Pope Francis' Inclusivism, Mormonism's Prophets and Priests

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line on a Thursday, I think. Yeah, it's hard to, hard, huh?

All day. Thank you very much. Appreciate that insight. Good to have you with us.

As I mentioned on the last program, we do need to get to a few things that I've been putting off for a little while.

But every day is something new that has developed since the day before.

I was looking through, I was trying to find something in my Dropbox file, and I just had the thought cross my mind, it's been happening a lot recently, maybe some of the rest of you.

I'm actually hesitant to even mention things like that, lest I get bounced for being on the wrong side of history.

That type of thing's happening. When literally you have banks who will not process donations for political candidates, because the banks have been taken over by Marxists, and so they just do whatever they want to do.

And people just getting bounced out of social media right, left, and center for just not having the right opinions.

It has the effect of chilling free speech, because you just don't want to say something.

If you're going to get bounced out, you might as well get bounced out for saying something meaningful, rather than just simply, they don't like you, and you're gone.

So I'm hesitant to even mention platforms that I use, or online services, or anything, because I wouldn't be the first person to all of a sudden find my password no longer works.

And yeah, there you go. That is the world in which we live.

So let's start off, I think, here, and then we'll go to some questions.

Last week, I believe it was last week, I made mention of a video put out by Pope Francis.

And, well, you just sort of have to watch it, and there's subtitles, so you can, it's the

Pope, I think, himself. It's at the service of human fraternity, the Pope video one,

January of 2021. That sort of would indicate to me that there's going to be a series of Pope videos.

We'll see. But here is what, I think it came out right as everything went insane last week.

And so it sort of got buried. But here is the Pope's video. We must return to our sources and focus on what is essential, what is essential in our faith, the worship of God and the love of others.

Let us pray that the Lord will give us the grace to live in full fraternity with brothers and sisters of other religions, and not to be fighting, and praying for each other, and to love each other.

So there is the Pope video, interesting way of describing it. And so let's look at it a little bit more closely.

It starts off by saying, when we pray to God following Jesus, we come together as brothers and sisters.

Okay, when we pray to God following Jesus, what does that mean?

What does it mean to be following Jesus? Doesn't that mean to be praying in his name, even to him?

Isn't prayer directed to Jesus? In 1 Corinthians chapter one, we're described as those who epikaleo, call upon the name of the

Lord. And epikaleo is in prayer. And it's kurios, Lord, Jesus.

So when we pray to God following Jesus, and of course, I would say that means following his example, which would mean that we're not praying to saints, we're not praying to intermediaries, we're not praying to angels, anything like that at all.

You can probably take the audio down. Okay, with those who pray according to other cultures, other traditions, and other beliefs.

Now, how do you – so that parallels praying according to Jesus with cultures, traditions, and beliefs.

And I think it's why even a lot of Roman Catholics were really put off by this kind of rhetoric, this kind of ecumenical mishmash, which is just par for the course for not just Francis.

Francis represents the natural South American outworking of Vatican II.

So there have been Francis' for a long time now, 60 years, within Roman Catholicism, and will be for as far as we can see in the future, that's for sure.

And this results in this idea of praying according to cultures, traditions, and beliefs.

And obviously, what you have, whatever this culture, tradition, and belief is, here you have a

Muslim woman doing one of the daily prayers. And so whatever this is, culture, tradition, belief, it has to do with Islam at this particular point.

And then, of course, we then have – oops, back it up just a little bit here.

We are brothers and sisters who pray. And here you have a

Jewish man. And so these are your monotheistic, the great monotheistic religions, right?

Judaism, Christianity, Islam, not in that order, but that's what's being said.

And we are brothers and sisters who pray. Now, this is consistent with the

Catechism of the Catholic Church. We have read it many, many times before, section 841 of the

Universal Catholic Catechism. The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the

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

God, mankind's judge, on the last day. So that's a quotation from Vatican II that is from Lumen Gentium 16, if you want to look that up, repeated in the

Universal Catholic Catechism, which I would argue in some ways elevates its authority in the current teaching magisterium of the

Church. If it's found in a magisterial document, and then it's placed in the

Catechism, and you have multiple popes who have then reaffirmed that.

Okay, and so you have the claim, evidently, this is true prayer, acceptable prayer.

So evidently, you can have true, acceptable prayer outside of Christ, outside of the one mediator.

Well, it makes sense. Roman Catholicism is already violated in a horrific way.

The biblical message of the mechanism whereby we approach

God, which is through the merits of the risen

Savior. You are, if you try to approach God outside of Christ, you are fundamentally questioning the validity of the

Father's testimony to the Son. That's what people really, really, really, really, really don't like is there is a natural, necessary exclusivity if Christ is who he claimed he was.

If Christ truly is not merely a representative of God, an angelic being, any of the

Unitarian perspectives, a highly exalted creature, whatever, but if he is

Yahweh in human flesh, the Son become flesh, then any other way of approaching

God is rendered useless in light of his own claim to be the way, the truth, and life.

No man comes to the Father but by me. If God has gone through the stupendous reality of the incarnation, this is an absolute deal breaker for pluralism, for inclusivism, whatever else it might be.

And so this has been, and that, of course, was accepted as a given within Roman Catholicism for a great period of time.

