Rich Did an Impromptu Interview of James

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Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is the Dividing Line.

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

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

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

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

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James White. Yeah, who let Centurion in the chat channel? Oh, are we on? OK, well, hey, you know, one of the one of the pyromaniacs, obviously, is in our channel this morning just simply to concede the blog wars.

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He hasn't done that yet, but I'm sure he will before long. Welcome to the

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Dividing Line on a what is a Tuesday? Yes, Tuesday. I've I've pretty much lost track of things.

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I've been in a cave for 16 days and I am so thankful that I can announce today that I will be sending the final text of the book, barring, obviously, earthquakes, all three of my computers exploding, things like that.

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I'll be sending the final the final text to Solid Ground Christian Books tonight.

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And that means hopefully in basically no more than two weeks from that point in time, maybe a little less.

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They'll start shipping and we'll have this available. I made some changes this morning.

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I thought I don't know why I hadn't thought of this before, but I'm putting in as appendices both the

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Christian message tract, which hasn't been in print in three, four years, and something

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I wrote on atheism a number of years ago that I dug through our boxes and tracked that down. And so those will be appendices, which hopefully will help make the book even more useful as something to give to people, to allow you to use it in an evangelistic fashion.

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And then as part of the final chapter, just this morning in the period of time since I have been in the office,

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I just started putting together a bulleted list, bulleted points in a list of the summary of errors, problems, contradictions and half truths in the tomb theory.

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And I tried to keep it as to the main points as much as possible and end up being three pages long.

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So I'm going to read that for you. Oh, by the way, if you're wondering, the book's probably going to come in.

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Well, I didn't put the I didn't figure in the appendices. Let me do some somewhere between somewhere around I would estimate one hundred and forty two pages in that in that neck of the woods,

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I would say about one hundred and forty two pages. It's only eleven point font. It's the font isn't very big.

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So if I use the same size font as their hardback book, I'm sure it would be about the same size, actually.

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But 16 days, 16 days from the first words typed until until the end.

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That is a definitely for me a new record. No, no two ways, no two ways about it.

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Here is a summary of errors, problems, contradictions and half truths in the tomb theory. Each is a bulleted point.

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The book and film were not subjected to serious scholarly examination prior to release to the public. Many scholars cited in the film book have affirmed that they were not told the full story and that their statements have been used out of context.

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The theory uses double standards and it's tremendously inconsistent use the New Testament at times, accepting its accuracy on one point, then rejecting it on the next without following any logical standards.

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The film and book demonstrate a consistent willingness to document only particular facts related to its conclusions, ignoring those facts that are contrary to its conclusions.

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The central argument of the film that Mariam Ney is the original name of Mary Magdalene is subject to numerous counter arguments and explanations.

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The inscription on the Mariam Ney ossuary can be read at least three ways, and the first two, which leave the entire theory without any ground, are more likely than the third upon which the theory rests.

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Even taking the inscription as the theory does, there is no reason whatsoever to believe a fourth century work of fiction, the

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Acts of Philip, is relevant to first century Jerusalem. The Acts of Philip nowhere refers to or identifies

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Mariam Ney as Mary Magdalene. The name Mary Magdalene never appears in the

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Acts of Philip. The Acts of Philip say Mariam Ney could turn into an arc of glass and a pillar of fire.

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Do the theorists think Mary Magdalene could do this? The film represents Francois Bovan, misrepresents

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Francois Bovan of Harvard, who has confirmed that he is only referring to the Mariam Ney Magdalene connection in the realm of literary parallels, not history.

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Bovan refers to the theory's claims that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a child as science fiction.

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The film misrepresents even the existing text of the Acts of Philip by saying the book says Mary Magdalene, which it never mentions, would be buried in Jerusalem.

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It actually says Mariam Ney would die in the Jordan River, which does not flow through Jerusalem. The theory's willingness to abandon first century documents directly related to Jesus and his original followers, the

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New Testament, in favor of the work of fiction from the Ancretite community of Asia Minor 300 years later, is a clear indication of its bias.

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The film and book misrepresent the nature and capacities of forensic mitochondrial DNA testing.

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Simcha Jakubowicz claims Carney Matheson concluded that the genetic testing shows Yeshua bar

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Yosef and Mariam Ney were married. Matheson denies this conclusion forcefully. Mitochondrial DNA testing can only address maternal relationships, not paternal ones.

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Hence, the two genotypes tested could have included a father -daughter relationship, a fact inexplicably left out of the discussion by the film and the book.

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The names of Jesus, Mary, Joseph, etc., had been found in other burial sites in Jerusalem in the past, including

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Dominus Flevit. All the names in the Talpiet tomb are found amongst the top 10 most popular names for men and women in the time period of the first century in Jerusalem.

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The argument that there is at least a 600 to 1 chance that this is the Jesus family tomb is based upon the assumption that, one, there is a

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Jesus family tomb in Jerusalem, and two, it has been found. That is, the statistical argument assumes its own conclusion so as to have validity.

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There is no reason whatsoever to believe Jesus would own a multi -generational tomb in Jerusalem.

