Bruce Jenner, David Barron, and Anjem Choudary—All in One Program!

Well, greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White and we have much to discuss today. I am going to get back. I have a horrible, horrible habit. I know of starting stuff on this program and then squirrel.

Off we go. Yeah, ball, squirrel, whatever. I know. I know. I'm sorry. There's just so much and only so many hours a day. And I know. So we're going to get back to what I said we do last week and finishing up listening to Anjum Chowdhury and a just a brilliant example of non-reflective Islam.

And that unfortunately is the major portion of Islam. It certainly is a major portion of what calls itself Christianity too. I mean, let's just be honest. Most of the major world religions are filled with nominalism.

Not overly surprising. Of course, Anjum Chowdhury, though, is not a nominal Muslim. He's not a Muslim just in name. There is a mindset to Chowdhury that that we need to recognize. And I think we know where it comes from, too.

But anyway. We're going to get to that. But I listened to a debate this weekend at high altitude. I'm not sure if that impacts anything as to how you hear the debate. Is the debate different at 9000 feet above sea level as it is at 1200?

I don't know. But I wanted to play just a few sections from the debate. It was an online debate between TurretinFan and David Barron on the deity of Christ. And it fits perfectly, of course, with the Anjum Chowdhury stuff.

It's all on the same subject, but just wildly different approaches. And Barron demonstrates for us the very essence of the term sophistry. And that's what I wanted to illustrate was that that was just a term that kept going through my mind as I was listening to that.

Well, I actually listened to it twice. I listened to it on a ride I did here in the valley and then when I was up north. So I listened to it twice and I wanted to use that as an opportunity to discuss some elements of Christology and things like that.

I didn't. There were some things I wanted to look up in the Talmud and stuff I didn't get a chance to do. I got sidetracked by other things, but we'll take a look at that. But sort of have to start off.

Bruce Jenner as a Sign of Cultural and Moral Collapse

Oh, I'm not showing anything, man. I have to start off. You cannot go anywhere online the last two days. I can't scroll through my Facebook feed. I can't scroll through Twitter, especially yesterday, but it's still today.

Without being faced with the reality of the result of a number of decades now of fundamental denial of the necessary worldview that gave rise to Western civilization and now has been rejected by Western civilization.

And when you attack and attack and attack generation after generation, then eventually there's going to be a fundamental reaction and result. When a Christian, when a person who takes the Bible seriously and tries purposefully to allow the Bible to form the way that we think, the way that we react to the world around us, sees the celebration of our society in the forcing down our throats, which is really what it is, of the utter disrespect for the beauty of gender, of gender roles and functions, that is the very essence of the photoshopped picture.

And we all know it's photoshopped. No one, please. We all know it's photoshopped. In fact, someone who I will not name mentioned yesterday that this picture broke photoshop of a man by the name of Bruce Jenner, who at 65 years of age, 65 years of has chosen to mutilate his body so as to fulfill his personal autonomy.

When we see that, if we do not see a fundamental selfishness, a fundamental act of rebellion, a fundamental act of disrespect toward both manhood and womanhood. I mean, I cannot imagine a clear thinking woman that would not be offended by this celebration.

And I cannot imagine a clear thinking man, especially one of my age. I am what, 13 years younger than Bruce Jenner. And so I well remember the pride that we as a nation had when this man proved himself the greatest living athlete, because that's what the triathlon is all about.

Lots of people can get good in particular areas, but the ability to have athletic prowess and capacity in all these different areas and running and throwing and feats of strength and high jumping and all that kind of stuff.

When he won, his picture was everywhere. Now, granted, with fame and fortune come pressures that can warp any man and did badly. And again, I could not even tell you exactly what the relationship between Jenner and the Kardashians and all those people and all that reality show stuff.

And I don't even know. I just know that he's a part of all that and that it has nothing to do with what you would hope a gold medalist would have become, what he would have done with his life. But the fact of the matter is, leaving that to the side, though, you can't really leave it to the side.

