Woke History and Critical Theory, David Allen and Romans 8, TR Only Mythology

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line, September 17th, 2019.

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On September 17th, 1862, the Battle of Antietam, or sometimes called the

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Battle of Sharpsburg, took place between the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the

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Potomac during the Civil War. So far, the single bloodiest day in American military history as far as actual, not just casualties, but fatalities in one day.

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The most pitched fighting, and given some of the later battles during the war, that's saying a great deal.

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For example, I was lamenting on Twitter this morning that the vast majority of the

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American populace has no earthly idea what that was, what it meant, who was involved, what their motivations were, anything.

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Sadly, I think we could find a large portion of the American populace wouldn't even be sure who won. Not just the battle, but the war.

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Or place it within 20 years, 50 years, 100 years of what even took place. It's a people who do not remember their own history will be a people who forget their history or will be a people who are willing to have their history rewritten for them.

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I was just on the Paul Edwards program on WMUZ in Detroit. Thanks to, welcome to all of you who might be joining because Paul was kind enough to link to us.

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This program discusses all sorts of things. I do not claim to be an expert on everything by any stretch of the imagination, but we do talk about stuff on this program that almost nobody else talks about.

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We will talk about things like coherence -based genealogical method in New Testament textual criticism, and we will talk about world history and church history and textual criticism, and all sorts of other things along the way from a

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Christian perspective, from a Christian worldview as some famous person is always saying.

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But speaking of a people losing their history, there is an article on RealClearInvestigations .com.

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Like growing numbers of public high school students across the country, many California kids are receiving classroom instruction in how race, class, gender, sexuality, and citizenship status are tools of oppression, power, and privilege.

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This is straight out of the Woke Handbook. This is critical theory to the nth degree, cultural

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Marxism on the rampage and certainly in utter control in California where you only have one political party that is completely sold out to critical theory.

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They are taught about colonialism, state violence, racism, intergenerational trauma, heteropatriarchy, and the common thread that links them, whiteness.

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They forgot about ableism and a few others that are supposed to be thrown in there for the fun of it. Students are then graded on how well they apply these concepts in writing assignments, performances, and community organizing projects.

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At Santa Monica High School, for example, students organize and carry out a systematized campaign for social justice that can take the form of a protest, a leaflet, a workshop, play, or research project.

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They demonstrate their mastery of the subject by teaching about social justice to middle school students.

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So you gotta keep pushing it down. So you gotta get way down there to the earliest you can get to.

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Make the older kids think this is cool, then it's cool. Students at Environmental Charter High School in Lawndale are assigned to write a breakup letter with a form of oppression.

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Okay, that's all in quotes. It doesn't make any sense. Quote, breakup letter with a form of oppression, end quote.

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So you're breaking up with a form of oppression. Such as toxic masculinity, heteronormativity,

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Eurocentric curriculum, or the Dakota Access Pipeline. Students are asked to persuade their audience of the dehumanizing and damaging effects of their chosen topic.

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You know, it's wonderful. I loved high school.

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That was an incredibly formative period of my life. It really was. And I remember, both junior high and high school,

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I remember in, but you know, we didn't, this is not what we were debating about. We did have,

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I remember we did do a debate on whether we should build the Palo Verde Nuclear Plant, which is chugging away nicely, 50 miles that direction.

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No we don't glow. I don't glow. Do you glow? I do not glow. The lights cause me to glow, but not the

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Palo Verde Nuclear Plant. And we,

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I remember I was on the side arguing for it, and it got built, and it's still working, and we need it, especially all the growth we've had out here.

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I remember we had a real big debate about which was the better combat fighter, the

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F -15 or the F -16. That was, that was a, that was a big one.

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And the F -16, I was on the F -16 side, and it is the one that has, is still flying much more than the

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F -15 Strike Eagle did. Anyway, but those are the kind of things we were debating about back then.

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Heteronormativity? Nah. Nah. Heteronormativity, we all accepted and agreed with heteronormativity, because it's a good thing.

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That's what we're doing here. Students at schools in Anaheim, San Jose, Oakland, and San Francisco are taught how to write a manifesto to school administrators listening to demands for reforms.

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And they wonder why the universities are collapsing, where there's no freedom of speech left, it's just one side, where even the professors are having to leave because they're not liberal enough.

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Well, it's starting, they're pushing it down to high school and junior high after that. Some conduct a grand jury investigation to determine who is responsible for the genocide of the state's

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Native Americans. And one class holds a mock trial to determine which party is most responsible for the death of millions of Native Tainos, Christopher Columbus, the soldiers, the

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King and Queen of Spain, or the entire European system of colonialization.

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So these are just some of the things going on in these schools. And remember, these folks will be voting.

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They get into it slowly, but they eventually will be the people voting. And that's the end of that.

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That's the end of that. Critical theory, cultural

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Marxism, and the shutdown of any kind of meaningful cultural discussion.

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That's what you're seeing in this kind of stuff. It's all around us.

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And the temptation, of course, you see how dangerous this is, how central it is.

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The danger is to then become absolutely, to develop monovision.

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But this is it. This is all there is to it. Let me back up a second.

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You can certainly, there are plenty of dystopian movies out there about what happens if these people completely take over, starting with the textbook of them all, 1984,

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Brave New World, Fahrenheit 41. This is nothing new. Those were books

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I read when I was a youth. And there have been lots of, remember, was it

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Ryan's? It was Logan's Run, and it was something about Ryan somewhere. But yeah,

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Logan's Run was one of them. And well, there was

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Soil and Green, and then Schwarzenegger was in Running Man. Running Man. So dystopian stuff has been for a long, long time.

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But it almost dulls the senses because now that we see it happening, we're like, yeah, but that's a movie.

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That can't really happen. Oh yeah, yeah, it's actually really happening.

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This stuff's been out there for a long, long time. Let me just suggest that if what we believe is true, that we are made in the image of God, you can only deceive people so long.

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I mean, man, if you look at the Soviet Union, that looked like it would never fall.

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But it broke down from inside because it enforced a worldview on people who are made in the image of God.

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And they may not have scripture. They may not, once they get out of it, do what they need to do, and hence maybe go back into it.

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But the point is, the culture of death can only produce death, and there's only so far this stuff can go.

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We're starting, I mean, a lot of us would have thought it could never get to the point of same -sex marriage.

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I mean, how could that, well, okay, it did. But how long can this go?

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As soon as Obergefell took place, two weeks later, transgenderism is all over the place.

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It's like, okay, we got that one, hit the next thing. Transgenderism. Transgenderism is a fundamental rebellion against the very idea that we are created by God.

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It's also not even close to being consistent even with a Darwinian worldview. It is a level of self -deception and deceit that is unbelievable.

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It's hard to believe that this type of stuff is happening. How long can it last?

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I'm not saying, well, common sense, well, it's not common sense, it's created sense.

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Eventually, this stuff kills itself. The left turns upon the left, eventually.

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Once they've silenced all the people they can agree that they need to silence, then they turn upon themselves.

