a long track record of trustworthiness.

45:32

And propriety and behavior. And there's one side that evidently has never done it. And it's a side that's never done it that has decided, well, we don't care that we had an agreement.

45:45

We are going to check it out the door and forget about it.

45:51

OK. So there's the situation. Two hours and 15 minutes.

45:58

In two hours and 15 minutes, if I have not received confirmation from either

46:06

Emir or Ergen Kanner that they are going to honor their word and honor the debate format that was already agreed to, including the order and time, if they will not confirm the videotaping situation, and I have added something to it.

46:27

Real simple. Brett O'Donnell cannot be trusted to act as an unbiased moderator of this debate.

46:39

And if anyone wants to challenge me on that, I can provide the emails. Brett O'Donnell feels that I'm the most unprofessional person he's ever met in his entire life.

46:49

He's said that. In writing. Now, the feeling happens to be mutual at this point.

46:55

But the fact is, I'd be happy to debate him on which one of the two of us has a basis for their feelings.

47:03

But the point is, I cannot trust Brett O'Donnell to behave in a proper fashion during the course of this debate.

47:11

We need a different moderator. That's all there is to it. Now, I sent that email, oh,

47:19

I don't know, hour, hour and a half ago. There's plenty of time, if a person wants to do so, to respond here.

47:28

It's been three days, for crying out loud. Started Wednesday afternoon, and as I said to somebody in channel, the

47:37

Kanners would either have to have been beamed to the mothership on safari in Africa or hiding in a closet in Motel 6 someplace with no phones or electricity to not know what's going on.

47:51

They know what's going on. They're just not responding to it. They're just letting it happen. And so there's a situation.

48:01

And if this debate does not take place, it will not take place because Brett O'Donnell of Liberty University decided to completely abrogate, and he admitted in his emails, he hasn't even talked to the

48:15

Kanners about it. Doesn't care. I'm in charge. That's it. I determine these things.

48:21

No, you do not. That ain't your role. Sorry. We are not college freshmen.

48:28

This is not a collegiate debate for your university. This is a theological debate, and you ain't in charge.

48:36

That's all there is to it. And don't ask me how you ever got the idea that you were. You certainly didn't behave like it before, that's for sure.

48:45

You know, when you'd let weeks and months pass by without even responding to anything. Good grief. So, if it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen because Brett O'Donnell of Liberty University took it upon himself to say, this is the way it's going to be.

49:00

That's it. But, but, beyond that, Ergin and Ymir Kanner have stood back and allowed him to do this.

49:12

If there has been, if they are calling, Brett O'Donnell saying, what are you doing contradicting us?

49:18

What are you doing violating our word? What are you doing saying that our agreement, which we've agreed to, is null and void and you're reneging on it?

49:26

Who do you think you are? If that's happening, they haven't bothered to let us know about it.

49:37

Would I like to think that that was happening? Of course. Is it happening? Doesn't seem to be. Doesn't seem to be.

49:47

So, you say, well, how many times did you call Liberty over the past number of days,

49:53

Rich? I've called numerous times and I, I, yeah. You get voicemail, right?

49:59

I get voicemail, I get the Secretary's voicemail, who, when I did finally get a hold of the

50:04

Secretary the first time, she put me on hold. I get, got the distinct impression that she went in and asked

50:11

Dr. O'Donnell if he would speak with me and she came back and said, no. And I said, well, then this is a situation, like,

50:19

I can take a message. And I said, well, yeah, I, we need to talk about this contract because it's, he has no standing to demand this.

50:28

He's not paying them as employees. He's not doing what is necessary under U .S. copyright law. And, um.

50:35

But you still never had a call back? No. Oh, no. No. I've only an email despite my numerous pleadings with him, practically begging him, please call me.

50:47

Let's, let's talk this out in person. I don't think email is, is the way to go here. Let's just talk this out.

50:52

Let me express my concerns here. Nothing. No. Nothing. So, um.

50:58

And where I come from, which isn't all that different than the way folks behave in Virginia, I think, that's a common courtesy.

51:06

Oh, yeah. Oh, no question about it. I've never seen this kind of behavior. I've just never seen it. Um, it leaves you trying to figure out what's really going on, who's talking to whom, what's going on behind the scenes.

51:20

I don't know. I ain't there. I can't tell. Well, I've always wondered what has happened to the concept of letting your yes be yes and your no be no in, in, in these kinds of situations.

51:31

Yep. And obviously, obviously, if at five o 'clock today, the silence has continued, uh, from Emir and Ergin Kanner, and I say, okay, that's it.

51:46

Sorry. Um, we can't trust you. You have reneged on your agreement. We had the agreement.

51:52

Obviously, what I'm gonna have to do then is I'm gonna have to post all that material. And I will. I will create a

51:58

PDF. It will have every single email in chronological order. Anybody who wants to know exactly what was said, exactly how it was said, will be able to start in, what was it,

52:09

February of this year, I think. Because I was in the UK when this all started on Tom's block, when the, the, the

52:16

Kanner showed up and started lobbing bombs at, at Calvinist. Uh, that's when it all started. Anybody who wants to start from the very beginning will be able to read everything for themselves.