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He was from Nazareth, 120 miles to the north, in Galilee, and on the only visited Jerusalem. The theories propounded in the book concerning the

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Knights Templar are presented without even the pretense of factual or historical foundation, and as such, have as much validity as the

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Da Vinci Code. They are pure fiction. The alleged cross symbol on the Jesus ossuary is far more likely the simple this side forward mark to indicate which way to slide the lid so that it would fit.

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The idea that the Judas, son of Jesus, in the Talpiet tomb is the author of the Gospel of Thomas, which was written in AD 165, a century after the

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Talpiet tomb was sealed, is emblematic of the kind of scholarship represented in the family tomb of Jesus.

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Or the Jesus family tomb, I believe is the appropriate name. The film and book desperately seek to avoid honestly stating the only possible ramification of their theory, that Christianity's primary claim in the resurrection of Jesus Christ is false, and hence

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Christianity is a false. Religion, so there are the bulleted points

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I do need to go back through because I have been thinking that the book title all along had the book sitting right there was a family to the tomb of Jesus, the

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Jesus family tomb. So I've got to go through every chapter and catch every single one of those.

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And yeah, either one's inappropriate, but I have to change every single reference, which will be very easily done.

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It's two search and replaces per chapter. It's no big deal. But that's another here and there.

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So there is the bulleted material. I might to go ahead and put that on the blog, but it will be in the back of the book.

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It will be in the concluding chapter so that you can see that. In fact, the thought crosses my mind that might be something good to have just as a separate thing, maybe at the beginning of the book.

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So you can just look at that or something like that. Maybe I won't include it in the last chapter. We'll see. But one way or the other.

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This material will be headed to the publisher tonight and therefore hopefully fairly close to Easter.

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We're going to miss it, but we came as close, I think, as you possibly can and produce a work that includes citations from the

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Thesaurus Lingua Grecae CD -ROM documenting the actual forms, the Greek terms found in, for example,

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Origins Contra Celsus to really get down to the same level as the highest argumentation they can provide for their own position.

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We checked all of that out. And to have done that, obviously, I'm the one who did the most work on this, but I could not have done it alone.

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There are all sorts of folks I've mentioned before that when I was back in Massachusetts, going back to Massachusetts, I was reading the book.

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I was calling Rich and having him order books in. And I was sending emails on my

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BlackBerry to Marie Peterson and having her look stuff up. And obviously the people who have been editing the work,

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Flamie and Marie P. and Channel and the folks in Channel a couple of times,

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I think at least twice. Micah, for example, dropped URLs in Channel that when

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I followed them, I found very important information, very important documentation that ended up in the book.

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Folks who listen to this program, who read the blog, for example, a mathematician back in St.

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Louis, his whole explanation of these statistics materials ends up in the book. And so it has been really a team effort.

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There have been lots of people involved in getting this done. Everyone recognizes it needed to be done as quickly as possible to get a response out there and a response that would be thorough and scholarly and full and yet readable and understandable.

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That's the important part. I hopefully have been able to achieve that balance. It's something that I've done with other books.

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King James Only Controversy, The Forgotten Trinity, difficult subjects, but made them readable and understandable.

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That's hopefully what we've done, even though obviously I will have basically only read this book over once before it goes out, which

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I'll be doing this afternoon in a very hurried fashion. Others have taken a look at it and at least it will not be a problem on that on that level.

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But still, I do understand Erasmus's terminology now in reference to the first edition of the

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Novum Instrumentum, when he said it was precipitated rather than edited. And this book certainly has been precipitated rather than edited in that sense.

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But this should not have been necessary if the canons of standard scholarship had been followed.

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Well, if they had been followed, this whole thing would never have come into existence. The very same flaws and errors in reasoning and logic and documentation that I've documented in the book would have been illustrated immediately and this whole thing never would have come together and there wouldn't be a super fancy website out there and there wouldn't be

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DVD sales and book sales for 25 bucks a pop and all the other things that go along with it.

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And so that's why it was put out in the form that it was put out. That's why it takes the form that it is taken.

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And so we just had someone join our chat channel and say, is this

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Muslim chat? Well, no, but we'd be happy to talk to you.

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No. Anyway, so the the project has honestly,

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I do not believe I've ever been more focused for as long a period of time on just one thing like that.

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Pulpit crimes I had to do pretty quickly, too, but it wasn't like this. It wasn't 10, 12 hours a day.

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It wasn't the first thing you're thinking of when you get up in the morning and the last thing you're trying to stop thinking of as you're trying to get to sleep at night.

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But 16 days, about 140 pages. And I'm certainly hoping that people will.

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I mean, hey, it's a great idea. I have one of these tomb shirts that I mentioned on the blog.

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Carla makes these tomb shirts. And if you're going to be going someplace, you know, you're going hanging out at the mall or something like that.

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Grab a couple extra copies of the book, sit there in the food court with tomb shirt on with a couple extra copies of the book.

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And what do you think the chances you might be able to strike up a conversation are? Be pretty good.

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You know, I had my tomb shirt on yesterday when I saw my chiropractor and he had heard about it, too.