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And so, when I look at critical theory, when I look at the reality of what it does in cultural

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Marxism, it can't build anything. It can't create anything.

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Even in the dystopian novels, the only way to hold those dystopian, anti -human forms of government together is with absolute power.

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And no one can maintain that. It eventually collapses and something new rises out of the ashes.

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Of course, we manage to be stupid enough, and this is a real issue. If we manage to be stupid enough to be playing with the human genome at the same time that we're stupid enough to think that we can determine our own, you know,

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I'm a. Yesterday, I saw a video clip where, oh, this name just escaped my mind.

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British guy on Britain's Got Talent in the first few years sat over on the left.

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Price, Bryce, Price, Pierce, Pierce, whatever is, huh? Pierce Morgan, thank you, who

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I have, who has just angered me horribly so many times in the past. I mean, he is a lefty, but what was funny was they had this kid on and he was just a kid talking about the

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BBC and it's 100 genders teaching kids.

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There are 100 genders. Now, interestingly enough, Pierce now has four kids.

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Funny how having kids changes you. Oh, yeah. Dr.

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Mueller has pointed this out many, many, many, many times. A woman with children, you can predict how she's going to vote.

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A woman without children, you can predict how she's going to vote, too. Children will change you.

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All of a sudden, you realize that all that idiotic leftist stupidity is just that idiotic leftist stupidity.

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And so he's sitting here, he starts reading some of these names to this kid that is supposed to be defending this stuff.

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And he's like, what does any of this mean? And so he asked about a neutrosis,

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I think was what it was, it had neutral in it, not neutral, but neutrosis or neutrosi,

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I think it was neutrosi. The kid didn't have a clue. He was sent there, evidently didn't read the list, or if he did, didn't know what they referred to, because think about it, two spirit, three spirit, gender neutral, genderqueer, it's all just insanity.

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It's absurd on its face. It's all made up, there's no science behind this.

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And so this kid has no idea. Pierce just, wait a minute, why were you, you're the expert in all this stuff, you don't even know what this stuff is.

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Why are we telling our kids this? Now, even Pierce said there are only three genders, male, female, and none.

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I'm like, see, he's still a lefty. But even people on the left recognize this stuff is stupid.

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And so he finally read what neutrosi or something was. And again, it's just all,

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I don't want to fit into the binary thing. I don't want to be what God made me to be.

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I want to claim the right to define myself. Otherwise, but that's what

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I was thinking about. This was, was when even Pierce Morgan is going, what are we doing?

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This is getting crazy. Um, then yeah, it can't, it can't build anything.

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It all comes tumbling down. Now we may have to go through a whole lot. You got to realize something. You allow the current economic system to collapse, which if we stop having children, it will, if we, the green, green new deal and the economy, uh,

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I mean, almost any element of the green new deal, end of the economy, um, the, the, the fundamental desire is to completely change the culture of the

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United States and hence to destroy its military power, its leadership power to destabilize everything.

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Critical theory breaks everything down. You do that and the death toll will be huge.

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Not just from all the little dictators that now don't have to worry about our

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F -22s coming in and taking them out because they're not around anymore because we can't fly them anymore. Um, but just the medical system, the food production system, the

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Pax Romana, which existed prior to the time of Jesus and which in God's providence,

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God used to allow the gospel to go everywhere. There is a USA Amana, uh, a

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Pax Americana today that allows world travel, world commerce.

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You can buy stuff from all over the world today. And the primary reason is the

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United States of America. I'm not being vain about that there. We got a lot of problems here, but the fact of the matter is since World War II, that's why it is the, who, who does everybody look to when the pirates start going after their ships and everything else, they look to the

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United States. Uh, we just launched, I don't know, have you, have you seen what was the name of it?

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We just launched the world's largest aircraft carrier. This sucker makes the

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Nimitz class carriers look like tugboats. This thing is a floating city. It has four,

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I think four times the nuclear power generation capacity that any ship has had before, uh, double the aircraft, uh, with a smaller crew.

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I mean, it is a technological, it's technologically unbelievable. I forgot what the name of it is, but it's huge, massive.

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Talk about being able to project your power all around the world. Um, now the world didn't have to worry about that too much as long as we were doing the right thing.

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And I realized we don't always do the right thing. I get that. But the Chinese and the, and the

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Russians, their aircraft carriers still use the slingshot.

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Have you ever seen them? The front end goes up like this. You got to throw the sucker up in the air and hope it doesn't crash.

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They don't even have our, and our new catapults are not the steam powered catapults that we've used in the past.

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These are Magneto. The, I mean, we've got tech in this ship that nobody in the world is even close to, even close to, well, that takes a real healthy economy and a lot of money.

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And right now there's a whole group of people running for president that would destroy every single bit of that.

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And that's why I've, and I've mentioned this before, when I travel, I am stunned at how much people around the world know about our elections.

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In fact, the sad thing is there are people in Australia and South Africa that know more about the people running for office in the

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United States than most of the people in the United States know. Because they recognize that as far as their overall economic stability and stuff goes, what's happening here is probably more determinative of that than what's happening there locally.

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We don't even think about that. How many Americans have a clue who

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Boris Johnson is? How many have any idea what

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Brexit is? How many know who the prime minister of Australia is? Don't.

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A lot of people know who Putin is. That's, that's, that's, that, that name sticks.

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And that's because he's sort of king for life. You know, but, you know, and Xi, yeah, maybe, maybe heard of him.

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Probably know more about the North Korean dictator than anybody else, but that's only because he's on the tube all the time and threatens to launch missiles at us and things like that, but we don't really care too much about what goes on elsewhere, unfortunately.

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So if we go down, distribution of medicine, distribution of food, distribution of fuel, we are the largest fuel producing nation now, believe it or not, astonishingly enough.

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Yeah. Saudi, Saudi Arabians, drone attacks. Not all those governments over there are very stable.

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The world suffers, people die. You need to understand something. The, the green people, the green initiative people, they want, they recognize the only way to get carbon.

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And by the way, carbon dioxide is actually a minor element to the greenhouse effect. Water vapor is the primary thing.

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We know, and, and someday I'm going to do a program on this because we know if you simply know your history, you know, the earth has been significantly warmer than it is today.

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If you just know your history, I learned that in seminary, in seminary.

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In fact, what was interesting back then was in the 1970s, we were told we were about to freeze to death.

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The great danger was global freezing. And so in seminary, when

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I learned that the North of England had once had vineyards in it. You can't grow vineyards in North of England today, not without building a structure, but outside there, there were vineyards in North of England.

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There's only one way that can happen. If England used to be a whole lot warmer than it is today, which means carbon dioxide ain't what changes things.

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There's something else going on. And there have been a number of times, if you study the black death, sorry, I'm wandering around here, but it is interesting.

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If you say the black death, Europe's population had doubled in the century and a half, two centuries prior to about the year 1300.

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Why? It was a whole lot warmer and you could cultivate a whole lot more land because when it's warmer, there's more rain.

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And so, and so that changed and it got cold and that land that had been cultivated could no longer grow anything.