But you've got your Roman Catholic liberals, and you've got your Protestant liberals, and almost all

Jews are liberals, so they've all given up on any kind of exclusivity because they don't really believe in objective truth.

So if you don't believe in objective truth, all this stuff doesn't make any sense anyways. So we are brothers and sisters who pray.

How are we brothers and sisters? Within Roman Catholicism, we're all children of God. The biblical distinction between children of God by faith and merely creatures of God is pretty much wiped out since Vatican II.

Really, over and over and over again, you'll find popes speaking about God redeeming his children, and they do it within the context of all of humanity.

And of course, this pope, speaking to the little boy, atheist daddy, you see it over and over and over again.

This is liberation theology. This is leftist theology. It's the lifeblood of Roman Catholicism in the

Southern Hemisphere. Well, okay, in South America, not necessarily Africa. I'll take that back.

In South America, most definitely. So here you have this commonality being brought together in what

Francis is saying. So fraternity leads us to open ourselves to the father of all, to see in the other, a brother or sister, to share our lives or to support, to love, and to know each other.

And so there is somehow in the human action of prayer and opening up and the creation of a fraternal family, not because of redemption, not because of forgiveness of sins, not because of union in Christ, not because of the cross, not because of the resurrection, but because of what we do.

So we're praying people, and so praying people, even if you're not praying to the same

God, but Roman Catholicism says they are. Roman Catholicism in regards to Judaism, Islam, adoring the same

God. That just read it, section 841. And of course, we've responded to this over and over and over again, pointing out that the

Trinitarian nature of God is fundamental to the

Christian understanding of what prayer is, who it's directed to, and how then prayer does create a body, but it is a body of faith that is defined by fidelity to Jesus Christ.

And so this is a brotherhood and sisterhood based upon an attitude of vague, undefined prayer.

And I say vague and undefined because there is a fundamental difference between how a

Muslim views prayer and how a biblical Christian views prayer. Now, there may not be as much with a

Roman Catholic who is using beads in a rosary as Muslims use beads in some of their prayers as well, though there would also be a fundamental divide in that Roman Catholics will be praying to Mary, to saints, to angels, all of which a

Muslim's going, that's polytheism, pretty much.

One point for the Muslims on that one. Very clearly a real fundamental issue there, which we've addressed.

You can go back to the debates we've done on these subjects. You can address these and the Roman Catholic perspective and their argumentation over and over again.

We know what the arguments are, been there, done that, got the t -shirt decades ago. But the point is that this idea of prayer in this nebulous fashion, it can't be defined in a biblical way by the

Pope because the Pope leads a religion that doesn't pray biblically. And that leads to all sorts of other issues.

And to know each other, I'm not sure how we would know each other just simply because we pray.

There's all sorts of religions pray. But here, the church values God's action in other religions without forgetting that for us

Christians, he has to throw us in here. Well, you know, he's going to say that without forgetting that for us

Christians, we'll get to it eventually here. Come on.

Good grief, how long did it take him to say that? The wellspring of human dignity and fraternity is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Now, the gospel is the issue with Rome. That's what we've been saying for years and years and years.

But the wellspring of human dignity and fraternity is in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

A gospel that an Orthodox Jewish person doesn't believe because it doesn't believe

Jesus is Messiah. A gospel that is identified as falsehood and polytheism within the pages of the

Quran, that to believe that to say three is to engage in shirk, kufr, to have no one to help you and to endure hellfire.

So, evidently, the idea is you can reject the gospel but still have this unity and the church values

God's action in other religions. How do you avoid the rather obvious conclusion that Rome today has abandoned the exclusivity of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ?

When you have words like this, the church values God's action in other religions.

What do you mean by God's actions? I mean, for any of this to make any sense, what you're saying is that the prayers of all religions or at least,

I don't know why you'd do this, but I can see someone arguing, at least the prayers of those in monotheistic religions are acceptable before God, are heard and accepted by God even with the rejection of the crucifixion, resurrection, even the identity of Jesus as the

Son of God, even as Messiah, right? So, despite these rejections, despite the fact that scripture specifically says, if you will not confess the

Son, you do not have the Father either. It seems that since Vatican II, Rome's position is, yeah, hey, you know, as long as there's a good faith tipping of the hat toward the

Father, then you've got at least the benefits of the Son, something along those lines.

But the church values God's action in other religions, whatever that means, I don't know.

What does that mean? I don't know. And then you just have the, you know, the wellspring of human dignity and fraternity.

How about the centrality of everything the triune God has done in all of creation is in the gospel of Jesus Christ?

How's that? That's a little bit more forceful, I think, and correct.

But again, the Pope doesn't have the gospel. We believers must return to our sources and concentrate on what is essential.

We believers, I, it's hard for me not to see that as an identification of all monotheistic members, members of all monotheistic religions as fellow believers, which is why

Francis has been so stridently denouncing the proselytization of these other religions.

I mean, if you're a Roman Catholic who seeks to bring your message to Jews, your

Pope says you're not supposed to be doing that. Same thing with Muslims. You're not supposed to be doing that. Bad person.

Francis doesn't think that's what you should be doing at all, because they're already believers, which we know is not what

Roman Catholics believed 200 years ago. We know this. This is obvious.