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He hadn't seen it. But he had heard about it. So I got to tell him about what I was doing and things like that.

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So a lot of ways, a lot of ways we could we can go there as far as getting that information out.

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But I really, as I've said, what I know, some people go, man, you you must really have thought that was a good attack against your faith to be so quick to respond.

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Well, good in the sense of the film was well -made. James Cameron's not stupid. These people had money behind them.

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It's well -made. It's it uses it's it's really designed to appeal to the the

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Western mindset. It is designed to be politically correct in the sense of what we were not really saying.

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There wasn't a resurrection. Of course, we're completely redefining resurrection is. But, you know, I mean, along those lines, yeah, it's it's it's quite slick.

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Now, as far as serious argumentation, no, it's it's very, very poorly done. But then why the big rush?

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Well, two things. The way it came out, you've got your conclusions thrown out there.

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And how many Christians do you know who are going to feel comfortable dealing with a range of subjects?

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It goes from ossuaries. How many Christians, you know, know what an ossuary is? How many know anything about first century

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Judaism, burial practices, inscriptions, names? How many of you owned

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Jesus and the eyewitnesses by Richard Balcombe? I was writing the CRI review of the book when this whole thing hit, thankfully, and he had all of the

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Ilan lexicon of names material in his book. So how many know almost anything about the difference between nuclear and mitochondrial

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DNA? I mean, these are there's all this these these realms of discussion, the

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Acts of Philip, my goodness, Gnostic Gospels, the Gospel of Thomas. Most people just simply don't have a background in that material and they need to know how to respond in an appropriate fashion to someone who asks a question of them about these things.

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And so the way it came out, bypassing scholarship, the fact that it came out in popular media and hence is going to have a big splash, big distribution, required a swift response, but a good response.

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And obviously, my hope from the beginning has been do with this what we've done with the

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Da Vinci Code and with things like that, turn these things around and use them. If we believe the truth, if we know the truth, then we can take a tax upon the truth and turn them into opportunities of witness.

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And so that's what we want to try to do with this book is use it as an opportunity of witness. That's why

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I've put an appendix in with the opening statements from Dr. Jim Renahan and myself in the debate on the resurrection with Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan.

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We had two folks, again, there were folks in channel, Mutato, Kruber, Marie Peterson.

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I would send them video clips and they transcribed all this stuff and that stuff ends up in the book.

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And it takes a long time, took them a lot of work. But the channel has been extremely important in getting all of this stuff done.

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And so we've got the material on the resurrection there. We have the Christian message tract will be in there.

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I think on atheism will be in there. And so hopefully the work will be very useful to folks.

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You've got a microphone in front of you. And I've just been waiting for you to finally just wait long enough to press a button and jump in.

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Hey, you're on a roll. I don't want to interrupt. A couple of things that have come to mind for me on this is

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I think maybe we need to get a bunch of these T -shirts. So that we can have them on out in Mesa here in a few weeks when we go out to the

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Mormon temple witnessing to people. I think that in and of itself will attract attention for people who maybe want to talk to us a little bit more.

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And because I'm not the week after next. Yes, it is coming up fast. And we've really got to spring into action on that.

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But we had received an email. I forwarded over to you a couple of days ago, as I recall.

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And the individual was remarking about the new

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Greek breakdown of the ossuary being Mariam Haimara or something like that.

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And the gentleman had asked the question. To me, the answer is obvious. But I think it's an interesting question.

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And that is, is he an expert in Greek and is he an expert in the ossuary inscriptions?

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Is that relevant? In other words, can someone who knows Greek and reads Greek be able to look at these ossuaries and genuinely read what's there?

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Oh, yeah, there's there's no it's not the difficulty is not your knowledge of Greek.

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It's the fact that if any one of us took some type of a sharp object to a vertical limestone surface and tried to write in English on that, the result would look like chicken scratch.

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I mean, it really would. It's not it's not easy to do. And many of the ossuaries clearly show evidence of someone trying to make a downward stroke.

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And they run into a part of the limestone that's a little thicker and they're trying to get through it. And all of a sudden it breaks through and you've got this big line.

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So I'm reminded of just simply being at a cemetery and looking at headstones.

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I mean, some of these ossuaries are very ornate and some of them are very crude and in the inscriptions.

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And imagine if you were all having to carve a relative's headstone with a nail versus someone who did that professionally and was, you know, did headstones.

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Those are that makes the difference. The language, the writing is still the same. It's just, you know.

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And it's also whether you have the tools to do what you need to do. I mean, it's sort of like you and me. I mean, when

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I do stuff around the house, it takes me four hours and it looks terrible, but you've got the tools. And so when you do it, it takes you half an hour and it looks fine.

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Same thing here. The Judah ossuary clearly was something that somebody spent some money to have that put together.

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And isn't it interesting? The inscription is very legible, no mess ups.

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It's clearly done by someone who does very precise chiseling, not by someone who has, you know, a rock or a piece of metal.

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And they're actually in the tomb as they're sliding it in and they scratch a name on it.

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You know, I mean, that's basically what you have with some of these ossuaries. So it is unusual.