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You started having famines. And then what happens starting in 1347, the black death, the black death comes long and wipes out minimally half of the

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European population, if it hadn't doubled beforehand, what might've happened?

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All sorts of this type of stuff, fascinating stuff, but it could happen again. We take it so for granted that we can just get in our fossil fuel car and drive to a building that has electrical lights and electrical coolers and everything else and buy our food.

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That is a relatively modern thing that most of us wouldn't know what to do with, we couldn't do that.

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And you gotta understand these people, they want us back in the 1800s. They want us plowing our own little plot of land.

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And the only way that's going to work is if you drop the world population to around a billion. How are you going to wipe all those people out?

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Well, partly just by not having kids, you know, so that there's a huge attack upon families.

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But there's got to be another way to do it. And war and famine, very effective, very effective.

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So you're saying there are actually people who want that? Yep, sure do.

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Now they're not, they don't want that for them and their families, but everybody else, that's just, anyway.

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How'd I get onto that? I don't know how I got into that, but oh, they certainly do.

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They want to rule over everybody. And if history has taught us anything, we know exactly what that's going to result in.

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I promised to address a couple of issues, and I'm not sure how many I'm going to get through, but there was a discussion in Twitter with Dr.

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David Allen. And Dr. Allen had put out a tweet that basically made the, he put out an article, said, yes,

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Jesus did die for the sins of everyone. And this was a response to an article that I think had been in TGC or one of those particular websites.

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And it was a response to Eric Raymond's article, presenting particular redemption.

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And he made claims that, you know, I assume he writes his own tweets.

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I write my own tweets. I know there are people on Twitter who do not write their own tweets.

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I doubt that Piper is actually writing his own tweets. I think someone's taking stuff from sermons, whatever, fine.

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I'm not arguing that that's a good thing or a bad thing. But I, like many people, you know, he made the accusation that scripture never says it's

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God's intention only to save the elect and that the Bible never connects together atonement and election passages to say that God intends only for the atonement to save the elect.

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And a lot of us were like, uh, you did. And so here on the program, I went to Romans chapter eight, walked through the text and a number of other people, likewise, pointed out to Dr.

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Allen that this was, um, a text. And so he put out a article, uh, responding to my responders a couple of days ago, and he did not make any reference to me, of course he did in passing, in fact, let me scroll down here, um, to those seeking a formal debate on this issue.

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That's, that's me. Yeah. To whom it may, yeah. To the nameless, faceless people out there that I will not deign to even note by name, though I have in the past to falsely accuse them of being hyper

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Calvinist, uh, to those seeking a formal debate on this issue, my response is there is no need to do so.

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I have published more than 1 ,200 pages on this subject, including arguments by Calvinists since the

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Reformation against limited atonement. I have often said that most of the best arguments against limited atonement are made by Calvinists themselves who reject it, and their number is legion in the past and today.

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That's Tony Byrne, by the way. That's, that's, that's just him speaking directly. John Owen's double payment argument and triple choice argument have been refuted and debunked a hundred times over by Calvinists.

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I have cited the sources and explained the arguments. I would love to see Calvinists who affirm limited atonement engage what I and others have written on this subject, as if they haven't already.

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That's the whole point of debate is to bring the two sides together so that people can see, instead of just going over here, read this book, go over and read this book, when in a debate, you have something called cross -examination.

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And that's when you find out whether an argument can hold water or whether it cannot.

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So he says, I have published more than 1 ,200 pages on this subject. You have not published 1 ,200 pages in Romans chapter eight, have you?

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Of course not. Now I'm not sure how many pages from there to there is.

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That's, that's my, it's a whole lot more than 1 ,200. It's more than two, three, 4 ,000. I don't know how many pages, lots, lots, lots, lots of pages.

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But so what? I found that to be an exceptionally unsatisfying response to being challenged on the merits of your case.

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But let me give further reason. In response to my tweet, there is no atonement text in scripture stating that God intends to save only the elect.

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David had written, wow, sure there is, Romans 8, 31 through 39, which

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I did 8, 31 through 34. So similar response.

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The hue and cry over the statement in the article in the tweet is a misreading of what I wrote coupled with a misinterpretation of Romans 8, 31 through 39.

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So I've noticed that for Alan, whenever you start pushing him on something, he said, well, you're just misinterpreting me.

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Well, that's possible. You might be extremely unclear in what you say. That's where debates come in.

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Because in the debate, when someone challenges you on the point and says, you've said this, but this says this, you can go, oh, you're misinterpreting me and here's how.

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See, that's how it works. That's why debate is such a good thing. That's why scholars do debates.

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At least they used to. Notice, now listen to this response and see if it's really substantive.

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Notice I did not say that atonement and election are not related.

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Well, how would they be related? Or the Bible doesn't teach election.

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Now, of course, we know that what he thinks is election and what the

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Bible teaches is election. Again, this is why debates are so useful. As I said in the article, there is no text period that teaches

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Jesus died only for the sins of the elect. I also claim that there is no atonement text in scripture that limits

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God's intention to save only the elect. And we say, yes, there is.

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Romans 8, 31 through 34 is an atonement text, specifically speaks of the giving of Christ in atonement, and it limits that to the elect.

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Here it is. So how does he deal with it? Romans 8 is not a text whose focus is atonement, but let's grant for the argument that it is, since Romans 8, 32 states, he who did not spare his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?

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Okay. So Romans 8 has broader implications, broader connections.

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It has connected all of soteriology to the predestining will of God.

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All the way back to Romans 8, 28, that it does, no question about it. So you've got everything in there.

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You've got, you've got God for knowing. That's an active verb, not a passive. Predestining, called, justified, glorified.

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It's all stuff God does. Yep. This is all about soteriology. It's all about salvation.

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It's all about God's power to save his people. I agree.

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Interestingly enough, the central focus of the earlier part of Romans, which is the empty hand of faith, which meets the hand of grace, so you can't, you can't bring anything in that hand.

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If you bring something in that hand, then you can't grasp the grace of God, or God's grace can't grasp your hand.

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Not your hand. I'm not using it in the synergistic concept. But that focus upon faith, justification by faith alone, apart from works of the law, the one who believes, not the one who works,

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Romans 4, 4 through 5, to gain something from God, that is not a part of what's in Romans 8.

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That is not a focus. And when he goes to the golden chain of redemption, there isn't anything there about believers.

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Now, we know that when he says he justifies, the only way to be justified is by faith, so we're not confused as to what

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Paul is saying. But justification is a divine act. Calling is a divine act.

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All those who are called are justified, which means faith has to be something that God accomplishes in those who are called because they are then justified.

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All who are called are justified. All who are justified are glorified.

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So if justification by faith is true, and it is, then faith must be the gift of God that is given to the elect of God who are regenerated by the

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Spirit of God on the basis of the finished work of God in Christ, based upon the election of the

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Father. Well, that's Trinitarian! Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Yep, exactly right. Makes perfect sense. It's balanced.

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It's consistent. It's consistent with Paul's theology. It's consistent with his teaching. Until you introduce synergism to it, which makes the whole thing fall apart.

