Reconciliation in Scripture Examined, Then Open Phones

Testing. Well, I got nothing up there.

We are having a bad day, folks. Well, I'm not having a bad day, but someone who will remain nameless is having a very bad day.

We ain't got no introduction. We ain't got no music. And somebody in the other room just looks really confused, and everything's not working right, and there's buzzing, and he about broke his finger in the door just trying to close the door.

I mean, it's not like we haven't closed this door many, many times before, but it's just one of those days for the poor nameless man that everyone feels like I pick on.

And now he's gone. He's at the deck. He's gone.

It's going to be rough, I can tell you right now. It's going to be either a very short one or a very long one, or maybe a short one that's going to feel very long, or I don't know, something along those lines.

But we just sort of started, and there you go. Welcome. I'm going to predict now that it's probably not going to get recorded right, or the internet's going to collapse, or something,

I don't know, before we get done here. So I'm not sure I want to put a whole lot of effort into something that's probably never going to make it outside the walls of this particular building.

But welcome to the Dividing Line. We are professionals. We've been doing this for many years, and that's why it works so well all the time.

Are we bleeding? A little bit.

Wow. How did you manage to do that? There's a thing called a knob, and they're fairly smooth and soft, you know?

And so you could have just used the knob. That's how I've always done it, is

I've just used... See, I'm going to pay you back just by opening this line. I'll let you hear the buzz. So the buzz is back.

I'll turn the buzz up for you here. All right, great. Wonderful. Well, please try not to bleed on the equipment.

It's already bad enough as it is in there without us having it short circuit with that.

So what were we going to be talking about today? Now I'm worried about playing anything, because who knows whether that's going to work or not.

So we'll give that one a second. And what's even worse is

I was actually going to take phone calls, so I'm not sure if that's even going to be a possibility.

We'll see what happens somewhere down the line. I mean,

I'm going to open it up here and look at it, hopefully, but we'll get to it eventually. Maybe once the bleeding stops, then we can take phone calls.

We'll go that way. Well, anyway, let's try to get serious here for a moment.

There are a number of aspects to biblical study that are frequently lost because of the fact that we look at the

Bible in its modern form. And again, having a divide into chapters and verses is wonderful.

It makes it so much easier for us to find things and all get to the same place at the same time. It must have been pretty amazing for the first 1500 years of the church where you didn't have that.

But still, it leads to a mindset, especially amongst those of us in the

West, it leads to a mindset that sort of atomizes the text.

It breaks it up into its little constituent parts. A lot of us are no longer trained in our schooling to read literature, to analyze themes, to follow themes across many different pericopes, things like that.

And so as a result, we tend to miss some of the most important tools that are provided to us in understanding the

Scriptures and apologetically in seeing through the shallow assumptions that are often used by some of the leading critics.

We played a quote, a couple comments on the last program, listening to Sam Harris and Bart Ehrman talking back and forth.

And the assumptions, the false assumptions that both were making became very clear at that particular point in time.

And as we've been thinking about the debate between Mike Licona and Bart Ehrman, there have been a number of times we've had to go back and analyze the foundational assumptions that were being made, even in the criticism of the

New Testament materials. So the next thing we need to get to in that, I'm not sure if I'm going to be getting to it for a while because I leave a week from tomorrow for that very lengthy trip.

And so it's probably going to be impossible to do any programs while I'm overseas.

I mean, I suppose it's might be able to do it, but I really, really, really doubt it.

So I'm not sure when we get to it, but one of the things we've been sort of touching on in his criticisms, for example, the birth narratives is assumptions about what would have to be included by both

Matthew and Luke for either one of them to be considered to be truthful.

All those types of things come to us when we look at the Revelation as a whole, and we see the presuppositions that are being made by critics, as well as look at the presuppositions that are being made by the writers themselves.

So one of the things that's extremely helpful, really, really useful in doing your study of the

Scriptures is to recognize when you have parallels. Now, sometimes those parallels can be troubling.

For example, when studying the Gospels in parallel, you're going to have to deal with all of the differences between the

Gospels, and that takes you back to recognizing assumptions. Does Mark have to be just like Matthew?

Obviously, a good friend of mine is not listening to the program right now. When we look at the parallels in Matthew and Mark and Luke, you know, we have to deal with the presuppositions that are found there.

Those aren't the only ones, though. Those aren't the only places where there's parallels. Lesser known are the fact that you have the historical books, you have the parallels between 1 and 2

Chronicles and 1 and 2 Kings, you have parallel material in other places in the

Old Testament, and especially the very name, Deuteronomy, the second giving of the law, means that you're going to have parallel materials between Leviticus and Deuteronomy, Exodus and Deuteronomy.

And so, when you can have a parallel, then you can, it's sort of like getting a second point of view, a second perspective on the same material.

And unlike, you know, my first exposure to this was back when the

Morah missionaries came by my home, well, they didn't come by my home, they came by my sister -in -law's home, and presented the

Acts 9 -7, Acts 22 -9 issue, where Paul is narrating his conversion.

Well, in one, Paul is narrating his conversion, and the other, his conversion is being narrated by someone else.

And the missionaries pointed to what they felt were inconsistencies between those renderings of the same thing.

Well, you can either look at them negatively like that, because you're always having to deal with people that are saying, well, see, this is this, this is that, there's a problem here, there's an error there.

Or, you can, you know, when you really dig into them, you end up seeing deeper aspects of what was being said.

So, for example, in that particular example, you see what was hearing and not hearing, the use of Sa 'ul in one of the instances, you get a deeper look at what was actually being said and being communicated than you would if you only had the one rendering, because you don't have that second perspective to look at things.

What's all this about? Well, one of the things that we have to deal with very regularly,

I was listening, like I said, to that Bart Ehrman -Sam Harris thing, and at one point,

Ehrman says, well, no, Paul never said that, because that's in one of the books that's only attributed to him, but he didn't actually write it.

Bart Ehrman has an extremely limited Pauline corpus, only seven books instead of 13, depending on what you do with Hebrews as well, but he has an extremely limited

Pauline corpus, and so most of us, when we are reading theologians and New Testament commentaries, if you haven't gone to Fuller Seminary, you'll sometimes be sitting there reading something, and the person will say something, and you're like, but didn't

Paul say such and such someplace else? And you and I, as conservatives, trying to allow the

Scriptures to speak to themselves as a whole, we're a minority. The majority of Western quote -unquote scholarship chops the

Bible up and does not feel any necessity or any concern to read the

New Testament in the context of the New Testament as divine revelation. And so, that's a huge, huge dividing line, a massive dividing line.

And so, if we're talking about Paul's theology, and you only have seven books to derive his theology from, and somebody else has 12, 13 books, and of course, he looks at the pastoral epistles, and his theory on that is this represents a later state of the church.

Well, you know, I'm sorry, but how do you know that?

You theorize about what the early church was like and then get rid of New Testament evidence on the basis of your theories, whereas what we have should be the basis of our looking at the church.

That's not how they do it. Anyway, with all that said, when we start looking at what

Paul gives us in Ephesians and Colossians, for someone like Bart Ehrman, that's not

Paul. This is the voice of a later generation.

When we look at Ephesians and Colossians, what we discover there is very similar to what you would have, for example, when you compare part of the

Petrine, Peter's epistles with Jude, you know, the crossover in 2 Peter and Jude, very similar to one another.

