Supreme Court, BLM, Thabiti, 2 Cor. 4:4

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line on a Tuesday. I mentioned yesterday on the program the

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Supreme Court decision had just come down, the Bostock decision I think is what it's being called now. Actually it was a bundled decision.

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There were a number of different cases thrown together, which is amazing to me because one of them was the funeral home where you had a man who decided to identify as a woman and wanted to start dressing as a woman in his role as a funeral director.

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And so that's cool now. You can't do anything about that as an employer.

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You can have crossdressers because that's the new thing.

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And yeah, of course, no one of the founding fathers, in fact, no one in 1964 when the

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Title VII was passed and the civil rights legislation back in the 60s, and none of them envisioned any of these things, but it doesn't matter, see?

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That's where we are today. So I mentioned we would take some time to look at it.

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There's already been a tremendous amount of excellent material produced, commentary, articles.

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I realize most of us are just like, I just can't take any more of 2020. Just I can't go there.

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It's too much. And I think that's purposeful in many ways.

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I think the idea is to get us all just to throw our hands up in the air and say, okay, it's done. We surrender.

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Too much, too much craziness. We just want to live our lives. We want to build our families.

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We want to raise our children, our grandchildren. We want to be able to go to Target and Bash's and Kroger's and buy food and repair cars and just live life.

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We struggle with the people who have so much energy to invest themselves in destroying everybody else's lives, because we just don't have that.

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So it's, yeah, I get it. I hear you. Take some time off, everything else.

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But if you are a Christian in business, in education, doing almost anything in our society, you have to understand what has happened and what will happen as a result of what has happened.

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At the very, very least, everyone who has been making the constant argument, it's all about the

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Supreme Court. That's never, never what the Founding Fathers intended. That's not what the

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Constitution envisions, but let's be honest. The function of our governmental system has been severely compromised by the fact that there are now enough people on the left.

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I'm not saying on the right, because there's a difference between the left and right. The left are ideologues.

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The left have a fundamental goal of the re -creation, which obviously requires the destruction, first of all.

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But the re -creation of the American government. And so they vote as a bloc.

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There's no such thing as bipartisanship anymore. There's no such thing as doing what's best for the country anymore. There's no such thing as honoring the

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Constitution anymore. And so the legislative branch is pretty much not able to do anything any longer.

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And so legislation has now been moved to the courts. And you get through the courts what you cannot get through the legislatures.

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And where do the judges come from? But from the Ivy League schools, which are absolutely soaked in the most anti -American worldview possible.

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So shouldn't be shocked, shouldn't be surprised. Literally what happened with this decision is that the

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Equality Act, which we warned could be passed even under the

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Republicans, but it was unlikely, but would definitely be passed if a

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Democratic majority was obtained via especially rigged elections by mail -in ballot.

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And that basically is no longer relevant.

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As Justice Alito in his scathing dissent wrote, quote, there is only one word for what the court has done today, legislation.

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The document that the court releases is in the form of a judicial opinion interpreting a statute, but that is deceptive.

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Not, it's my opinion that that's wrong. No, that's deceptive. What the court did, and this was, you fully, we fully expected the leftists to do what leftists do.

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Leftists have a different moral concept than the founders ever envisioned.

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For them, the reforming of American society into a socialist utopia is a good and moral thing to do, and therefore they'll do whatever they need to do to bring about that final result.

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Even if that involves all sorts of contradiction and self -contradiction and everything else that goes along with it, they'll do that.

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And so when you see how the voting takes place in the

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Supreme Court, you will see that especially Justice Kagan tries to pick off one of the, at least one of the conservatives to swing everything.

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She did that with Gorsuch in this one, and of course, Roberts is compromised from the beginning.

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So what we've seen here is in the important worldview issues, the court is still 6 -3 leftist.

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We don't have a conservative court, we have a leftist court, and it'll only get worse from here.

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But the point, again, is that this isn't how it was supposed to be.

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And once you have a sufficient number of people within a constitutional republic who want to destroy that republic, they will succeed.

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And we have people at the very, almost everyone in the seats of power.

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What's actually amazing is that it has survived, this constitution has survived an amount of poison in its bloodstream over the past 50 years that would have killed, it would have killed an

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Italian constitution in about three seconds, given that at one point a little while ago, the

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Italians had had more governments since World War II than there had been years since World War II.

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Yeah, an Italian constitution would have died at this level of poison in a matter of seconds.

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So give them credit, but no one can design a governmental system that can survive the fundamental treason of pretty much everyone that is that is elected to positions of authority within its system.

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It has to assume that the people participating want to keep it going, and that's not the case anymore.

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That's not the case anymore. And the reason is a worldview issue, and that is seen in this decision.

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We now, if you read it, if you read the decision, it's available online, a number of different places you can download it.

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If you read the decision, what you read is Gorsuch playing word games because, look, no one seriously believes that in 1964, anytime in the 60s into the early 70s, even when other legislative work was done on all of this and the statutes, no one believes that they had in mind or intended to say that by banning discrimination based on sex, that this had anything to do with homosexuality and certainly it had nothing to do with transgenderism.

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Homosexuality was still illegal in a large number of states at that point in time. Transgenderism was considered a mental disease and should have remained in that consideration because it is.

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But there's just no rational human being can possibly believe that,

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A, the founders would have for a second envisioned any of this or felt that anything that they had written could in any way, shape or form be interpreted as having room for this kind of legislation and thinking and the violation of the created order, because that's what it is.

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And then secondly, no one in the 1960s had this mindset either.

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This is not what was being voted for. The president who signed it wasn't thinking this. And so you have a modern

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Supreme Court redefining the meaning of words so as to expand past legislation because this wasn't going through Congress.

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It wasn't going to make it through the Senate. And so legislating for the bench, usurping the authority of the legislative branch, fundamentally undercutting not only the societal norms of the

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United States, but the governmental structures as well. And like I said,

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I think John Adams and others, you've heard the quote from John Adams, the Constitution is only sufficient for moral and religious people.

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It is wholly insufficient for the governance of any other. He's exactly right about that. We are no longer immoral and religious people by any stretch of anyone's imagination.

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The deists amongst the founders would say that. The deists would be astounded at the utter lack of moral fiber, let alone the completely non -theistic perspective that is present now.

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And so it's not at all surprising. So what you find is you find Gorsuch playing word games to try to literally call this a textualist argument.

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And in the process, I mean, it wasn't as childish as the

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Kennedy, as Obergefell's, as that majority opinion was.

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It wasn't as feely -feely, you know, emotional. What about the little children stuff that you had in Obergefell?

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But it was still incredibly sad to read. I mean, when you listen to an argument like this, and that's what the two sides of this issue are.