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Because then you've got lots of people being called who aren't justified, which would, of necessity, break up the chain.

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Then you've got people, do you have people who are being justified who are not being glorified? You do in Roman Catholicism. That's sort of a necessary element of it.

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So anyway, back to the article here. Why say that Romans 8 is not a text whose focus is atonement?

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You then say, well, but let's grant for the sake of argument it is, since Romans 8 .32

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does say atonement. Doesn't use the word, but gave him his own, delivered him up for us all.

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But then notice the shift. It's the last sentence in the paragraph. Sometimes you miss the last sentence in the paragraph, if you're going really fast.

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Paul is addressing believers and their current status as having been justified because they have believed in Christ.

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Now, you have a true statement not drawn from the text, inserted specifically to provide a way around the emphasis of the text.

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Paul is not emphasizing our status as believers. He is emphasizing that God is the one accomplishing all of this, that God has predestined and God has called and God has justified and God is glorified.

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And now in the holy court of heaven, God is the one who justifies.

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G is the one who dies, rather is raised again. And therefore there can be no condemnation.

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There is no one that can bring a charge against whom? God's elect.

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But you see, when you're a synergist, you can't reason with scripture from the divine perspective down to man.

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You always have to be going from man up to God because man's the one in ultimate control,

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God can do everything he wants, but without man's cooperation, it's not going to accomplish anything. They can say that's

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God's sovereign will, but the point is that God tries and tries and tries, but the final determining factor is man.

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And so what you do here is you bring in human faith, which in Paul's theology is the result of all this other stuff,

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God's sovereign will, regeneration, gift of faith, gift of repentance, so on and so forth, bring in faith, which is something we do.

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And so we have this status because we have believed in Christ, not because God's chosen us, but because we've believed in Christ.

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So rather than draw from the text, its terminology, which is the phrase,

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God's elect, verse 33, who will bring a charge? Cata eclecton

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Theou, the elect of God. We don't like elect of God.

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So what we'll do is we'll change it over to those who've believed in Christ. Okay?

39:19

So having said that, he says, to suggest this text teaches limited atonement is faulty logic.

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We're not told why. The exegesis isn't touched. But he goes on, all those died for receive all things.

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Some do not receive all things. Therefore they are not died for. This is a quotation from someone else. He says, here is the fallacy.

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Okay. Let's see what the fallacy is because Dr. Allen loves talking about fallacies, but Dr. Allen does not want to defend his assertion about these things in debate against people who could point out his fallacies.

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That's if, I mean, honestly, if Dr. Allen really believes that we are the ones doing the fallacies, how much benefit would there be to do a debate with me and prove the fallacies in cross -examination because if they are fallacies,

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I'm not gonna be able to disprove them, right? Right. Okay.

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Here is the fallacy. The first us in Romans 8 .32

40:26

is being converted into all for whom Christ died when contextually the us refers to believers, not all for whom

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Christ died. Really? Huh.

40:48

Well, I'm looking around here and let's see, let's figure that the context starts at verse 28, we've got those who love

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God, we do have that, and you can't love

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God without believing in him, but that's true, but then those are defined as to those who are called according to his purpose.

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So they're the kleitos, the called, the elect ones, called, chosen.

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So they're the elect, so it's the elect who love God. And we know that if you're an enemy of God, you don't love

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God. There are some, there are some who would say you have to love

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God before you can believe in God and you have got to do that in and of yourself so that dead men actually have the ability to love

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God and to bring about their own salvation. There are plenty of them out there. They're called

41:51

Pelagians, they're semi -Pelagians. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to become conformed to his sons, that he would be the firstborn of many, many brethren, that's

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God acting there, and those who he predestined to be called, called, justified, justified, glorified, golden chain, all divine actions, what then shall we say to these things if God is for us, who is against us?

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Well, the only us here are those predestined, called, justified, glorified. Right?

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These are the elect, the called ones. And if they're, if all the called are justified, then this isn't just a general called ones, which would be the general calling that we do when we preach the gospel, we don't know who the elect are.

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No, this is specific. Unless you're going to become a universalist where all those who are called will eventually be glorified.

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That is consistent. It's unbiblical, but it's consistent. What then shall we say to these things?

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Who's the we? If God is for us, who is against us?

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Now, if this us is all of mankind, then

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God is against a whole portion of mankind because they're outside of Christ, and therefore his law requires that his wrath come against them.

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So this us isn't all of mankind. But what Dr. Allen is saying, this us is believers.

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Well, where'd you get believers? The context is that these are the called, and the next verse is going to say that they are the elect.

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So if you allow the text to define and you draw your meaning from the text, why would you jump chapters back someplace to a different context when you've got a context right here?

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Well, because you have a tradition you're defending, and your tradition is in opposition to the exegesis of this text.

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That's why. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us?

43:56

He who did not spare his own son, but delivered him over for us all. So here, so there is a specific terminology being used here.

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Hupere hamon. Hupere hamon. I pointed this out last time, but now we have a response from Dr.

44:14

Allen. I am laying out where Dr. Allen is exegetically wrong.

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If he thinks he's exegetically right, then he needs to do something more than just simply keep going back and forth.

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One of us has offered to come to Texas at his leisure, at his schedule, at his school, or at a church of his choice in that area, to lay these things out.

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Be happy to do it. This is important. But you have hupere hamon in verse 31.

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If God is hupere hamon for us, tithkath hamon, who can be against us?

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So the very next sentence is, he who did not spare his own son, but delivered him up hupere hamon.

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You can't change the son. You can't change who this is talking about. You can't change it.

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So God is for every single one of those for whom

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God gave up his own son. It's the same group. You can't break that.

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But delivered him over hupere hamon, how will he not also with him freely give us tapanta, by grace, karisatai.

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So perfect consistency here from the Reformed perspective. Absolutely perfect consistency.

45:58

But the other side has to, well, no, this is, but you bring this over here and then you put this over here.

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You can't, you can't walk through the text. It's like John six. You got to jump over here, jump over there, pull this into the pole.

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You can't walk through the text. Just like Romans nine. We've done that one too. Romans eight,

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Romans nine, John six, Ephesians one. You people can't walk through these texts. And until you realize that you're going to keep losing people.

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As long as we have the freedom to respond, you're going to keep losing people because you can't walk through these texts.

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You have to bring in other stuff. We don't. We can let the language say what the language is.

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How will he not also with him freely give us all things. Who is the us? Same us.

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Who will bring a charge against Kata Eklekton Theu against the elect of God?

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Well, this is the us. Are you really serious?

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You can say, well, up till now, he was just talking about believers, even though he doesn't use that term.

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And now he's just talking about something more general. No, it's the whole reason in this text, why, how should he not freely with him give us all things?

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How can he do that? Because the elect of God have been justified. How are they justified?

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Because Christ gave himself in their stead. He's already explained his righteousness for their sin.

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Romans three, Romans four, who will bring a charge against God's elect?

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God is the one justifying. Who does God justify? His elect. Does God justify anyone other than his elect?