Colossians and Ephesians, very similar to one another. But interesting differences.

You can see certain topics that he's going through and that he wants to communicate in both letters, but there's clearly a different emphasis between the two epistles as well, which is fascinating because it gives us another perspective.

It makes some of the discussion all that much deeper. They're not just carbon copies of one another.

And the theory that I think fits the best is that Ephesians was a circular letter.

It was a letter meant to be circulated around the Lycus River Valley. And it is interesting that there is a textual variant right at the beginning.

There are just a couple of early manuscripts that do not say to the saints who are at Ephesus.

There is no specific designation of where the epistle is being sent in some manuscripts.

And that would allow us to look at Colossians 4 .16, where it talks about the letter coming from Laodicea.

And that would be Ephesians, that it would be going around one side of the valley and it's going to eventually get to Colossae.

And that would be our letter that we call Ephesians.

And so, what we call

Ephesians starts in a well -grounded church, a church that Paul invested years in the training of the elders and the grounding in theology.

And yet, the epistle to the church at Colossae, it's a church he's never been to.

And so, what you get to see in the slight differences in emphasis between Ephesians and Colossians and what's contained in one and what's not contained in the other and vice versa and then what is in parallel, sort of gives you an insight into what

Paul wants all the churches in Lycus River Valley, Ephesians, including the ones really grounded in the

Word, to know. And then with special focus in Colossae, which is to the east, and this is where most scholarship feels

Gnosticism came from the east toward the west. And so, there is a more of an apologetic concern about some errors that, evidently,

Paul has heard are creeping into the church at Colossae. So, what for me is that's fascinating because, transport that to a situation today.

Well, this is a good example. I'll use my dear friend Jason Wallace up in Salt Lake City.

If the OPC were to put out a circular letter, just a general exhortation to the churches in regards to standing firm in the faith in our difficult days, so on and so forth.

It would be like, okay, we're gonna have this general letter we're gonna send out to everybody, but if we're gonna send it to the church in Salt Lake, there's specific challenges that someone's gonna face in that valley.

Salt Lake, it's everything. Oh my goodness.

Salt Lake is just the Disneyland of heresy.

It's a small world up there. That's just amazing.

But it wouldn't surprise us if there was a special emphasis upon those elements of Christian truth that need to be emphasized in dealing with Mormonism, or in dealing with those who have become disenchanted with Mormonism, especially over the past number of decades, and how to especially present the

Christian truth to them. That would be putting it in a modern sense. And of course, if you wrote to churches in Brooklyn, you've got the

Jehovah's Witnesses or anything else along those lines, you can see why there would be differences.

By the way, this is one of the reasons why the argument against Pauline authorship of the pastoral epistles, to me, is just so far off base.

Because they'll say, well, look at all the different vocabulary. That is used in 1st, 2nd

Timothy and Titus, that isn't used in the genuine Pauline epistles. Well, if you get to determine what the genuine

Pauline epistles are, and by that determine what is Paul's vocabulary, well, you change just one of those books, and all of a sudden that vocabulary list completely changes, and it's completely arbitrary.

But what's more, it's very obvious that when you write an epistle, you write a letter to a specific individual.

Even if that individual is in a particular church, the vocabulary you're going to be using is going to be different.

Fundamentally different. And so, it just doesn't make any sense.

I mean, if we were to take Bart Ehrman's letters that he writes to co -workers, and compare the vocabulary with his popular books, or just compare the vocabulary of his scholarly books versus his popular books, we'd have to come up with the conclusion that there are many

Bart Ehrmans, and there are a bunch of forgeries running around too. But when that's turned on the ancient context, no one seems to say anything, and no one seems to care.

So, it is interesting that when we look at this material, for example,

I was looking at the word renewed. Renewed. That is found three places in Paul's writings.

I'm sorry, renewed. Reconciled. I'm sorry about that. I was looking at renewed first, then I moved to reconciled. And reconciled is used in Ephesians and Colossians.

Twice in Colossians, once in Ephesians. Renewed, interestingly enough, is used in Colossians, Ephesians, and Romans.

Now, again, as long as you're not really concerned about these things, you can always come up with a defense of your theory.

So, if you point out, hey, here's rather specific Pauline theological language.

It's being used in Romans, Ephesians, and Colossians. Then the person who rejects

Ephesians and Colossians is going to say, ah, that's where the person's trying to imitate Paul's language.

So, when there is a parallel, it's the forger trying to imitate the language of the original.

But when he uses different vocabulary, that's evidence he's a forger.

There's no way out. Once you've got your theory, you've got your theory, and that's it.

And look, folks, for seminary students, there is, sadly, even in good seminaries, a groupthink concept.

And you send a young man to the seminary, and he's going to be automatically impressed with those bright professors and how much they know and all the stuff they can quote off the top of their head.

And he's going to be like them. And the critical barriers often come down.

And that's why many a church has sent a man off to seminary, and the guy comes back, they're like, where'd you get all that stuff from?

And it's because they want to be in the in -group, and they want to be like these men that they look up to.

And it's good to look up to scholars, but the problem is, if those scholars are not deeply committed to the

Christian faith or deeply committed to the local church, then that can cause all sorts of rather serious problems down the road.

But the point is, the vast majority of seminary students are just simply going to accept what they're told by their professors when it comes to issues like authorship, dating.

The vast majority of folks in seminaries don't take time to be looking at that stuff. And there is such a bias against anything that is conservative or believing or historical in seminaries today that you're not going to get published in the vast majority of instances if you're writing something that is actually supportive of traditional, historical

Christian orthodoxy. The game's rigged for you trying to find something that's new.

And normally, when it comes to theology, new is called heresy. Sort of how it works.

So, there's all sorts of reasons to believe that Paul wrote Ephesians and Colossians. I don't know of any meaningful, compelling reason not to believe that.

But, that's what you're going to run into out there. And especially, like I said, in that very, very dangerous place called the

Christian bookstore. That's what's going to be there. I forgot my water.

It's dry. These days. I'm sorry? Well, I had already done that.

That's fine. But I could just use some water. I appreciate it. Thank you. And please don't dip your finger in it.

Okay. Appreciate that. Poor guy. Making fun of the poor man that injured himself while closing the door.

It's just terrible of me. Anyway, It is so dry out here right now that I've noticed, even when teaching

Sunday school, I normally do not drink water while teaching. But right now, it is just so dry that, yeah,

I'm getting parched here pretty quick. That will change come the second week of July.

And then, while I won't have to worry about drinking water for that reason, we'll have to worry about drinking water just because I'll be sweating so much because it will be so horribly humid.

Anyway, all of that meandering about, man, we have covered 47 ,000 different topics there all at one time.

By the way, please be very careful in closing the door because the door tends to close.

Oh, that makes such a difference. Ah, water is such a wonderful thing in the desert. You know what the temperature gauge on the back porch said as I left it, 112.

So, obviously, it's much warmer under there because I've tarped it off some and so it's holding the holds the heat in.

So, it's much higher than it really is. But, so what do you do?

You either hold the heat in or you get the sun. Well, you know, six of one, half a dozen of the other.

Yahoo, that's the way it is. But, anyhow, yes, the summer has arrived in Phoenix. It is that way.