This isn't even debatable. This is not what they believed 200 years ago. But it's what Francis believes today, and this is called the

Pope video. So, you know, why not accept what the

Pope video says? What is essential to our faith is the adoration of God and love of neighbor.

I think there are probably a number of Roman Catholics who would agree with me that the only proper way of adoring

God is in and through the revelation he has made in his son, Jesus Christ, and that to seek to adore

God while rejecting the testimony he's given by raising Jesus from the dead is to call him a liar.

So, this faith is not a

Christian faith. What is essential to our faith is the adoration of God and love of neighbor. Adoration of God as he has revealed himself in Jesus Christ.

That's not in the Pope's video. And then, of course, they're giving food to folks, and they're being really, really nice.

Let us pray that the Lord may give us the grace to live in full fellowship with our brothers and sisters of other religions and not fight each other.

Full fellowship. So, in the Pope's mind, full fellowship can exist outside of the redemption that's in Christ Jesus, outside of regeneration.

You're going to have full fellowship. No spirit, no common object of prayer, no common means of prayer, but full fellowship with our brothers and sisters of other religions and not fight each other.

Now, if you just mean by that physical fighting, but that's not all he means. He means proselytization. He said that many, many times.

And praying for one another, open ourselves to all, this is the message of the

Pope video. So, there you go. As I've said many times, these are tough years for Roman Catholic apologists, because I'm going to tell you, just think how many times we have done debates in the past with Roman Catholics who said things far more exclusivistically than their

Pope just did. Do they think back on stuff like that? You know,

I really wonder. They think back and go, oh, no, or just ask their questions as to why the

Pope would take the positions he has now. I don't know. Okay, let's shift gears a little bit and let's talk a little

Mormonism, shall we? It's been a while since we have addressed anything within Mormonism.

Mormonism is undergoing a tremendous, I wouldn't call it a transformation.

I mean, I don't know what's going on in Utah. I don't know if anyone has ever really understood what was going on in Utah at all.

But we have our sources in Utah.

Basically, Jason Wallace, who sends me videos and says, can you believe this?

And it's always, oh, I wonder what kind of new thing. Good old Jason, he keeps cranking out the videos up there.

You got to check out their stuff. Look up Jason Wallace and Orthodox Presbyterian Church up there. They keep cranking out the good stuff and yet he'll always be sending me stuff.

Can you believe that this is now going on? And look at what they're saying now. And the collapse of Mormonism on issues relating to human sexuality, especially.

I've commented on this in a number of different venues. It just stuns me because before 15 years ago, 15 years ago, you know, a decade before Obergefell, if you had said, where do you think the strongest resistance will be to a continuing movement toward homosexual marriage, transgenderism, things like that?

Where do you think that would be? I would have said, well, I'd assume

Utah and the Mormons will always be there. Why?

Because of the fact that they have an embodied, gendered

God. Their God didn't create gender. Ever thought about that?

Gender pre -exists the Mormon God. Had to because there has to be all these generations of gods before this

God. And so male and female is a almost eternal thing within Mormonism.

And so I would have said, they'll defend that hill.

That's a hill they'll die on in Utah. Well, it ain't. It isn't. It's amazing.

It is interesting to see what's been going on at BYU and how

BYU, as in many other religions that could be mentioned, that academic intravenous feeding into the bloodstream of the religion is fundamentally changing that faith.

Really is. And so we haven't done a lot with Mormonism of late.

Last thing we were talking about, sadly, we were really hoping to have some stuff going on in Utah and some dialogues and things like that.

We've got a real nice leather -bound item here that we just need to package up and send it.

I mean, seriously. And just hope that down the road. But I keep forgetting to mention that we need to get it out and just get it done and write a letter.

We're going to have dialogues and debates and so on and so forth. And Utah just, for some reason, the

Mormons in particular are extremely sensitive to any sense of, they're very fearful of public opinion.

Very fearful of public opinion. So we were really ramped up and ready to go for the

April General Conference last year, because it was 2020. 200 years since the alleged

First Vision. We really should do something in 2023, or 2024, because that's when it would have been.

We just got to remember to do that. I forget things like that. But we were ready to do stuff on the

First Vision and everything. In -person classes at BYU, everything just gone.

Just shut down like anything. It really reminds me of the United Kingdom, honestly.

I mean, did you all see? I'm not going to forget, but I'm going to have a hard time the rest of my life.

I really am. Because when I see abject stupidity, it is really hard for me not to go, look, it's abject stupidity.

And so did you see the video of the guy? He's running in London.

Okay, I know where he's running. I've run there myself. I know where he is. I was running there in 2019.

I can pull up on Strava and show you my routes in London, where I was running.

Along the Thames, it can get very windy there. And here's this guy.

He has been stopped by a COVID marshal. Now, if you ever were looking forward to a great career, what a career, to wear a bright yellow vest and walk around in London lecturing people about masks and not being six feet away from somebody else.

Or they probably use six feet there and then they use meters someplace else. And what a life.

So this video starts up, because you can tell, this guy has been stopped from running.

And there were a lot of us who ran. Funny thing was, we were in London. I'm not forgetting

Mormonism. I'm going to get back. But I don't want to forget this. Funny thing in London was, there weren't a lot of early morning runners.