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No. For whom did Christ die? For the elect of God.

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How can you justify anyone for whom Christ did not die? Well, Christ died for everybody. But that would make him one of the us.

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Hupere Hamon. So you're stuck with universalism. There's no way out of this, guys.

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You can stand on your head and spin and do anything you want. You can't get out of this if you just let the language say what the language says.

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Who will bring a charge against the elect of God? God is the one justifying. This ties us right back to the golden chain.

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Those whom he called, he justified. Who does he call? The elect of God. The elect of God.

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It's the elect of God who are justified. It's the elect of God who are glorified because Jesus Christ died in their behalf.

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Absolute harmony in Trinitarian redemption. It's beautiful.

48:56

It's the whole foundation of one's hope. Who will bring, uh, who is the one condemning?

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Catechumenum. Christ Jesus, the one who died, rather was raised, who is the right hand of God, who also intercedes, who also intercedes, mediates, this is, this is really the term specifically for intercession.

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Guess what the phrase is? Huper Heimon. It's the same phrase.

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For whom is Christ interceding? The elect of God for whom

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Christ gave himself. This text absolutely, absolutely says exactly what

49:50

David Allen says is nowhere in the Bible. And I will travel to Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and stand before the entire student body and defend that thesis.

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And it won't ever happen. It won't ever happen because it's a tradition.

50:08

It's a tradition. It is not exegesis. So there you go.

50:19

Uh, okay, um, I, I didn't finish reading what he said, so we just walked through it and he says, here's the fallacy.

50:27

The first us in Romans 8 .32 is being converted into all for whom Christ died when, when contextually the us refers to believers, not all for whom

50:35

Christ died. Have we debunked that sufficiently enough? I, hopefully we have. We've walked through that. That's not it.

50:40

There was no fallacy there. The fallacy is on Dr. Allen's part. That has now been documented, plainly.

50:49

Those who cite Romans 8 as supporting limited atonement are equivocating on the meaning of the word us in verse 32 and elect in verse 33.

50:57

Equivocating. Really? You mean Paul? So, so, and this is, this is again where a debate would be so useful because you can make this kind of statement and it sounds so good until someone comes along and says, so what you're actually saying is that Paul distinguishes between them?

51:16

Can you demonstrate that from the text, please? See, that's, that's why

51:21

I just go over here, listen to them, go over here, listen to them, until the two sides are brought together, you can't accomplish anything.

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There's a long history of debate in the church and it can be done properly.

51:39

There is no place in scripture where elect refers to the abstract class of the elect qua the elect, unborn elect, unbelieving elect, believing elect, glorified elect.

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Really? Why is that? Where do you get that?

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So when, when we have the elect of God in verse 33, if that's not the elect as a whole, then theos hat dikaion cannot be

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God justifies the elect as a whole. What do you do with that?

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Now you have different kinds of election or different kinds of justification. God is the one justifying.

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Are there different kinds of justification? If you want to come up with different kinds of elect, then come up with different kinds of justification.

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But in this text, you have the elect as a whole in view and they're justified by God.

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Why? Because there is no one who can bring a charge against God's elect because Jesus Christ died and rose in their behalf and now intercedes for us.

52:58

It's right there. Case closed. Debate done. Uh, so there is a place in scripture.

53:09

We are looking at it where the elect refers to the abstract class of all the elect as the elect. Every time he says the word elect occurs in scripture, it refers only to believers.

53:21

Hmm. Well, given that the elect will infallibly believe, you can turn the order around if you want to.

53:33

But once you recognize that at the beginning of this chapter,

53:40

Paul had said that those who are according to flesh cannot do what's pleasing to God.

53:47

Then you see the necessity, the necessity of regeneration, the necessity of the granting of the gifts of faith and repentance, it has been granted to you to believe in Christ Jesus.

53:59

And again, it all ends up making sense again, which it doesn't in this system.

54:06

Every time the word elect occurs in scripture, it refers only to believers. Not true. He says there are no exceptions. Well, in the sense that you are trying to force a category, a preexisting category onto the word elect, then you're wrong.

54:24

If Dr. Allen is right about this, then Romans 8 has nothing to do with you and me, because it was written a long, long time ago. We weren't around.

54:29

We couldn't have been believers. This can't be about us, which means we can have no confidence Jesus Christ interceding before the father for us today.

54:36

Congratulations. Way to go. Did Dr.

54:45

Allen ever think that through? I don't think so. It's the same thing with what

54:51

Leighton Flowers does with John 6. I've got to get around this. So I've got to say that this is about hardening of Jews and then you try to go over to John chapter three and the whole thing falls apart.

55:04

It's all because I've got this tradition. I've got to defend it from scripture and I've got to defend it against any attacks.

55:10

And the result is a mishmash. I can take the exact same exegetical methodology

55:17

I'm using here. I can go to Ephesians 1, I can go to Romans 9, I can go to numerous other passages.

55:22

John chapter 10, John chapter 17. I don't have to change my exegesis. They do.

55:28

They do constantly. Constantly. There are no exceptions. It's a bogus argument.

55:34

As an aside, the same is true of the use of his people in scripture. Never is a term used for the abstract class of the elect as most

55:41

Calvinists use it. His people is usually a reference to the nation of Israel as in Matthew 121. Once again, he will save his people from their sins.

55:48

This now means only Jews get saved. Thank you very much, Dr. Allen. Really?

55:57

You really want to go there? The Bible can never speak in a generic abstract fashion of a divine truth.

56:06

I can guarantee you we will find him violating his own principle. Numerous times in his own writings.

56:14

Reformed systematic theology speaks of the elect as the abstract class of all the elect. Scripture never does.

56:21

Therefore it is begging the question when one takes the two uses of us in Romans 832 and elect in Romans 833 as meaning the abstract class of all the elect as the elect, it is only believers that Paul is speaking to and about.

56:33

Paul is giving special assurance to those in a believing state. Now, did that come from the text?

56:39

To those of you in a believing state, notice what this ends up doing.

56:46

And this is, should have done a radio free Geneva. Notice what this does. This places the focus upon man rather than God.

56:58

This places the focus instead of what is the focus of this text? God has done this incredible from back in eternity.

57:12

You have his electing grace. He has predestined us on the basis of his will, his foreknowledge.

57:20

And that's not just having knowledge of future events. This is divine act on his part of entering into a choice to love us, even when he knows what we're going to be like.

57:29

That's amazing. But it's all about God. This is the whole text is about God. This is just as bad folks.

57:36

This is just as bad as what the Roman Catholics do in Matthew chapter 16. When they change the focus from who

57:41

Jesus is to who Peter is. Romans 6, Matthew 16 is about Jesus as the rock,

57:48

Jesus as the foundation of his church. They make it about Peter. They're doing the same thing here.

57:55

Not about Peter. Got to put man in there. And so the whole, who shall separate us from the love of God?

58:03

Well, as long as you're a believer or nothing, but you're the one that's got to do that. The whole ground of assurance stripped out to maintain synergism, to maintain the ultimate sovereignty of man.