All of this meandering about all to get us back to looking at this word reconciliation.

Reconciliation. We're hearing a lot about it today and so a person might want to ask the question, what does the

Bible say about reconciliation? And it's interesting to me that the term is used in these two epistles that Paul writes for distribution amongst the churches there in the

Lycus River Valley. And so we have it used in three places.

We have it in Ephesians 2 .16 and then twice in Colossians 1 .20 and 1 .22, at least the specific term that we're looking at.

And so, in context, Ephesians 2 .13, But now in Christ Jesus, you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

For he himself is our peace who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall.

So we're talking here about the religious, cultural, and ethnic division that is central to the

New Testament message in Paul specifically. Primarily because Paul was so concerned that it would be a permanently established division in the church.

He recognized this would be fatal. It would be fatal because it would inevitably lead to the idea that there is one way of salvation for one group and one way of salvation for another group, and once you have that, then you're going to have to have different gospels for two different groups.

And if you have different gospels, then you have two different saviors, and it's the unity of the church and the body of Christ is divided and destroyed.

And so, if you've never really noticed just how focused the

Apostle Paul is on refuting any possible idea of a

Jewish Christian church versus a Gentile Christian church, you need to see it. Every person in this audience has memorized

Romans 3 .23. Probably memorized it when we were little kids if you were raised in a church.

But you need to realize when it says, for all who have sinned, Paul's primary point there is not the universality of sin in the sense of every single individual, though that's true.

That had already been established in Romans 1 and then repeated in the application in 2 and then concluded in that catena of passages

Romans 3, verses 10 and following. The emphasis in Romans 3 .23

is on Jew and Gentile. For all Jew and Gentile have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

It doesn't matter whether you possessed the law and the promises, those are great advantages, but once you've sinned, you're under the wrath of God.

For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. That's Jews and Gentiles. So these are the two.

Those who are formerly far off are the Gentiles, have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

And so for Paul, the healing of that division, the prevention of that division continuing, is part of the redemptive work of Christ himself.

For he himself is our Irenae, our peace who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall by abolishing in his flesh the enmity.

So the enmity that existed, Paul says, which is the law of commandments contained in ordinances so that in himself he might make the two into one new man thus establishing or making

Irenae, peace. Now you see the deep connection this has to Romans chapter 5

Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. So here is this peace.

The peace is with God in Romans 5 Here the peace is between the two divisions, those that have been divided from one another.

And that dividing wall has been broken down abolishing in his flesh the enmity which is the law of commandments contained in ordinances so that in himself he might make the two into one new man.

Now the Jewish person could not conceive of a greater division than Jew Gentile.

There was no concept of ethnicity in the

Jewish Gentile division because you could be a convert to Judaism and it didn't matter what your color was.

The Ethiopian eunuch had come to Jerusalem to worship. He was attracted to this monotheistic religion.

And so when Isaiah the prophet says everyone who thirsts there's nothing there about ethnicities or colors or skin colors or anything else vast majority of the people to whom these books originally written were much darker than white

Europeans are. So that thing that element not even there.

The greatest division in the mind was between Jew and Gentile. And Paul is saying in himself in Christ he himself is our peace no matter what your ethnic background the two groups where the greatest division existed have been made into one in himself he makes the two into one new man thus establishing peace.

So what is biblically speaking the ground of peace between men and God and between men in the teaching of the

New Testament in inspired scripture. Now Paul didn't know anything about the politics of 21st century

United States. He didn't know anything about what was going to happen in 19th century United States or in 18th century

United States or anything like that at all and anyone who makes the political or historical events of a nation that would not come into existence for a millennium and a half after this time normative for the interpretation of these words is not engaging in honest exegesis of the text and allowing the scriptures to be supreme in these matters.

Application cannot come before exegesis application comes afterwards and so the establishment of peace between the two greatest most harshly divided groups happens through the blood of the cross it is in Christ and in Christ alone so making the two into one new man thus establishing peace and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross by it having put to death the enmity.

There's there's reconciliation Ephesians 2 16 abolishing in his flesh the enmity that he might reconcile them both in one body this is why it is so important everybody says we're talking about gospel issues yeah we are because you see there is only going to be one body that is reconciled to God through the cross not many bodies only one body and so this is foundational primary

Christian teaching this is how we this is where we have to start and this has to be the lens through which we view everything else in history and the less central this idea is in our thought the less biblical and gospel oriented our application is going to be at any point in history whether it's the current situation or the 6th century or the 9th century hey there were situations in all of those centuries that required a reflection upon how it is that we are to have peace with God and peace with one another and he quotes from Isaiah 57 he came and preached peace to those who were far away and peace to those who were near in other words

Jews and Gentiles see this is not something that only

I've come up with this is a prophetic reality this was prophesied this is something that is important for the early church to establish that the gospel was to go to the whole world and that that Jewish Gentile dividing wall was broken down in the person of Jesus Christ and verse 18 for through him we both have our access in one spirit to the

Father Trinitarian passage notice that? through him, Jesus the

Son we both have our access in one spirit to the Father Trinitarian understanding, can't understand the gospel or the

Christian life outside of the Trinitarian reality of the New Testament so no one approaches the

Father in any other way than this one way that has been provided the

Jew doesn't have a different level of access, the Gentile doesn't have a different level of access, one spirit one

Father, one body this is the radical teaching of the

New Testament and that concept of reconciliation is directly connected to the work of the cross so there's the first use it's making the two into one new man thus establishing peace and might reconcile them both in one body to God by means of by the cross, reconciliation is a salvific result of the work of God it is the triune

God's successful work based upon the self -giving of the

Son in the purpose of the Father application of the Spirit it's a Trinitarian thing and it is an accomplished reality and that is why any believer anywhere in the world no matter what that person's ethnic orientation might be has peace with every other believer because we have one access through him by the

Spirit to the Father anything else fundamentally destroys the foundation of Christian unity fundamentally so there's your first usage and then the others are directly right next to each other in the book of Colossians speaking of the centrality of Christ for it was the

Father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in him and through him to reconcile all things to himself having made peace through the blood of his cross the language between Colossians and Ephesians is almost identical at that point peace blood of his cross through him

I say where things on earth are things in heaven what's a little bit different here and this is why

I like the similar themes different emphasis allows you to see things from another perspective, parallels between Colossians and Ephesians what you've just had is the warning against seeing

Christ as a lesser than truly God intermediary one of the eons, part of the pleroma, the semi -gnostic early gnostic concept that Paul's going to be warning about in the book of Colossians and the

Son's being the creator of all things has led up to this and then it's the

Father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in him and through him creation by means of him and now through him to reconcile all things to himself having made peace through the blood of his cross through him

I say where things on earth are things in heaven so you have this use of term reconciliation universalist will use this to try to press a universal reconciliation as in the salvation of every single created being that could be saved

I guess every personal being angelic, human depends on what universalist you're talking to but the problem is at this point when

Paul speaks of reconciliation through the blood of his cross he's going to make two applications there is a sense of universal reconciliation here in that because of what

Christ does on the cross God the Father can justly deal with everything in creation he has provided in Christ the demonstration of his love, his mercy his goodness the fulfillment of the prophetic word all these things but at this point up through verse 20 he's talking creation language then this becomes the transition verse 21 and although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind so now what's he done?