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The Talpiot tomb has more inscriptions than I think any other tombs that have been found. I mean, they found some tombs that had, you know, a couple dozen ossuaries in them and only one inscription.

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So, you know, that in and of itself is interesting. But the fact remains that, yeah, we can read these things.

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But the Mariamne one is difficult to read. I mean, it just it wasn't done by a professional.

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And therefore, if that becomes the foundation and it is without that, all the rest of the argumentation flies out the window.

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And since there are very plausible, in fact, much more plausible readings that do not even substantiate the theory, you've got a pretty tough, tough road to hoe there.

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And interestingly enough, none of that factors into the statistics argument, right? Vorheverger doesn't take into consideration,

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OK, what are the chances that there was a Jesus family tomb in the first century in Jerusalem? What are the chances that it's already been found amongst the ones that have been excavated and then factor in the actual lack of clarity in regards to the reading of the

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Mariamne thing? That would completely change all the all the math. But that didn't show up in the film.

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Now, for those of us who went through the series that you did just before this went down on textual criticism, what about the issue or how does the issue of the fact that this is done in minuscule text rather than unsealed text address the subject?

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That's not that's not minuscule text. It's again, it that that's a misunderstanding of what you're looking at there.

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It's just a different way of forming the letters. But it's not a it's not a situation where you have a differentiation between the letters as a small letter versus a large letter.

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That's that's not the case. I saw one email, so it wouldn't have been an unsealed text. Well, yeah, and that's where I'm coming from.

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Yeah. Thinking about those emails. Yeah, well, it is in unsealed text. What's more interesting is why is it in Greek?

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It seems far more logical. I mean, the connection that they try to make is that, well, the

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Acts of Philip say that the Mariamne preached in Greek and therefore this makes all sorts of sense.

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Actually, it's far more logical. I mean, if you're going to be doing serious scholarship, you do not go to a fictional work from the fourth century and read it back into the first century to figure things out.

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And so it's far more logical in looking at that ossuary to recognize this is a multi -generational tomb that had as many as 35 people in them.

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We only know one sixth of them. We only know one sixth of the people found in this tomb. And since there are that many people, it's multi -generational.

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You're in Jerusalem in the first century. Is it not much more logical to go, hey, this is probably a servant or someone who was associated with the family or someone in the extended family?

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Is that not much more logical as to what the association with this particular person was? And given the graffiti like scratching, unlike the

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Judah ossuary, this is something that was done right at the last moment. And that would fit with someone who, for example, was a servant in the household or something along those lines.

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But these people had money. That's that's one of the main things that immediately precludes this as being the

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Jesus family tomb is that not only are you 120 miles off on your map, but these people to have money and power in the

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Jerusalem community, Jesus didn't have it. And to assume that they did, that would that would be rather silly.

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Then on the statistics stuff, what has bugged me from the beginning has been the fact that the statistician immediately, when he first started working with the information, immediately discarded

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Matthew, the ossuary of the Matthew individual that was found there.

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And if all because of the fact that the assumption was made up front that this is the

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Jesus family tomb, therefore Matthew is not a family member and therefore we're not going to include him in our statistics.

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If you are forced to include a Matthew in those statistics, all bets are off.

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Well, yeah, the whole again, the whole problem with with the approach that was taken was that, you know, in the film they try to do is to try to connect

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Matthew with Mary's line and the priesthood line and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's it's again a glowing example of here's the conclusion we want to reach.

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How do we explain everything out of the way to get the conclusion? That's that's what I know that Simcha Yakubovich has said that he it was his job to to shoot the theory down at at every point.

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Oh, please. Yeah, it's it's it's rubber used rubber bands and superglue to hold together at every point is what is actually going on.

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I mean, we're talking some heavy lifting, dude, heavy lifting. Yeah, he wasn't shooting anything down. And, you know, it's amazing when you say something like this, when you just make an observation that there is clear bias on their part.

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A lot of the emails you sent me, the people, why are you attacking these people? Why are you so mean? They must be right.

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And you're just like, wow, have you? No one thinks logically anymore.

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No one thinks critically anymore. It's it's incredible the the mindset that the people have. But again, the the database that you're working with is so small.

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You have one sixth of the names in the tomb. That's all you've got of the total number of bodies found and bones and so on and so forth.

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You got one sixth named. So that means you've got five, six. You don't know. And even then, when and hopefully folks will find this useful,

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I took a fair amount of time to provide some of the data that otherwise you're only hearing about here, there and everywhere.

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And that is these names, especially for the women, they kept saying, well,

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Mary Omni, we've never found one like that. At least 10 percent of the women whose names we have found, only one occurrence of the name has has appeared.

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And we only have about 300 names grand total for for the women to work with.

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So you're talking about a small, a very small sample is one eighth the data size that you have for the men.

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And again, that stuff doesn't come out. It is fascinating to notice that, for example, the names found in the

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New Testament seem to track very well with what we find in secular sources in Palestine, unlike Gnostic Gospels and things like that, which are written someplace else and don't have a direct connection.