58:19

That's what you got, that's what you got. Anyway, I think we have responded to that sufficiently now and I've come up on the hour, but there's still one other thing

58:30

I want to look at. So it's not like we have,

58:36

I'm not even sure we can get out of here right now. There's some parking lot work being done outside and knowing my luck, right as I need to leave, they're going to be laying something down and I'm going to have to get a helicopter to get out of this place.

58:52

One other thing that I did say, I announced on social media, I was going to address and it's sort of related to this.

58:58

I tweeted this, check this beast out. I didn't know they still, they would even publish something.

59:06

It's a thousand pages long. Let me see if it's, there's obviously a lot of pages back here.

59:15

Yeah, oh, 1063, so almost 1100 pages, this beast.

59:24

It is Collected Works of Erasmus, the New Testament Scholarship of Erasmus, Volume 41, the

59:29

Collected Works of Erasmus. There's going to be a lot of neat stuff in here to go along with what we've been doing from other sources in regards to the origination of the, what we call today the

59:43

Textus Receptus, and 16th century biblical textual criticism and stuff that some of you find very, very boring and the rest of you actually recognize this as really important stuff.

59:57

So, yeah, there's, that just came out, which is, which is cool to have, right around the same time, just a few days ago, an article appeared, written by Taylor DeSoto out here in Gilbert, Arizona, and there's a little blog that's been put together here,

01:00:22

The Young, Textless, and Reformed. Now, it is important for us to refute these errors.

01:00:36

These errors are not held by many people, but I have said before,

01:00:43

I'll repeat it again, if you're going to engage with the culture, if you're going to engage with meaningful and educated

01:00:55

Muslims, atheists, agnostics, and others in our society, you're going to need to understand why we can have confidence in the text of the

01:01:09

New Testament. And I believe that retreating back to the initial stages of the creation of a collated text, that is, to the work of Erasmus, his five volumes, the works of Stephanos, he did a couple of different editions, when

01:01:26

I say volumes, I mean editions, five editions, for Stephanos, Erasmus, Stephanos's editions, and then the editions of Beza, going up to 1598.

01:01:38

So the 16th century, long before the discovery of the papyri, long before the discovery of the great unseals,

01:01:47

Vaticanus was known, Erasmus made reference to it. If you're going to retreat back there, and it is a retreat, it's a retreat back to a time period before collations of manuscripts could be done, before there was any catalogs of manuscripts, where each editor, whether it was

01:02:08

Erasmus or Beza or Stephanos, had to almost physically have access to the manuscripts, which none of us,

01:02:18

I mean, actually, we can do it in a wonderful way today via high quality digital images, but there were mistakes made that I've pointed out.

01:02:28

For example, Beza made some mistakes because he didn't realize that in Stephanos, in Stephanos, go ahead and,

01:02:45

I just do this just because I know that the TR guys are like, he shouldn't have that, should not have that wonderfully brand new bound, it even says

01:02:57

Stephanos right there, it says 1550 on the side, it's in such great shape and it's beautiful, he shouldn't have that because he's a mean man.

01:03:10

In Stephanos, here along the sides, you have these notes, both sides, some are cross -references and some are references to other manuscripts.

01:03:33

What Beza did not know, I'm just saying this in passing, I've mentioned it to you before, what Beza did not know was that Stephanos had had access to Codex Bezae Cantabrigensis, which would be, it's

01:03:49

Codex D, it's that manuscript, it's the Living Bible of the early church, it has all sorts of wild variants in it. Stephanos had access to it and that's what his

01:03:58

B, his Beta manuscript is in the 1550 edition.

01:04:04

Beza didn't know that that's what B was, Beza was given that manuscript and so when he would see that the

01:04:14

Beta manuscript in Stephanos has the same reading as his manuscript, he'd go, oh well here are two major manuscripts have the same reading, so he'd give it more weight.

01:04:25

It wasn't two, it was one, same one, he just didn't know. That impacted things.

01:04:32

That wouldn't happen today. It wouldn't happen today because we now have catalogs of manuscripts and like with what

01:04:41

CSNTM is doing these days, they've already, I don't know how many, I'd have to ask Dan how many times, they have found that what was listed as one manuscript was actually two manuscripts bound together, so they've split them up.

01:04:57

Or they've discovered that a manuscript in this place is actually a part of another larger manuscript over here, brings them together.

01:05:04

That's why the number of manuscripts keeps changing back and forth, is primarily because CSNTM is doing stuff and there have been a few papyri discovered too.

01:05:13

I think we're up to, what was the last one, 141 or something like that, 142? I forget which one it was, it was just recently added.

01:05:18

Anyway, we've got to get rid of all that stuff. Go back to what was in the 16th century.

01:05:29

The very idea is plainly erroneous on its face. Plainly erroneous on its face.

01:05:36

And it certainly gives the other side reason to go, hey wait a minute, what's the problem with, they only had access to a small number of manuscripts, any one of them, what's the problem with having access to 6 ,000 of them, let alone all the

01:05:54

Latin, Coptic, Sohitic, Boheric, is there something in there you all don't like?

01:06:00

Maybe something there that undercuts your confidence? Well there actually isn't, but sure sounds that way when you run away from it, and go, yeah, yeah, actually, yeah, we have a whole lot more manuscripts, but we don't need them.

01:06:16

They got it right back then, and that's pretty much it. Really?

01:06:23

Well, we've quoted from Beza and Erasmus, they never made that claim. How many times does

01:06:31

Erasmus go, I'll leave it to the reader. Here's one reading, here's another reading,

01:06:37

I'm going with what happens to be in this manuscript here, but it could be the one.

01:06:44

They didn't have the attitude that people have who elevate their text to a position that they never elevated their text to.

01:06:53

So there, this article, the young textless and reformed, says there is no modern doctrine of preservation.

01:07:01

Now okay, you title things to get someone's attention. It's a false statement on its face, there is, and I've presented it a number of times, and it is significantly more deeply rooted in history and the manuscript tradition than anything is being put forward by the small group of people that are trying to drag us back into the 16th century in our knowledge of the text of the

01:07:32

New Testament. But there is no modern doctrine of preservation.

01:07:42

There is no modern doctrine of preservation, and I'm not sure people have realized it quite yet. Well, there's a reason.

01:07:49

What does preserved mean? It means that, now remember, this is something that Douglas Wilson and I debated in our little book on this particular subject.

01:07:58

It means that something has been kept safe from harm, uncorrupted, or maintained the same form as when it was created.

01:08:05

In this case, New Testament corpus is the object that is said to be preserved. This means that in order for the New Testament to be preserved, it had to have stayed the same from the time it was penned in the collection of faithful copies and collated editions going forward.

01:08:18

That does not mean that every copy or collation is faithful to the text that God inspired or preserved, just that the original, it just says just that original, but probably should be the original, was transmitted faithfully throughout the ages and even to the modern period.

01:08:37

Now again, as I've pointed out many, many times before, this is the same thing that happens when you talk with Doug Wilson.