I would be out there before sunrise, and I had downtown

London to myself. To myself. Where the eye is and stuff. I mean,

I ran under the eye, going both directions, and I was the only one there. Nobody across the bridges, nobody there.

I mean, it's a sleepy town in the morning. And then that changes.

But that's when you got to get your running in. And so here's this guy.

I know where he is. You can see in the background what bridge is nearby. That's how you can tell where you are on the

Thames, which bridge is nearby. And he has been stopped by a

COVID marshal and told he cannot run because he's breathing too hard.

Now, I have thought of this scenario many times while out running.

I ran seven and a half miles yesterday. That's 12 .07 kilometers, something like that.

Listening to Carl Truman's new book, which, by the way,

I know Carl's never going to see this, but Carl Truman's new book was not designed to help you run faster.

Not at all. In fact, I'm sure

I ran a good bit slower than I normally would have. I needed John Cooper. I did not need

Carl Truman. But I learned more from Carl Truman, so that's why I was doing it.

Anyway, every time I run, there's a bus stop at one of the corners

I go by on one of the major streets. And I've seen cops there in the past.

And the thought has crossed my mind more than once, how long until some nutcase is going to say you need to be wearing a mask?

Because I see people biking. I see people running. They're wearing masks. And I'm just like, okay.

So here's this video. And the funny thing is, have you ever used your cell phone to do video?

The little microphone thingy there is extremely sensitive to air movement.

And so you can hear and you can see it. The Marshall dude has a hoodie type thing, and you can see it fluttering in the wind.

The wind is blowing along the Thames. And this is where I'm losing it, folks.

This is where I'm going to be suffering for the rest of my life. Anyone who knows anything about something called viral load knows that in those conditions, you can't communicate nothing.

You can't spread nothing. As soon as you breathe, that wind, your outdoors disperses everything and it's poof.

That's it. People have the idea that if there's one virus hanging around someplace that goes up your nose, you know, that's not how it works.

That's not how it works. Any decent virologist will tell you outdoor transmission almost never happens, requires lengthy close contact.

And if the wind is whipping, you're perfectly safe.

But here they are stopping runners along the way to say you're breathing too hard.

This was the once mighty Britannia. I don't mean to mock anybody, but the level of stupidity is just...

Okay. Anyway, back to Mormonism. I apologize for that brief departure.

Two issues. I received some questions and I should remind everybody that both of these questions are addressed rather fully in this book.

This is the later version of it. I don't even think I have the... No, I don't have the original in here. But a book called

Letters to a Mormon Elder. And then, of course, you also have Is the Mormon My Brother, two books that address these issues.

But two issues that I've been asked questions about, and I asked permission of the individual who kindly asked me, could

I address these in the program? Because others may have the same questions, may be involved in similar conversations, discussions, whatever.

And that allows us to kill two birds with one stone. Oh, I'm sorry,

I need to apologize to the avian community. If you saw the Scottish guy doing that, that was, it was hilarious, because it's just so true.

It doesn't matter what you say, you've got to apologize to somebody today. That's just how it works. Anyway. So, the first question has to do with the issue of prophets.

As you may or may not know, depending, you know, there's people who don't know a whole lot about Mormonism and its specific means of how it's set up and things like that.

There are many prophets within Mormonism. And there is the prophet, the president of the church, but then on a, in another way, all of the

First Presidency and the apostles are prophets in a sense.

And in Mormonism, this is directly connected to the concept of the priesthood, the

Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthoods as well. And the whole concept of church authority, which, and I just wonder how long it's going to be.

In fact, I'm sure it's happening right now. Back when I first started studying Mormonism, 11 -year -old kids knew these stories and knew their theology.

Last time I was in Salt Lake City, which I think was 2019, yeah, October of 2019, when

I visited the Deseret Bookstore in Salt Lake, which used to be just this amazing place.

I mean, just theology books abounding. I was stunned at what had happened to this bookstore and how few books specifically on Mormon theology were left in it.

The section which used to just, you'd have all the time, you could be in there all day long is now one little alcove.

Total change, just astonishing. Anyway, now

I am sure there are many at BYU who are introducing historical criticism of the

LDS sources themselves, and I'm sorry, the Book of Mormon cannot survive that.

The Doctrine and Covenants cannot survive that. The Pearl of Great Price, oh goodness, cannot survive that.

Once you bring any type of critical historical analysis to bear upon the

LDS scriptures, done. So, the problem is that the entire hierarchy of the church is based upon this concept of a restored priesthood, which allows for prophets and apostles, and once you delve into what the scriptures actually teach about these things, it's nothing, nothing at all like Mormonism has construed it to be.

Joseph Smith was a very, very ignorant man. He borrowed from sources that were available to him, but he had an extremely shallow understanding of the relationship of the sources that he would make reference to, and he really, you know, he was a very uneducated individual, and it is the element of education that's clearly missing from him is learning to think in proper categories and see how things related to one another.

He just, he could not relate things properly. And so,

Mormonism claims to have apostles and prophets, but this is clearly not what is being referred to, for example, in Ephesians 411, he gave some as apostles and some as prophets and some as evangelists and some as pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints, the work of the service, the building of the body of Christ, till we attain to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the

Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature that belongs to the fullness of Christ. And in fact, of course, this is in the same section of Ephesians, where just earlier

Paul had said, now to him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever.