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It's a debate. It's an argument. When you read the majority side, it is strained and easily refuted.

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And Alito tore it to shreds without hardly any difficulty at all.

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Justice Thomas joining with him. Even just going point by point, even the times that he attempted to say, well, certain dictionaries say this and certain dictionaries say that.

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Everybody knows exactly what was meant by discrimination on the basis of sex.

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Now, I would say that we planted our own seeds back then of our own destruction by getting the government involved in things that the government wasn't supposed to be involved with in the first place.

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This whole issue of discrimination, the very term goes back to the Latin. And the funny thing is, the function of a court is to discriminate.

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It's just you're deciding between different things. That's what discriminare means. So we sort of have been building our own coffin for a long time as the government has gotten bigger and bigger and bigger and intrude into things that that were never it was never intended to intrude into anyways.

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And now we have this entire worldview on the part of many, many people where if you have something that you feel needs to be done, well, the government has to do it.

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That that that behemoth, once the government starts growing, it'll never stop. It just until it eats itself has nothing left.

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And it feeds upon the citizens and feeds upon their liberties and their freedoms. And that's what you get.

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And so I would recommend to you the reading of Justice Alito's dissent because he, even though Gorsuch and the majority try to say that this is somewhat of a narrow decision, it's not.

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It is precedent setting. It will have impact in a huge number of areas, but especially for Christians.

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Who own businesses. Who try to work in the realm of business, schools, seminaries, universities.

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This decision will be the basis of an absolute flurry of legislative action seeking to, in essence, banish the last vestiges of a

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Christian worldview from the public square in the United States. This is exactly what the left wants.

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This is what the elite left wants. This is what BLM wants. This is what the radical revolutionaries want.

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This is what the latte sipping, vegan burger eating revolutionaries in Chaz in Seattle want.

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And they're all coming together at the same time. Now, I know in the long run, they can't hold it together.

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They're there right now. They have a target. The established governmental order, societal order of the

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United States, they want to take that down and they want to end our influence in the world.

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They want to. They're being funded by George Soros and by the Chinese who have differing.

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Soros has different goals than China has. But if you've all got the same goal, you'll work together to accomplish that goal.

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Then you can turn on each other later. You both think you're smarter than the other one. And so you can turn on each other later. And that is where the real interest is going to lie, is what's going to happen then when they start turning on each other, because they don't have any moral foundation to not do so.

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But anyway. But what is fascinating here is the court literally is trying to what the court did.

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Was the court destroyed the historic common sense necessary for human flourishing and existence definition of sex, gender?

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They destroyed it without ever defining it. There's there's no positive definition of what a transgender person is in the majority opinion.

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So that's going to lead to all sorts of further confusion and breaking down division, intersectionality, everything else.

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But that's what they did. They refused to stand with what would hold the society together and instead go with this nebulous decision, which will result in all sorts of lower courts running with this every which possible direction.

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But the one thing that is obvious and plain is if you hold to natural understandings of these words, the words that actually function in the world rather than they're simply the fevered result of someone's percolating brain, you will feel the full weight of the society coming down upon your shoulders.

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And as as was pointed out, I read Pastor Gabe's tweet yesterday and I've seen a number of other people follow up on it today.

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If you if you had your hand out to Uncle Sam for that payroll stuff just a few weeks ago, he owns you.

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He owns you. You took his money. It was a cheap sell.

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It was a cheap sell. It was a cheap sell, but he owns you. And Christian schools, there are only a few that have always said, we will not take our money.

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We won't take Pell Grants. We won't take any of those student loans. We'll work with you in other ways.

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But we're not we're not selling our souls. There are very few schools like that, very few schools like that.

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And so every school that has been taking that stuff is under the authority of this decision and everything that's going to come from it in regards to every aspect of what discrimination now supposedly means.

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So and if you're a church and you just went, hey, that sounds like, come on,

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Uncle Sam, let's let's let's let's get some of this. Caesar never, ever, ever gives without demanding something back with interest.

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This morning, I was watching Fox News and a conservative pundit commented that he that while he is a conservative and he knows that the language in the 64

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Act doesn't actually say sexual orientation, what the court wisely did was extended, took an extension from the language and he thought it was a good decision.

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And I'm listening to him and I'm like, do you hear yourself? You're basically admitting to the fact that they're inventing this stuff, they're inserting words and thoughts in there that were never intended.

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And you think that's a good thing? Yep, they do. It doesn't this is not a conservative leftist split, sadly.

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This is a worldview issue, and that's why Trump's response was, hey, that's fine, no problem.

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It's been obvious. It's been plain, it's been clear that Donald Trump as individual does not have a worldview issue with transsexual, transgenderism, homosexuality, any of that stuff.

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That's his worldview. He's a New Yorker and New Yorkers have been diverse for a very, very long time, is how they would put it.

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He has no issue with it. There may be people in his in his administration that do, but he doesn't.

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And that's that's plain. That's clear. There really there are very, very, very few people in positions of high authority that have any concept of the long term impact of the degradation of the worldview that is necessary for the

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Constitution to function. And the left just wants to get rid of all of it because they don't want to see the

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Constitution function. They want to see it turned into into a mashed potato so they can just form it into whatever they want. But the people pretending that they actually recognize the importance of the

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Constitution, if they are secularists, they have no they have no mechanism for defending it outside of pure traditionalism.

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And that's what I was going to say is not only do you have Trump in that situation, but I noticed where did that go?

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Where did I put that? Oh, yeah, here it is. Uncle Gary, Uncle Gary DeMar, put up an article recently.

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Well, this morning, actually, talking about the home church of Gorsuch, Judge Neil Gorsuch and his family have been sitting under the ministry of Reverend Susan Springer, who pastors

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St. John's Episcopal Church in Boulder, Colorado. Let me tell you something. I know

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Boulder. And there are some good believers in Boulder, but Boulder is deep, deep, deep blue.

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OK, it ain't purple. It's deep blue. Yes. My wife's from Boulder.

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Did you know that? And the interesting thing about the downtown shops in Boulder, I think you and I have actually walked those.

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I've been there. You know what it reminds me of? Well, after I after I came down from the high that I got from walking down the streets in Boulder.

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Chop. What? Chaz? Yeah. Seattle. Yeah, it's it's that I think they moved to Seattle as well.

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I think it's because you go there and it's like, oh, that's life. That's the way it is. Yep. I'll get out.

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Yeah, it's Boulder, but it's it that's not the most important part about that.

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It's Reverend Susan Springer. And it's an Episcopalian church. OK, Machen was right.

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Christianity and liberalism, different religion. And this church is as leftist as you can, as you can get, it's it's way, way out there.

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And so what what do you expect? Heresy has results.