now he's going to the human level he's talking to those who were alienated and hostile in mind that is against God's truth he's talking to Gentiles primarily here engaged in evil deeds yet he has now reconciled you in his fleshly body through death in order to present you before him holy and blameless and beyond reproach so when we get to the human application it's still

God who does the reconciliation but it's of a specific people that he is going to present as holy and blameless and beyond reproach very same terminology that interestingly enough he had used back in Ephesians chapter 1 elect from the foundation of the earth that we might be holy and blameless before him etc.

etc. etc. so you have the specificity of a specific people who are reconciled in the work of Jesus Christ and they are the ones who are in the faith if indeed you continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast and not moved away from the hope of the gospel that you have heard so this reconciliation is not some type of universality it's a part of God's work, faith repentance, the whole nine yards but it's still the work of God so reconciliation it's what

God does it's what God does in Christ by the power of the spirit based upon the shed blood of the

Son upon the cross of Calvary that's what reconciliation is and it is an accomplished reality it's an accomplished reality so we need to be very very very careful when we take a term that has such clear

New Testament parameters as to its meaning and saddle it on some kind of sociological societal modern history movement especially when we add to it a descriptor that goes directly against the teaching of scripture

I refer to the phrase racial reconciliation there's one race there is one race in scripture, there are many ethnicities

I mean if you're even going to use the term make it ethnic reconciliation if you just have to use it be accurate about it but when this terminology is used what does it mean?

it's not borrowing the meaning of reconciliation from scripture it's borrowing the meaning of reconciliation from sociology and then using the capital of scripture to promote that idea rather than starting with the biblical norm the first thing that should cross our mind as believers is how is anyone reconciled in New Testament theology some might say we use that term in non -biblical we talk about the reconciliation of a husband or a wife that's true but even in that context what is the basis of reconciliation in a broken marriage or in a broken relationship it first and foremost flows in the

Christian context from a recognition of the grounds upon which we have been reconciled to God we don't have any grounds for holding something against someone else for refusing to forgive someone else because we ourselves have been forgiven so it all comes back to having a proper biblical theological foundation and putting these things in the proper order you may continue to use biblical terminology and even make reference to biblical text but if you reverse the order of authority so that your sociological or historical or political utilization of terms becomes the lens through which you're defining the biblical terms that's extremely dangerous and extremely troubling as well and so here you have biblical teaching it has to be this has to be true at any time in any culture no matter what has happened between any ethnicities if the gospel is going to be a global message around the world you change that and you diminish or do away with the ability of the gospel to bring peace in every corner of the globe all for the sake of one particular area that's very short -sighted and very dangerous very short -sighted and very dangerous well, didn't mean to go so long there but I was wondering about I'm afraid

I understand that real quickly I want to play a clip

I was pointed to it yesterday it's from I haven't taken the time to be looking really carefully but Lydia McGrew has been making some commentary about Mike Licona and then about other people as well

William Lane Craig specifically in this particular instance and so William Lane Craig responded to some things that were said about the minimal facts argument he says he doesn't use the minimal facts argument could have fooled us all because we've heard him default back to it so many times in his debates but he says well that's just because it's a debate and so in a debate you only have so much time so I'm doing it differently than I would in my books my books are much more expanded

I don't really use this seems to be an interesting distinction but it was mentioned that his discussion of why he does apologetics the way he does apologetics might be useful and having heard it

I agreed and so let's take a listen to a few moments here

I suppose while we're doing this we can go ahead and open the phones at 877 -753 -3341 877 -753 -3341 877 -753 -3341 877 -753 -3341 877 -753 -3341 877 -753 -3341 877 -753 -3341 877 -753 -3341 877 -753 -3341 877 -753 -3341 877 -753 -3341 let's listen to what

William Lake Craig says here I think that Lydia fails to understand my evangelist's heart in presenting the evidence for the resurrection

I want to bring people to a personal knowledge of Jesus Christ and so I want to make it as easy as possible for a person to become a

Christian. I don't want to make them have to jump through the hoop of believing, say, that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, or that there were two cleansings of the temple, or that Jesus was born of a virgin.

Now, okay, I can almost see the audience going, what?

So, jumping through hoops. Now, leaving the cleansing of the temple issue, because they get into a lot of the discussion of chronology and the debate about whether John's recording of the cleansing of the temple at the beginning of Jesus' ministry is the same as the cleansing of the temple in Passion Week.

And personally, I think there's a real rather simple answer to that, in the sense that when

Jesus, at the beginning of his ministry, if he were to have done something like that, it would not be nearly as noted as the one with the huge following doing it at the end, who's, you know, people saying

Hosanna and all the rest of that kind of stuff. But leaving that one aside, let's talk about the other two of the three that were just mentioned.

The other that were mentioned was Jesus' birth at Bethlehem and the virgin birth.

Am I not correct about that? I'm gonna double -check that just to make sure that I didn't miss that.

And so, I want to make it as easy as possible for a person to become a

Christian. Now, okay, just rolling it back just to replay that, and I have to stop there. Anyone who wants to come after me must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

Repentance from sin. There is a theological issue here.

In Dr. Craig's mind, easy means fewest intellectual objections.

Fewest intellectual objections. So, this is reflected in his synergism.

His view of what is involved in salvation and his synergistic views is what is identifying for him what easiness is.

So, from his perspective, if you're preaching repentance from sin and a full -orbed acceptance of Jesus' claims, then you're making it hard for someone.

Because if it's not the work of the Spirit to grant saving faith, you know,

I guess that makes sense. But you see how the theology is very important there.

I don't want to make them have to jump through the hoop of believing, say, that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, or that there were two cleansings of the temple, or that Jesus was born of a virgin.

Yeah. So, Jesus' virgin birth at Bethlehem is a hoop to jump through.

Now, he'll say later on, I believe these things. You can make good arguments for these things.

But these are hoops that could be detrimental to someone's salvation.

So, even though they are a direct part of the narrative of defining who

Jesus is, that is secondary and ancillary and to the side of and non -definitional of what it means to be a

Christian from his perspective. It says a lot about what conversion is, who's in charge in these things, the work of the

Spirit in regeneration, changing of the heart, all sorts of other things that are reflected here.

But it does make you wonder, okay, so what if someone, let's say you give this real easy gospel, as you call it, and someone says, sure, okay,

I'll believe that Jesus was a great prophet, but I don't want to jump through the hoop of Jesus being the second person of the

Trinity. I don't want to jump through the hoop of believing that I fell in Adam or that I'm under God's condemnation.

Where do you draw the line? Because I would imagine that in many of these instances,

Dr. Craig says, yes, that is a part of Christian teaching, but this is, you know, this mere

Christianity idea boils everything down, but how do you boil it down when you're now talking about such things as, you know, if Jesus is not born in Bethlehem, then the very historicity of his birth is affected by this.

If he's not born of a virgin, likewise, the historicity of that event, because the people who record it say that he was, and his mother is part of the narrative, and sort of hard to just sort of extract her out of that,

I mean, what do you have left? And who gets to determine this extremely boiled -down version?

Good question, I don't know. I want to give them evidence which is adequate to justify the conclusion that Jesus made radical personal claims.