It's a part of this whole thing. I mean, you live an immoral life. You live a life without pursuit of moral excellence or something that validates your human experience. And yeah, at 65, you end up doing this to yourself, to your family.

Wow. But anyway, the point is, this man is being called by every aspect of our culture, brave and courageous. Brave and courageous at the age of 65. I mean, my oldest grandchild will be 15 when I'm 65.

I mean, I'll be getting close. Well, of course, she delays marriage as long as the rest of her generation is. I'll never see great grandchildren, but if she doesn't, I'd be less than a decade out from great grandparenthood at that point in time.

Doesn't it cross anyone's mind? Are we so focused upon the individual now that we don't even think about the impact of our actions upon anyone else, including our family? And I know this is about the most messed up family you could possibly have, but I was certainly raised to think about that.

I guess that was the last generation that did it. I would hope that my kids would testify that I certainly tried to communicate that to my kids. I was about to say, I wonder if my daughter's listening.

And she just tweeted and said, Bruce is Kanye's father-in-law. Well, there you go. I've commented on Kanye West as undoubtedly one of the most arrogant, ignorant people I've ever seen promoting his own arrogant ignorance.

I'm sorry.

The line of this train wreck goes back into the 90s. The irony is, if you start thinking about it, O .J. Simpson is involved. Robert Kardashian Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Go down that line, and it's a train wreck all the way back.

They're living off O .J. Simpson money.

Yeah. Anyway, it's easy to see the process that led to laying the foundation of this kind of action. But the fact remains that our society, even allegedly conservative talking heads on Fox News, talking about this man's courage and bravery, my friends, that is neither courage nor bravery.

And if you define it as such, then you are demonstrating that you reject on a visceral level any meaningful definition of those terms. You want courage. You want bravery. Look at the men who stormed Omaha Beach.

All right. That's courage and bravery. Mutilating your body at 65 does not take courage. It takes cowardice. It takes collapse. It takes giving in. It takes focusing upon yourself as the be all and end all of all things.

That's all it takes. Courage and bravery. My goodness. I'm amazing, but not amazing when you consider the revolution that has taken place. And we are now the counterrevolutionaries. We are now the ones who have a counterrevolutionary message.

It's a message about how it's good to be a man and that God made you that way, and therefore you have certain responsibilities, young man. And it's good to be a woman. And that's a gift from God. And that being able to give life to another human being is a good thing.

It's a proper thing. And it gives you transcendent value, value in God's eyes. And you can be used to have value in the lives of others. When you mutilate your body simply to satisfy yourself, you're demonstrating that number one for you is you and no one else.

And that's not good. And that's not courageous. And that's not brave. It will lead to utter emptiness. Now here they're even going to do a reality show about Bruce Jenner. I've never watched a single episode of the Kardashians or anything else, nor would I ever waste my time.

I mean, I've often thought of the text in Psalms, the statement, I will place no empty thing, futile thing before my eyes. I don't live perfectly in light of that. Some of the things I've seen on television probably fall into that category, but I don't see much television.

I can't even bring myself to sit there and just watch people running around Hollywood buying things and then going home and talking about it. But now in this context, oh my goodness. Um, so we, we, we are again, face that situation where on the one side we feel such frustration, offense.

I mean, I am absolutely offended by my nation's responses. Absolutely. You want to talk about offense? I am a minority who is offended. No one cares. Um, irrelevant, but I am offended and we feel a proper righteous indignation against this kind of such blatant open spitting in God's face.

That's all this is. It's spitting in God's face. But at the same time, while in this situation, I'm, I'm not one of those people. Uh, I'm, I'm not one of these people who looks at this and goes, oh, poor Bruce.

The man has had every advantage in the world. Don't tell me that he has not had the ability to get help, to know what the right thing to do is. I'm sorry. He has lived in a land with such availability of the truth that I'm not one of those people who goes, oh, poor Bruce.