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Heresy matters. And for a long time, a lot of us have just sort of looked at the liberals and just sort of chuckled at how absurd they looked in their rainbow frocks and their rocks with their women preachers and their trees walking in to do environmental church services and and and and their numbers.

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Crashing, disappearing, I mean, the Episcopalian is the dodo of the theological world, it will it will eventually disappear.

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But this shows you the damage that it can do on its way out. Is you can have people who looked, quote, unquote, conservative when they were chosen to the bench.

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But the reality is all these people are coming out of institutions of higher learning,

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Harvard and Yale primarily, who that are soaked in a worldview of secularism.

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And I posted something this morning and I bet. I bet a lot of people when

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I posted this this morning were like, oh, yeah, come on, really.

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But. I grabbed a graphic and I posted it and I said, realize something, none of this, none of this could ever, ever have happened were it not for this man.

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And I posted a picture of Charles Darwin and.

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If you are one of if you're one of if you're one of those biologos guys that has a picture of Charles Darwin in your in your study.

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You you just don't get it, you just don't get it. You may be as smart as they come when it comes to theories and everything else.

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But you don't understand this worldview thing. None of this could have ever happened.

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In the world before Darwin. That doesn't mean you didn't have homosexuality and things like that beforehand, you did.

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But you did not have this idea that what we think between here and here creates reality.

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You even the unbeliever. Still had to deal with the reality of the existence of God in a day of judgment.

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Darwin. Ended that Darwin opened the door, set the world free.

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And you'll you'll hear atheists saying this all the time, they fully understand this. Set the world free from all the restraints that kept it from spiraling into the insanity we now see overtaking

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Western culture and. There is no meaningful

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Christian response to this. To what's going on with the sudden rise of the race issue is all there is.

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The whole issue of man and ethnicities, the

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Christian church has a response to that if we have bought into Darwin. If we no longer have a creator.

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Who is making us in his image. If we no longer have a creator who has a decree that he is accomplishing, by the way.

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You really don't have anything to say. To what's going on, which is why we see so many

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Christian churches just. It's like the flood just picks him up and walks off of them.

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You know, one day there's a VBS going on and singing the same songs

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I sang when I was in VBS and the next day they're floating by with rainbow flags sticking out the windows.

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How did that happen? The foundations were rotted through foundations weren't there.

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Our message is rooted in and grounded in the fact that there is a creator who defines who we are and what human flourishing really is.

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We don't get to make that up and then tell God just to give us whatever we want. And so, you know,

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I'm hearing a lot of people saying this is this is all the Christian church's fault. You know, I've never

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I've never been one of the, you know, go burn the churches down because of what society is doing type people.

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I don't I don't get it. I don't understand it. But if you want to define church in a super broad fashion and include all everything that has nothing to do with the church in that,

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OK, fine. Have we been as quick on the button to respond?

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No, no, no. I certainly certainly wouldn't make that claim. We are normally behind the curve.

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But that's the past. The issue is now with the speed at which things are happening, which only seems to be accelerating.

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We need to really understand the application of the

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Christian worldview. And that needs to start within our families. That needs to start.

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I tweeted last night, more than ever before, that that conversation around the dinner table with the children.

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I know that never happens anymore in the modern family. But if you're wise enough to be doing homeschooling so that that time does exist, then that's when children remember what it is you have to say.

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And they need to have a positive understanding of how it is that God is their creator, gives them transcendent meaning.

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It makes every little boy made in the image of God is called to be a man.

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And that's a distinct set of priorities that is fulfilled in light of the gifts that God gives to that little boy.

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And he is to be instructed and trained to take that energy that is his and that growing strength that is his and to channel it in such a way as to glorify

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God and to fulfill his purpose as a protector and a leader. And that little girl is to be taught that it is good to be a girl, that she would want to be a woman, that she would want to be a godly woman, that she would want to be a wife and a mother and to nurture her own children in the fear and admonition of the

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Lord and that she has transcendent meaning, transcendent value before God, that she is created in God's image and she has purpose and that the world will seek to steal that from her by lying to her in so many different ways, in so many different ways.

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This has to be illustrated. It has to be modeled. It has to be made so very clear.

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And then we seek to communicate that reality to others around us.

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And right now, we still have those freedoms, but we can see, if you cannot see what's coming, if you cannot see the daily deluge of examples of people losing their jobs for saying things that would have been barely controversial six months ago, people get ready to be maligned in the same way that Christians were maligned in the early church.

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The Christians, the early Christians in that first century, they were accused of cannibalism and all sorts of sexual debauchery.

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They were called atheists. They were said to be basically opposed to the peace of the

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Roman Empire. They were seeking to overthrow Caesar. There were all sorts of lies told about them.

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And you read the second century apologists and they're constantly referring to stuff and refuting stuff that we're like, why are they spending so much time on this?

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It was because of the constant public slander that was aimed at them.

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And so they had to respond to these things. That is what is already happening to us and is only going to increase.

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So we'll have it from outside the church. But one thing that is different now is that we will have it from inside the church, too.

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You didn't have the apostate Christian church. You did have false teachers, but they were abused by the

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Romans, too, in those first few centuries. But now we have a different situation where you will have the apostate church joining in and you will have those within the church.

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They may not be a part of apostate groups, but they are within the church and they will seek to sow confusion and to attack.

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And so what we call Christian cancel culture will be upon us. Things that were unthinkable just a matter of months ago will become normative.

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If I go speak at a church someplace, there have already been times in the past for normally narrow reasons where people would contact the church and say, you know, you shouldn't have that guy in because he's this and he's that.

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That's just going to become the norm. That's just going to become you're going to be accused of being bigoted, racist, racist, bigoted, bigoted, racist, racist, bigot.

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They don't really have a whole lot of stuff, but they repeat it loudly and scream.

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It's a little bit like that awesome video of the the chick and the cops in where was that that these that look that if they had tried to get an actor to play that cop, they couldn't have gotten anybody to do it any better than that cop did because he's just look and he's just got that face.

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This is sort of like, really? I mean, every time you talk to us, you're just insulting us.

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Don't you think there's something wrong with that? And then she just starts screaming. And the look on his face is sort of like, oh, yeah, bye bye.

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We'll see you. We're leaving now. That's.

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The cops get it all the time. We're going to we're going to get it all the time, too. And and see the thing,

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I'm in trouble here because I look at a woman like that and I go, you're not you are not even living up to being a human right now.

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You are you are literally your mental. Functioning here is below the level of humanity.

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My cat is more rational than you are, and so I have more respect for my cat than for that woman who just sits there and starts screaming.

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My cat is careful when crossing the road, my cat's thinking about the future. You know, this person isn't even up to that point.