Why isn't the virgin birth a radical personal claim? Well, when you say Jesus made these claims, technically it's the

Gospel writers that made these claims and put them in the words of Jesus, right? I mean, you're assuming that what the

Gospel writers record Jesus saying is accurate, but what they said about the virgin birth and the location of the birth of Jesus might not be.

You see the problem here? I just don't see how this stuff holds together. I really don't.

I was just distracted for a moment. I looked into the other room, and Rich is very busily screening calls, and he's listening to the callers as they're trying to distill the essence of their question down.

And I just looked in there, and Rich is in this, he's like this. His eyes are closed, and he's spinting, and he's just working on it.

Either that or his finger is really hurting bad. I'm not sure which one of the two it is, but it just sort of caught my attention.

This is why you people think I pick on him. You just don't see what comes back through that thing. You don't, you just don't know.

Thereby he put himself in the place of God, and that those radical claims were vindicated dramatically and publicly by God by raising him from the dead.

Why wouldn't, again, the fact that he fulfills Old Testament prophecy and his birth at Bethlehem, and that he is virgin -born, why isn't that vindicated by his resurrection from the dead as well?

And if we can show that, then that is sufficient for a person to become a

Christian. So that is sufficient for a person to become a Christian. We don't have to talk about sin, we don't have to talk about atonement, we don't have to talk about, well, a bunch of stuff the prophets talked about, actually, even in prophetically announcing the coming of the

Messiah. They don't have to talk about any of those things. This is what's dangerous from my perspective, when you have such a synergistically oriented understanding of what the gospel presentation is.

And leave this other stuff until later to examine at his leisure.

At his leisure. He says leisure, I say leisure. So fundamental elements such as, really, the whole essence of sin and salvation and things like that, virgin birth, scriptural fulfillment of prophecy in the birth of Jesus, which points us to who

Jesus was, all that is leisure study. You can, at your leisure, at a later time, having made some kind of a commitment to Jesus, then you can sort of look those things over.

The problem, of course, is it sounds like you can look them over and take what you want and leave what you want, because you're already a

Christian. So a Christian doesn't have to. But, you know, he'll make the argument that you should, but you don't really have to.

But we shouldn't make a person come to believe in the reliability of the gospels first in order to become a

Christian. So you shouldn't make someone believe in the reliability of the gospels before they come to believe the gospel.

Now, I'm not the only one who has pointed this out, that it's like, are you listening to what you're saying here?

Because again, what this means is that there is a quote -unquote core message that somehow gets communicated outside of the divine reliability of the scriptures that were actually the whole basis upon which these things were believed in the first place.

So we can put that aside, and you still somehow got an orthodox message without a inspired container that communicates these things.

That's what we're hearing. If you can show that the burial narrative is fundamentally accurate in its core, that Jesus was buried in a tomb by a

Sanhedris named Joseph of Arimathea. Fundamentally accurate in its core, not its details.

Matthew gives us the core, but then he gives us that silly zombie thing, right?

As Laicona put it. No, that was the same Matthew who tells us that Jesus rose on the third day, that tells us that he was buried in the tomb, and tells us that there were saints raised and went into Jerusalem and recognized people.

It doesn't mean they all were, and obviously it was people who had recently died, or they wouldn't have been recognized in the first place.

And it had to do with the whole victory of God over death, and it made perfect sense, and it does not require belief in zombies and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

But hey, if that offends the... We just don't want to make it too difficult for people.

It needs to be easy. Taking up the cross needs to be easy.

Just think about what someone in that day would have heard if they were listening to this.

They would have been going, easy? You think this is supposed to be easy?

Oh, okay, right. If you can show that that tomb was discovered empty on the first day of the week after the crucifixion by a group of Jesus' women followers, if you can then show that the early disciples, both individuals and groups, experienced appearances of Jesus alive after his death under various circumstances and occasions, and if you can show that the earliest disciples came to believe that God had raised

Jesus from the dead, despite every predisposition to the contrary, that is sufficient to justify placing your faith in Jesus Christ on the basis of his radical claims and God's raising him from the dead.

Now, I just stopped for a moment. Listen to what was just said. Was there anything about sin, repentance, atonement, the wrath of God, union with Christ, any of that?

I mean, you're talking boil it down past the point where you're just down to the bones.

Now we're down just a few bones, and you could never rebuild the whole carcass given the few bones you got left.

I mean, the whole central, well, okay, so there's some radical claims he makes about himself.

So what? What does that have to do with me? How does any of this lead someone to repentance?

How does anybody, how does anyone to believe in Jesus? For what? Why are you having to believe?

So something really weird happened historically. I'm saved. I'm saved.

That's why you don't see this in Romans. You don't see this in Galatians. You don't see this in the gospels.

It's just been absolutely positively boiled down to nothing. You don't have to prove first that he cleansed the temple twice or that he was born in Bethlehem in order to justify that belief in the resurrection.

So understand that with the heart of an evangelist, I want to set the bar low in order for a person to become a

Christian. Set the bar low for a person to become a

Christian. Well, you know, if you think that it's pretty much up to man, now, you know, remember just a few months ago when we listened to this amazing response that he provided to Si Tymbrugneke?

Remember that? And at that time he's saying things like, well,

I know that unless the Spirit of God's active, nothing's gonna come of this, you know.

Okay, so be consistent with that. If that's the case, why is the Spirit of God's power necessary?

And is the Spirit of God's power sufficient? See, it keeps going back.

There's a reason why Craig's playing footsie with Rome at times, just saying, well, you know,

I just don't buy what they say about this or the other thing, but hey, you know, other than that, you know, that kind of issue, it comes back right here because necessary, insufficient.

When was there a big, huge event in church history that focused on God's grace and both sides said

God's grace was necessary, but only one side said God's grace was sufficient. Oh, that was the

Reformation. Yeah, that was the Reformation, which unfortunately a lot of people sort of abandoned.

Well, we'll stop there because we've got our calls and we only have, you know, 22 minutes left to get to, we've got our four calls.

That's probably going to be good enough for the four that we've got. So once again, some of you are, if you've not, if you're sort of new to the program, you go, wow, you just, you know, took on William Lane Craig.

That's not the first time. We have for over a decade have consistently allowed

Dr. Craig to speak for himself and interact and said, hmm, what about this?

What about this? Theology matters. Theology determines your apologetics, and there's an issue here.

And we have done so over and over again, and we continue to do so.

So let's go to the phone calls, and, hmm, let's start with Seth.

Hello, Seth. Hello, Seth. Oh, you mean

Gus. Well, it says Seth on my screen. I think Rich now needs a hearing aid, too.

Maybe that's what he's having problems with today. Rich needs a hearing aid. Just kidding, just kidding. So yeah, my question was regarding the body and its role in the

Christian life, in particular, to knowledge. So you have folks like Jamar Kisbee who might say that you don't know what it's like to be

Black, therefore you can't say anything to me, and we're kind of left with this Gnosticism.

Be careful. Now, Gus, I just need to warn you.

I've been raked over the coals for using this term

Gnosticism, because Votie Balcombe has used that term for quite a long time and has called it ethnic

Gnosticism, where you cannot comment about another ethnic group's experience unless you have been in that ethnic group, which is sort of hard to do.