There are people, I mean, it is interesting. My feed started filling up with people talking about this next movement, which is, which Michael Brown, I had never even heard of it until Michael Brown wrote, uh, a queer thing happened to America where he talked about people who in their mind, they feel that their limbs are not their own, that this arm is not, it's not me.

It's, it's, it doesn't belong there. And so they, they have a deep desire to cut off an arm, a leg, maybe both, maybe all their appendages because it doesn't belong to me. Now that person is ill. That person has a fundamental mental problem.

So does Bruce Jenner, but you do not go, oh, sure. In fact, let's pass a bill and we'll take money from other people and give it to you to mutilate your body. And then we'll take money from other people to then take care of you in your new to this newly disabled condition.

That is insanity. It is moral, ethical corruption and insanity on a level that is difficult to even begin to understand. And yet, is that not what liberalism is doing to us? Is that not what the wacky secular left is all about right now?

And seems like even the wacky secular right doesn't have a foundation to go, well, it's wrong because you can't say the because part, because you don't know what the because part is. So there are these people, and there was a, there was a story about the transabled movement.

And so if you can, if you can decide one morning that you're a woman and then force everybody else to pay for sex change operation, we're doing it with the guy that's turned over all those documents, whatever his name is now going by a woman's name.

And I refuse manning something. Yeah. Yeah. Um, we're, we're paying for that. Your tax money is being used instead of building ships for the Navy is being used for hormone treatment to make a man think he's a woman.

How long can a nation like that survive? How long can a nation like that survive? It's insanity, abject insanity. And so there are these people, there was a story about a guy. He used a power tool, cut his arm off, didn't to himself because it wasn't his arm.

Are you going to say, well, you know what? We've now become enlightened to the point. We understand that that's okay. Because whatever you think you are, you are, that's what they're doing in Colorado, California, you know, the 45 year old guy in the stall next to your 14 year old daughter, because people think this way because they're insane morally and ethically they've lost it gone.

So, uh, this morning I was listening to a fellow on the drive in and, uh, he, he, he, uh, made, made good point. He said, um, well, what if, what if I decide I'm not my race? What if I decide that, uh, as a white man, I'm actually a black man.

And what if they come up with the, with a medical means of changing my skin color and pigmentation? Will that change anything? I mean, if I decide I'm Chinese and if I go and have my facial features changed and the tone of my skin change that make me Chinese, well, from this perspective, sure does.

Sure does. And we, if you have, if you still have a semblance of common grace in your mind, you go, that's nuts. And it is, but that's the whole point. I, I've said it before. Say it again. There is a biblical principle.

I said this on iron sharpens iron yesterday. There is a biblical principle that we need to be much more focused upon in Christian proclamation. I almost never hear anybody talking about it. I'm serious.

Even in reformed circles, I almost never hear anybody talking about the biblical principle laid out in second Thessalonians chapter two. And in that text, we're told that if we do not love the truth, we will be caused to love a lie.

That there is a judicial result from God. That when the truth is presented to you, when the truth is right there in front of you, and still in this land, the truth is widely and generally available. If you do not choose to love the truth, not just tolerate it.

I mean, this is, this is a warning for religious people. If you're raised in a Christian home, if you are raised in a Christian church and you have the truth surrounding you, you need to understand something.

You cannot be apathetic or neutral toward that truth because if you choose not to love that truth, then God has the freedom and has warned us that he will judicially send you deception so that you will love a lie.

If you will not place your passion upon what he's revealed to be true, he'll cause you to place your passion upon what is a lie. And that, my friends, is the only explanation that I can come up with that can explain the abject insanity in the world around us.

And you know what? The abjectly insane are offended when their insanity is pointed out. And they have the reins of government. They have the reins of government. Well, so while we still have opportunity, we continue to speak about important things.