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And I, I really struggle when people turn their minds off and and just let their emotions run wild.

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I. Yeah, that's my that's my weakness right there. I will I will I'll admit that.

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But anyway. This is coming, so I'm sure it's going to be a lot of fun.

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It's already happening, but pressure will be put on every Christian publisher to censor.

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We will end up going to smaller and smaller publishers over time.

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Amazon will start getting rid of our books, especially books on homosexuality, transgenderism, things like that, anything that holds up any type of biblical moral norm will end up being compressed.

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But even they will be put under attack and there will be calls for, well, they shouldn't be allowed to be on the

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Internet and so they should be banished from the Internet. And so we need to find out who, you know, who's hosting their websites.

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And I mean, these people, the other side are totalitarians. There is there is they have one goal.

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Everyone has to believe the exact same thing. There can be no dissent, there can be no and there's no debate either.

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There's no debating these folks, none. It can't can't be done, not allowed to be done.

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The very fact that you would try to debate is considered to be a horrific, terrible thing. Now, I'm watching the clock going by very, very quickly here.

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Thank you. Tucker Carlson mentioned a

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Rasmussen poll that said that Black Lives Matter had a 62 percent approval rating.

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In the United States right now, that is astonishing to me. That is astonishing to me.

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I'm not sure if we can I don't want to see that kid punching that 92 year old lady again.

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If you've seen it, they're trying to to blur her out now, but I saw it unblurred and it was just just.

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You just wish you were there and could have just. No. Anyway, did you did

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Rich, did you see this video? Let's see if we can let's see if we can pull this up.

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This is this is awesome. Let me.

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Y 'all see this, this guy walks up to all these medical personnel, they're standing outside of a hospital for Black Lives Matter, and he starts talking to him.

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And so hold on a second. You got audio. OK, OK, here we go.

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Black Lives Matter or just some black lives. The black lives killed by black men matter, right?

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Yes. The black babies killed in the abortions clinics matter, right? Thought so.

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The black the black officers killed by that bastard in Minnesota, that matters, too, right?

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OK, but the black babies that are killed in the abortion clinics don't matter, do they?

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Medical people do their lives matter. Does the future of our black babies matter?

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What's up? What's up? Awful quiet now, aren't they? It's OK if we kill them in the womb, right?

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But you have a problem when we you don't seem to really have a problem. We kill them on the streets. Yes, well, we know they're the same issue.

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If we don't if we don't respect the lives of our unborn children enough to save them and fight for them, our lives mean nothing.

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Once we're born, you all have a good day. How absolute wow.

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Do you hear the hear the quiet here, the quiet that's that's what happens when image bearers are faced their own rampant hypocrisy.

43:03

But that's what Black Lives Matter is. Did you see the rallies over the weekend for black trans lives matter?

43:17

Black trans lives matter, in fact, Elizabeth Warren was talking about the plague of deaths of black trans people as if there's some plague of deaths going on.

43:36

You cannot say anything against Black Lives Matter if you are if you're an employee of any type of major corporation whatsoever, you cannot say anything.

43:48

And the people who should be standing up and saying, wait a minute, this organization is seeking to fundamentally destroy our form of government, our society, our peace, the societal cohesion.

44:04

And they support the destruction of the nuclear family. They support homosexuality.

44:11

They support transgenderism. They are pushing these deviant behaviors as if they are moral goods.

44:17

But you can't say a word about it. And how many people, again, in positions of leadership are willing to stand up and do so right now?

44:28

Almost none. Instead, what you get are all the people taking a knee and all the people wearing their

44:38

Black Lives Matter shirts. And then you have the massive hypocrisy of Starbucks where you can you can't wear a

44:50

Make America Great shirt again if you're a quote -unquote partner, but you can wear

44:56

Black Lives Matter. And everybody knows when you donate to Black Lives Matter, they're giving the money to Democratic sources.

45:02

So you've got an entire huge corporation saying, we don't care, we're going to support one side against the other in an election year.

45:11

And yet some of you are still sitting around going, all this stuff just happened. It's just there's no, you can't be a conspiratorialist.

45:23

OK, right. All right. Whatever you say. Just just an amazing amount of of stuff there.

45:34

Yeah, Gabe Hughes, he commented on what I just played for you. Um, notice there's a woman who comes up and bows to him.

45:43

Then she looks back at her friends and gets back up again when she realizes what he's asking, where he's actually standing, because he's a

45:50

Black man. And so he shows up and she comes forward to bow. She takes a knee. And then as soon as he says, what about Black babies and the abortuary?

45:59

Oops, I can't bow to this Black man because this Black man has the wrong views.

46:07

So his Black life doesn't matter anymore. And all the Black lives, 95 % of them that are murdered in the

46:15

United States are murdered by other Blacks, but they don't matter either.

46:21

It's only the ones that are killed by whites, because that will allow you to push the narrative and remake the society.

46:31

The very name of the organization is a lie. They don't believe it.

46:37

And their promotion of a lifestyle that destroys Black people, transgenderism.

46:44

What is the increased amount of suicide amongst transgenders again? And amongst homosexuals again?

46:52

What's your stand on abortion? Yeah. Okay. So just like Planned Parenthood, which is behind the murder of Black babies every single day, is standing up and saying,

47:08

Black lives matter. So Black Lives Matter, along with Planned Parenthood, is involved in destroying

47:15

Black lives. But you can't say anything about it. There you go. There you go.

47:25

Wow. What an amazing, and amazing, and amazing day that we live in.

47:33

What made it all the more amazing was a series of tweets that I saw over the past couple of, well, it was a couple of days ago when they were posted by Thabiti Anyabwili.

47:56

Now, years ago, I spoke at a conference on Islam with Thabiti, and we spoke on the subject of Islam, and this was, this was before, you know, this is like 20, might have even been before 2010.

48:18

So this is a while back. And obviously there's been a lot of changes over the past number of years.

48:31

And I posted, when I mentioned I was going to refer to this series of tweets,

48:37

I posted a link to a dividing line where I responded to some of the things that Thabiti said back in 2018.

48:46

And interestingly enough, my response was focused upon Colossians chapter two. In Colossians chapter two, we have that assertion that there is this renewal of the

48:57

Holy Spirit is a renewal in which there is no ethnicity. There is no

49:02

Jew nor Greek. There is no Scythian or barbarian. These are ethnicities that would have been known to the church of Colossae.

49:14

Um, that's what I was focused upon. And so when I first read one of these tweets,

49:22

I had to find the thread because I'm going, no way, no way. But it said what it said.

49:29

So here is what, I believe he is a Together for Gospel board member, as I recall, or Gospel Coalition board member.