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But they sort of forget about that part and don't realize that might mean we should take the New Testament more seriously. But anyway, those have been fascinating things.

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I've learned a lot over the past three weeks. There's no no two ways about it. And all it's done has been to significantly increase my confidence in the accuracy of the text of the

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New Testament. And that's that's why we do apologetics. I think you're absolutely right.

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This entire circumstance should be something that strengthens the faith of the faithful and not weaken it.

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You mentioned a moment ago that we've gotten these emails about, you know, why are you attacking these people, et cetera?

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And they're just trying their motives are this and their motives are that. And the one that I'm thinking of is the guy who said that, you know,

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Jesus would never behave this way to us. And I'm thinking to myself, Jesus wouldn't get caught dead.

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You know, so but it's interesting how for a matter of convenience, when they're willing to employ the name of Jesus and say that Jesus wouldn't do this and Jesus wouldn't do that.

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And of course, that totally ignores Jesus' treatment of so many different issues in his day.

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The scribes, the Pharisees, snakes, serpents, scorpions come to mind. Oh, yeah. But it's this whole thing really needs to strengthen the faithful.

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And and make us more bold in being able to go out there and use it as a witnessing tool. Yeah, I agree.

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And it would be I hadn't even thought about the the

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Easter pageant coming up. That would, of course, the Mormons are going to be going, yeah, that's that's exactly right.

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But that should be something that draws them to us into conversation, not repel them.

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And so we can use that as a tool to be able to say, hey, you know what? We've got information you need to hear that you'll want to hear while we're at it.

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Yeah, not only that, but Jesus, this Jesus is that I'm talking about is not only in an usher, not in an ushery, but he's not the spirit brother of Lucifer either.

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Yeah, well, and I obviously have not been spending any time to to try to find out.

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But I'd be interested. Has there been any response from the Mormons? I have not. You know,

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I haven't been surfing any Mormon blogs or anything, but I I haven't heard a whisper.

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Maybe we need Pierre to call. Maybe Pierre can tell us. You know, I'd love to get Pierre's insights on this entire matter to see what he thinks.

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You know, the interesting I don't know that the you know, has the church made any official statement or anything like that?

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I don't know because they're I mean, they've they're really stuck. You got to have body, flesh and bone one way or the other. So you don't have any way around that.

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877 -753 -3341 is the phone number. We're going to take our bottom of the hour break and be back with your phone calls here on The Dividing Line.

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The history of the Christian church pivots on the doctrine of justification by faith. Once the core of the

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Reformation, the church today often ignores or misunderstands this foundational doctrine. In his book,

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The God Who Justifies, theologian James White calls believers to a fresh appreciation of, understanding of and dedication to the great doctrine of justification, and then provides an exegesis of the key scripture texts on this theme.

32:00

Justification is the heart of the gospel. In today's culture, where tolerance is the new absolute,

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James White proclaims with passion the truth and centrality of the doctrine of justification by faith.

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Dr. J. Adams says, I lost sleep over this book. I simply couldn't put it down. James White writes the way an exegetically and theologically oriented pastor appreciates.

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Pulpit Crimes. The criminal mishandling of God's word may be James White's most provocative book yet.

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34:56

So you think after we install the new phone system we'll get more phone calls? Probably doesn't really make any difference, huh?

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No. We're putting in a new phone system. Some of you may have noticed that one of our lines started going south on us and it's not the line coming in.

35:10

It's the phone system itself. And so we've got a new one sitting there.

35:17

We're just not sure exactly how we're going to get it in there because you want to have enough time to get it in and get it tested and stuff like that, right?

35:27

Yeah, well, we don't want it melting down when you go to sing Happy Birthday next time. That would... smoke coming out from it, stuff like that, yeah, that'd be good.

35:35

Maybe that's what happened to this one, you know? We did line one, was where the singing was, and it just finally killed it.

35:41

Game over. Yeah, it's possible. I don't know. But anyway, I'm thankful that I'm not the one that's going to have to install it and we'll go from there.

35:51

So are the rest of us. Oh, yeah. All right. But, you know, I'm still wondering, am

35:57

I going to be able to dump people, you know, if I'd have to do it on the net or something?

36:02

Well, you'd probably use a computer screen to do it. Yeah, I'm going to be doing it on the... This thing even has the ability to busy out all the lines.

36:11

Cool. Pretty wild, huh? Like we really need to. Yeah, really. You know, we're not taking calls right now.

36:17

That's when everybody tries to call, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, they always wait till the end of the program. See, that's what we should do from now on.

36:23

Instead of announcing the number, just say, we're not taking calls right now. That's right. That's the way to do it. And then start taking.

36:28

That's good. Okay. Anyways, 877 -753 -3341 will not be changing.

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That'll still be the phone number. It'll just be going into a different phone system, one that hopefully will not throw us any buzzing issues when we're trying to talk with folks or popping or hissing or whatever, that type of thing.

36:49

All right, 877 -753 -3341, if you have questions concerning the tomb story, anything we've said about that,

36:57

I'd be glad to talk about that. I'm not avoiding this topic because I'm trying to be politically correct or avoiding offending anybody.