You say you're going to shift from that to talking about the deity of Christ? Yeah, why not? I mean, fundamentally, what we're saying to the world is what Jesus taught. I posted this morning on Facebook.

I did the Logos graphics thing and put up, again, Jesus' words from Matthew chapter 19. Have you not read from the beginning? He who created them made them male and female. And then I put as the author, Jesus, the Son of God.

Don't need to put any degrees after the name, anything. That pretty much says it all right there. And why does Jesus' teaching on this trump some pinhead at Berkeley? Well, because the pinhead at Berkeley isn't the Son of God.

He's not the maker. He's not the creator. And if Jesus is just some other, you know, religious figure or someone other than Christians believe him to be, then he doesn't have the authority to speak for the entirety of mankind.

But if he was truly the incarnate Son of God, then this is a battle the secularists cannot win. Because it is a battle against God himself, and he who sits in the heavens laughs at the rebels who run about doing their thing.

So I think there's a reason for that. All right. So as I said, I listened to this debate. And what I'm fundamentally trying to communicate here is the level of sophistry that is endemic today in the modern Unitarian movement.

Now, again, for a long time, Unitarians were, you know, there used to even be a denominated church, and there probably still is. They're very small. But Unitarian Universalists, they have a, I think they still have a church.

I think there's a church on 16th Street in Greenware or something like that. But they used to be down 15th Avenue and Northern. I think there was a Unitarian Universalist church there. I think somebody else bought it.

I think there might actually be a real church there. I'm not sure. But anyway, when you speak of Unitarians, it communicated something that we're not trying to communicate when I talk about the new Unitarian movement.

Even Muslims are confused. Even Sheikh Umar was confused last week when we debated, thinking that the opposite of Trinitarianism is monotheism. No. Monotheism, henotheism. Monotheism, only one god. Henotheism, one major god, minor gods beneath him.

Polytheism. I mean, there's all sorts of categories. Henotheism is a form of polytheism, so the absolute contradiction of monotheism is polytheism, belief in many gods. Unitarianism is the idea that there is only one person that shares the being of God.

That God is Unitarian, only one person. Binitarianism would be two persons. Trinitarianism, three. Three persons sharing the one being that is God. Obviously, from our perspective, what does the scripture teach?

We look at the fact that scripture teaches one God, Yahweh, and yet the Father identifies Yahweh, the Son identifies Yahweh, the Spirit identifies Yahweh, et cetera, et cetera. But many people confuse the technical term Unitarian as if it's a denomination or just the wacky Unitarians who have bake sales for kiddie blessings or whatever else they do.

And it's actually a technical term, and we're using the term technically here. And for a lot of people, most of our experience in dealing with Unitarians is with Jehovah's Witnesses because they are Unitarians.

Now, are they consistent Unitarians? It depends on the Jehovah's Witness you're talking about. Most Jehovah's Witnesses say Jesus is a god. I mean, technically, the Witnesses would be henotheistic, but they would say that there's only one true God, one almighty God, and that is Jehovah, and Jehovah is Unitarian.

Obviously, our Muslim friends are radical Unitarians along those lines, not just that there is one being of God, but there is only one person as well, even though you would think if the author of the Qur 'an really wanted to communicate that and understood what the doctrine that he was, there'd be a discussion of that.

But there isn't, which is one of the main reasons I really, really, really cannot accept the idea that the Qur 'an came from God. But anyway, the new Unitarian movement is made up of, well, some former Jehovah's Witnesses.

You know, you got Greg Stafford running around out there, the Witnesses of YAH. I don't know what he's been up to recently. Somebody asked in channel recently, and I said, it's been years since I heard anything about Greg Stafford.

But you have a small group of primarily young men really seeking to sort of carve out a niche for themselves, and this is their one focus, and this is something that I don't think too many people could argue overly strongly against.

But in my experience, individuals who become focused upon this kind of perspective are not balanced. They're not teachers in the church. If they've learned the original languages, they've learned it only so they can argue particular points in regards to the Trinity or the deity of Christ or something like that.