Mormonism teaches that there are many generations of past where there was no true church, but Paul had no such idea.

And to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus, ais pas astas geneas, to ionos ton ionon.

So, to him be the glory in the Jesus, ais unto all generations forever and ever.

So, whatever else is being referred to by the

Apostle Paul, it's not the idea of a restored ministry, a restored priesthood.

Paul knew nothing of the LDS concepts of Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthoods.

And in fact, I think it'd be good to point out, because this is even more foundational, because every

Mormon prophet pretends to hold the priesthood. Of course, every

Mormon elder riding by on his bike pretends to hold some kind of this priesthood.

We have a tract, I remember, well, we have a couple of tracts that address the issue of the

Mormon priesthood that we have distributed up in Salt Lake City. And I've always been surprised that there weren't more

Christians who focused upon this, because in my opinion, it is clearly one of the weakest areas in Mormon theology, is this concept of the priesthood, not only historically, because, yeah,

I don't, no, I don't have it in here. I mean, I do have a triple, but I don't have it.

I mean, I have a new quad. Excuse me,

I didn't get my arm work in today. So, in the

Doctrine and Covenants, in section 24, if I recall correctly, if I had my little one back that I got back in 1984, somewhere around there.

No, no, if I put my reading glasses on, I have marked in orange everything that was added about the subject of the priesthood in the

Doctrine and Covenants and that it's not noted in the modern version of the

LDS scriptures, the changes that have taken place, because the concept of the priesthood came about after the establishment of the church in 1830.

That, in fact, was one of the things that I think it was

David Whitmer brought up, was that this was stuff that developed later on, and then he changed the

Book of Commandments, came to Doctrine and Covenants, he added all this stuff to it and edited the quote -unquote revelations and so on and so forth.

So, digging into the history of the development of the idea of the priesthood in Mormonism reveals the editing of the

LDS scriptures themselves. But more to the point, the

New Testament teaching on the nature of the priesthood is absolutely irreconcilable with what

Mormonism teaches. Mormonism teaches that you have a lesser and a greater priesthood in the sense that the young men receive the

Aaronic priesthood, and then at 18, you can receive the

Melchizedek priesthood. I'm sure there are people pushing for these priesthood rights and authorities to be given to women in Mormonism.

Currently, they're only for men. Man, would that be an earthquake.

Just wow. And, of course, Brigham Young taught that the day that the priesthood was given to the black was the day that the church went into apostasy.

That was 1978 when that happened, by the way. But when you compare the ideas of Joseph Smith about what a priesthood was with biblical revelation, once again, you're just struck with how little

Joseph Smith knew of the Bible and its history, how little he understood it, and how he made just incredibly erroneous.

It's like he did not understand, for example, when you have the

Mormon three levels of heaven, the celestial, telestial, and terrestrial. He made up the word telestial because he did not understand not only the parallelism that Paul was using in 1

Corinthians chapter 15, but he didn't realize that in the King James translation of the Bible, in the

Pauline epistles, that particular translation committee used terrestrial and celestial.

They're the same Greek words that were used in the Gospel of John, and that translation committee used heavenly and earthly.

It's an inconsistency in the King James, which he didn't know because he doesn't know the original languages, and he wasn't a prophet.

And so we have this celestial glory and terrestrial glory, and then he comes up with telestial glory, which doesn't mean anything, to try to parallel it with sun, moon, and stars.

This is the kind of weirdness that you come up with when you actually start looking at what

Joseph Smith attempted to teach and derive things from the

Bible. It's a mishmash of ignorance. It really is.

Well, especially so when it comes to priesthood, because the Aaronic priesthood is for the family of Aaron, and no one today knows that they're the family of Aaron any longer.

The Mormons do pretend to have something called a patriarchal blessing, where you are told what tribe you're of, but they're not told that they're the tribe of Aaron, but they're still given the

Aaronic priesthood. And what did we call that tract that had

Korah, Dathom, and Abiram on the front? A test for the

Aaronic priest, right? Wasn't that it? That was always a bad color paper.

Oh, I know, I know. A test for the Aaronic priest. And it has a...

Didn't Don do that drawing in the front? It's got these guys who are about to fall into a...

The earth is opened up underneath them, and it's sort of like the Wile E. Coyote defying gravity moment, you know, every time he goes off the cliff, you know?

Um, that's what Korah, Dathom, and Abiram are doing. And you can find the story in the

Old Testament where they wanted the Aaronic priesthood, and God had the earth open up and swallow them because they were not of the proper family to have the

Aaronic priesthood. And so God showed them that. And then, of course, you can go into the book of Hebrews, and it talks about the passing away of that priesthood and its services and things like that in light of the sacrifice of Christ.

And then the Melchizedek priesthood is something that's discussed for us in the book of Hebrews.

And it is astonishingly clear that Joseph Smith did not understand the

Hebrews at all. Now, you can't blame him. There are a lot of Christians today who don't have a clue what's going on in the book of Hebrews 2.

But he claims to be a prophet, and so there's no excuses at that point. But he comes up with this concept of the

Melchizedek priesthood. And the problem is, I remember the first time I opened up my new

LDS Bible, and I was talking and I said, do you claim to hold the

Melchizedek priesthood? Well, I do. I said, well, do you know what the requirements for the

Melchizedek priesthood are in the Bible? Well, here in Hebrews 7 .3,

without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God, he remains a priest perpetually.