01:08:46

On the one hand, I want my text, if we're gonna talk about inerrancy,

01:08:51

I want my text to be inerrant. Okay, and so which one is inerrant? And he actually said, that one.

01:09:00

At least, hey, give Doug the credit. He pointed to one.

01:09:05

And the problem is, I can point out errors and that, so there's the doctrine of inerrancy out the window. Oh well. But at least he pointed to one.

01:09:14

But what if you turn around and you say, what's said here? Oh, it's been preserved, but not in any one manuscript.

01:09:25

So that does not mean that every copy or collation is faithful to the text that God inspired or preserved, just that the original is transmitted faithfully throughout the ages and even in the modern period.

01:09:38

Well, I believe that. I believe that based upon the entirety of the manuscript tradition.

01:09:44

I believe all the original readings are there in the entirety of the manuscript tradition.

01:09:51

But that's what's being said is not a doctrine of preservation. Hmm.

01:09:57

The words of the New Testament were not lost. I agree. The existence of different text forms and variants does not disqualify the

01:10:05

Bible as being preserved. Agree again. It simply indicates that certain lines of textual transmission were corrupted.

01:10:13

Certain? All. All. You cannot find two

01:10:20

Byzantine manuscripts that are identical with one another. It's worse in some books, better in others, but all lines experienced the technical term corruption.

01:10:32

There are textual variants in all of them. And even within faithful manuscripts, there were variants introduced into the text.

01:10:40

Yep, that's why you need textual criticism. All the time. Always. There is no mistake that the manuscript tradition tells a complex story full of many scribal errors and corruptions.

01:10:52

And it does, as does the Byzantine manuscript tradition as well. In order for a text to be preserved in light of textual variants introduced by scribal errors and corruptions, there is one process.

01:11:03

Okay, here we go, folks. Here we go. This is... I'm going to try to... I'm not going to talk... respond to the whole thing, because half the audience is zoning out.

01:11:14

When Rich starts zoning out, we're all zoning out. I get it. Okay. He's like, what? What?

01:11:19

Me? No. I'm listening carefully. But this is important.

01:11:27

I realize that most of you will never know that it's important until you see it causing problems.

01:11:35

And then you sit there going, oh man, I wish I'd listened more carefully. In order for a text to be preserved in light of textual variants introduced by scribal errors and corruption, there is one process that could have resulted in the original text being transmitted faithfully into the modern period.

01:11:55

This process... listen, folks, this is a major, major...

01:12:01

this is an assertion that's being made but not defended.

01:12:11

This process would have involved correcting scribal errors and corruptions as the manuscripts were copied throughout the ages.

01:12:26

This can be observed in surviving manuscripts by the existence of corrections by various scribes, as well as the increased uniformity of texts going into the

01:12:40

Middle Period, though not perfect uniformity. In order to believe that the text of the

01:12:47

New Testament has been preserved, one has to say that the effort of the scribes was successful in every generation of copying.

01:12:59

If the text has been preserved, one would expect the text to become increasingly uniform over time as the number of copyists increased along with the number of Christians.

01:13:12

Now that is an entire assertion of a methodology that was not believed in by a single editor of the

01:13:23

New Testament in the 16th century. Not a single one. None of them believed that.

01:13:29

Where did Erasmus say that? Here. Here we go. Here you go, Taylor. Thousand pages.

01:13:36

Where did Erasmus say that? We've already seen where they said the exact opposite. Those careless scribes, they misread this and they misread that.

01:13:44

It should have been this and the Latin's better. This is called making up theories because of a simple fact, and the fact is there is no possible way to create a textual critical methodology, apply it to today's manuscripts, and come up with the

01:14:08

Texas Receptus. That is a fact. They cannot get around. They sit and spin, they do jumping jacks, they can get charismatic.

01:14:17

It doesn't matter. They can't get around that reality. It's a fact. So you gotta come up with some other way. Some other way.

01:14:23

So now we have the idea that, well, what the scribes were doing is that there is a long process of the scribes correcting the text.

01:14:31

Well, okay, how does that work? Because, plainly, we see scribes making some major errors that end up being

01:14:44

Byzantine majority readings. So is this a providential thing?

01:14:51

Which ones of the scribes are providentially being guided to correct the text?

01:14:59

Why are they needing to correct it if the Byzantine text is the primitive text? Because, see, the

01:15:04

Byzantine text is longer than the earlier text. There is a growth in the text.

01:15:11

So a bunch of stuff was lost back then. How could it have been reinserted?

01:15:18

Are they getting divine revelation from God? What about the clear scribal errors that we see?

01:15:26

What do you do with them? Because those scribes, you're right, scribes did try to correct things.

01:15:33

But they often didn't. They were often ignorant. If you're trying to correct stuff, isn't there a need for some type of revelation, inspiration going on here?

01:15:41

Is this some type of spiritual activity going on after the canonization of Scripture? How does this work?

01:15:51

And the uniformity, the fact that manuscripts from a thousand years onward are more like one another than those beforehand.

01:16:03

I say that is because Latin became the text of the

01:16:11

West, and hence you have the Vulgate, and the rise of Islam in the

01:16:17

East. It takes out North Africa and most of the Holy Land up to Byzantium.

01:16:25

And so you end up with not only the rise of sacralism, but the rise of monasteries.

01:16:33

So what you're telling us is that the monasteries were the methodology, the mechanism in some preservational system?

01:16:44

That monks, Benedictine monks, that's the preservational system?

01:16:52

Is that what's being... It's not because of what happened historically. It's because of the monks?

01:17:05

Okay. Due to the heavy persecution of Christians in the early church, alongside the fragility of stationary, the early manuscript evidence in the

01:17:15

New Testament is sparse. Well, in comparison to what? In comparison to how many manuscripts we have from a thousand years later?

01:17:23

Well, okay. All of the extant early manuscripts generally represent a different text form than what survived in the later textual tradition, and are generally agreed to have originated in one locality.

01:17:41

Really? Hmm. So the fact that CBGM, in its application in the

01:17:52

New Testament right now, is favoring Byzantine readings? That goes against your entire theory.

01:18:03

Not only that, but CBGM demonstrates that as far as the bulk text is concerned, the early manuscripts are 98 % of what the later manuscripts are.

01:18:14

So, might want to emphasize that. And while Egypt is a great place to preserve manuscripts, meteorologically speaking, how do you know they all originated there?

01:18:31

Because Alexandria especially was a place of massive correspondence and trade, and a lot of those manuscripts could have originated from many different places.

01:18:40

Caesarea, all sorts of places. Hmm. Based on empirical methods, there simply is not enough data to draw any definitive conclusions on the authenticity of surviving manuscripts in the third and fourth century.

01:18:56

Really? Where do you get that from? I want some proof. I want some proof,

01:19:03

Taylor! I was doing a whole series,

01:19:08

I might pick it up again someday. I was doing a whole series preaching through p45. That's from around 220.

01:19:19

What do you mean, based on empirical methods, there is simply not enough data to draw any definitive conclusions on the authenticity of surviving manuscripts from the third and fourth century?