They're not addressing a wide variety of things. They don't really engage in polemics outside of seeking to gain converts for their particular movement. I certainly saw this firsthand years ago. Years ago, I was very young, and I began having phone conversations with this one particular Jehovah's Witness.

When he first started calling me, he didn't identify himself as this individual, and he eventually sort of came clean. And, I mean, this was a guy who was just an expert at arguing against the deity of Christ.

But one day, I just threw him completely off guard by saying, are you in Christ? And I started talking about Ephesians 1 and how 10 times in the first 13 verses, in Christ, in him, so on. He became so uncomfortable and eventually said, that's not important.

Let's get back to something that's important. Expert at dealing with this one area, get him off that one area, and ah, a total lack of balance. But in that one area, these folks, wow. I had the thought while I was writing and listening to this, I was going to see if we could track down the old dividing line.

I'm sure it's on Sermon Audio now. The old dividing line that we did when I was driving back. Yes, when Rick Stamp called in to the dividing line, and I was driving back from Tucson, and I happened to hear the show, and I called in on my cell phone.

And that was a long time ago. Yeah, 99. Okay. I almost thought about dragging that out and giving you an illustration, because it was Rick Stamp, who in our chat channel one night, we were talking, you know, we were going back and forth in the chat channel, asked a question.

He said, is there any place else where the vocative form of theos, or is it nominative? I think it was, the nominative form of theos is used in addressing God. And I knew that there was, it was Revelation Chapter 4.

But before I could even type it out, the next line appeared in the channel that does not involve a textual variant. And lo and behold, I look at the text, minor textual variant. It wasn't relevant, but there was a minor textual variant in that other use, the term.

And here is someone who is so focused upon that one area. That's all they study. And so when it comes to that one area, they can just throw stuff at almost anybody. I mean, your average Christian minister who is visiting the sick and dealing with all the issues that come up when the saints gather in what's called the church, just does not have the kind of time to do that level of study and research.

These guys are, they're a challenge, not because they're balanced or they're truthful, but because that's just simply what they have dedicated their lives to. And that seems to be the case of David Barron as well, who did a debate with, with TurretinFam on BlogTalkRadio.

So I wanted to play just some sections of this to illustrate what I mean by sophistry. A sophist is a person who, well, obviously sophos means wise, but a sophist is a person who is so focused upon appearing wise that they actually end up not being wise because that lack of balance.

You know, we talk about the sophists and it's, it's not, it's not meant to be a, a positive statement. It really isn't. So let's, what I've got here is at the end of the, at the, at the point where there were closing statements, sometimes the closing statement actually allows you to sort of summarize things better than, than others.

Here is something, you know, sort of a, of a summary of Barron's position. And I want you to hear and see if you cannot recognize on your own the circular argument that was the foundation of his entire argument.

This is, this is, this first part is the foundation of the entirety of, of his argument. Here it is.

I want to go back to the things I talked about in my opening statement and just kind of review some of those because I don't think they were in any way sufficiently addressed. In some cases, not at all.

One of the main arguments and my main argument throughout this, including in the cross-examination, is that the idea of multiple figures, multiple persons in one God was not an idea existing in Judaism at that time.

In church and family, he agreed. It's not. And so when we come to the New Testament, do, do the New Testament authors ever define this for us? That, okay, now we're supposed to understand God exists as multiple persons?

No, they don't. Nowhere. So how would they, how would the first Christians have this framework for interpretation? How would they know that now, okay, this is said of Jesus, and I'm supposed to take that to mean that he is one person of a triune God.

Well, they didn't think about person of a triune God to know this. This wasn't a thought or figure within God to avoid anachronism. They didn't think about this type of thing. What we do know that, that the, the New Testament authors had was they had writings in their religious background, writings that articulated very exalted things of other figures.