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I do know that there is a huge brouhaha going on right now in regards to the comments that Dr.

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Moeller made in regards to homosexuality. And everybody's going, well, what do you think about that?

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Because obviously I've debated John Shelby Spong and Barry Lynn and that guy up in Salt Lake City that I can never de -something, de -Bradshaw, thank you, up in Salt Lake City, and written on the subject and all those other things, and everybody's expected me right out front.

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I've had to say the same thing that I've had to say to other folks, you know, I'll try to catch up on email tomorrow, you know, there are folks waiting for me to talk to them about travel arrangements and stuff like that.

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The only way to write a 140 -page book in 16 days, and that doesn't mean you got all your research done first and then wrote it.

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You still got sources coming in while you're writing, okay? I mean, that's the only way to do that is pretty much just say no to everything else, to not do anything else other than what you're doing.

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Didn't I do a couple of Chris shows in the midst of all that? I think I did. I did two shows for Chris on the subject, and in fact, no,

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I did Way of the Master before I left for Massachusetts, but I did Chris afterwards. But anyway, you just sort of have to say, sorry, can't get into that right now.

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I have not even read the necessary, shall we call them primary documents, so as to make an intelligent comment on the whole thing.

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I do know that, unfortunately, the temperature has risen dramatically in the conversation, and that does seem to be how things go.

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I even had to remind some of our channel regulars this morning that we need to discuss this as brothers and sisters in the

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Lord, because it's real easy to take up sides and to pull out the verbal pitchforks in a situation like this.

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And unfortunately, that really doesn't end up accomplishing a whole lot. In fact, it only diminishes the conversation when it takes place.

39:29

Same thing happened. I guess, yeah, it would be the week that I started on the book was, of course, the

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John MacArthur Shepherds Conference on Millennialism Leads to Arminianism Sermon.

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And now on that one, nobody was asking for my opinion anyway.

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Everybody was going, did you even care? You know, they just nobody was nobody could care less.

39:59

I love the emails that start off. I know you don't discuss eschatology, but I did know about that.

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And I have not spent the two dollars to get the sermon, because if I'm listening to something right now while I'm writing, or at least recently, if I'm listening to something about writing,

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I was listening to tomb stuff and interviews with various and sundry people and stuff like that. So I don't know that I would have any comment to make other than if if the statement was made was that amillennialism leads to Arminianism, there'd be two comments

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I'd make about that. A, that doesn't seem to be historically the case.

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I think if you just sort of look at history, that hasn't followed through. But B, the thing that sort of keeps me out of arguing about all this stuff is that I don't see that eschatology leads to anything.

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I think it's your theology that leads to your eschatology, not the other way around. I get concerned when folks have a particular theory of eschatology that ends up determining their theology rather than their theology determining their eschatology.

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And so if that's what was said and I don't know, I've said right up front, haven't even spent the two bucks to get the sermon because I don't think the

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Talpiot tomb was mentioned. And therefore, over the past 16 days, that just wouldn't be relevant to me.

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But I've heard that there is there is quite the quite the brouhaha going on out on the net and in the broadly reformed community, shall we say, on that particular subject as well.

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And I just go, OK, well, I'm not

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I don't want to be understood as saying that eschatology proper is not important because eschatology proper in a systematic theology is going to refer to such things as the nature of the afterlife, resurrection, judgment, the establishment of the eternal state and issues like that.

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And that is important. And it's quite true that there are many today who have so little interest in those things that they can dismiss the concept of hell and punishment.

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You know, you've got Clark Pinnock running around out there with his not only second, but third, fourth, fifteenth, one thousandth chance type evangelization of the dead theories and denying, of course, eternal punishment and creating a conditional mortality type situation.

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And you've got the idea that as you're taking your final step into non -existence, you can still turn and repent and God will receive you and and that kind of stuff.

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And again, for good postmodernists, that sounds great and wonderful. And I'm sure they're very excited by that.

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But so I don't want anyone to hear my frequent statement that I don't do eschatology as a diminishment of the importance of those aspects.

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The problem is the term eschatology has quite simply been been stolen. Its meaning has been shifted from its historic systematic theology meaning where you're dealing with those subjects over to almost exclusively an argument between premillennialists and amillennialists and postmillennialists.

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And that's only within a broader community. And then if you've been a premillennialist, then you know that there are all sorts of different types of premillennialists.

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And in my experience, the nastiness is not so much the premillennialists for the amillennialists or the amillennialists for the premillennialists.

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The really, really, really nasty stuff actually is found in the closer someone gets to your position, but they're different.

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So, you know, you'll have debates between pre -trib and mid -trib.

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And these folks are ready to anathematize each other. I mean, they're ready to if and if you don't believe that, then you're not really believing the gospel because and then you make this big, long extended application and churches split and hymnals get thrown and the deacons meet out behind the church and have fisticuffs and so on and so forth.

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And I think having seen some of that in my history is one of the reasons

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I just go not interested in even starting down that road, because there's so many things that get people nasty.

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And it's one thing, I'll let people get nasty with me if it's about important stuff.