Is that you? Or is that your mom and dad over there? And they're like, huh?

I have never met a missionary on his mission. And I've spoken to, no,

I've not spoken, I've spoken, we figured it out one year out at the temple toward one of the last years that we were doing it, or 5 ,000 more missionaries in Salt Lake and in Mesa.

And in all that time, obviously, I did not talk about the priesthood with all of them.

But in all that time, I had never met a Mormon missionary who could look me in the eye and say that he had specifically studied what the

New Testament taught about priesthoods. Didn't really care.

I mean, that's not their source. They don't believe in Sola Scriptura. But without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days or end of life, but made like the

Son of God, he remains a priest perpetually. That's the Melchizedek priest. And then I would take them down for it is attested to him, 715, and this is clearer still, if another priest arises according to the likeness of Melchizedek, he has become such not on the basis of a law of physical requirement, but according to the power of an indestructible life.

So, if there's going to be another Melchizedek priest after Melchizedek himself, he has to have an indestructible life. For it is attested of him, you are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.

For on the one hand, there is a setting aside of a former commandment because of its weakness and uselessness, for the law made nothing perfect.

On the other hand, there is bringing in of a better hope through which we draw near to God. And as much as it was not without an oath, for indeed they became priests without an oath, but he with an oath through the one who said to him, the

Lord has sworn will not change his mind. You are a priest forever. So much more also Jesus has become the guarantee of a better covenant.

So, the whole idea of the Melchizedek priesthood is to point out

Jesus's unique high priestly role, the promise of God, and the doing away with the

Aaronic priesthood. That's one of the, that's one of the, it would be humorous if it was not heretical that a

Mormon priest is claiming both priesthoods when the argument of Hebrews is the one does away with the other.

But you can only have the one if you have an indestructible life. And that's why only Jesus holds that Melchizedek priesthood.

So much more also Jesus has become the guarantee of a better covenant. The former priests on the one hand existed in greater numbers because they were prevented by death from continuing.

But Jesus, on the other hand, because he continues forever, holds his priesthood operabaton.

Operabaton. Permanently, forever, or without successor.

Now, I think about 18 months ago, maybe two years ago, someone online made the argument that I was misrepresenting operabaton and they tried to quote a few lexical sources.

I did a whole program. I don't know if a search would bring it up. Maybe if we could find it,

I'd like to link to it when I type up the program. But I did a whole section on Hebrews 724, the meaning of operabaton in response to Mormon criticism on the subject, and demonstrated to the nth degree that operabaton does not fit in the

LDS idea of a priesthood being given by Peter to Joseph Smith prior to the founding of the

Mormon Church. None of which actually happened, of course, but it is not what is being said here.

Jesus, on the other hand, because he continues forever, holds his priesthood permanently. He does not have to give it to anybody else.

It is not passed on to anybody else. And the only person that can have it is a person who has an indestructible life.

And that is not true of any person who has ever claimed to hold the Melchizedek priesthood since Jesus, and therefore you do not hold that.

And then I also like to ask more missionaries, so if you have the Melchizedek priesthood, then you can do what the Melchizedek priest does, right?

Hebrews 725, therefore he is able also to save forever those who draw near to God through him since he always lives to make intercession for them.

I actually had a missionary say that he could do that once, but I sort of backed off just in case the flame, you know, licked up on everything around us because that was pretty astonishing.

So the point is that when you look into both the Old Testament teaching about the

Aaronic priesthood, the New Testament teaching about the Melchizedek priesthood, the one thing that's very, very clear is when

LeGrand Richards in his book, A Marvelous Work and a Wonder, I remember when I first read that, and I, over and over and over again,

Richards said the same thing. Joseph Smith did not get this from the Bible. He got it from Latter -day Revelation. Joseph Smith did not get this from the

Bible. He got it from Latter -day Revelation. There's a reason why LeGrand Richards was right about that.

Joseph Smith didn't get anything he was teaching from the Bible. He was getting it from his own mind. It wasn't

Latter -day Revelation, but he was getting it from his own mind. And I also cannot say A Marvelous Work and a

Wonder without remembering Wally Tope. It's a Marvel more don't wonder, or the other one, but I won't use that one right now.

Yes, Richards remembering. Was it Walter Martin? I thought it was

Wally Tope or Ed Decker. Yeah, yeah. But I think I first heard it from Wally, but anyway.

Be that as it may. So, the foundational concept of the priesthood, fundamentally contradictory.

Therefore, the idea of prophets, the prophets in the Old Testament, the law and the prophets were until John.

Since then, the kingdom of God is being preached. There was a specific purpose of prophets amongst the

Old Testament people that is not continued in the church in the same form.

A prophet is a fourth teller of the Word of God, but that is not a – there are only two offices in the church that we are given qualifications for.

If we're not given qualifications for it, then it's not to be something that's continued, or scripture is not sufficient.

So, what are those two offices? Well, elder, bishop, presbyteros episkopos.

These are the same offices as a pastor teacher. Ironically, you don't – you have bishops, but the interesting thing is bishops in Mormonism are primarily chosen on the basis of being able to get people to work together.