And so with this, they had their own framework to interpret the things set of Christ. Now, this is not to say that things set of Christ don't go beyond, in some cases, what is said of them. But what we find is that those things are explained for us in.

Scripture. Now here's, here's the argument, and I could have gone to his opening statement that this is a more condensed version of it. Fundamentally, David Barron's argument was the Trinity can't be true because it is not a part of Jewish belief in Second Temple Judaism.

Well, think about that for just a moment. First of all, just, just on historical level, Second Temple Judaism is not by any stretch of the imagination, a monolithic thing. I think far too many times in this debate, he got away with saying, well, the Second Temple Jews believe this, Second Temple Jews believe that.

Well, which group in Second Temple Judaism? I mean, it's painfully obvious, even in the New Testament, that you have the Pharisees, you have the Sadducees, and you have the Zealots, and then we know we had the Essenes, and we had, we had all sorts of divisions in Second Temple Judaism.

And the literature produced in the century before and after the time of Christ manifold different viewpoints, all sorts of different perspectives. And if you're familiar with New Testament studies, you know that the big thing today, now that we have so much of this literature, which we didn't necessarily have in the past, is to try to find connections here and connections there.

And, and, you know, you get published by saying, well, it seems to me that Paul was familiar with this parallel to this revelation of Enoch over here. And in fact, what makes so many of the commentaries today that you would purchase next to useless for the average Christian is that most of the pages are spent taken up, are taken up and spent talking about, well, it's possible that he'd drive this from that, it's possible to drive that, you know, all the rest of this stuff.

Not recognizing that from a New Testament perspective, the New Testament author is not sitting there going, well, you know, what, what the Jews as a whole believe, or what this sect believes, that's it, that really should be our ultimate authority.

Instead, the New Testament is generally saying, actually, it was just a small remnant of people that remained faithful to God's biblical revelation, and that the large majority had already abandoned that.

So why their writings would be normative for us, I can't begin to, begin to understand. But it does greatly expand the amount of information you can try to throw in to make it sound like you have a case for teaching that Jesus was, well, whatever it is you come up with.

It's very difficult to get these folks to be overly specific as to who Jesus was. They know he wasn't truly God, they know the Trinity is not true, but what the real truth is, seems to vary from individual to individual as to exactly what that means.

But the fundamental argument is, well, if it wasn't found in the contemporary documents of the day, if it's not found in Second Temple Judaism, however you define that, and I never got a definition, I certainly never got a working definition from Barron as to, well, what part of Second Temple Judaism is supposed to be providing us with this absolutely necessary background that the apostles absolutely necessarily have to draw from.

But the assertion is this, if it's not there, then God can't reveal it. Now you see why it's important? I have emphasized for years and years and years, I mean from the first time, from the first time I ever taught on the doctrine of the Trinity, I have emphasized the reality that the doctrine of the Trinity is revealed in the incarnation of the Son and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

So it takes place between the Testaments. Once you understand that, then you can, it really becomes plain and obvious as to how this argument assumes its own conclusion and how it has no foundation. I mean, are you really going to say, well, God could not have, God could not have revealed anything more than had been revealed in the Old Testament and in the development of theology during the intertestamental period that leads to Second Temple Judaism, Tanaitic Judaism.

God's limited to that, can't be anything more, because that's what he's saying. That's what Barron is saying, is that if it's not found in that literature, then it can't be true. And it's like, why? What's the foundation of that?

And we weren't given a foundation of that, other than just the constant repetition of the assertion that, well, you can't interpret these things this way, because that wouldn't have been in the background of the apostles, which means what?

That there could be no, this is not a new revelation from God. God has done nothing new here. We are limited to what we have in the Old Testament. And the Muslims do the same thing. The Muslims make the exact same argument.

Again, you have to examine the presuppositions of the arguments that are being presented to you. It's vital that we recognize that we have to think these things through on that particular level. And so it's fascinating that's there.