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But if it's not stuff that isn't going to determine where you're spending eternity, then the older I get, the less stomach

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I have for it. Well, you make me think of phone calls that I get. Yes, you are the one who answers the phone and I get some real weird ones.

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I get some interesting ones and what I oftentimes point out to people who really want to talk about this and will not take no for an answer.

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It is a matter of seconds before you start realizing as they're rattling off, this is the way it is, that unlike what you said a moment ago, they have let their eschatology drive their soteriology.

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They have let their eschatology affect how they look at the Gospel and how they present the

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Gospel and what the Gospel is. And that's the thing that really bugs me, because I keep thinking of this one phone call that I got where this individual had a full preterist relative.

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So a hyper -preterist. A hyper -preterist. A pentalist. This individual had thought the matter through so thoroughly about the 70

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A .D. linchpin of his thinking that he suddenly had imposed the idea that the apostles, after the ascension of Christ, continued to offer sacrifices.

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And I started thinking about that. Look at how you've distorted the

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Lamb of God has been sacrificed. The ultimate sacrifice has already been made.

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Why on earth would his followers continue to offer something that was less than what he already offered?

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And again, I point out to him, go witness to this man, because he's not believing the

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Gospel. His eschatology aside, he has let his eschatology cause him to deny the

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Gospel itself. Yeah, well, I sure miss getting the chance to answer their phone all the time.

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That's just something I really wish I had the opportunity of doing.

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And if you believe that, I have some swampland in Lake Havasu to sell you. We do get just some...

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I don't know why people think that a Christian apologetics ministry would have answers to some of the questions that are asked on the phone or emails that are sent in.

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Okay, I understand the folks who will send me emails and they want me to drop everything

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I'm doing and become their personal Bible answer man and write exegesis of text for them and things like that.

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And if you don't get responses from me on that, you are amongst the 99 .9 % of people who don't.

48:03

But still, at least when people are somewhat in the ballpark, but my goodness, some of the stuff.

48:12

You even got a call from a guy that had just tried to commit suicide, right? And he's in a medical facility in Colorado someplace, right?

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And he's calling... Well, his question is, can somebody who's attempted suicide still be safe?

48:29

Yeah, yeah. And he's calling from Colorado. And I'm like, dude, where's your pastor?

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Yeah, he had no idea how he got hold of us, right? I have no idea how he got hold of me.

48:39

He was calling from his hospital room. And I'm like, look, you need to get a hold of your pastor.

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What church are you going to? And well, have you ever talked to your pastor about this?

48:51

No. Well, have you ever talked to your pastor? When was the last time you were in church?

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And I'm like, dude, you need to get off the phone with me and you need to call your church. If you can't do that, you need to have one of the nurses call your church.

49:08

I imagine it's because Alpha came up first. It may be A. Maybe that's our problem. That happens, yeah. We're the first in the phone book.

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But still, that's in Colorado, not in a Phoenix phone book. Hey, Google the wrong city or something.

49:20

I don't know. But still, so many people want us to be the church. They want us to fill in.

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They want an anonymous voice over the phone rather than someone who's going to look you in the eye and you're going to have to them in the eye and you're going to have to have this community thing and there's going to be accountability.

49:42

No, they want an anonymous voice over the phone so they can sort of spin what you say just simply to basically allow them to do whatever it is they're going to do anyways.

49:51

And that's what they're looking for. And people will call us up and ask us questions about stuff that just you just want to go, why on earth did you ever think that we would have even a scintilla of information on a subject such as this?

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Or even if we did, why would you trust us? I mean, sometimes you ask folks, well, how do you know about us?

50:18

Well, a friend said, and you're going to trust we have to say, I mean, absolutely no discernment whatsoever.

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Zip, zero, nada. It's just, it's shocking. Truly, it's a reflection from my perspective on the church and it's a reflection on the evangelical mindset.

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It's me and my Bible off in the woods alone, except when I get stuck and now

50:47

I'm going to throw up the red flag. But the problem is, who are you going to trust? And are you going to call the same people all the time?

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If you call somebody else, they're going to give you a different answer. Things aren't going to fit right. What a mess it produces. It's truly incredible the stuff that you that you hear coming across the phone.

51:04

And so, anyway, I wasn't, like I said, I'm not getting into the eschatology debate.

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The only thing that I'm going to say about that is that my theology determines my eschatology, not my eschatology determining my theology.

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And I think you can be, personally, I believe you can be a consistent, you can have a consistent reform soteriology and be a postie, an ami, or a non -dispensational preemie.

51:41

But I got some issues with a certain, who can define dispensationalism anymore anyways?

51:47

I mean, you almost have to attach a specific writer's name to the term dispensationalism to know what in the world you're talking about anymore.

51:57

I mean, and I say this as a person who grew up with the

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Schofield Reference Bible in my hands. So I understand that. But today, I mean, go down to Dallas.

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Can you, can you, will you get the same answer as to what dispensationalism is from two different professors? I don't think you will.

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You know, and so what form does it take today? I don't know. But I know it's produced some real messes, like the

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Wilkins -Hodges heresy on salvation.