49:37

I'm sorry. Gospel Coalition, TGC, these acronyms, they all start with T. Um, if he's not now, he was at some point,

49:48

I think. I could be wrong about that. I don't keep up with things like that very much. He says there's something

49:53

I've been trying to find words to express for some time. I'm still not confident. These are the words, but I will use them and ask you dear reader to receive them as best as God's grace will allow you.

50:01

I'm still grappling for better expression. I'm grateful for the many white brethren in Christ who have expressed genuine concern and weariness about recent events.

50:10

I appreciate the expressions and like many, I draw some encouragement from them. Please don't stop sharing how you feel.

50:19

A lot of expressions of empathy are addressed to African -Americans as brothers and sisters in Christ. A welcome that,

50:27

I think it should have been, I welcome that recognition of our kinship in the Lord, especially when a number of other professing

50:34

Christians weaponize and politicize that kinship to deny justice.

50:40

But it must be said, and here's where I struggle to find the correct words, that the site of our struggle is not our shared

50:48

Christian faith. Therefore expressing Christian solidarity falls short of the kind of solidarity that's needed in the moment.

51:03

Let me just repeat that. Therefore expressing Christian solidarity falls short of the kind of solidarity that's needed in the moment.

51:15

To put it another way, George Floyd, a Christian as I understand it, was not mistreated and killed because he was a

51:23

Christian. Breonna Taylor was not killed because she was a Christian. Same for Ahmaud Arbery.

51:31

The man in Central Park was not threatened because he was a Christian. These are different issues that have come up over the past number of months.

51:44

Vast differences between each one, when you really think about it, vast differences between each one, but they have been woven into a single narrative.

51:53

You could have, if you wanted to, woven a different narrative for a different ethnicity with an equal number of examples, but no one does that because that's not the narrative right now.

52:07

That's not what is succeeding right now. They were killed or threatened because of the country's attitude toward black people.

52:19

The site of the struggle is anti -black sentiment, discrimination, and injustice.

52:26

Therefore the solidarity most needed is with black people as a people,

52:32

Christian or not. I want you to hear this. This is from a

52:37

Christian pastor. This is from a reformed Christian pastor. This is from a pastor who wrote on these issues years ago in a very different tone than now.

52:51

And I want you to think with me seriously about what he's saying. I want you to hear what he's saying.

52:58

Therefore the solidarity most needed is with black people as a people,

53:03

Christian or not. Now notice he did not bring up the black police officer that was killed.

53:10

Or the black police officers who've been killed. He does not bring up the thousands of blacks shot by other blacks.

53:25

Which is, he faces, what's the number?

53:31

25 times the danger from another black man than he does from a white man or a white cop.

53:40

But that's not the narrative right now. That's not the narrative that is repeated over and over and over and over and over and over and over again with such repetition and force that the facts, that's why the president of the

53:52

Southern Baptist Convention can sit there in his presidential statement and say, let's not talk about statistics.

54:00

Let's just talk about the burdens that our brothers are feeling. Well, what if those burdens are created by the excessive repetition of a false narrative that is simply not balanced?

54:13

That doesn't help them or anybody else, but you can't do it. Not today. And here you have a

54:20

Christian minister saying, therefore the solidarity most needed is with black people as a people,

54:29

Christian or not. My friends, from a Christian perspective, there is no such thing as a people outside of Christ.

54:35

What are they bound together by? Only by their skin color. They don't all have the same background.

54:43

They didn't all come from the same place. That is a myth. That's not true.

54:48

Everybody knows that on the factual level, just not the feelings level. How, how are the black people a people when they are in rebellion against Christ and against his law and more than any other group in the

55:09

United States kill each other? How is that a people? Is that not a fact?

55:17

It is a fact. So how do you, how, how can a

55:23

Christian talk about creating solidarity with a divided people who are preying upon themselves?

55:39

I know some people from various ethnic backgrounds are attempting to express precisely that solidarity with black people as black people.

55:47

I am grateful for that, but I want Christian brethren to realize that emphasizing Christian solidarity misconstrues the struggle.

55:59

I thought that from a Christian perspective, the struggle is to communicate to all people, but especially in this situation to black image bearers.

56:17

To that young man, I just mentioned as I was scrolling by, because it showed up again. Did you see it today? Young black man, and you can literally fill a half hour's worth with YouTube videos of young black men doing this.

56:32

I don't know why. It became, remember the, the gang stuff they were doing where you, these mobs where you'd, you'd go after folks, um, a couple of years ago and just do brutal beatdowns, just brutal beatdowns.

56:46

Yeah. The knockout game. Yeah. Yeah. Knockout game. A 92 year old white woman is tottering down the road.

56:56

This young black man is walking by. Doesn't say anything to her. Doesn't look at her.

57:02

He just simply goes right into her face and takes her out and happens.

57:11

Just sort of look back once as he just keeps sauntering on down the road. What solidarity am

57:19

I supposed to express here? This is a young man who has a, it's what?

57:28

74 % chance that he does not live with a consistent father in the home.

57:37

And so he shows his masculinity by knocking the head off a 92 year old woman as she walks by.

57:48

The solidarity should be Christians need to be getting into those contexts and speaking to that issue and introducing these people to what they're not being introduced to by their community right now.

58:02

And that is there's a day of judgment coming. You are made in the image of God. You're to respect all people.

58:10

And you young men are to restrain your testosterone and you don't do things like that.

58:17

You help people like that. That's what makes a real man. Let's have solidarity in proclaiming the gospel to these guys, changing their hearts and turning them to people that will build things up instead of knocking 92 year old women out in the middle of the street.

58:37

Sorry, that's the struggle. More misconstruing the struggle in this way forces a terrible choice upon black

58:46

Christians. Do we? So if a white

58:52

Christian calls a black Christian brother, we are misconstruing the struggle and forcing a terrible choice upon the black

59:05

Christian. What was the first thing I said in 2018?

59:12

Taking what we were hearing at MLK 50 and applying it to the primitive church would have destroyed the primitive church.

59:22

The primitive church was multi ethnic at its core. There weren't no white people in it.

59:30

It was multi ethnic at its core. And in that situation, you still had slavery.

59:38

You had masters and slaves. You had people who had experienced genocide at the hands of other people only a few hundred years earlier before the

59:47

Romans came along and forced everybody to play nice. And so if you apply this, hey, you need to look at my ethnicity before my identity in Christ.

01:00:02

Back then during Paul's day, there is no early church. It's done for.

01:00:08

It's finished. More misconstruing the struggle in this way forces a terrible choice upon black

01:00:17

Christians. Do we embrace Christian solidarity to the detriment of black existence slash struggle?

01:00:28

Existence slash struggle. Is this really the same language that I remember from my youth, from the

01:00:34

Black Panthers and the weather underground and people like that? Is that, is this the same language from back then?