Well, I suppose not these days. You've got people that can be anything anymore. But you're going to get run over if you identify that as Gnosticism, and you probably will not get your woke card and may not get to speak at any of the big conferences.

Yeah, no, I think my card was already revoked over the summer when I was studying at Princeton.

A friend of mine who I was studying there with said I probably was the least woke person he's ever met, so I guess for what that's worth.

Anyway, so yeah, the other extreme would be those that probably would deny the importance of the body.

And I know the guys on mortification has been recently did an episode on the importance of the body.

When you say body, you mean the body of Christ, or the body— No, no, like, the body as, like, if you're a female, then, like, yeah, the embodiment of a woman or the embodiment of a person who's

Black. So I mean, between those two extreme, you know, opposites, like, what would your thoughts be in terms of—I definitely agree with you that the

Gospel has no respect in terms of your melanin count, and I think that the scripture in terms of sin and any other problem that it addresses is sufficient.

But just in terms of living in the world as embodied, you know, agents, what would you say in terms of what we could derive from experience without ending on either extreme?

Well, you know, it's funny, one going to address and got distracted with other issues was someone—I did a 19 -tweet commentary.

I responded to a fellow on Twitter that had done,

I don't know, seven or eight or nine tweets on neo -Marxism. And I wrote a response and posted the thread on Twitter.

And one of the arguments that came back was, well, if what you're saying is true, then there's no basis for distinguishing between men and women and roles in the

Church, because you're saying we're all just one in Christ. And I'm like, well, that's completely missing the application that Paul himself makes.

He does say that male and female, as far as the relationship to God is concerned and the grounds of justification and reconciliation and the dividing wall and all the rest of that stuff, that those distinctions are done away with.

There is neither male nor female in Christ Jesus on that level. And he then goes on to make distinctions.

So the idea, I guess, they have is, well, that means that there can be ethnic distinctions as well.

And I go, where? Where do you have this? I mean, I see where we have this in regards to a recognition of the fundamental creative reality of male and female, but I see nothing about ethnic males and ethnic females of one group versus another group or anything that's even slightly related to their historical experiences as a group or anything else.

These are creative distinctions between them and not ethnic, cultural, experiential distinctions between them.

Because anything in our history between, for example, two ethnic groups and see, once the gospel goes out in the world, there are so many places, especially

Americans, are so ignorant of the rest of the world that we are utterly unaware of, you know,

I've used as the example, as one example, something that if I went out and did one of those jaywalking things on the streets of Phoenix or ASU, U of A, whatever,

I doubt I would find one out of 500 people who would have any idea what the rape of Nanking was.

One out of 500. I really, really doubt that. And yet the

Japanese destruction of the Chinese city of Nanking in World War II and the means by which it was accomplished and the behavior of the

Japanese soldiers was so reprehensible, so guilty of war crimes, that one woman who wrote probably the longest, fullest historical account of that, the rape of Nanking, that's what the book's called, committed suicide years after writing the book because she was just so infiltrated and devastated by the images of what had happened there.

Well, the gospel has to be able to go into a church that has Chinese and Japanese people in it.

And it can't be worried about plantation owners in the South in that context.

And if we import stuff into it to try to deal with that in the

United States that then destroys its ability to bring unity in the church between Chinese and Japanese and another place in the world, then we've obviously completely missed the boat.

Now, I think there's everything right in recognizing and celebrating what is good in what we can see was a gift of God in our ethnic heritages.

But see, the problem is, when we talk about reconciliation, reconciliation deals with evil and sin.

And unfortunately, vast majority of ethnic interrelationships down through the history of man have been marked by evil and sin.

War, slavery, taking over somebody else's country, etc., etc.,

etc. This is unfortunately the history of man. And so, what's more likely to bring division in the body?

Dwelling upon the sins of the past or looking forward, recognizing that each one of us are equal before God, have one access by one

Spirit through the blood of Christ to the Father, that's where we have our unity.

Now, recognizing that then, I think it's perfectly fine to rejoice in God's good gifts to us in, let's say, people might have a particular skill in sports or things like that, and we can rejoice in a

Christian person. We think of chariots of fire, okay? Here is a great Christian man who could run like the wind.

Okay, that's wonderful. But you don't go, okay, and because he was of this ethnic group, then that creates division in the church or something like that.

You don't look at it as an issue of ethnicity. And when it comes to, you know, I've said before, hey,

I like my kilts. I'm Scottish. I've got a lot of Scottish blood, but I'm not going to force anybody else to rejoice in my kilt or my

Scottish, I'm not going to force. Look, if I was saying, you all need to watch Braveheart and you need, you

British people, when I come to London, you British people, I need to hear some repentance for you for what you people did to Scotland 700 years ago.

That's where the problem lies because they weren't there, they didn't do it, and they're not accountable or responsible for what

Longshanks did to the Scots back in the 12 and 1300s.

That's where the problem would be. So I can take the positive and see it as a gift of God and see the differences that we have as a positive thing, but I cannot go back and take the sin and bring that back into the current modern situation, because that's what was done away with.

What did Paul say? The commandments and the laws, he's abolished that.

The sins are gone. So all that stuff, that's the radical element that's been taken away.

What is good, what is beautiful in the Chinese experience or the

Japanese experience or the Brazilian experience or everything else, anything that we can see that would fit into Paul's parameters of what is true and honest and just and pure and lovely of good repute, if it's something we can think upon those things in the biblical context, then sure, rejoice in it, but don't divide over it.

Don't divide over it. And in the same way, then, when the

Bible then plainly continues distinctions, male and female, because it's creation -oriented, that doing away of the middle wall is not doing away with God's creative ordinances.

That's the difference. Ethnicities come afterwards, politics, wars originate in sin.

The male and female, that's God intended from the beginning for the continuation of mankind. That's a good thing, and that's why those distinctions remain as well.

Though I'm noticing something, and I bet you you've noticed it too, Gus, and that is I'm seeing a lot of these folks who, right on the heels of the racial discussion, are moving directly into a discussion of gender roles as well.

And there is a tremendous amount of egalitarianism flowing right through the open door, right behind what's being said.

I've certainly noticed it, many others have as well. Yeah, it seems like it. But thank you, thank you for your time.

And a question, last one here, any chance you're coming to California for a round two of Steve Tassi and Dr.

White? There wasn't a round one. There was an immediate disqualification in round one.

Brother Tassi didn't get out of the corner, so no. That would never happen with that opponent.

And California? I'm sorry, but you folks, y 'all really need to be thinking about moving someplace else.

That place is crazy. Beautiful state, but run by some very odd people.

So anyways, Gus, thanks for your call. Thank you. All right, God bless. All righty, that was fun.

Boy, I guess just looking at the times here, go down to Cody. Hi, Cody. Hey, Dr.

White. I'm the one that interviewed you back in the fall at Emilio's church here. Oh, okay.

I vaguely recall that in the back, I think. Yes, sir. Thank you again for your graciousness for doing that.

My question is in regards to Romans chapter 3, verse 10, when it says, no one seeks for God.

How do we define seek in the context of regeneration? How do we define that nobody seeks for God?

Because when we throw out Cornelius, right, that he was the God -fearing

Roman before, you know, where would we place his regeneration?

If no one can seek for God apart from God regenerating the heart, how do we reconcile his apparent faith beforehand?