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And so, you know, if you're going to be saying people were saved a different way than were saved today, back in the

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Old Testament like that, you're going to have some problems being consistently reformed. But if you're not a dispensational, but you're a historic premillennialist, okay,

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I'm sorry, forgive me, but I think you can be a consistent reformed person and hold to all three of those.

52:51

And we have, I think, all three represented in our own church. And no one walks around, you know, with a heresy detector.

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And they're going beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. Now, you know, I'll admit, if I see someone carrying a

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Tim LaHaye book around, my eyes are going to go up, and I go, okay, might want to see what's going on there. But, you know, there's a good example.

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Look at the rabid, rabid, rabid, rabid premillers. What are they? They are all the exact same people who write books against Calvinism.

53:23

Dave Hunt, and I mean, I've told the story before, but I was sitting in a restaurant while I was a speaker.

53:34

Dave Hunt was one of the plenary speakers, as was I. This was a number of years ago, right when What Love Is This came out.

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And one of the topics of conversation, they mentioned a fellow whose name I had never heard before, so I know nothing about him.

53:48

And someone said, hey, whatever happened to, what's his face? And Dave gets this very serious, sober tone to his voice.

53:58

And he says, well, you know, he had a lot of promise. He really looked like he had a lot of promise, but he went off into heresy.

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And you could just, you know, this taking in of breath, you know, this gasps because whoever this guy was, again,

54:15

I had never heard him before. He evidently had been really promising. He went into heresy.

54:21

What happened? Well, he denied the rapture. And I'm sitting here going, in other words, he adopted a more historic view of eschatology that goes back a lot farther.

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And you've dismissed him as having gone off into heresy. And I'm sort of looking around the table wondering, is there anyone else in here who's having the same thoughts

54:48

I am, that it's just really wrong to be dismissing this guy and in essence, rumor mongering about this guy and saying this guy has left the faith because he changed his eschatological viewpoint.

55:06

Hello, is that really what you want to be doing? I mean, honestly, these are the same folks, not all of them, but, you know,

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I'm sitting next to Dave Hunt, this same fellow can't figure out what the Bible teaches about original sin, can't figure out what the

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Bible teaches about sovereignty of God. He ends up quoting the New World Translation, trying to get around Acts 13, 48, creates the

55:28

Hebrew original, the first 15 chapters of Acts and won't even take it out of his book when he said he would. But boy, you know, we can't figure that stuff out.

55:35

But we can figure out that if you end up not holding to the rapture view that you've left the faith.

55:41

And I'm just sitting here looking around going, OK, if I say something, am

55:47

I going to end up with mashed potatoes all over my lap or what's good? Or am I just I mean, it was cold and it was icky outside.

55:54

I didn't have any intention of walking back from this restaurant to the hotel. It was a long way. So I'm just sort of looking around going, whoa,

56:03

I'm feeling a little odd here. This is this is because, you know, because everybody's like, oh, he did.

56:10

And I'm just like, do to do to do to do. I'm reading

56:18

I'm reading Algo in the chat. Joe says Ron Rhodes is in the parking lot laughing. Richard Fisher was crying.

56:27

You know, that man scares me because, yes, they were both there. How does he know that?

56:34

I think I think that guy follows me. I have a stalker. I simply have a cyber stalker.

56:40

This man is have we checked in the closets around here? Have we checked for hidden cameras or anything like that?

56:47

Because this man is just scary. He really is.

56:53

And obviously, I've told these stories way too many times before because he remembers the details far more clearly than I than I thought

57:02

I had ever actually revealed. But anyway, yeah, no, it was it was a fast.

57:07

That was the same that was the same time where when we got up from that dinner was when

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Dave Hunt was telling the Sinaiticus story. How about how Sinaiticus was found? Trash cannon.

57:18

I had rather loudly corrected him to the whole group that that was it was not the case.

57:25

And Dave Hunt's not King James only, but he's King James preferred. And I think the only reason he holds that position is so he can speak in the wide variety of places he speaks.

57:36

If he was really King James only, then a lot of his Calvary Chapel connections would be strained. But at the same time, he does speak a lot of these prophecy conferences like with people like Chambers who are

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King James only. So he has to, you know, try to walk a difficult line there that that prophecy gig gets you into some pretty odd places.

57:55

OK, I mean, there's you got to be really careful. If people thought that John MacArthur woke everybody up with his sermon, you got to go to some of these prophecy places, man.

58:05

You'll you'll hear some stuff that'll curl your hair. Well, anyway, thanks for listening to The Vying Lion today.

58:10

We will be back, Lord willing. Are we going to try to do the thing Thursday? Do you want to try to do that to where we will go regular time

58:17

Thursday? OK, we'll go with our regular time on Thursday, which for those of you who still haven't gotten used to the change in time that you'd made, not us, is four o 'clock

58:26

Pacific time now. Whatever. We'll see you then. God bless. He was standing at the.

58:58

We need a new reformation. The dividing line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.

59:34

If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at P .O.

59:39

Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can also find us on the

59:45

World Wide Web at AOMIN .org. That's AOMIN .org where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates and tracks.