01:00:44

Or do we emphasize black survival slash flourishing to the detriment of Christian solidarity?

01:00:53

My friend, there should not be any minister of the gospel that even thinks that there is somehow, that this is somehow the terrible choice being forced upon anyone.

01:01:10

This is why Christian identity has to be the only consideration.

01:01:18

As soon as you allow identity politics into the church, it's done. It's done.

01:01:24

You will have exactly what Paul said would destroy the gospel. Jewish Christian church,

01:01:30

Gentile Christian church. Now you've got black Christian church, white Christian church. Same, same thing.

01:01:42

This is a real world dynamic for many black Christians. Thankfully, I know so many for whom it is not.

01:01:51

Thankfully, it's not that we don't understand unity in Christ.

01:01:56

I'm starting to wonder. It's that we cannot afford to underline that unity when the threat is against black people, whether or not they're

01:02:08

Christians. Well, again, the threat for the vast majority of black citizens in the

01:02:22

United States comes from black citizens in the United States, not from white cops, not from white society.

01:02:33

For the vast majority, shootings, murders, rapes, vast majority performed by blacks against blacks.

01:02:41

That's again, there isn't a question here. This is just simply a fact. I know it's not the narrative. I know it's not what's it's not, not what is repeated by all sorts of folks, but this is the reality.

01:02:54

The extension of empathy only along Christian lines and with the tacit expectation that we define ourselves solely in terms of our

01:03:06

Christian identity is ultimately a self -destructive proposition for the black

01:03:15

Christian. We cannot accept such terms and survive.

01:03:28

Do you hear that? This is what identity politics does. No grounding in the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ, no grounding in the fact that is one guilty sentence against all of humanity, ethnicity does not matter, removed in only one way, all indwelt by the same spirit, going to the same place, worshiping the same savior.

01:03:59

That is not enough. No, no.

01:04:04

If you do what Paul said to do in Colossians and see there's one renewal without ethnic division, then that is self, that's a self -destructive proposition for the black

01:04:18

Christian. Didn't seem to be in Paul's day, but it is now. So much for solo scriptura.

01:04:24

So much for solo scriptura. We cannot accept such terms and survive.

01:04:32

On the other hand, the rejection of Christian solidarity in order to emphasize black survival and wellbeing causes consternation for those of us who deeply believe in the gospel's reconciling power.

01:04:47

Both options are a kind of suicide of something vitally important. Exactly. What is more important?

01:04:54

What is the universal reality? What is the message that would have meaning outside of the

01:04:59

American context that had the meaning that kept the early church together in the early days before there was any such thing as the antebellum self?

01:05:10

What had the meaning then, Thabiti? What's needed is solidarity with us as black people.

01:05:22

What's the basis of that? I know the basis of that is for Christians.

01:05:28

I know what solidarity I have with South Africans and Ukrainians and Russians and Australians and, and everybody else, even with the

01:05:39

French too. I mean, look at Rich and I, I mean, that really is talk, talk about, wow.

01:05:46

I understand that part you're getting, Google will translate the emails you're getting in French for you just fine.

01:05:58

Um, uh, I understand that solidarity. I get it.

01:06:04

What's my, what solidarity am I supposed to have with you as a black person? I'm not a black person.

01:06:11

I don't have that experience. What, what do we share together? Even our humanities in the image of God.

01:06:20

How am I supposed to import identity politics? I understand how to import

01:06:25

Christian identity in Christ. He's the God man. We can all be united to him. I get that. This philosophy of man doesn't provide me with any foundation for solidarity to begin with.

01:06:40

Number two, you're emphasizing solidarity with black people to such an extent that we're in turn free to accept and emphasize solidarity in Christ.

01:06:49

Get that? Before you can have solidarity in Christ, there's something else you have to do.

01:06:59

Have we read Galatians recently? We can have solidarity, but you got to be circumcised first.

01:07:12

How is it not? We just had a Christian minister say, you got us.

01:07:19

If you want solidarity with me, there's a first step first. Then we can have solidarity.

01:07:33

Gospel coalition board member last I knew the council council member and the council, the gospel coalition just said, you're emphasizing solidarity with black people to such an extent that we're in turn freed to accept and emphasize solidarity in Christ.

01:07:56

And here's, here's where I'll stop until that happens.

01:08:02

I didn't write this. This is a quote. Look it up until that happens.

01:08:08

We'll have to choose black solidarity before Christian to live.

01:08:19

That is the end of the gospel. That is the founding of a new religion, a religion of works.

01:08:34

Yeah, it is. I was just stunned when, when I was given that tweet initially, and it was just that one right there that said, until that happens, we'll have to choose black solidarity before Christian to live.

01:08:50

I was like, no, no. That's that. No, there's gotta be, there's gotta be something before or after it's going to change that.

01:09:01

Um, well, and since it's right after it's, I mean, there isn't something right after the change because the next, next tweet is

01:09:08

I want you to be in the fight with us, but you need to be in the fight on the right basis.

01:09:15

You'll need to understand how the current issues affect us as black people and not as Christian people. Until you understand that you'll distract from the focus that's needed.

01:09:24

That's it. The gospel is no longer enough.

01:09:31

Council member, the gospel coalition, he asked for a charitable reading.

01:09:39

I don't know how to read it anymore. Charitably. I'm reading it theologically and I'm stunned.

01:09:47

I am absolutely stunned. I think most other people are too.

01:09:55

I'm just one of the few people that will actually say it publicly. And we will take, oh my goodness, we'll take so much heat for daring to point out that identity politics destroys

01:10:12

Christian unity. It destroys it. It's a theological heresy, theological heresy.

01:10:21

I hope the BD will see that he has allowed the emotion of the moment.

01:10:28

To create a tremendously dangerous and false narrative that he has promoted and that he will not only repent of it, but he will call others to do the same thing.

01:10:37

That's my call for him. That's my call for him. Okay. Got a few minutes left before the bottom of the hour.

01:10:45

When we are going to wrap up, I want to answer a question that has been asked of me on a different issue.

01:10:56

I have spoken with Dr. Hartley, Donald Hartley about possibly coming to the program.

01:11:03

We'll do a further discussion of this. But I want to turn your attention, if you could, to Paul's second letter to the

01:11:13

Corinthians. We'll start in verse two and let me do the big text thing here because I do want to point something out.

01:11:30

Second Corinthians 4 .2. But we have renounced the things hidden because of shame, not walking in craftiness or adulterating the word of God, but by the manifestation of truth, commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God.

01:11:42

And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In whose case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel, the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

01:11:54

For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus is Lord and ourselves as your bondservants for Jesus' sake.