52:30

And this is one of the main reasons that I did it before, is that if this kind of thing happens, you have to be able to demonstrate that you have acted in integrity, and we have.

52:41

Yes, sir. Let me interject here that in, I've had discussions with Dr. Kanner, Dr. Irving Kanner's assistants.

52:48

Um, uh, people that work in his office, that work directly for him. And, uh,

52:53

I do want to say that in, in dealing with those folks, in working with those folks and trying to get some logistical things, they were nothing short of a joy to work with, to talk with.

53:04

That's just it. I've got emails from all sorts of people at Liberty and they're all, they've just been supportive and, and kind and wonderful.

53:13

It just seems it's in the leadership at the very top. I, I, I am absolutely befuddled as to the massive disconnection between the kindness and the, the, the, the willingness to, to, to compromise and to work with people and to do what's right on the part of certain people.

53:34

Uh, and then you get up to the top and you, you, you can write people emails and they won't respond to you for weeks and months on end.

53:43

And, and you, you, you, I, it's absolutely amazing. Absolutely amazing. So there is a situation, uh, as it stands right now with, uh, two hours, uh, six minutes and 30 seconds on the clock.

53:57

Shall we say, you say, why an arbitrary time folks? It's real simple. If you can't expect this level of simple courtesy to respond in light of the clear need to respond.

54:13

If you cannot trust that your concerns are going to be addressed, you can not trust these individuals to handle the videotaping.

54:24

You cannot trust them during the debate. You cannot trust the behavior. You can't, you just can't do it.

54:32

What an amazing contrast to what's going to happen, uh, a week from, uh, two weeks from yesterday, two weeks from yesterday.

54:39

Yes, two weeks from yesterday in my debate with, uh, with Bill Shishko. And amazingly talk about one, want to contrast this, look at the debate coming up with John Shelby Sponge.

54:52

I mean, it's, it's been three or four emails. Michael Fallon's taking care of all of it.

54:58

I'll take care of no rancor, no nothing. Early on in, in the, someone in the chat room, uh, made a, uh, a very intelligent point.

55:07

And that is that the, the correspondence in this matter should have read about as mundane as a grocery list.

55:13

Oh yeah. And that's how it's supposed to work. And yet, uh, reading this stuff is just absolutely amazing.

55:21

And it, it really should have been short, sweet and to the point, uh, some negotiation back and forth.

55:28

Well, we'd like this and no, we'd like that. And with some compromises in there and done with it, it should have been very boring reading.

55:35

But it wasn't, it just wasn't and isn't. By the way,

55:40

I would like to very quickly, uh, make an announcement that, uh, starting in five minutes from now, uh, on Iron Sharpens Iron, which we had helped to, with the program with yesterday of the

55:52

Tom Wells and Richard Veselas. Uh, my good friend, David King, who coauthored the Holy Scripture three -volume series in Sola Scriptura, will be on with Chris Arnsen talking about the patristic witness to Sola Scriptura in the early church.

56:03

And that's on Chris Arnsen's Iron Sharpens Iron at www .wnygspiritofny, spiritofnewyork .com.

56:12

And, uh, that'll be a live program. And, uh, so I honestly don't know what the situation is going to be as far as, uh, um, uh,

56:23

I, I can't, because, uh, I'm scrolling on a remote desktop, so I can't repeat that. But, uh, look up the

56:29

Iron Sharpens Iron program and, uh, listen in as, uh, yeah, there it is. Uh, www .wnygspiritofny

56:36

.com, uh, to listen to, uh, David King as he is live with Chris Arnsen discussing the testimony to the sufficiency of Scripture in the early church.

56:45

And, uh, I think you will be, uh, blessed by that and, uh, and enjoy that. So that'll be coming up, uh, in just a matter of moments right after this program is over.

56:54

I'm appreciative of the fact that we don't schedule them all at the same time, because then we'd have, you know, uh, divided loyalties, and we don't want to have that.

57:01

Um, so, uh, anyway, that is the situation, uh, I would ask that you would, uh, I want to see this debate happen, but it needs to happen with some level of integrity.

57:11

This subject should not be addressed within a context of my having to walk into that place wondering, um, uh, uh, what's going to happen.

57:20

That should not be the issue. Uh, that, that should not even be relevant. And I call upon the people at Liberty University to stand up and do the right thing, stand by your word, stand by your agreements, and just do the right thing.

57:33

Let us have this debate. Let us do it right. And if this doesn't happen in this context, I want everybody to understand,

57:39

I will repeat my standing challenge to Ergon Kanner, one -on -one, neutral location, neutral moderator.

57:50

I'll still debate you on this issue, because you're still wrong. Uh, I don't know what's going on back there.

57:56

I don't know why y 'all can't get your act together. I don't know why this is happening. I don't know why you can say one thing and do another.

58:02

I've never seen this type of thing in my life. You all need to stand up and do the right thing, and allow the students of Liberty University to hear a

58:12

Bible -centered, non -personal, focused debate on whether God saves perfectly to his own glory, or whether he just tries to save and fails with regularity.

58:26

They need, they deserve that. And that's what I want to see happen. Two hours.

58:32

Two minutes. We'll see what happens. Keep watching the blog. God bless. Brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.

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