They're not chosen on the basis of the qualifications that are given to us in 1

Timothy and Titus. And the other is deacons. There are only two offices in the New Testament.

None of these other offices are meant to be things that are continued on in the

New Testament church in perpetuity. Most people don't even think about that. And so, they look at offices in the

New Testament and in the apostolic period and go, well, that must mean that anything that existed then is supposed to continue to exist all the way down.

Instead of asking the question, how are we equipped to continue these offices in the future?

And there's only two offices that we are given qualifications for, and that is the pastor, the elder, the bishop.

They're used interchangeably by the apostle and the deacon.

And just look at 1 Timothy 1 and Titus, and you'll be able to see these things.

So, hopefully that is helpful in understanding what's going on here.

And speaking of which, oh, okay,

I thought I was doing a different one. I'll have to get back to that.

It's strange for me to have anyone contacting me right now about speaking somewhere because it's sort of like, how?

We are going to try to, I guess I might as well go ahead and shift here. We are going to try to get out and do some things.

We definitely want to try to get back to Moscow, Idaho, and to do the stuff up there with Doug Wilson and Cannon and the debates we're going to be doing and other things we're going to be doing up there.

I mentioned this last year briefly once. I'm just going to throw it out there again. It really looks like for the foreseeable future that unless you are willing to, in my case, risk my health,

I'm not going to go into details. I think I may have an enough detail that people will be able to figure it out.

But not only do I have a religious and philosophical objection to masks, the fact is

I can't wear them for any period of time without causing a much more dangerous reaction than anything

COVID would ever do to me. And so I'm not doing the vaccine until you have appropriate long -term safety standards met for that vaccine, which they can't and won't.

So it's going to be really hard to travel anywhere. Even with a doctor's note or a medical exemption, it means nothing anywhere today.

They don't care. They just don't care. It doesn't matter. So be that as it may,

I'm still hoping there's somebody out there that has access to a little

RV unit. It doesn't have to be one of those big honking things.

It can't be some beat up old thing.

We don't have anybody to repair stuff. It needs to be in good shape. Maybe somebody out there owns one of those.

I keep seeing, and I don't know why they're always out in the middle of nowhere, but I'm thinking about this one

RV place out along I -17 northbound. I keep driving past on my bike going up toward New River, and they're always just out in the middle of nowhere.

There's just desert all around. Then you've just got bunches and bunches of RVs out there in the middle of nowhere.

And so we'd love to have a donation of an

RV. That's just all there is to it. I don't know if we have to set up a special fund or something to eventually do it, but it just looks like if I'm going to go almost anywhere and do almost anything outside of being online, and we will be doing that stuff.

Rich ran into a brick wall literally on getting the studio going, but he's got a little color back.

He's looking a little thin and lost a little weight.

There you go. That's not how I want to do it. We're all fine here now.

That's his favorite line from Star Wars. We're all fine here now. So we will be doing the stuff with that, but there's still people who for some reason would like me to actually come in the flesh and do things.

What? Yeah, I know. I know. Rent America. Well, maybe. Look into it and see what it costs.

I don't know. Maybe we just have to put together an RV rental fund or something like that and get rid of James. We'll call it the

Get Rid of James Fund, and that might get all sorts of contributions to it from people you'd never heard of before.

Yeah, the Beverly Hillbillies on the truck. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Somebody's texting me over and over again here.

Anyway, so we do want to... There are things that I would like to do as far as getting up there, doing that.

There's obviously want to get back up to Utah. A few things like that.

Who knows what... Right now, planning for the future is just basically impossible.

It's just basically impossible. You just...

After next week, we'll have some idea.

I almost hate to think about what we're going to find out next week. Right before the program started,

I was looking at that video of a nurse in Florida talking about how they were just informed that they are going to have a

COVID crisis next week. What an amazing virus that you can plan when there's going to be a crisis with it.

Didn't know they had a remote control on it, but hey, it was designed in China anyways. I have all sorts of stuff that's made in China that has remote controls on it.

Sometimes it's the same remote control. Maybe I haven't tried. I haven't tried that on COVID. I should try the off button.

Just hit off and see how it goes. Feeling much better now.

What does this one do? Oh, no. Goodness. Anyway, it's hard to know what's going to be coming.

It's hard to make plans. Want to try to do some things this year other than just sit in my house and ride my bike outside until they tell me

I can't do that without wearing a mask. That ain't going to happen. I can assure you of that. The only people who would ever tell you you should wear a mask while riding a bike the way

I ride a bike are people who have never ridden a bike the way I ride a bike. Just insanity.

Anyways, one other thing that I did want to get to today,

I had this and the resolution isn't very good, so you might want to keep it down at the bottom, but I had this queued up two weeks ago.

Then everything kept happening and new stuff came along. I remember thinking at the time, this is the terminology that I've been missing to be able to explain some of the issues here, but peak life years lost over baseline.

This is the language that as soon as I listened, I said, man, that's what

I've been trying to express and didn't have the terminology. From the beginning, from the very start, we have been pointing out,

I have the oddest things about COVID -19 from when it hit

Italy real hard and that was one of the first ones and nobody knew it was happening in China, was the average age.

Not just the comorbidities, the fact that this is a virus that requires comorbidities to be truly dangerous to almost anybody.