Well, I think the vast majority of Reformed people would be consistent in indicating that there has been a work of the

Spirit of God. You do have the term drawing, and what this issue raises is trying to make a specific identification of the exact point of regeneration and the relationship between the drawing of the

Spirit of God and that point in God's sovereign will where new life is granted, which we know, scripturally, in the vast majority of instances is—well, in all instances—is done through the work of the

Holy Spirit, and the vast majority of instances—I'm only referring here primarily to the issue of elect infants dying in infancy—through the mechanism of the

Gospel. In the vast majority of instances, the normative mechanism, the Spirit of God with the

Word of God, the Gospel, is the mechanism by which regeneration is accomplished.

Let's leave the issue of infants dying in infancy and elect infants and all the rest of the stuff off to the side, because most of this conversation—and it is a conversation that has had a fair amount of controversy over the past couple of hundred years, and it flares up every once in a while.

There are some who will absolutely insist that as far as a normative

Christian experience, that regeneration is simultaneous with the expression of saving faith—simultaneous in the sense of, at least in our experience, they would recognize in the ordo salutis a logical priority to regeneration, and then the result of that being the expression of saving faith on the part of the person who's thusly been regenerated—but that they would put that in the same context.

There are others who would say that there could be a period of time—now, long, no one ever gets overly specific—but there could be a period of time wherein—and this was very common amongst the

Puritans. You could argue for it even in some of Spurgeon and Pilgrim's Progress.

Certainly, if you look at Pilgrim's Progress, it seems like there is a longing and a desire on the part of Pilgrim that is not fulfilled until the

Wicked Gate and goes up to the Pack of Sin, rolls into the tomb, and so on and so forth, where you have that confession of faith, the cross, and so on and so forth.

But there was obviously a spiritual aspect to his existence prior to that.

And so there are others who would say that there can be a time period where a person is brought to spiritual life, and then there is this experience of tremendous distress until—conviction of sin and distress—until confession of faith takes place, because they haven't yet heard how they can have freedom from this burden that is theirs.

And so that debate has gone on for quite some time.

It seems to me that you'd have a hard time absolutely denying that it has ever been the experience of God's people, that they did have that period of time of great spiritual distress.

But I wouldn't call that seeking after God in the sense that I think we have it in Romans 3.

I think when you're—what you're looking at—when you look at, there is no understanding one, there is none seeking after God, that this is descriptive.

These are present -tense participles. And so, though articular participles—substantival participles—the emphasis of time is not strong in them, the idea, however, is—I think that this is describing someone—that this would mark their character, that they were regular seekers after God, they were regular ones of understanding, so on and so forth.

That is what's being denied. I don't think that Paul intends us to apply that to a specific situation where the

Spirit of God is bringing conviction of sin or something like that and saying, oh, that can't happen until this happens or anything else.

These are—the very fact that we know of the exception to this rule—Jesus—these are what are called nomic statements.

They are general truths that then must be applied in specific situations.

So, that's a long answer to what may have been a short question, but I think the primary issue there is simply that there is no

God -seeker—it should not be applied to a situation where God is active, where the

Gospel's being presented and God's Spirit is active. It's descriptive of man in his natural state.

There may be those who are religious, there may be those who seek for the benefits of God, but not

God. They want the benefits of security, but they do not want to have to deal with the

Holy God. Right. I think that's what's being said. And I don't want to make doctrine out of experience, but it was my experience that I did feel that way.

I mean, I knew the Gospel when I was younger, but when I was 20, it became real, and there was a week of time where I just started to hate my sin, before I would actually bend the knee.

But like I said, I don't want to make doctrine out of experience, and I think I kind of came to the conclusion right away, thinking through this, that you pointed out in the beginning, which was the difference between God drawing somebody and God regenerating somebody.

Yeah. Like I said, there are those who would make the specific act of regeneration at the beginning of that process, or the end of that process, and how long that process is, difficult to say.

It does seem that it normatively is almost, from our experience, simultaneous.

But there are many great saints of God that have had the same experience that you have.

So, you know, I don't think we can, I don't think God has given us or commands us to draw some of the ultra -sharp lines, as far as time goes, as we sometimes would like to.

Right. And then there's some of us that think that if we just show an awesome argument for the resurrection of Jesus, that people are going to automatically hate their sin.

That's right. That's interesting. That's right, Cody. Well, hey, are you still down there with Emilio?

Yeah, well, I'm still in between Fort Worth and Wichita Falls. I'm supposed to be speaking there

July 16th, I think? No, no, June. June 16th. June 16th.

I'm going to be speaking. Oh, really? Where at? I'll be at Emilio's church in June, yep. Oh, okay.

Well, that's assuming I survive the trip that I'm going to start on next week. Right, yeah. Well, we'll pray for you.

I appreciate it. Thanks, Cody. God bless. All right. There's only a 13 -second difference between these two, so we got two more.

Let's talk to Ray. Hi, Ray. Hey, Dr., how are you? Doing good. I think

I was the one that was making Richard drainage, I apologize. Okay. I've had some discussions with some non -Trinitarian friends of mine, in particular my parents, and one question that I asked them,

I want to know if it actually had, you know, real theological merit other than being quippy, is that if God is triune and the

Holy Spirit is a part of that triune God and has His own personality, His own function within the

Godhead, and they don't believe that, then my natural question to them is, if you believe it's not

Trinitarian, then is the Holy Spirit, has it been created by God, or is it greater than God?

Because it seems to me that you only have those two choices if the Holy Spirit isn't a part of a triune God. Well, what would be the basis of saying greater than God?

I understand if you say He was created, then He has to be lesser than God, but what would be the foundation for saying that the only other option is that He's greater than God?

Well, that if the Holy Spirit is separate than God, then the only two options of being separate from God is either being greater than or less than.

It can't be—if the Holy Spirit isn't a part of that triune God, then what else could

He be? I don't think that there's a strong argument for it. Either a henotheist or a polytheist could posit some kind of equality, but then you've got either—well, a henotheist couldn't, but a polytheist could.

You could have two separate gods that are equal to one another. I just didn't know what the—you know, if the assumption is that they accept the biblical teaching that there is only one true

God, then the question would be if the Spirit is not created, then you would have to at least be a duotheist, a di -theist, because you'd have to have some level of equality.

Couldn't be—the idea of being greater than the Father, I'm not sure where you would derive that, other than, you know, the

Spirit searches all things, yea, the deep things of God, so I suppose you could make some type of argument there, but I don't think anyone ever has.

No, I don't think so either. And I kind of—I mean, not to be too quippy with my own parents, but, you know, I kind of point out, you know, it's kind of a

Star Wars type argument of, you know, the Holy Spirit being a force from God rather than God.

Is that what they think? Oh yeah. Oh, okay. Okay. Well, you know, again, the

Spirit is, in the New Testament, the one who gives the gifts according to his own will, he is the one who spoke to the prophets, he's the one that searches the deep things, but at the same time, we're also told that his primary purpose is to take from the things of God and to glorify

Christ, and so he's not the focus that someday he will be as the triune

God is worshipped, but it's not his role to put himself out front, it's the

Son that's being proclaimed the glory of the Father by the power of the Spirit. So I understand why people go that direction, but if they would just look at the places where the

Spirit is distinguished from the Father, and yet the Spirit is clearly personal, it's a matter of allowing all of the

Scripture to speak for itself. Absolutely. Well, I really hope you will come back to California.