Earlier in the debate, two quick sections here, because I still do want to get, I may have to go a little bit over just to get to it, but I really do want to finish this up and still get to the Amjam Chowdhury stuff.

I started preaching earlier. But here's another.

Section I wanted to highlight. So what we didn't find addressed here is the overarching issue, of course, of whether or not there was this idea even known to the New Testament authors of God as existing in multiple figures.

We don't see this anywhere articulated, anywhere in the writings. And yet as we read these texts that Church of Phantoms pointed to, he simply presupposes this idea without ever establishing that the idea was existent in the Jewish religious background at that time.

But let's consider some of these arguments specifically and see what we find. First, Jesus is called the Son of God. Yes, he is. But what he didn't do is substantiate that this meant a figure within God, or that this referred to ontological equality.

He points to John chapter 5, where he was calling himself God's son, making himself equal to God. But what was assumed in that is that ontological equality was in view. The text says nothing of it. The Jews at that time didn't have any concept of this ontological equality with God.

What they did have, however, was the concept of a functional equality with God, wherein Jesus bore God's authority upon earth so that Jesus had the full authority of God. And so what he did, he did without authority.

Jesus was indeed functionally equal to God.

Now, there again, basic restatement of the argument that, well, they didn't have this idea of a multiply personal God. Now, I'd like to challenge that on a number of levels. And maybe if Michael Brown ever has time to do it, maybe one of the topics we could address sometime in the future would be indications in the same literature, but even more so in the writings of the rabbis.

For example, the personification of the Devar, the Memra, the word of Yahweh and things like that, that have been seen as having relevance to the development of New Testament theology along those lines.

But there you sort of have this. Even at the end, though, he says, now, certainly, you know, Jesus goes beyond those things. And it's like, well, wait a minute, here's one of the major problems. His argument is, well, I can find this.

I can find this angel over here identifies Yahweh, or I can find this individual over here who is worshipped or a one thing here, one thing there. What you don't find. Is the combined argumentation of all of these streams coming together as they do in regards to Jesus Christ.

So what they try to do is draw many parallels here and then here and then here and then down to here, not recognizing that the New Testament means of doing this is all of these streams together. Jesus isn't just one.

There's not just one stream of evidence concerning who he is. There are many streams that come together. There are many streams that join together. That's that's vitally important to see. Now, here's here is a real example, however, of sophistry.

Here is a real example of what caught me as just there are many examples,.

But this one really, really caught me. He brings up the use of the term I am, of course, we haven't seen substantiated. This is, in fact, a name of God. In fact, in John 8, 58, if this is a name, the sentence just doesn't make sense.

Let's say I am is a name and we'll plug Jesus in its place before Abraham came into existence. Jesus, what does that mean? It doesn't mean anything. In fact, these words I am in this particular text simply refer to having been in existence since a time before Abraham.

He brings up that the when Jesus uttered these words in John chapter 18, the Jews and the Romans are some of them, some of both. We don't have quite all the details there, but that they fell to the ground.

But is this in itself indicative of the fact that they understood this to be the name of God in some way? No, not at all. In fact, it's interesting. There's an account in the Talmud with.

There we go. Now, a couple of things. A couple of things. First of all, the argument at the name, because if you plug in, it makes no sense, is incredibly facile. No one was saying that it's a name in the sense of a personal name.

But there are all sorts of phrases used as names of God in the Old Testament. This is a verbal phrase that refers to the very being of God. So trying to plug it in like that, that's that's not even it's almost not even worthy refuting, to be perfectly honest with you.

That's very facile. But secondly, no one is arguing. No one has ever I've never. OK, I have never seen anyone argue. Let's put it this way. That the reason that the soldiers or the guard or whatever you want to call it, that's described in different ways in the four Gospels, fell backward upon the ground. Was because they personally understood the direct connection between Ego-Ami and Anahu and Isaiah 4310 and all the other places in Isaiah and the minor prophets and trace that back to Exodus three.