There may be a very small number of people who have a certain kind of weakness without the other comorbidities, but if you are not morbidly obese and are in semi -decent shape, you really don't have much to worry about this.

You're not going to enjoy it. Nobody likes feeling blah for days on end, but man,

I've had flus in the past. I remember one flu I had a few years ago.

Oh my goodness. I coughed so badly that every muscle in my chest was pulled, breathing hurt, every cough was agonizing.

You just wanted to die. I've talked to a lot of people who've pulled through this and it wasn't like that.

You don't like feeling blah all the time. It really runs you down, but it wasn't like that, where you're just dreading the night.

Here it comes again. Anyway, this little video,

I think, says something that needs to be factored in. Not that anyone's listening anymore.

Let's just be honest. It seems to me that we've reached a point where the constant drumbeat narrative of the media, of all of the media, it's now reached a point where it's like, if you don't accept this, you're a bad, bad person and we will punish you.

So stop thinking these thoughts. We are at that point in our society on a number of different topics, a number of different topics.

But this made lots and lots of sense. Let's take a look at it here real quick and you'll see.

I've been hearing Spanish flu nonsense now for many, many months. So let's explain it. Here's the 1918

Spanish flu in Sweden, the peak deaths per million in the affected months. Let's look at other flus over the last 20 to 30 years and earlier.

Now, as you can see, they're much smaller in death rates per million, right up to 93.

Here's COVID -19. It's not dissimilar from these, and it's way lower than Spanish flu in deaths per million.

Okay then, but that's not the story. Let's look at peak life years lost over baseline.

What really, really matters, how many life years, quality life years are lost by the people who sadly pass from the disease in question.

So we put away these and we have the benefit of recent papers showing the age of death for Spanish flu, the distribution.

As you can see, there's some over 60 years, but overwhelmingly they're younger. And in the 20s was the peak.

So the Spanish flu median age of death was in the 20s. So around 50 quality years of life lost per death.

So we need to correct for that. Versus COVID -19, median age of death is in the 80s.

So maybe half a year of quality life lost per death on average. Obviously there'll be smaller numbers at lower ages, but on average.

So if we correct for this 50 times versus a half, we get this.

So this is the picture of COVID -19 impact on quality life years lost relative to the

Spanish flu. And actually I couldn't make the line small enough to truly represent the hundred times less, but this is a representation.

So when anyone tells you that this is comparable in any way to the Spanish flu in terms of impact, they are lying to you and they are lying to you on a massive scale.

Yeah. Life years lost and people are like, well, but every life is...

That's not the point. There's something weird about this virus.

As to, I mean, kids are like, huh? What? Dunno. What?

And so if you can stand back and nobody can anymore,

I get it. No one can anymore. If you can stand back and just ask yourself a simple question, looking at previous diseases, diseases that are a regular part, we've never vanquished the flu.

We can't get rid of the common cold, but the benchmark for COVID -19 now is utter eradication, right?

Has anyone stopped to realize how silly that is? No, because this is now 1000 % political and they can get away with making it political because they have produced such a panic.

And yet when you look at life years lost, the diseases that are still in our society have a much higher toll in total life years than COVID -19, but we don't treat them the way we've treated

COVID -19. Why? There is no answer to that that is not political.

There is no answer that did not have to do with the 2020 election. There is no answer to that does not have to do with the

Great Reset, because those are all the correct answers. And when

I talk to panicked individuals who are frightened out of their minds, including

Christian pastors and churches, and I ask them, okay, given your position now, is it your position that we should have started wearing masks in 1918 and continued consistently for the past 100 years?

Because if you're going to be consistent, if one life can be saved, then we should have been wearing masks since 1918.

There never should have been air travel without masks. And of course, then you go, but then there's all the studies that show that masks don't do anything.

They don't stop the transmission at all. But hey, it's the flag.

It's now the sign of submission. It's the, I give in, I will believe lies.

That's what it's all about. That's what it's all about. But still, if you think it's the greatest thing in the world, if you think masks are wonderful, if you think the

Marines were just idiots and couldn't do it right, if you're in the

Air Force, you already believe that. But anyways, that's another issue. But if you believe all this stuff, still, if you're going to be consistent, you should say, we should always have been wearing them, and we will always wear them from now on.

There'll never be a time when you'll see another face of a stranger. You will never see anything but their eyes.

And by the way, you can take a lot of viruses in through your eyes. So, so much for that.

That's more of the stupidity. It's living according to lies. The happiest people in the future will be the people who know the least.

So they are not constantly faced with the reality that they are being forced to mouth lies, to mouth lies.

That's the nature of totalitarianism. Anyways, okay, thank you very much for listening to the program today.

Hopefully it was helpful to you. I'm sure there'll be lots of stuff between now and next week.

Next week's going to be wild. By the way, prayers appreciated. Did you start the music? Prayers appreciated.

Next Friday, we are doing a rally for life at the state capitol in Arizona.

If you're in the area, we've got people traveling in. Legislation being introduced to abolish human abortion in the state of Arizona.

And I will be speaking there as will a number of others. So pray for that. And pray for the weather too, because believe it or not, it doesn't rain in Arizona anymore.

But now they're talking about possibility of rain on Friday, the very day we're doing the rally.

So pray for that and for the lives of the unborn.