I definitely want to go and see you with Mr. Kastner. The Soviet Socialist Republic of California, yes.

Yeah, but please, we need every support that we can get, believe me. All right, thanks,

Ray. God bless. Thank you, sir. You too. All right, last call for the program today.

Went a little bit over time, but that's okay. Let's go back to a place I lived for six years,

Pennsylvania. Let's talk to Steve. Hi, Steve. Hey, how you doing, Dr. James Lloyd? Doing good. All right, quick question for you.

I'd like to get your response, or if you can expound a little more on an issue that this apologetic teacher named

Damon Richardson brought up, and it had to do with your Critical Race Theory video,

I guess last week, in regards to you saying the Black Hebrew Israelites are worse than the

KKK. That wasn't last week. That was quite some time ago. Okay, well, again,

I'm not too familiar with what it was. I was just wondering if you could expound on that. I did on the program, but I'll be brief.

That was, all I was talking about, that was a very short commentary on the fact that my son had done a

Facebook Live, wasn't really a debate, but dialogue discussion with a small, really radical group of Black Hebrew Israelites who would only refer to him as Devil or White Devil.

They would not use his name. They would just refer to him as the Devil or a White Devil. And what

I said was that these guys, these Black Hebrew Israelites, and there are different groups of Black Hebrew Israelites, obviously, but this particular group who are sitting there wearing pseudo -Jewish clothes, sunglasses, short -fingered gloves, and just acting in an utterly reprehensible manner, abusing the word of God, so on and so forth.

And yet they're just so openly religiously racist that I said that these guys make the

KKK, and I obviously meant today, the KKK has become a shadow of its former self.

The KKK is not standing at railroad stations in major cities across the

United States yelling at White people as they're going by, or for the KKK, yelling at Black people as they're going by, that because of their skin color, they're going to hell.

So these guys are openly racist, but they are Black racist.

And that was the comment. I said, these guys make the KKK look like amateurs.

And I was talking about today, on the street corners in the United States, this is the situation.

And no one has ever argued that. Nobody who criticized me for that has argued, oh, no, no, no, the

KKK today is much more open and much more blatant in what they're saying, because it's not true.

They're not. Not in modern America. They may have been in the 1890s, but they're not in modern

America. And I think the reason it got the response that it did is because there are many people who do not believe that Blacks can be racists.

And so the very fact that I would say that was offensive to them. And of course,

I responded to that by saying, excuse me, racism is a sin. And if you're a child of Adam, you can sin.

And therefore, it doesn't matter what your melanin count is. You can be a racist. And if you say anything other than that, you are not deriving your parameters from scripture.

You're driving them from some sociologist someplace and not from the Bible. Don't hang that on me.

So that was all there was to it. I'm sad that people today will not allow anyone such as myself to have an opinion different than theirs.

But there were a lot of people that fully understood exactly what I was saying, and took it into proper context and recognized that it was sort of a given what

I was saying. But it's sad. I've done entire programs where I've walked through all this stuff in great detail.

They don't touch those. It's the 37 -second mention in passing of something that happened with my son on Facebook that all of a sudden becomes the fodder for videos and stuff like that, which

I think says something. Yeah, that's a shame. That makes total sense.

And again, I apologize on my part, because I didn't actually get to view that video. So I was going off of what's up.

I said, don't worry about it. Like I said, my original comment was in passing.

It's, you know, I don't expect everyone to catch every passing comment that I make.

I did respond to that afterwards. But hey, we do a lot of dividing lines. I forget when I've responded to something or not.

So it's not your fault if you didn't catch it. Oh, of course. And again, well, with that finally tuned up answer, when are you coming back to your hometown?

And just to give you a heads up, if you ever do, the potholes on the streets are horrible.

So if you're riding your bike or driving, just be aware. I don't generally ride bike too much when

I travel. I would love—it's been a while since I've been back to Pennsylvania.

But every time I go back, at least to central Pennsylvania, I want to try to get away and visit my old stomping grounds, see if my old houses are still there.

Google says they are anyways. And then drive over to Gettysburg and visit

Devil's Den and the cyclorama and walk Pickett's Charge and do the stuff

I used to do many, many, many moons ago. So who knows? Right now, most of my traveling is outside the

United States, as it will be starting a week from tomorrow. But I'd love to get back there sometime.

It's a beautiful state. And like I said, I spent six years there. So I got a good education from kindergarten through fifth grade in the schools, the public schools in Pennsylvania.

But that was in the 1970s. So I imagine things have changed. Yeah, I'm an old guy now.

So. Well, just take one day at a time. Thanks, Steve.

Thank you. Thank you again. All right. God bless. Bye -bye. You know, that did just remind me real quickly,

I wrote a four paragraph little article on my Facebook page yesterday.

And if you didn't see it, look it up. It was, I thought was one of the most interesting things

I've written in a long, long time. Because what it shed light on was how the internet can help us with our memories.

I've had a memory, my first memory of my life was in the basement of our farmhouse in Minnesota, looking through those storm doors out at a twister, a large, huge, massive black volcano, yeah, volcano, tornado.

And I've remembered this my entire life. But I found out yesterday, the exact date of that memory, but I wasn't looking for it.

It just pops up in my feed. And I'm like, oh, that's interesting. There was an outbreak of tornadoes,

May 6, 1965, in Minneapolis. Huh, I wonder. I click on it.

Three F4s, two F3s, and an F2. I mean, those are serious tornadoes.

And this one little town called Fridley was just destroyed. I mean, it looked like a nuclear bomb had gone off there. It's just turned to matchsticks.

And because it was hit by more than one, and they crossed paths, talk about. But the point was,

I'm looking down, and I look at the bottom one. And it says it first touched down in Golden Valley.

And I start looking at the cities. These are all the cities of my, I left there when I was five.

So talk about being young. So I do the math. And I looked at the maps. I looked at where the house was.

Did it? Yep. Yep. Yep. Mm -hmm. Yeah, that everything fit, contacted my dad. He said, oh, yeah, let me tell you some more about that.

And lo and behold, now I know the exact day of that first of my memories.

I was two and a half. Now, some people say, no one remembers any two and a half. I did. Traumatic things like that, you can remember.

I have a lot of memories from three. I was a precocious, weird child. But, oh,

Rich is biting his tongue. Oh, he's biting his lip near the room. But anyway, it was just really interesting to me to see how rather randomly the internet could all of a sudden give you something.

It never crossed my mind. I wonder if I could find out because I was like, oh, it would just take forever. I don't even know how I'd begin.

And lo and behold, all of a sudden you're sitting there, click, click, click. There's the actual date, that twister that I saw.

And I've got a picture of it. I have a picture of what I saw 53 years ago. I have a picture of it.

And unfortunately, it killed six people and injured 158. But it did not come down on our house.

That's why we're still here, because it would have sucked us right out of that basement. There's no no toys about it. So anyway, that was interesting experience.

I've put the article on my Facebook page. You might find it. It's only paragraphs long with pictures.

So you might take a look at it. Anyways, with that, Lord willing, I've got to get my inoculations on Thursday.

So I may not be a happy camper for the next program. Okay, but we'll try.