01:19:28

I want to know where you get that. It would be more definitive if the earliest manuscripts agreed in more places, but even the earliest surviving witnesses in the

01:19:36

New Testament are massively divided. Really? 98 % the same text is massively divided?

01:19:44

Where are you getting this stuff? Where are you pulling this stuff?

01:19:51

There's no notes, it's just, believe me, okay? And your

01:19:56

PhD in textual criticism is from where? Because, I mean, if you're just gonna make this kind of assertion, then you need to be able to back it up.

01:20:06

And on this program, we've put up on the screen, here's

01:20:12

CBGM, here's their stuff, you can go right now. You can go right now for the

01:20:17

Book of Acts and pull up data charts, massive amounts of information, behind the

01:20:25

ECM of Acts from the CBGM work at Munster that will demonstrate that the early text and the later text, they're all part, that's all one

01:20:38

New Testament. That's all one New Testament. Anyway, I'm sorry,

01:20:45

I said I was going to, here's something I marked that I wanted to get to. When the word preservation is taken at face value, it simply means that the whole thing being preserved has not been corrupted or harmed or destroyed in any way.

01:20:59

It does not mean that every single manuscript, even one manuscript, has been kept without error. It means that in every generation, the original text has survived in the approved manuscripts that the people of God have relied on for all matters of faith and practice.

01:21:16

It means that scribal errors were corrected and that manuscripts of poor quality were retired or destroyed.

01:21:23

There is not a scintilla of evidence that the

01:21:30

Church as a whole has ever said this manuscript and not that one.

01:21:37

Prove me wrong. Prove me wrong. I mean, I can show you where the

01:21:44

Church made the Vulgate the standard and threatened anybody who used anything else.

01:21:51

I can find that. But you and I don't believe that. Well, at least

01:21:57

I can speak for myself. I don't know where you've gone. You're adopting stuff that's very different.

01:22:02

I don't know. But I would assume that you don't accept the authority of the Pope or the

01:22:07

Council of Trent. And so, where has the Church, this approved manuscripts the people of God have relied on for all matters of faith and practice?

01:22:20

That sounds so elevating. It's just a myth.

01:22:27

It's a myth. Prove it. Document it. Show me where they said, this is the approved manuscript, that's the unapproved manuscript.

01:22:36

Who was it? Who said it? When? What information do they have access to? Otherwise, just admit,

01:22:45

I'm just putting this stuff out here because. Because. Yeah.

01:22:52

So, there you go. There you go. There's much more.

01:22:57

But like I said, I'm not even... Rich, you still there? Oh, okay.

01:23:03

All right. You know, when Rich starts doing the... No, when Rich starts doing the...

01:23:15

Sure, you're checking the parking lot. I understand. I get it. Oh, you heard a noise.

01:23:24

Oh. Well, my car, I got smart.

01:23:29

I parked on the other side of the road. I'm over that direction. I hope it's still there. It's not going to be great.

01:23:39

That'd be bad. So, all right. So, with that, yeah,

01:23:49

I expected... As soon as I did it, I expected the same thing. I expected the same thing.

01:23:54

Yeah. Yeah. So, anyway. All right, folks. I've been talking for a long time now because I was on the radio before I did this.

01:24:03

So, I've been going for a long time. I'm starting to feel it. So, we will be back,

01:24:08

Lord willing, on Thursday. And I think I've got another week after that before things start getting crazy.

01:24:15

Please be praying for us. Lots of debates coming up. I mean, I think we have more...

01:24:22

I think I'll do more debates this year than I've ever done in any single year in my adult life. I really do.

01:24:29

And especially Salt Lake. I mean, Jason Wallace is just...

01:24:34

As Rich just said from the other room, a bad man. I want...

01:24:40

I didn't want to say that. I want to be able to blame somebody else for it. But, yeah. And I do intend on that Saturday evening, when

01:24:50

I come for the Lee Baker debate, I intend to do everything

01:24:55

I can to make Jason feel as guilty as I possibly can for what he's put me through.

01:25:02

I may, you know, just come dragging in, you know. Maybe I'll buy a little cane or something like that, you know.

01:25:08

Just try to... And it won't matter, because he's Scottish and he doesn't have a heart just like me.

01:25:14

So, it won't make any difference. But anyway, debates coming up. They're in Salt Lake City.

01:25:22

Each one very different. Very... I mean, that's the thing. Look at those two debates in a dialogue.

01:25:28

A dialogue is a debate without rules. Atheism, two -on -two debate,

01:25:37

Jeff and I. Next night, Alma and I, what is truth? That's almost...

01:25:43

That's a Christian -Mormon epistemological discussion. The next night, Lee Baker is the

01:25:49

Bible reliable, which is going to be all over the map. There's nothing, probably nothing similar between any of them at all.

01:26:00

So you're having to shift gears and prepare for this wide a range of things to be able to do that.

01:26:11

And then, boom! Straight to Australia, and really looking forward to the debate with Abdullah Kunda on whether Paul was a apostle of Jesus Christ or an innovator.

01:26:26

Because Islam has to say that Jesus fundamentally altered Paul's message because of the knowledge of the...

01:26:34

the level of knowledge of the author of the Quran. Has to say it. And the possibility...

01:26:43

I'm hoping for the possibility of a debate in Melbourne, too. I haven't heard back from you guys on that.

01:26:49

I wrote back and said, let's do it. And there is a Islamic apologetics organization starting in Australia.

01:26:57

And maybe they'd be able to... I know it would be weird on a Saturday morning, because that's all we've got. But I'd still like to try to do it.

01:27:06

And then right after... less than two weeks after that, off to London, and we've got the debate.

01:27:14

Michael Brown and I tag -team debate against two Muslims, whose identity has not yet been revealed to us yet.

01:27:25

But I have a feeling I know who it'll be. It'll be including... should be including one Muslim that I've wanted to debate but have not debated before.

01:27:33

And there's one other Muslim in London that I really want to debate.

01:27:39

And I would love... and I'd do it this trip, as long as it's a subject that wouldn't require a huge amount of new reading.

01:27:48

But I think his name is Muhammad Hijab. He's the fellow that debated

01:27:54

David Wood, I think, early last year. And I keep trying to get people to get us in touch.

01:28:03

I want to get in touch. And I want to do something. Even if it's outside the normal channels, still want to do something.

01:28:12

So... And those of you in the St. Charles area, we're still coming your direction. It is not the

01:28:19

Sunday immediately after Thanksgiving. Right. It's...

01:28:24

I think it's what, the 7th? I think it's around the 7th. 7th, 8th, 9th. Something like that, of December. Oh, wait a minute. I have calendar up, so I can...

01:28:33

Yeah. The 6th, 7th, and 8th of December.

01:28:42

So it normally... it actually is still the same. It's the first full weekend. It's the first full weekend of December.

01:28:49

That's what we've always done in the past. This last one wouldn't have fit there. So yeah. But Thanksgiving is really late this year.

01:28:55

It's 28th. Really, really late. That's... I think it's the latest that that gets. So anyways. Alright. So lots of stuff coming up.