01:12:00

For God who said, light shall shine out of the darkness is the one who has shown in our hearts to give the light and the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

01:12:14

So what is the issue? The issue is in second Corinthians 4 .4, and we've discussed this in the past.

01:12:20

I don't know. I don't know if a search on our fancy dancy new wonderful website would pull this up.

01:12:28

But we have had a discussion of what this means.

01:12:34

Over here on the right, we have in which plural.

01:12:40

So in, in whose case, haotheos to ionos tutu, the

01:12:47

God of this age, this age tutu has blinded the minds of the unbelieving eista with the result at so that they might not, um, see, but it's actually be enlightened as in, uh, coming out of darkness.

01:13:09

Um, the light photos Mon of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is icon to say you, the image of God.

01:13:20

And the majority, uh, interpretation of second

01:13:30

Corinthians 4 .4 is that Satan is being referred to as haotheos the

01:13:35

God of this age. And that is primarily because of the use of two ionos tutu, this age, this age is, is said to be the age of the, um, power of the, uh, of the enemy of God and so on and so forth.

01:13:53

And so, um, and then you have this idea of blinding the minds of the unbelieving.

01:13:59

And so, uh, most people interpret it that way. Well, Dr. Hartley pointed out, uh, who he's done.

01:14:06

He, I had the book in here and I took it back. Um, he has a monograph on this section on this, as I recall.

01:14:13

And then I, I found, I looked all over my library. I could not find that one. I did find the work on Isaiah chapter six and the judgment passages is found there.

01:14:26

And if some of you remember the back in January before the whole world went nuts, um,

01:14:32

I preached a couple of times, once in New York and once at G3 and then once at Apologia, so I did it three times in about a month,

01:14:41

I preached from the Greek Septuagint from Isaiah chapter six, and one of the things you have to deal with there in Isaiah chapter six is the, um, the judgment narrative of God blinding so that people will not repent it's judgment coming upon a people and Dr.

01:15:03

Hartley suggests that that's actually what we have here in second Corinthians four, four, this isn't Satan.

01:15:09

This is God blinded the minds of the unbelieving. Just as you have in second

01:15:15

Thessalonians where those who refuse to love the truth are, um, uh, caused to love a lie.

01:15:23

And it was God who did that at that point as well. These are judgment passages and should be understood in that way.

01:15:32

Now, part of the specific question that was directed to me has to do with the forms of the word

01:15:39

God. And you will notice that we have here

01:15:45

Hatheos, the Hatheos is the nominative singular of the word God. So, uh, if you go back to the

01:15:53

Septuagint, um, in fact, let me, let me show you this. I'll go back to, um, the

01:16:00

Septuagint and Genesis one, one, there it is. Um, so, uh,

01:16:12

Bereshith bara Elohim et ha'shamayim ba 'eth ha 'aretz. In the beginning created

01:16:20

God, the heavens and the earth, but in Greek, enarkei epoyison

01:16:27

Hatheos tan uranon kai tein gein. So Elohim, the

01:16:34

God who creates all things is Hatheos. Hatheos is the normative term for God.

01:16:42

It's theos. Then here, for example, is theu. Theu is the genitive singular.

01:16:50

If you were taught an 8k system, it would be genitive ablative. Most of the modern grammars use a 5k system, but same, same form, just, uh, different ways of, uh, syntactically interpreting each of the cases, but theu, pneuma theu, the spirit of God.

01:17:10

Now, even though it says theu here, you'll notice it's identical. Elohim, Elohim are identical in Hebrew.

01:17:17

And in Greek, what you do with a verb, you parse a verb.

01:17:26

A verb will take various prefixes, suffixes can have things happen to its root, um, to, uh, thematic vowels.

01:17:35

There's lots of things can happen in the Greek language to a verb and to participles and to infinitives.

01:17:44

Uh, Greek is extremely expressive, especially in the verbal, verbal aspects. And then in the noun forms, you decline a noun.

01:17:53

And so you place it into its various forms. And so the first, the lexical form that you look up normally is the nominative singular, ha -theos,

01:18:03

God. And then theu would be the genitive. Theo is in the 8k system, locum, instrumental, dative, 5k is just simply the dative, theon is the accusative.

01:18:18

And the accusative is the case of direct, the direct object. So when God is the, uh, direct object of a verbal action, then it will be in the accusative.

01:18:32

There was a vocative form, um, does appear in the

01:18:39

New Testament, but it's very rare because the vocative was passing away at the time of the Koine period when the New Testament was written.

01:18:44

So you'll find it in the Greek Septuagint, but fairly rare in the, um, in the

01:18:49

New Testament. So there you have, uh, theos as it's found in the

01:18:57

Greek Septuagint. And obviously this means God. This isn't a lesser

01:19:02

God. This isn't a divine being. This is God created the heavens and the earth, ha -theos.

01:19:11

Okay. So we can go back to, for example, John 1 .1. And here you have enarche ein halagos, kai halagos ein pros tan theon, kai theos ein halagos.

01:19:26

And so notice the word was with God. Tan theon is accusative because you're using pros.

01:19:36

It is a predicate nominative, but since you have the, uh, have pros there, it takes the accusative, kai theos ein halagos.

01:19:45

And the word was God. Now you say, well, it doesn't say ha -theos. The one area, and I, I, I think

01:19:54

I could substantiate this fairly easily. And, and I'm sure he'd probably actually enjoy getting to do this because he probably has almost never asked to do this.

01:20:04

Uh, but I can get Dan Wallace to back me up on this. The one area that most people who study

01:20:10

Greek never really master, especially English speaking people, is the article. The article is not the word the.

01:20:20

We normally define it that way, but it's not. The article in Greek is so much more expressive and so much more nuanced than the or a or an indefinite uses in English.

01:20:39

Um, and the, the parallels just don't follow. So when

01:20:46

Jehovah's witnesses, for example, look at this and go, Oh, look, it doesn't have the article. So it's a God. That is absurd.

01:20:53

Uh, look down here, for example, at, uh, verse six, again, again, it's a

01:20:58

Anthropos, uh, Pestelaminos para Theou. There came a man sent from Theou.

01:21:06

God, there's no article. So you, are you saying that should be sent from a God that that's

01:21:12

John was saying there, there was a man sent from a God whose name was John. No, there's a man sent from God.

01:21:19

You do not have to have the article for it to be definite. That's just one. That is just a fundamental reality of the

01:21:27

Greek language. So up here in verse one, when it's, when it says that the word was with God, that's not, that's not, ah, see, that means that's the true

01:21:40

God. No, that's just simply God in the accusative form. There is no meaning distinction.

01:21:47

There is no grammar. There is no lexical source on God's green earth that will say that Hotheos means something different than Tantheion.

01:21:58

They do not have meaning differences. They are functioning differently within a sentence.

01:22:04

That's the only difference between them. And we could go anywhere.

01:22:09

We could just, we could just start walking through, um, and finding places where God is used.

01:22:15

Uh, so, uh, God is used again in verse 12 and as many as we see it, him, them, he gave authority, technotheo, genocide to become children of God, not children of a

01:22:26

God, but children of God. But there's no article. There's need to be an article. Um, uh, those who were born again by God, verse 13, even to those who believe his name, they are, they are, they are become children of God.

01:22:43

They are born again by the power of, um, of God. So you can just walk through.

01:22:50

Uh, it's interesting. Uh, no one, John 1, 18, no one has seen God theon because it's direct object of haoreken, horao.

01:23:00

No one has seen God that otherwise would be theos. But theon, no one has seen

01:23:06

God without an article at any time. Monogenes, theos, the unique God, haon, istan, kalpon, tupatras, the one who's in the bosom of the father, that one has exegeted him.

01:23:16

He has made him known. He has explained him. Um, so, uh, going back then to, um, 2

01:23:26

Corinthians chapter four, in whose case, hatheos tu ionos ionos tutu, how you're going to understand this is going to be completely dependent upon whether you look at, for example, the use of taflao, uh, the blinding and connect that to the judgment material in Isaiah chapter six.

01:23:54

Let me just, um, thank you. Never done that before.

01:24:00

Uh, look at Isaiah chapter six, um, verse 10.

01:24:11

Render the hearts of this people insensitive, um, and notice their eyes are specifically mentioned as part of the judgment of God.

01:24:26

Now they're said to be dulled or dimmed, uh, so that they may not see with their eyes and hear with their hearts and turn, and I might heal them.

01:24:38

So there is a specific judgment upon the eyes in Isaiah chapter six.

01:24:45

And so when you go back to, uh, 2 Corinthians chapter four, um, you have the same type of a darkening of the understanding and of the mind.

01:24:59

So if you see the same judgment here in 2 Corinthians four, then you can see why

01:25:05

Dr. Hartley and others would see that Hafez here is actually simply referring to God, the father, uh, who is acting in judgment in this particular case.

01:25:17

Now, can they, us be used of gods in the plural can, um, and was in first Corinthians chapter eight.

01:25:29

So you'll notice, um, first Corinthians eight, four concerning the eating of things offered to idols.

01:25:41

We know that there is no such thing as an idol in the world and that there is no God who dice, they, us,

01:25:47

I may heist notice the asses in the nominative. So if you say the ass is some lesser

01:25:53

God, then Paul is saying, and that there is no lesser God, but one, it's just making sense.

01:26:00

He's, he's speaking of monotheism here. He's, he's talking about the shema and he is actually going to repeat the shema after he says, for even if there are legaminoi theoi, legaminoi theoi, so -called gods, whether in heaven or upon the earth, just as there are theoi many gods and many lords.

01:26:31

So there's all sorts of things on earth that men called lords and gods all over the place.

01:26:37

I mean, there's, uh, there in Corinth, I've told the joke, I don't want to become like Bart Ehrman who tells the same joke all over and over again.

01:26:47

But, but, um, there's a little city, a retirement city outside of, uh, where we live here called

01:26:54

Sun City. And that's where the old folks live. And there's another one next to it,

01:27:00

Youngtown. But in Sun City, the joke used to be that on every corner, there was a gas station and three banks.

01:27:07

That's pretty much the case. Not really the case anymore, but there, there used to be three banks and one gas station in every corner.

01:27:13

Well, in Corinth, you had three pagan temples and a meat market on every corner. That's basically what you had.

01:27:19

There are idols everywhere. And so what Paul's saying is, for even if there are legaminoi theoi, things that are called gods in heaven or upon earth, just as there are many gods and many lords in that context.

01:27:35

But for us, ala haimin hais theos, one

01:27:41

God, the father, from whom tapanta are all things, and we ais auton, we for him, kai hais kurios, and one

01:27:55

Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom tapanta, kai haimais, and we dia autu, and we through him.

01:28:06

Now it's interesting. This phrase ais auton is used of Jesus by Paul in Colossians chapter one.

01:28:14

So there you have the language of the shema, which is the very, uh, definitional text of monotheism for the

01:28:26

Jews. Um, look, look what we have here. Uh, in the

01:28:33

Greek Septuagint, here is the shema. Here it is. Shema Yisrael, Yahweh Eloheinu, Yahweh Echad.

01:28:38

In Greek, akue Israel, kurios hatheos haimon, kurios hais esten.

01:28:47

See the same language that Paul uses. He uses kurios of Jesus. That's the term Yahweh.

01:28:53

He uses theos. He uses hais twice. He's taken the Greek Septuagint's rendering of the shema and expanded it out in light of the incarnation of Jesus.

01:29:05

And so once again, hatheos is the one God there in the shema in the

01:29:12

Greek Septuagint, just as it is in the New Testament as well. Um, so hopefully that provides an answer to the utilization of that particular form and, um, issues regarding theos and its grammatical forms in the

01:29:31

Greek language. Oh, by the way, I've had this for a little while. I wanted to bring it in. Um, cause I'll never remember this, but someone sent in a mug for me that says 30 years of debates, 1990 to 2020.

01:29:43

Hadn't really been thinking about that, but, uh, August less than two months, um, 30 years of debates.

01:29:49

Wow. And then I'm a cool cat with a Coogee, uh, the cool cat and the Coogee and the, uh,

01:29:55

Oakley sunglasses. I'm sure. Uh, oh, and I'll bet you, I'll bet you that's a, one of my gadgets.

01:30:01

Uh, like, uh, that he, that he's holding. That's, that's my assumption is that that's, um, my, my, what did, what did, uh,

01:30:10

Stravinsky's call it? My gizmo, my gizmo. I'm wearing, I'm holding my gizmo.

01:30:15

Yeah. Yeah. That must be. Yep. And someone also sent me in a light bright.

01:30:21

I haven't had a chance to unpack it yet. And I think you have to have batteries and stuff like that. But, uh, I was thinking about like making a picture on the light bright and put in the background sometime or something like that.

01:30:31

Um, we'll see if we can get around to it. I've been a little bit busy recently. Um, but thank you very much for those, uh, those kind gifts.

01:30:38

I, I very much appreciate that. Um, all right. So lots of heavy stuff today on the program.

01:30:47

Um, but important stuff, really, really, really important stuff. And I think that's why most of you tune in is we try to make sure that even when we have fun, it's still something that's edifying and will be useful to you.

01:30:58

Uh, over, over the long haul. So thank you for listening. We'll be back on Thursday is the plan right now on Thursday.